A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond

Lindsay-Hogg , whose mother was actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, delivers an entertaining view of his film and theatrical experiences, as he tells his childhood as a search for truth and answers, “with twists and feints and clues” against familial “lies and deception.” His mother, who appeared in both film (Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory) and on stage (notably at Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre) was, as Lindsay-Hogg describes, a seductress who had affairs with Robert Capa and Henry Miller, and married Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg and Stuart “Boy” Scheftel. Driven by ambition, Lindsay-Hogg at age 24 directed 1960’s England’s music program Ready, Steady, Go, and later recorded videos for rock and roll bands like the Beatles (“Let it Be”) and the Rolling Stones. He offers clever accounts of directing TV’s Brideshead Revisited (casting, locations, script work, and working with such actors as Jeremy Irons) and on Broadway (Whose Life Is It Anyway? and Agnes of God with Tom Conti and Geraldine Page). Questions of rumored paternity haunt him—the possibility that Orson Welles was more than a mentor is lastly revealed by socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, once his mother’s confidante. The book is both a story of a boy’s pursuit for honesty and a talent finding his own way to fame (Oct.)