Vanity Will Get You

This engagingly humorous and touching memoir describes Cotten's modest beginnings: birth in 1905 and growing up in Virginia, struggling for acting roles as a youth in New York and a significant meeting during the early 1930s with radio actor Orson Welles. Their ongoing friendship and professional association was established at the Mercury Theatre, leading to film landmarks like Citizen Kane and The Third Man. Cotten also recalls his stage role in Katharine Hepburn's Broadway record-breaker, The Philadelphia Story and his subsequent performances in movies. There are vivid accounts of his years in Hollywood and his relations with celebrities to whom he pays generous tributes. The book movingly expresses Cotten's feelings of loss at the deaths of his closest friends, David O. Selznick and Orson Welles. Photos not seen by PW. 40,000 first printing; first serial to American Film magazine; author tour. (May 5)