The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me: Six Months on the Set With Marilyn and Oliver - Hardcover

Clark, Colin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312143958 ISBN 13: 9780312143954

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1996

Synopsis

Leaving college in the 1950s, Colin Clark got a job as a gofer on the London set of a new motion picture called The Prince and the Showgirl. It was no ordinary production: Uniting Britain's premier classical actor, Sir Laurence Olivier (also the director), with Hollywood's ultimate sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe, it should have been a box office smash. But even before cameras rolled, things started going wrong - and twenty-three-year-old Clark, tiptoeing among clashing egos, saw it all.
Every night, after twelve hours on the set, he went home and recorded the day's events in his diary, recalling scuffles, arguments - as well as his own intrigues of the heart - in a daily fly-on-the-wall chronicle. Olivier was bent on acquiring a new and exciting image; Marilyn desperately wanted to be regarded as a serious actress. Neither star understood the other, and the dream cast soon became a nightmare. Marilyn, on her honeymoon with playwright Arthur Miller, was constantly hounded by the fawning of her acting coach, Paula Strasberg. Olivier, exasperated by her inability to remember lines or even show up on time, ended up giving perhaps the worst performance of his career. From his lowly but privileged position, Colin Clark saw it all first-hand.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In June 1956, fresh from Eton and Oxford, the 23-year-old Colin Clark, younger son of Sir Kenneth, worked as a humble 'gofer' on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl – the film that united Britain's foremost classical actor, Sir Laurence Olivier (who was also directing), with Hollywood's most glamorous sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe (on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller). The resulting confusions and complications are deliciously exposed in Colin Clark's first-hand record of the time.

"Hurrah. Another Clark diary. Fruity, lascivious, apple-cart upturning, this has all the elements we have come to expect from the Clark school of diarifying...quite wondrously and toe-curlingly frank... Not only is it packed with the tastiest little nuggets of gossip about Monroe's domestic unprofessionalism, Arthur Miller's selfishness and Olivier's surprising weakness of character, but on top of that it is the record of a fresh and roving Clark eye."
JOANNA PITMAN, 'The Times'

"One of the best filming-of-a-film diaries I have ever read...This is a wildly funny book about raging egocentric neurotics. Now that most of them are no longer within reach of their lawyers, Clark has been able to unearth a scurrilous yet loving and hugely perceptive account of a peculiarly intense summer around the studios.
SHERIDAN MORLEY, 'Sunday Times'

"Extraordinarily compulsive reading... a fascinating document."
NIGEL WILLIAMS, 'Mail on Sunday'

"Sheer delight... a diarist who is as sharp, funny and irreverent as his older brother Alan."
CHARLES SPENCER, 'Sunday Telegraph'

About the Author:

Colin Clark was the younger brother of the famous diarist Alan Clark and younger son of Kenneth (‘Lord Clark of Civilisation’). His first book, The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, was published to huge critical acclaim in September 1995. Born in 1932, Colin Clark was educated at Eton and Oxford. After The Prince and the Showgirl, he became personal assistant to Laurence Olivier before moving to Granada Television. Subsequently he produced and directed over 100 arts documentary films in America and Britain. His autobiography Younger Brother, Younger Son was published in 1997.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0312143958
• ISBN 13: 9780312143954
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 218