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Breaking the Silence
The award-winning actress describes her odyssey from her own turbulent childhood, abusive first marriage, and alcoholism through the struggle and joy of building a new life
336 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 15, 2010
I enjoyed this memoir of Mariette Hartley. She wrote about her families problems with alcohol addiction and the suicide. She dealt with them honestly, poignantly and humorously. He grandfather was the bahaviorist, John Watson, and she implies that some of the family problems stem from that no touch approach to childrearing.
I didn't know much about her or even that she was a movie and TV star. My expose to her was this August at the NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) Conference in San Francisco. She was the keynote speaker and she spoke about her families problems with alcholism and suicide with sadness yet filled with wit. Of course she was selling her book too.
She also talked about a book, Little Bee, I read and discussed with the Hayward Library Most Literary Fiction Group. She read this quote,"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here to please agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar maker wants us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okey? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived."
She felt that it was one of the most beautiful thing she had read. We all suffer scars and need to look on them as beauty marks. When I purchased the book I told her that I had read "Little Bee" and remembered that quote. She asked me if I thought that the book had a happy ending. I said that I thought that it had a sad ending and she said that I should read the first chapter again. Which I did and now I think that "Little Bee" had a happy ending.
I didn't know much about her or even that she was a movie and TV star. My expose to her was this August at the NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) Conference in San Francisco. She was the keynote speaker and she spoke about her families problems with alcholism and suicide with sadness yet filled with wit. Of course she was selling her book too.
She also talked about a book, Little Bee, I read and discussed with the Hayward Library Most Literary Fiction Group. She read this quote,"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here to please agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar maker wants us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okey? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived."
She felt that it was one of the most beautiful thing she had read. We all suffer scars and need to look on them as beauty marks. When I purchased the book I told her that I had read "Little Bee" and remembered that quote. She asked me if I thought that the book had a happy ending. I said that I thought that it had a sad ending and she said that I should read the first chapter again. Which I did and now I think that "Little Bee" had a happy ending.
April 25, 2013
This one starts off with nuggets of momentum, and then gains more and more, as it goes along. Funny and sad. Really enjoyed it.
February 1, 2024
Not what I expected.
It was hard to follow. The time line bounced around. A lot. I remembered the Polaroid commercials but had few memories of the rest of her career. There are many jokes about the alcohol abuse and suicide in her family. Tears of a clown? But she accomplished what her title says. She broke the silence.
It was hard to follow. The time line bounced around. A lot. I remembered the Polaroid commercials but had few memories of the rest of her career. There are many jokes about the alcohol abuse and suicide in her family. Tears of a clown? But she accomplished what her title says. She broke the silence.
January 17, 2016
Breaking the Silence is one actress's surprising, powerful memoir of family secrets and personal courage, told with earthiness, spirit, humor, and unabashed honesty.
From the beginning, Mariette Hartley seemed to have it all: brains, talent, looks, and charm-they ran in her family. But other things ran in her family as well.
Her funny, alcoholic adman/artist father grew dreamy, grew depressed, and then shot himself in the head, with Mariette in the next room...
Her rage-filled, silence-prone mother, a secret drinker, tried repeatedly to commit suicide, first one way and then another-she'd never escaped the bonds of her own father, John B. Watson, the trailblazing behaviorist who preached that children should never be kissed, hugged, or even touched; it wasn't scientific...
Her jealousy-obsessed first husband beat her at the smallest imagined slight-but only where it didn't show...
Mariette herself began to drink, began to contemplate suicide, until her life, and her career, hit bottom. It was only then that she found the strength to put her parents legacy behind her and begin the long, valiant journey back.
Breaking the Silence is a book of hope and courage, but remarkably, it is a book of high good humor as well. With wit, humanity, and a directness that is sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, Mariette Hartley describes that odyssey: the terror of the descent, the drama of the breakthrough, and the joy of building not only a new life, but a new, healthy family of her own. Filled with marvelous stories about television, Hollywood, and a life suffused with both tragedy and comic absurdity, Breaking the Silence is a work as warm, forthright, and thoroughly engaging as Hartley herself.
