Dance While You Can: On Relationships, Feelings and Family

Synopsis: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her most revealing memoir yet, Shirely Maclaine shares deeply personal stories about her family: her parents, her brother, and her only daughter—and about her life in the movies over four decades.

“On the deepest, most personal level, I needed to work out who my parents were and what they had been to me. I knew that I couldn’t get on with my work and the rest of my life until I had.”—Shirley MacLaine

An extraordinary woman whose energy, drive, and talent are legendary, Shirley MacLaine still moves audiences to laughter and tears. Recalling the powerful family influences that propelled both her and her brother, Warren Beatty, to stardom, she considers the effect of her own career on her relationship with her daughter, Sachi. And writing about her friendships with such Hollywood stars as Robert Mitchum, Ava Gardner, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor, and Debbie Reynolds, she contrasts the golden days of the film business with the different world of moviemaking today.
 
But Dance While You Can is more than a memoir—it is an unforgettable glimpse into a woman’s soul. Writing with candor and emotion, Shirley explores her complex feelings about success and failure, love and loneliness, the constant pressure to re-create herself in her work, and the challenge of balancing her search for self-awareness with the difficulties of sustaining her closest relationships.
 
Illustrated with thirty-two pages of personal photos—many never before published—here is a rich, revealing look at a remarkable woman in the prime of her life. Frank, often funny, and always entertaining, this is Shirley at her best.