At age 70, singer-actress Carroll, a Golden Globe and Tony Award winner, was described in a 2006 rave review by Stephen Holden in the New York Times
as delivering a song “like an emotional volcano,” and the label works equally well for this radiant autobiography, bubbling over with sincere self-insights as well as a potent underlying theme of the “immense cruelties” and racial politics of showbiz. Revealing personal struggles with her mother and men (she details her marriage to singer Vic Damone), she pulls no punches in detailing conflicts with such major figures as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Pearl Bailey and Samuel Goldwyn. Beginning with her Harlem childhood, she traces her life from the High School of Music and Art, modeling and early club performances to theatrical triumphs (No Strings
; Sunset Boulevard
), TV (Julia
; Dynasty
), her grandchildren and plastic surgery, plus painful memories of racism. An outstanding chapter probes the “art-directed Negro squalor” and other “demeaning” aspects of the 1959 film Porgy and Bess
, a “cliché of noble poverty as reimagined by some very talented white men.” What emerges is an astute analysis of her career along with descriptions of the highs and lows of an often glamorous life, whether she performs at dazzling Vegas venues or in an intimate cabaret space. (Oct.)