Emmy Award winner and six-time Emmy nominee Mariette Hartley has acted on stage, screen, and television for more than thirty years. She has been in films such as Ride the High Country' in television series ranging from Peyton Place to M*A*S*H to the current WIOU; in such acclaimed television movies as M.A.D.D: Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and Silence of the Heart; and of course, in those Polaroid commercials. For nine frenetic months, she cohosted CBS's The Morning Program, for a description of which, see within. She is currently developing a one-woman stage show.
Hartley is the honorary director of the American Suicide Foundation, and is active in many other organizations, including MADD. She speaks at schools, clinics, and hospitals around the country, and lives in southern California with her husband and their two children.
Now for my own short review. This is not a happy book to read, admittedly, but it is a very good book to read. It's very sad that anyone has to go through these types of experiences. The problem with drinking in this country is well known; the problem with depression, and its effects on people, is a problem which is known but not acknowledged.
Too many people have the attitude that all a person has to do is "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and "quit feeling sorry for yourself" and that the depression will just go away; such statements imply that the person is being somehow lazy about not trying harder; the answer is simply in changing the way a person looks at things.
Bull. Solid, 100% smell-to-the-heavens bull. Depression, especially of the type that she writes about in her book, can be an all-consuming, ever-present and inescapable reality for a person.
I described it in the following way in a zine I once did:
Imagine, basically, the darkest moment in your life, then imagine living like that every single day, every single night, with only very rare "breaks" from that type of feeling. Imaging the night filled with "anxiety" dreams, nightmares, etc. taking up about half or more of your sleeptime. Imagine having someone say something positive and immediately your mind comes up with a number of negative responses which you don't verbalize. Imagine you hating yourself for showing so much "weakness" when so many other people in the world are in a much worse financial/physical/political/etc. situation that you are in.Imagine knowing that this is very likely the way things will be for the rest of your life; small moments of happiness in a universe of darkness.
I even wrote a poem once summarizing such feelings:
If I were but a speck of dust
Cast in the endless realms of the universe
I doubt that I could be
more lonely.
This is the type of reality that depression is, much less than drunkenness and suicide. Mariette Hartley's book is important reading for anyone suffering from any of these types of problems; at least we can see that a person can survive the problems and find at least some joy in their lives.
From the beginning, Mariette Hartley seemed to have it all: brains, talent, looks, and charm-they ran in her family. But other things ran in her family as well.
Her funny, alcoholic adman/artist father grew dreamy, grew depressed, and then shot himself in the head, with Mariette in the next room...
Her rage-filled, silence-prone mother, a secret drinker, tried repeatedly to commit suicide, first one way and then another-she'd never escaped the bonds of her own father, John B. Watson, the trailblazing behaviorist who preached that children should never be kissed, hugged, or even touched; it wasn't scientific...
Her jealousy-obsessed first husband beat her at the smallest imagined slight-but only where it didn't show...
Mariette herself began to drink, began to contemplate suicide, until her life, and her career, hit bottom. It was only then that she found the strength to put her parents legacy behind her and begin the long, valiant journey back.
Breaking the Silence is a book of hope and courage, but remarkably, it is a book of high good humor as well. With wit, humanity, and a directness that is sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, Mariette Hartley describes that odyssey: the terror of the descent, the drama of the breakthrough, and the joy of building not only a new life, but a new, healthy family of her own. Filled with marvelous stories about television, Hollywood, and a life suffused with both tragedy and comic absurdity, Breaking the Silence is a work as warm, forthright, and thoroughly engaging as Hartley herself.
