Alan Alda Books

Wonderful to see all the behind the scenes photos. I look at them all the time.

At what went on behind the scenes of M*A*S*H, particularly during the final week or so of filming. I found this book at the Boston Public Library and, as it was in the reserved books section, read it in less than an hour. And I'm glad I did--I learned more about both M*A*S*H and the show's actors than I could have without interviewing them myself. Arlene Alda did a superb job with the photography, and Alan Alda's commentary is not only insightful, but also makes me wish I was old enough then (I was two in 1983) to appreciate the show, and lets me appreciate it--and the hard work of everyone involved--even more now.

Delightful, great photos and a MUST have for all MASH junkies. Alan Alada has just come out with his own autobiography, so this may be harder to find.

THE LAST DAYS OF MASH IS A GREAT BOOK EVERY MASH FAN SHOULD HAVE THIS BOOK!

ALAN & ARLENE ALDA DID A WONDERFUL JOB ON THIS BOOK!

FROM A BIG MASH FAN FOR 6 YEARS NOW KIRSTEN

If you're a M*A*S*H fan--or just have one in your life--you'll want to go to the extra trouble of trying to find this out-of-print volume. It's a photo-journal of the last week of filming M*A*S*H, with all the pictures provided by Alan Alda's talented wife. She had unusual access to a very closed set and was therefore able to capture a lot of raw emotion. Her photos, combined with her husband's often poignant commentary, do much to convey a sense of what was happening to the group of players that had called the 4077th their home. Perhaps because the initial profits went to charity--though probably because it was genuinely there--a real sense of love permeates this work. THE LAST DAYS OF M*A*S*H was no attempt to capitalize on the hysteria surrounding the end of the series, but an authentic documentary effort.

Funny, funny, funny. What surprised me most was finding out it was based on actual events (meaning that they did go on a camping trip). I enjoy everytime I listen to it.

Alan Alda titled his new book Never Have Your Dog Stuffed -- and Other Things I've Learned. But rest assured he didn't write it as a guide for self-improvement. He doesn't aim to be your guru. "I tried to tell as good a story as I could," he sums up. The resulting narrative, at 224 pages, is as lean as its author, and as engaging, and as flush with ideas and observations. "There are things that were very, very difficult to put into words," says Alda, at 69 an entertainment veteran actor who had written numerous screenplays but never a book. "That was what I had the most fun with - the things that don't want to go into words. "But the hardest part was how to take a life and make it one simple story, not just a bunch of anecdotes. I didn't like the idea of writing a memoir or an autobiography. I only put in stuff that moved the story forward." The story: One man's advancement toward accepting the uncertainties of life. Letting go, notes Alda, is a drawn-out process, "so you don't just decide to do it. You have to creep up on it. Practice it. Get used to it. "I think the guy who winds up at the end of the book would say, 'Destiny is just what happens. " Alda should know. A lot has happened for that guy this year. He got an Oscar nomination for his role in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a Tony nomination for his Broadway performance in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, and an Emmy nomination for The West Wing, in which he plays flinty Republican presidential hopeful Arnold Vinick. He continues this season on the NBC political drama, and, for its Nov. 6 episode, Sen. Vinick will square off against the Democrat (Jimmy Smits) in a debate aired live. Which candidate will succeed President Bartlet (series star Martin Sheen) by season's end? " I wouldn't spoil the surprise even if I knew," Alda replies when pressed for details about his contractual commitment to the series. But then, flashing his incandescent grin, he pledges to remain "as long as necessary to turn this great country around." When he isn't shuttling to Los Angeles to shoot the series, Alda leaves his Long Island home to hit the campaign trail for Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. Its first sentence establishes the book's matter-of-fact, often darkly witty tone. "My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that," Alda writes. He was the son of a mentally ill mother and an actor father, Robert Alda, who was subject to the vagaries of show business during a career that ranged from the hardscrabble vaudeville circuit to Broadway in the original production of Guys and Dolls. All in all, it was a dizzying childhood for Alan. But by age nine, he had decided he would be an actor, too, setting the stage for his push-pull life of embracing make-believe while defiantly inquiring into how things really are. He is a man in love with facts and verifiable truth (his decade as the gung-ho host of Scientific American Frontiers makes that clear). But he has also studied what it means to yield control to forces beyond reason.

