[admin]

He’s one of America’s most recognizable and acclaimed actors–a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, during his eleven years on M*A*S*H. Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances.

“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six,” begins Alda’s irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession.

Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow.

It is the story of turning points in Alda’s life, events that would make him what he is–if only he could survive them.

From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist’s shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can’t be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness is found in embracing them.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, filled with curiosity about nature, good humor, and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda has ever played on the stage or screen.
Customer Review: Surprised that I liked it so much...
This is my first review ever, and I just want to be counted as one who really enjoyed this book. This biography did not feel like a self promotion and I enjoyed his playfulness with words and ideas, as well as his self-awareness and humility. Mostly I liked it because it made me laugh and appreciate one person's journey through the land mines in life.
Customer Review: Cardinal Spellman, it ain't.
This is a tough book to review. True, it's an autobiography and also true, it has some hilarious high points, such as the expression on the stuffed dog's face, but for the most part it's strictly "who cares?" The typical actor's autobiography blows their own horn and tells all about other actors, especially their sexual exploits -- but none of that is present in this book. I was disappointed in the lack of detail surrounding Alda's long run in M*A*S*H and his excess of detail in the interminable experience in Chile with his intestinal blockage. I might add in passing that his descriptions and exploits at Cardinal Spellman High School in White Plains did not in any way resemble the Cardinal Spellman High School that I knew. And I am his contemporary. This pretty much sums up my reaction to this autobiography. If there are readers who are amused by stories of weird things that can be done to dogs, may I suggest "Never Inflate A Dog". At least that effort contains characters that I became interested in. In short, even though Alan Alda has lived in the same township in New Jersey where I lived for years and where I saw him more than once in the local hardware store -- I guess I just don't give a fig.


More...