Emmy Award winner and six-time Emmy nominee Mariette Hartley has acted on stage, screen, and television for more than thirty years. She has been in films such as Ride the High Country' in television series ranging from Peyton Place to M*A*S*H to the current WIOU; in such acclaimed television movies as M.A.D.D: Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and Silence of the Heart; and of course, in those Polaroid commercials. For nine frenetic months, she cohosted CBS's The Morning Program, for a description of which, see within. She is currently developing a one-woman stage show.
Hartley is the honorary director of the American Suicide Foundation, and is active in many other organizations, including MADD. She speaks at schools, clinics, and hospitals around the country, and lives in southern California with her husband and their two children.
Now for my own short review. This is not a happy book to read, admittedly, but it is a very good book to read. It's very sad that anyone has to go through these types of experiences. The problem with drinking in this country is well known; the problem with depression, and its effects on people, is a problem which is known but not acknowledged.
Too many people have the attitude that all a person has to do is "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and "quit feeling sorry for yourself" and that the depression will just go away; such statements imply that the person is being somehow lazy about not trying harder; the answer is simply in changing the way a person looks at things.
Bull. Solid, 100% smell-to-the-heavens bull. Depression, especially of the type that she writes about in her book, can be an all-consuming, ever-present and inescapable reality for a person.
I described it in the following way in a zine I once did:
Imagine, basically, the darkest moment in your life, then imagine living like that every single day, every single night, with only very rare "breaks" from that type of feeling. Imaging the night filled with "anxiety" dreams, nightmares, etc. taking up about half or more of your sleeptime. Imagine having someone say something positive and immediately your mind comes up with a number of negative responses which you don't verbalize. Imagine you hating yourself for showing so much "weakness" when so many other people in the world are in a much worse financial/physical/political/etc. situation that you are in.Imagine knowing that this is very likely the way things will be for the rest of your life; small moments of happiness in a universe of darkness.
I even wrote a poem once summarizing such feelings:
If I were but a speck of dust
Cast in the endless realms of the universe
I doubt that I could be
more lonely.
This is the type of reality that depression is, much less than drunkenness and suicide. Mariette Hartley's book is important reading for anyone suffering from any of these types of problems; at least we can see that a person can survive the problems and find at least some joy in their lives.
January 22, 2014
I remember seeing Mariette Hartley on T.V. when I was a kid. Recently, she has reappeared on television narrating the TV show "Wild about Animals". She seems supernaturally young - looking much the same as she did in the 1980's. I found her to be smart and witty in this memoir. Her unusual childhood and strange grandfather, Big John were fascinating. Her father and mother both had personal demons that made them less than ideal parents. She had an early abusive marriage. Later, she had a successful marriage and career. I found myself skimming through her detailed childbirth account. Sometimes, the timeline in the book was hard to follow. Overall, I enjoyed the book. She seems to have overcome her traumatic early years with courage,grace and humor.
January 7, 2020
Breaking The Silence
by Mariette Hartley
ILL
Hardcover
the author is the daughter of Dr Watson
http://robothink.blogspot.com/2005/09...
this is about Eve Ensler's the apology The Apology
and the similarity betw Shreber and Watson; this is about the effect of behaviorism on the american psyche , ie on men and on women
by Mariette Hartley
ILL
Hardcover
the author is the daughter of Dr Watson
http://robothink.blogspot.com/2005/09...
this is about Eve Ensler's the apology The Apology
and the similarity betw Shreber and Watson; this is about the effect of behaviorism on the american psyche , ie on men and on women
December 7, 2011
This was a very moving book - as she recalls family tragedies and how she overcame them. She also shares funny stories about her career....an enjoyable read.
June 27, 2012
Read over a few months, heartbreaking stories. Could relate to it all.
August 30, 2013
Well-done, Mariette. Brave woman, and such a gentle soul.
In Breaking the Silence, Mariette opens her life - glamour and faults, joys and traumas, for all to see.
Well written and funny too!
In Breaking the Silence, Mariette opens her life - glamour and faults, joys and traumas, for all to see.
Well written and funny too!
Want to Read
March 8, 2016Damage by behaviorists.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews