Memories of Hollywood's Legendary Actresses - I Loved Her in the Movies

Good description of his friends/lovers/wives but no dirt shoveled in this book. Which is refreshing. His descriptions are insightful and gives you an idea what the end of the Golden Era of the big studios was like. Thank you Mr. Wagner!

Great read--could not put it down, Reads like Wagner is sharing a glass of wine with you and treating you to a lifetime of stories. If you love the great ladies of the glamour years of Hollywood, you will love this book.

I would have liked more in-depth descriptions of the women described in this book. But Robert Wagner was a gentleman, except for Shelly Winters, and a few others. But it was truthful because any time Shelly Winters is mentioned in a book, Shelly was not a nice person. Same thing about the “kiss”at Liza Minnelli’s last wedding from her new husband, not a thing anyone wants to see.

being a fan of old movies, the wonderful actress of that era, the glorious fashions, this books takes you back in time....RJ truly writes about what goes on behind closed doors ....it was a real eye opener about how sad most of their lives were before they became stars and after...
If you love old movies from the silent films through to the 60's this is the book for you!

This is a confection of a book. Superficial and sweet but entertaining and informative enough to be worth the price of admission. Not many secrets revealed but a lot of solidification of impressions about what female stars of the golden Hollywood era endured and overcame. Wagner is a gentleman and this book proves it.

With a career in the movies and on television that traversed 60-plus years, Robert Wagner has rubbed elbows with an amazing number of the silver screen's leading ladies. Whether he knew them in a personal or professional capacity, he had the opportunity to study these legendary stars in a way few people ever did. Fortunately for us, he's now divulging his thoughts and experiences with readers in his most recent memoir, I LOVED HER IN THE MOVIES.

Beginning in the 1930s and extending to the present day, Wagner recalls the famous women he encountered decade by decade and shares his personal interactions with them. He also provides insight regarding various well-known movie studios, producers, directors and cameramen. Before the book is over, it's easy for readers to feel that they have intimate knowledge of Hollywood, particularly during its heyday.

Wagner dishes the dirt, in the kindest possible way, on big-name actresses like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Julie Andrews, Audrey Hepburn, Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe. He also shares insights regarding the two of his three wives who were actresses, the now-deceased Natalie Wood and his current spouse, Jill St. John.

An especially beguiling story that Wagner shares involves a trip home with a schoolmate from the Hollywood Military Academy, Irving Thalberg, Jr., when Wagner was just eight years old. Little did he know that he would get to meet Thalberg's mother, actress Norma Shearer, and receive an autographed picture of her that day. Readers also learn how Wagner got his start in the movies and how he went on to work in the industry for many more decades.

For those interested in his television career, Wagner includes stories of his portrayal of the dashing and debonair Jonathan Hart starring opposite Stefanie Powers in ABC's hit mystery series “Hart to Hart.” Weekly one-hour episodes were produced from 1979 to 1984, and then Wagner rejoined Powers to make eight 90-minute made-for-TV movies from 1993 to 1996.

Also included here are full-page images of many of the women whom Wagner talks about, giving readers faces --- and often bodies --- to match with the names of the screen stars.

I LOVED HER IN THE MOVIES transports readers back in time and allows them to relive an era that no longer exists today, those days when the pictures were everything and people believed that maybe life could be like what they saw in the movies. It reflects a time when the stars really were larger than life and when the public wasn't privy to their every peccadillo. Anyone who has ever watched and enjoyed the classic movies from yesteryear will love this remembrance by a man who has been there and done that, and is gracious enough to tell the tale.

Reviewed by Amie Taylor

This disappointing book is filled with gossip about old Hollywood female stars, but it's content is obviously mostly from reference books accumulated by the co-author and not Robert Wagner's personal background. There's actually very little about Wagner in this book and his "memories" are dull and weak. Ironically, while he's willing to spill the trash about others secret affairs and illegitimate children, even analyzing how hypocritical they are when they claim to be religious, he says almost nothing about his own affairs or his own failures. The book is incredibly repetitive, with the authors seemingly smitten with every actress, and is filled with a number of errors in order to make storylines pop. There is too little about some of the greats and way too much about some insignificant actresses. It's mostly written as a mini encyclopedia with Wagner mostly absent from the stories. And the performers are grouped by chapters in a way that makes no sense with no real narrative and often stories get interrupted by tangential information. Poorly done--only for those that can tolerate verbose gossip with no sources given. Certainly Wagner didn't know most of this information himself--and it's too bad that he withheld personal stories because this book is too distant to be meaningful.

