Haywire is a 1977 memoir by actress and writer Brooke Hayward (born 1937),[1] daughter of theatrical agent and producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan.[2] It is a #1 New York Times Best Seller[3] and was on the newspaper's list for 17 weeks.[4] In Haywire, Brooke details her experience of growing up immersed in the glamorous and extravagant lifestyle afforded by her parents’ successful Hollywood and Broadway careers and tells the story of how her privileged, beautiful family and their seemingly idyllic life fell apart.[2]
Margaret Sullavan – Brooke's mother, who was both a Hollywood and a Broadway star, by all accounts a superb actress, and known for her husky voice and "irresistible crooked grin."[2] She performed with the University Players at Harvard, made her Broadway debut in 1926,[8] and starred in 16 films including the classics Only Yesterday (1933), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and Back Street (1941).[9] Before Leland Hayward, she was married to actor Henry Fonda and director William Wyler. According to Brooke, she loathed Hollywood, was fanatical about her privacy, and was determined to bring up her children properly in a perfect, beautiful home. Her death at age 50 (in 1960) by barbiturate poisoning was ruled an accident.[2][6]
Bridget Hayward – Brooke’s younger sister. She was in and out of mental institutions in her teens, and worked at the Williamstown Theatre as an apprentice. She “succumbed to a recurrent, unexplained illness marked by epileptic seizures and bouts of severe depression” and her death at age 21 is considered to be a suicide.[2]
William (Bill) Hayward – Brooke’s younger brother. He, too, was in and out of mental institutions such as the Menninger Foundation. He produced Easy Rider in partnership with Peter Fonda and loved motorcycles for the rest of his life. He shot himself in the heart in 2008.[11]
Contributors
Throughout Haywire, Hayward uses snippets of oral history from interviews she conducted with people who knew her immediate family members (several of whom were "family friends")[6] to provide outside perspectives on what they were like and on how the family operated. These contributors include:[12]
The 2011 paperback edition includes an introduction by Hayward’s family and friend Buck Henry – actor, director, and Oscar-nominated screenwriter (The Graduate)[15] – and an epilogue by the author, both of which are dated May 2010. Henry introduces Leland and his "crazy kids," while Hayward’s epilogue discusses the years since Haywire was first published, thanks Henry for urging her to finish writing it, and, most notably, covers her brother William’s death (he shot himself in the heart in 2008).[16] The "epilogue is remarkable for its uninflected tone. She offers nothing remotely consoling about redemption or overcoming adversity. And that is one of the most bracing and strangely affirming aspects of this book."[17]
Reception
Within a month of its publication, Haywire was “heading for what appears to be a huge commercial success.”[6] It became a #1 New York Times Best Seller[3] and was on the list for 17 weeks.[4]The New York Times Book Review described it as "a Hollywood childhood memoir, a glowing tapestry spun with equal parts of gold and pain. As a book it is an absolute beauty – a Hollywood beauty, to be precise – with all the charm that term implies, the deceptive simplicity, the complex hidden machinery and, above all, the terrible cost."[2] Critics commented that the book, although published when Brooke was 39, deals mostly with her life up to her early 20s and is mostly silent on her personal tragedies (the most evident of which were her failed marriages) that occurred in the intervening years.[6] The later epilogue addresses this issue, albeit briefly.
Another New York Times reviewer wrote that one of Haywire’s themes contributed to a 1970s trend: "'Survival,' as opposed to action and creativity, seems to be the dominant motif in much of 70’s popular culture, especially in some books...Brooke Hayward’s childhood, described in Haywire, has been discussed as if it had been the domestic equivalent of an Iranian torture chamber."[18]
Movie
Haywire inspired a Warner Bros. TV movie by the same name. First aired in 1980, it was directed by Michael Tuchner and starred Lee Remick, Jason Robards, and Deborah Raffin.[19] The film was produced by Brooke’s younger brother, Bill Hayward.[11] A New York Times TV writer made note of its non-chronological “ambitious time scheme” and called it “an exceptionally fine-tuned television drama.”[20]
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American actor whose career spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. On screen and stage, he often portrayed characters that embodied an everyman image.
William Wyler was a German-born American film director and producer who won the Academy Award for Best Director three times, those being for Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959), all of which also won for Best Picture. In total, he holds a record twelve nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director.
Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress.
Bridget Jane Fonda is an American actress. She is known for her roles in The Godfather Part III (1990), Single White Female (1992), Singles (1992), Point of No Return (1993), It Could Happen to You (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), A Simple Plan (1998), Lake Placid (1999) and Kiss of the Dragon (2001).
Joshua Lockwood Logan III was an American theatre and film director, playwright and screenwriter, and actor. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for co-writing the musical South Pacific and was involved in writing other musicals.
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career, and won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in consecutive years for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950), the latter of which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six.
Leland Hayward was a Hollywood and Broadway agent and theatrical producer. He produced the original Broadway stage productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The Sound of Music.
Frank Kent Smith was an American actor who had a lengthy career in film, theatre and television.
Frances Ford Seymour Fonda was a Canadian-American socialite. She was the second wife of actor Henry Fonda, and the mother of actors Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda.
Barbara O'Neil was an American film and stage actress. She appeared in the film Gone with the Wind (1939) and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in All This, and Heaven Too (1940).
The Moon's Our Home is a 1936 American comedy film directed by William A. Seiter and starring Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan and Walter Brennan. It was adapted from a novel of the same name written by Faith Baldwin and first published in serial form in Cosmopolitan magazine.
Brooke Hayward is an American actress. Her memoir, Haywire was a best-seller.
Producers' Showcase is an American anthology television series that was telecast live during the 1950s in compatible color by NBC. With top talent, the 90-minute episodes, covering a wide variety of genres, aired under the title every fourth Monday at 8 pm ET for three seasons, beginning October 18, 1954. The final episode, the last of 37, was broadcast May 27, 1957.
Sullavan is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Mister Roberts is a 1948 play based on the 1946 Thomas Heggen novel of the same name.
The Good Fairy is a 1935 romantic comedy film written by Preston Sturges, based on the 1930 play A jó tündér by Ferenc Molnár as translated and adapted by Jane Hinton, which was produced on Broadway in 1931. The film was directed by William Wyler and stars Margaret Sullavan, Herbert Marshall, Frank Morgan and Reginald Owen.
So Red the Rose is a 1935 American drama film directed by King Vidor and starring Margaret Sullavan, Walter Connolly, and Randolph Scott. The Civil War-era romance is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Stark Young.
John Swope was a photographer for Life, and a commercial pilot who trained United States Army Air Forces pilots during World War II
Margaret "Talli" Tallichet was an American actress and longtime wife of movie director William Wyler. Her best-known leading role was with Peter Lorre in the film noir Stranger on the Third Floor (1940).
Haywire is a 1980 American television film starring Lee Remick. The film score was composed by Billy Goldenberg. The film was based on the memoir by Brooke Hayward, who is portrayed in the film by Deborah Raffin.
↑ Note: Contributors are listed in parentheses under the most formal name that Hayward uses for them in the book (i.e., Hayward never lists Joshua Logan as such, so here he is “Josh,” while Henry Fonda is sometimes referred to simply as “Hank” but also mentioned under his full, more recognizable name).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
