When the Actors Studio faced possible extinction in 1994, Lipton (An Exaltation of Larks
) engineered a partnership between the Studio and the New School for Social Research to create a degree-granting program. Thus was born the Actors Studio Drama School, with Lipton as both founder and dean. The school's craft seminars, in which Lipton interviewed leading actors and directors, became the basis for Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio
, and since 1994, he has been that series' executive producer, writer and host. Looking back over the show's parade of personalities, he intercuts autobiographical flashbacks with quotes from the TV interview transcripts. These brief selections, excerpted from his sessions with Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Lemmon, Mike Nichols, Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep and many more, may leave some readers wishing Lipton had published the transcripts in full. Raising the curtain on his own memories, he traces the path of his multifaceted career as radio actor (The Lone Ranger
), TV actor (The Guiding Light
), Broadway lyricist (Sherry!
) and novelist (Mirrors
). Along the way, theatrical truths emerge and amusing anecdotes abound since Lipton is a witty and engaging writer. The free-associative transitions from interviews to autobiography occasionally read like two different books shuffled together, but that only makes this exaltation of Lipton doubly enjoyable. The 48 illustrations include Al Hirschfeld's caricature of Lipton. (Oct. 18)