Robert Wagner strikes me as a nice guy though and it’s hard to believe he’s still up and at ‘em having been around so long. I know there are many who suspect the worst of the man and to tell you the truth, the events that took place that night on the Splendor have cast a long shadow over the past thirty years, not only for me but for every Natalie Wood fan. But I came to this book hoping to start a new page clean.

He tells us at the beginning that the book will be free of negativity, but has to eat his words over and over again, especially when thoughts of Betty Hutton cross his mind. Or Raquel Welch, of whom he says that the eight weeks they spent together shooting The Biggest Bundle of Them All chafed more than an “eight week long session with a proctologist.”

It’s hard to believe he’s still up and at ‘em having been around so long. He worked for Carmel Myers, for goodness’ sakes. OK, he’s 88 now and still active, thanks to the ministrations of the beloved Jill St. John. When he appeared on TV to roast Robert Osborne on a This is Your Life” segment, he looked fit as a forty year old man (maybe because poor Osborne was sinking in front of our eyes, poor guy).

Wagner still has plenty of insight into Natalie as a woman and an artist, as Carl Andre probably has plenty of insight into Ana Mendieta. Wagner tells us that she won the role of Deenie in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass due to a strange Wood quirk. Jane Fonda had the inside edge, but Kazan chose her over Jane Fonda because “Natalie admitted to him that she was ambitious, and Fonda wouldn’t. Kazan wanted an actress who wasn’t afraid to be great. Natalie wanted to be great, so she was.”

When Natalie was alive, she had Wagner wanting to be great too, though they made rather a botch out of playing Brick and Maggie in that awful version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Now he is playing lackluster comedy parts, like the poor man’s Leslie Nielsen.

Wagner’s good at both inductive and deductive reasoning. For example, he followed his friend Ida Lupino through her acting career and her pioneering work as the 1950s premiere female director. When she makes the transition into TV roles, she was able to get good gigs directing “tough” shows like The Fugitive and Have Gun, Will Travel and, he says, this was lucky for her because the few women who had their own shows like Donna Reed and Loretta Young wouldn’t hire Lupino to direct them. It’s all “ironic,” Wagner claims, but he makes connections between this behavior and the male dominated Hollywood world in which every woman had to fight for herself. Even the greatest female star had at most a ten year-run of box office gold—then she was yesterday’s dog’s dinner. Who else would know the tawdry details of the feud that split apart Hollywood’s oddest friendship, that of Barbara Hutton and Rosalind Russell? Only RJ Wagner, who was there when it all happened.

He knows who had the greatest jewelry collection in Hollywood. No, not Liz Taylor, but a three way tie between Merle Oberon, Paulette Goddard, and ice skating goddess Sonja Henie. Why them? Because they cared about jewels, seeing them as objective tokens of the love men gave them. “Jewelry MATTERED to them—it was a way of keeping score.” Rosalind Russell’s obnoxious husband was called behind his back “the Lizard of Roz.” Why? Wagner asks. “How to put this delicately?” he muses. “Because he was an arrogant a$ $ h 0le.” the store won’t even let me print the things RJ gets away with, because he’s so cute that even Barbara Stanwyck wanted him, when she was 44 and he was 19—and she got him.

The actor author Robert Wagner was part of the Hollywood scene in the 1940’s onward. He acted with or heard about many of the screen sirens; among them Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert, Gene Tierney, Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Susan Hayward, Janet Leigh, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor and Glenn Close. This sympathetic retelling reveals how the starlets coped with the Hollywood studio system. And the movie system in a nutshell, “what Hollywood sold was not really the individual movie. The actual product being marketed was the star-- the movie was merely the packaging. The vast majority of the people who were signed by the studios failed, not because they didn’t have any talent, but because they didn’t come across, didn’t photograph effectively, didn’t pop the lens of the camera to imprint themselves on the front lobe of the viewer’s brain.” (p.25-26). Smoothly written, in good taste and detailed index makes browsing easy.

Robert Wagner (Pieces of My Heart) made his film debut in 1950 at the age of 20 and has continued to work nonstop in films and television ever since. In I LOVED HER IN THE MOVIES, Wagner looks back at actresses he's worked with or known socially and offers first-hand tales of their temperaments and talents. He also examines Hollywood's treatment of actresses, why the younger ones are cast opposite older actors, and why women fared better on screen in specific decades.

