Only Make Believe: My Life in Show Business

by Howard Keel

This is the deliciously entertaining memoir by the coal miner's son who became an international star of stage, screen, and television. Keel speaks his mind about his many co-stars, including Judy Garland, Betty Hutton, Tammy Grimes and Katherine Greyson, to name a few.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published September 25, 2005

Reviews

[Casey · Rating 1 out of 5]

First off, I adore Howard Keel. I really do. I think he was amazingly talented and gifted. This book, however, is atrocious. It is horribly written, going off to random tangents and getting lost in banal recallings of pointless self serving incidents. I still love Howard Keel, but recommend all but hard core fans of his to stay away from this book.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting stories told by an arrogant, womanizing jerk who had a beautiful voice.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard Keel was one of the great musical stars of Hollyood's Golden Era.

He was also my friend and, for many years, my publicity client.

In ONLY MAKE BELIEVE, Howard presents an honest account of his life, revealing many things that I knew and some that I did not know about him. Here you will find inside stories about Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Esther Williams, Jane Powell, Doris Day and many other stars with whom Keel worked.

This is also a story of one of the biggest comebacks in show business history.

It's no secret that Keel's career floundered after the decline of the movie musical at the end of the 1950s. With the exception of a few unimportant films, he made his living working in nightclubs and regional theaters. Indeed, he was about to quit show business when he was offered the role of "Clayton Farlow" on DALLAS, a 10-year assignment that would totally revitalize his career.

ONLY MAKE BELIEVE is an entertaining, candid autobiography by a man whose great loves were his wife (Judy), his kids, golf and singing. It's a very entertaining read.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should have been titled "the many loves of Howard Keel"

[Debbie Maskus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Howard Keel was handsome and suave, but his memoir falls flat. The writing displays Keel’s lack of education with its simplistic language. The memoir details Howard Keel’s life from birth to his later years. Many of the episodes should have been omitted as they portray an arrogant, self-centered man. For me, the story wasted many hours that could have been utilized elsewhere.

[Ashleigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is reading all the one star reviews!

This is one of the most horribly written books I've ever seen! Turns out Howard Keel was a real misogynistic jerk too. I love his movies, but he seems like the worst person.

[Megan Severe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved learning about his life and hearing the backstory from his movies, but his foul language and sexual descriptions were offensive.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not sure what was the worst thing about this book: slogging through the absolutely horrific writing or learning that Howard Keel, whom I loved for years, was a jerk.

I know the man was not a writer. But he had a ghost writer, someone named Joyce Spizer, who reportedly "teaches creative writing." Well, some of the spelling and grammar was certainly creative. This book is full of sentence fragments, punctuation errors, and misspellings. The Fisher Theatre is not the Fischer Theatre, and that's pretty easy to determine with a 3-second Google search. Keel's/Spizer's prose is littered with sentences like "He played golf with so-and-so and I." No. He didn't play golf "with I." He played golf "with ME." This sort of writing runs throughout the book. I taught college freshmen who wrote far better than this. Hell, I taught seventh-graders who wrote better than this.

There are also a lot of factual errors. Frank Sinatra's career was hardly "in its infancy" when he made "From Here to Eternity." (He'd been a huge star before that, had hit a slump, and was about to make a comeback.) Robert Donat did not have dinner with actress Catherine Deneuve in 1944; she was born in 1943. Judy Collins did not write a song called "Clouds" that became a mega-hit; Judy Collins recorded a song called "Both Sides Now," which became a mega-hit, but it was written by Joni Mitchell. And on and on and on.

I might be able to forgive all of that if I hadn't been learning at the same time that Howard was conceited, rude, egotistical, arrogant, and hot-tempered. According to this book, he was pretty much the world's best singer, dancer, actor, golfer, and lover. What he was, was a serial cheater, at least during his first two marriages. Typical comments about co-stars and chorus girls run along the lines of "She was something else!" "Those legs!" "How could I resist!" "She had the whole package!" and lots of "Wow!" Occasionally we'd get a coy "No names, please!" Nice that he showed SOME discretion. And for someone who claimed to have cared so much about Marilyn Monroe and who shared so much about their on-again, off-again affair, he never even mentioned her death or his reaction to it. It was as if she was no longer there for him to boink, so there was nothing to say.

I'm also not interested in onstage (or any, really) farts and/or burps or hearing about what balls he had. Yeah, he used the term figuratively, but he used it too often. Way too often. He claimed he didn't dislike a certain director because she was a woman; he disliked her because she was a bitch. John Farrow was a prick. He told Sebastian Cabot to piss off. Cole Porter didn't fawn over him. Howard clearly needed lots of ego-stroking. I'd read that he always thought he should have been a bigger star than he was, but the bitterness in this book was palpable.

Anyone who threw things, made demands, bitched about directors and costars, and walked off the job as often as he did because people didn't acquiesce to him is lucky to have had a career at all. "Only Make Believe" was a total disappointment, in oh so many ways. But oh, that voice...

[Sonia Reppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keel's personality jumps out of the pages of his autobiography. His zesty, sometimes brash, voice has a lively charm, matching his larger-than-life image. A remarkable life, he had triumps and failures. If you are into the golden age of Hollywood, you'll like this.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable but a lot of name dropping!

[Betsy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This stories were pretty interesting but the writing was really clunky. Needed a much better ghostwriter.