THE STAR DRESSING ROOM: Portrait of An Actor is Alan Shayne's affectionate, often uproarious new memoir that takes us back to Broadway's golden age.
Fans of beloved theatre memoirs in the vein of Moss Hart's Act One and Helene Hanff's Underfoot in Show Business are sure to relate to Alan, the perennially broke young actor as he's repeatedly upstaged in acting class by an incredibly arrogant aspiring young performer named Marlon Brando. With great wit, he relives the terror of being an understudy who's never sung or danced on Broadway-but needs to go on for Ricardo Montalban at the last minute opposite the legendary Lena Horne.
THE STAR DRESSING ROOM book is filled with his delightful anecdotes about show business legends of the 1940s and 1950s including Brando, Lena Horne, Gertrude Lawrence, Katharine Cornell, Charlton Heston, Maureen Stapleton, Ricardo Montalban, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, Burgess Meredith, Miriam Hopkins, Jack Palance, Martita Hunt, Maurice Evans, Dolores del Rio, Raymond Massey, and Luise Rainer. Greta Garbo, Mary Martin, Lotte Lenya, Elaine Stritch, and Anne Bancroft make cameo appearances.