cover image One Life is Not Enough: My Life in Russia and the Broadway and Hollywood Years

One Life is Not Enough: My Life in Russia and the Broadway and Hollywood Years

Barbara B. MacLean, Barbara Barondess-Maclean. Hippocrene Books, $19.95 (219pp) ISBN 978-0-87052-338-0

In 1908, when she was a baby, MacLean's parents took her from their Brooklyn home to their native Russia; later, her passport allowed the Barondess family to return to the U.S. when the Russian revolution threatened them. In due course MacLean became an actress and life on the Broadway stage was rich, if scarred, by her ""first love,'' producer Jed Harris. In this autobiography she covers her first 40 years. MacLean acted in Hollywood films during the 1930s when ``five horrors movie moguls controlled the most glamorous asylum in the world''; she was a friend of George Gershwin, Theodore Dreiser, publisher Horace Liveright and other famous folk. With marriage to Douglas MacLean, a silent-screen star and producer, she retired from acting, then became a fashion designer and decorator. In her 80th year, MacLean plans a sequel to her memoirs, presumably because one book, like the one life of her title, is not enough. Photos. (March 25)