One Helluva Life: An Autobiography

Stapleton (b. 1925) has enjoyed a long career as a character actress and has won every award in sight: Oscar, Tony, Emmy. Her memoir, written with Scovell, covers her starstruck girlhood, her Broadway debut in 1946 and her charter membership in the Actor's Studio and offers insights into her art in such roles as Serafina (The Rose Tattoo). Along the way she talks candidly about her friendship with Marilyn Monroe, her struggle to save Montgomery Clift from self-destruction, the emotional dues she paid to appear in Tennessee Williams's plays and the essential difference between stage and screen acting. Much of the book deals with her multiple health problems, which have included alcoholism, pill addiction and several phobias. One of the most intriguing sections concerns her May-December romance with legendary Broadway director George Abbott (``the object of my greatest passion'') when she was in her 40s and he in his 80s. Stapleton is a woman with a large talent, a short fuse and a bawdy sense of humor, and her helluva life will interest many readers. (Sept.)