Moon River and Me: A Memoir by Andy Williams

From the Publisher

A remarkable memoir by one of the most popular and beloved entertainers of the twentieth century

When in the mid-1950s Andy Williams reached a low point in his career, singing in dives to ever-smaller audiences, the young man from Wall Lake, Iowa, had no inkling of the success he would one day achieve. Before being declared a national treasure by President Ronald Reagan, Williams would chart eighteen gold and three platinum albums, headline at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for more than twenty years, and host an enormously popular weekly television variety show whose Christmas specials still occupy a tender spot in every baby boomer's heart.

Williams knew everybody who was anybody during his seven remarkable decades in show business (including Judy Garland, John Huston, Jack Lemmon, John Lennon, Elton John, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, and Barbra Streisand, among others) and was a close friend of Bobby Kennedy for many years, and he shares memories of them all in Moon River and Me. His millions of fans guarantee a huge audience for the autobiography of the plush baritone who- at the age of eighty-one-still draws thousands of fans to his Moon River Theater in Branson, Missouri.

Library Journal

Pop icon Williams's memoir is an entertaining look at a show-business life that began in Iowa and progressed steadily to a worldwide career. After the Williams Brothers Quartet (Andy Williams and his three brothers) broke up in the early 1950s, Williams went out on his own, at first with little success. Eventually, he was given his own television variety show in 1962 and became one of the best-known pop crooners in the post-World War II era. His book is a treasure trove of anecdotes from the celebrity world. He was acquainted with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, Chico Marx, Michael Jackson, Elton John, and Fred MacMurray; Williams was a fast friend of Robert and Ethel Kennedy. The singer's fans will be absorbed by his accounts of his early years in the Midwest and Hollywood, his marriage to Claudine Longet and his role in her trial for manslaughter, and his therapeutic use of LSD. VERDICT An entertaining read for those who love celebrity biographies or autobiographies, especially those who remember the pop scene in the 1950s and 1960s.—Bruce R. Schueneman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., Kingsville

Kirkus Reviews

Octogenarian crooner submits his Horatio Alger tale. In the 1960s, easy-listening icon Andy Williams's velvety voice and handsome mug became associated with a culturally conservative side of America that never embraced rock 'n' roll. But as we learn in this surprisingly candid memoir, Williams endured a pre-success hard-knock life that rivaled the squalid upbringings of many country singers or rock stars. Raised during the Great Depression in tiny Wall Lake, Iowa, a pre-adolescent Williams and his brothers were pushed hard by their hyperambitious manager father, singing at local church socials and anywhere else they could find work. Soon the family was living a peripatetic working-class existence, moving to Des Moines, then Chicago, then Los Angeles, doing radio shows and picking up the odd decent-paying gig. In L.A., however, his father's dogged persistence paid off when he got the brothers bit parts in a few Hollywood films. However, making it as a solo act in the post-World War II entertainment landscape nearly undid the workaholic singer. At his lowest point he was playing dingy nightclubs to little acclaim and sleeping in vermin-ridden flophouses-he once even resorted to eating dog food. Even as he began to have success on television, hosting the Andy Williams Show, while becoming a million-selling recording artist, life was still tough. Two marriages ended in divorce, and one ex-wife, singer Claudine Longet, was later involved in a controversial shooting. The author's peak years in the late '60s are the least compelling, as Williams rambles on about the fruits of success: art collecting, investing in Arabian horses, celebrity golf tournaments and run-ins with the Rat Pack,Elvis, John Lennon and seemingly every major or minor showbiz luminary of the day. Equal parts oddly compelling and eye-crossingly dull.

Product Details