Hard to put down, it was so fascinating and the writing is excellent.
Very witty and honest. Highly recommend this book!

This is one of those books that is impossible to put down once you begin reading. It's like a conversation. The knowing tone and honesty with which Alda writes is extremely captivating. It's a rare honor to read a book written by someone interested in life and learning. I'll read it again and again I'm sure.

This is like having a conversation with the man, as if he was sitting across the kitchen table from me. Nice time.

I've been a fan of Alda's work for a long time. The man is so talented it's unreal. Now to be able to see where he came from and how he got into the spotlight is amazing. He uses certain elements in his life where, had it happen to you or someone you know, it would be depressing, and turns them into amusing learning experiences. I am a constant reader, however 99% of what I read is fiction, nonfiction never grabs my attention. But I could not put this one down. Please read it. You wont regret it.

I was introduced to this play about a month ago when I was cast in the role of Kitty, a friend of the Kitteredges. Intending to only skim the script and hilight my lines, I read the entire play in one sitting. From the opening scene to the closing, I felt like I was being included in the characters' experiences.
The characters' personalities are also quite deep. After the first couple of times that I read through the script, I realized that there was so much more to the characters than what was written on the page. Guare does a wonderful job of letting the reader use his imagination and create his own backgrounds and deeper personalities for the characters.
This play is an intellectual-artsy type for those who are willing to examine their trust for strangers.

Even if this play were worthless, which it is not quite, the concept that gives it its title has passed into the American lexicon, so it will long be remembered, if in name only. Supposedly based on true events, it tells the story of a New York City couple, Flanders (Flan) and Louisa (Ouisa) Kittredge, unsuccessful private art dealers who are desperately clinging to their Manhattan socialite lifestyle. Flan is cash strapped and badly needs to turn up some money to complete a two million dollar deal. One night, as they are hitting up a South African acquaintance for some money, a young black man, Paul, turns up on their doorstep. He claims to be a Harvard classmate of their kids who has just been mugged in Central Park. Any initial resistance they may feel towards this stranger evaporates when he cooks them and their guest dinner, expounds on Catcher in the Rye, reveals that his father is Sidney Poitier, and intimates that he might be able to get them all jobs as extras in his Dad's movie version of Cats. He plays their liberal guilt and their social climbing hunger to perfection and makes such an impression on the South African that he agrees to invest with Flan on the art deal. The grateful couple allow Paul to stay overnight in their apartment while they go out.

His implausible story begins to unravel though when, returning early to their apartment, they find him in bed with a male street hustler and throw them both out. Flan takes particular relish in telling the story of their visitor and they are surprised to find that Paul has similarly hustled a number of their friends. They, especially Ouisa, become obsessed with finding out who Paul really is; apparently just a street hustler. He drops back into their lives several times, and they are tangentially involved in a scandal when Paul seduces and dumps a young man who then commits suicide.

Most of the philosophizing in the play, with the exception of the Six Degrees concept, is fairly silly and the people are immensely annoying. There are some funny lines, but most of the humor comes from watching the loathsome Kittredges humiliate themselves repeatedly. It is perhaps the ultimate comment on the kind of people that the play portrays that none of it is very believable. Despite the nonfiction origins, it strains credulity to believe that people who are this shallow actually exist. I'd recommend it mildly, but only for its cruel treatment of a group of people I don't much like--upper class NY City liberals. The LA Theatre Works production has the added bonus that Flan is played by Alan Alda in a near self caricature.

GRADE : C

John Guare's "Six Degrees of Separation" is about the foibles of a New York City couple named Flanders and Louisa Kittredge, who go by the nicknames Flan and Ouisa. They are a pretentious pair desperate to make a deal with a wealthy South African to keep them in their swank lifestyle when a black man named Paul barges into their lives and cons his way into an invitation to stay the night. Because Paul is charming and intellectual -- flattering Flan and Ouisa to their heart's content -- they become easy dupes, totally shocked when they wake in the morning to find that Paul had invited a male hustler into his bed while they slept. There are touches of liberal guilt in how easily Flan and Ouisa are deceived in that they are fairly patronizing to Paul as a young black man who has (seemingly) been mugged and left penniless until his father gets into town the next morning. But the truth is that the Kittredges are not taken in by their guilt but by the promise that they can get something out of their association with Paul. He claims that the father he is waiting for is none other than Sidney Poitier, coming to NYC to cast for his upcoming film adaptation of "Cats" -- and that he can get them roles as extras to repay their kindness. That is Paul's modus operandi (it turns out that he has also conned several of Ouisa and Flan's friends in the same fashion). He promises his marks a connection to a higher level of society that they aspire to. For Ouisa, Flan et al this means the world of celebrity, but for Rick and Elizabeth (the poor couple Paul turns to when his mugged-son-of-Poitier shtick won't work anymore) it is access to the upper east side world that the Kittredges inhabit. Eventually Paul's relentless conning has tragic consequences, and it feels typical of this play's mindset that the tragedy happens to the lower-class characters while the upper-crust ones hover above it all. But the main fault of Guare's play is that the characters are so uniformly unappealing. They are all pretentious (a word that just about sums up the play) and unlikable cartoons lacking in depth or realism. The parents abysmally ignore their college-aged children, who lavishly act out in retaliation, and they all just feel like stereotypes instead of relatable people you might actually meet in the real world. This is not to say that the play is without merit. It's now famous concept that everyone in the world is connected by a mere six people is intriguing, as are its questions regarding race and class distinctions. The question of how far a person is willing to go to break into the upper echelons of society is also a good one. But what I found most intriguing was when Ouisa, wondering why Paul went to such great lengths to gain access to their lives, commented that "We're not enough to be envied." Can anyone ever be happy with what they have when someone else will always have more? All in all I found "Six Degrees of Separation" to be a mixed bag with some good points muddled by weak characters.

My thanks to Mr. Guare. Had he not portrayed the rich as fatuous dupes, I might still envy them.

Based on the true story of a wealthy, well-meaning liberal couple in the upper echelons of New York society's upper crust, we have Flan or Flanders Kittredge and his wife Ouisa or Louisa; the former is a standoffish but deep down good-hearted art dealer in the private sector who has a penchant for the works of Kandinsky and Cezanne; the latter is his wife, articulate and intelligent who is in need of something of greater meaning and depth other than money, art, fancy restaurants and wealthy friends.

And so the evening commences with a friend from South Africa; they are discussing poverty, the downtrodden and the oppressed, overblown intellectual banter to elevate the ego and make the evening progress smoothly and divinely. But the night is anything but that, for it is dramatically interrupted by Paul - a young black homosexual flimflammer or Peter Funk man with a penchant for male street hustlers (only when he is happy - his words). He comes into the lives of these two unwitting victims after stabbing and passing himself off as a friend to their children who are at Harvard. And what else does her profess? You guessed it - that he is the son of you-know-who: Academy Award winner Sidney Poitier, the most eminent black actor of his generation, the hero that has been the catalyst for the lives of these socially and politically 'aware' forty-somethings.

Paul charms and bedazzles himself into the lives of those he encounters, using his wit, knowledge, ease and most importantly, his race, more specifically, Sidney Poitier's name. As the play intensifies, Paul promises the Kittredge's and future unsuspecting victims minor roles in the movie version of Cats, for which his 'father' is purportedly directing. The victims salivate over the prospect of being in a Poitier film, and they let their guards down, for their humdrum existence now has that depth and meaning that was missing at the beginning of the play; it has that structure that their kids, their careers, their money and their friends could not provide. It has a purpose. An assumed black actor's son is mugged in Central Park. And the kind Kittredges help him out. When life is not all that we want it to be, it is easy to have the wool pulled over our eyes. We believe because we want to believe. That is the meat of this play.

This play is complex because of the issues that are addressed; it is not just about race and economics, but it is about the purpose of existance in life. This work evolves and reveals so many layers, layers that are eventually reached, and thus, a truer gift of insight gained. Ironically, in the environment of the wealthy elite and the established intelligentsia, it was a sharpie who made this couple and others similar to them see the gift that life and living really is.

Yes, sure, like everyone else over the age of 30 I, too, subliminally believe that Alan Alda really *is* