book review: The Autobiography of Garry Marshall

If you don't know who Garry Marshall, the author of My Happy Days in Hollywood is, that's okay; you know his work.  Happy Days.  Laverne and Shirley.  Pretty Woman.  Even if his name doesn't have instant household recognition, his movies and TV shows certainly do.  This is one of those Hollywood living legends who has worked on everything from truly classic, iconic TV shows (he was on the writing staff of The Dick van Dyke Show) to movies starring such modern-day celebrities as Seth Meyers and Zac Efron.

This is the type of Hollywood autobiography I love, because the subject's career is so extensive and varied that you feel like you get a little taste of all aspects of the biz.  So, from that perspective, understand that I'm a little biased when I said that I enjoyed this book.  But that's okay, because it's a fair reflection of how you'll probably react too:  If you like Hollywood biographies, you'll like this one.

That's not to say that the book is without flaw, and while I did enjoy the book overall, and while some of the following complaints may sound to you like nit-picking, these things really did bother me about the book.  Specifically, I have three bones to pick with My Happy Days in Hollywood.  The first is the chapter on Laverne and Shirley.  Marshall spends most of the chapter complaining about the stars of the show, and their allegedly uncooperative behavior.  Now, it's been my observation that there are two types of Hollywood autobiography.  There's the "let's dish the dirt" tell-all, which attempts to titillate the reader with a "warts and all" depiction of Hollywood's good and bad sides, and there's the schmooze-fest, in which the author, out of either sincerity or fear of alienating Hollywood power players, has nothing but nice things to say about everyone they've worked with.  Granted, this is not an "either or" dichotomy, but rather a spectrum, but Marshall's style clearly leans much, much more towards the schmoozing side of things, so his chapter-long complaint about Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall is really jarring in terms of tone -- especially since Penny Marshall is the author's sister, which makes all the complaining even more awkward.  Later on, Garry Marshall mentions several compliments toward his sister, including the rather strong praise that she is a physical comedian on par with Lucille Ball (whom Garry Marshall has worked with), but the praise seems hollow in light of all the complaining he'd done earlier.

I also take exception to Garry Marshall's take on Exit to Eden.  I've noticed that, with rare, rare exception, most Hollywood autobiographers tend to turn on their own work when it was financially unsuccessful.  Sometimes this may be an example of someone just understanding where they went wrong, but more often, I get the feeling that it's a form of hypocrisy, as if to say, "well, if the public doesn't like it, then guess what, I don't like it either!"  If the unsuccessful work is acknowledged at all, the details that follow tend to be a contradictory mixture of "mea culpa" confessions, and "not my fault" excuses.  Marshall's chapter on Exit to Eden, a movie I happen to like, is the perfect example of this.  Occasionally, I'd like to just read someone say "hey, you know what, this movie didn't do well, but I stand by my work!"

But here's the part that really annoyed me:  After the usual mixture of "here's where I went wrong"s and "not my fault"s, Marshall does eventually admit that he occasionally gets compliments from the general public about Exit to Eden.  But Marshall interprets these compliments as examples of people "understanding what I tried to do" with the film.  This bothers me because, for all of Marshall's success, and for all his self-praise about understanding how an audience thinks, he is here illustrating a stunning amount of ignorance in the matter.  People either like or don't like a movie, and while their reasons may vary, I have never heard of someone liking a movie simply because "well, the movie sucked, but I understand what the director was trying to do."

But my third and most prevalent complaint about the book is not confined to any one chapter: For a professional writer, Marshall, surprisingly, has absolutely no ear for dialogue.  This is more annoying than you may think.  Whenever Marshall attempts to use dialogue in the book to recreate a moment in his career, the real-life characters speak in a flat, entirely unconvincing manner.  For one thing, no one apparently uses contractions in Marshall's world, not even when he is trying to convey the most casual conversation.  Sentences like "do not worry, it will all work out," or "I am telling you, it is going to be a hit" sound remarkably untrue (re-read those lines with the contractions to see how much more natural they sound) to human nature, and at the risk of repeating myself, a professional writer of dialogue really should know better.

Okay, nitpicks aside (although I really did find the whole "no contractions" thing to be a constant annoyance) I do recommend the book for people who like Hollywood biographies.  For one thing, the most boring part of this type of book is usually the "before they were famous" part, as the authors wax on about their uneventful childhoods, and the reader impatiently waits for the name-dropping and Hollywood insider stuff.  Marshall, however, manages to make his earlier life sound interesting, thanks in no small part to the alleged quirkiness of his family life while growing up.  He also does a good job with the gradual transition from nobody to Hollywood success, explaining the step-by-step process of his career with clarity, humor, and a good narrative flow.  His later, occasional reminders that "I'm just a kid from the Bronx" are sort of unnecessary, as he well illustrates how he got to the place where he is.  And, because Marshall's background is mostly in comedy (as he does tend to explicitly remind us a tad bit too often) his Hollywood anecdotes, even if they lack in sordid dirt, are fun to read, not so much because of what happens, but because of Marshall's generally humorous and upbeat take on the events of his own life.

In summary, My Happy Days in Hollywood is definitely a flawed book.  But if you can get past the flaws, and you should, then you are in for an enjoyable read.