I LOVED HER IN THE MOVIES is a treat for movie buffs. Wagner is not only a devoted film historian but also a very social lifelong participant. Most of his assessments are positive, but he's not blind to many who had troubled lives or difficulties behind the scenes. He adored his MADAME SIN co-star Bette Davis, but she saw life and work "as a battle to be won" and "if there weren't any obstacles, Bette was quite capable of creating them." His HARPER co-star Shelley Winters was "a difficult woman on the best of days, and a massive pain in the ass on the worst of them." Wagner's friendship with Marilyn Monroe gave him a relaxed view of the star, but he notes that producers grew leery of her because "schedules and budgets were kindling for her wavering temperament."

A few other choice memories... Rosalind Russell ("Boyant, smart, the life of every party"), Bette Davis ("For all her volatility and the special handling she mandated, I always adored her"), Ann Sheridan ("A hard-drinking, hard-living woman"), Lucille Ball ("Comedy was Lucy's profession, not her personality"), Claire Trevor ("She was Earth Mother: bountiful, loving, always supportive"), Janet Leigh ("a class act all the way"), Elizabeth Taylor ("The most beautiful woman of her time.").

Wagner and co-author Scott Eyman arrange the book chronologically, so actresses and careers are seen within the context of specific decades. This is a chatty, relaxed but well-researched memoir, filled with zingy comments and juicy backstage tales. Film buffs will be delighted by film historian and veteran actor Robert Wagner's appreciative and candid first-hand appraisals of Hollywood's greatest actresses.

This is for the audible version, which is the best way to experience this book. Robert Wagner delivers an outstanding look back at the female stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, many of whom he knew personally going back as far as his school days growing up in West LA (Norma Shearer, anyone?). While not shying away form addressing the personal demons and flaws of some of his subjects, this is not a "tell-all" and Wagner treats just about everyone with respect and empathy. He also provides some insight into what it must have been like to be a woman trying to maintain a career in the sometimes cruel studio system. I've always enjoyed Wagner and other than visible connections like Fred Astaire playing his father on "It Takes A Thief" and some of his early movie roles, I didn't realize how steeped he was as a bridge between old and new Hollywood. This is a terrific book and a must for classic movie fans.

Mr. Wagner has some very perceptive insights into many of the female stars of the movies. He starts out with stars of the silent screen such as Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson and goes through the galaxy to today with Meryl Streep and Dakota Johnson. Many of the women he discusses he worked with or knew socially. This gives the book a very intimate feel. It is a fun, fast read. My one complaint is that there is A LOT of R. J. Wagner in this book.

Previously, Mr. Wanger wote You Must Remember This, a book that I loathed. With this book he more than makes up for that. I hope Mr. Wagner will write a book on the male stars. His observations would be interesting to read.

An absolute read ! Wagner's text is smooth, full of off the the wall humor( actors walk into a room, but their egos are 5 feet infront of them) and ge was including himself. Love reading about the golden age of hollywood. This is a book that will be reread...a lot. Book is very easy to read , very pleasant to hear of the stories on and off screen by s9meone who truly loves and respect his craft. As far as other ppl wanting to hear about scandalous gossip, DONT READ! (THIS IS NOT ABOUT NATALIE) either. Its a heart warming trip down memory lane . I thank you Mr. Wagner for another excellent read!

This was an enjoyable read. As someone else said in another review, you could find most of what was written about these actresses on Wikipedia. While some of this may be true, I believe different. This is different due to the author not only telling us about the actresses, but also telling us his experiences in personally knowing these women not just as actresses but as normal people too. Well worth the read. I was given a copy through a Goodreads giveaway.

I love reading about old Hollywood. It was enjoyable but I would have loved a little more about Natalie Wood. We need to treasure the actors/actresses from the heyday of Hollywood. They were the great ones and slowly we are losing them. Thanks Robert for writing about the actresses I love watching on TCM.

We were lucky enough to meet Robert Wagner and he signed our book. If you would love to get a classy and honest behind the scene feel for starlets lives in that era, thus is THE book. I am so glad he wrote about it so these lovely stories don't get lost over time. Thank you Mr Wagner.

I enjoy reading about different areas, and this story centered on Kentucky and Arizona. I am still amazed to learn that a Jewish doctor could also be a rough and tough cowboy, who mucks stables and rides a horse. Catherine Henry, alias Robin Lee Carter, and her doctor husband must find a genetic match for their 5-year-old son, Michael, who has leukemia. Catherine must return to her buried past to save her son. The story moves quickly through Catherine's search for an abandoned son, and a reconciliation with her forgotten family. Goldner does not have the depth of character and plot that authors such as Louise Penny, Charles Todd, and Elizabeth George display in their books. The one scene where Catherine remembers the fall leaves in Kentucky stirs fragrant memories of fall.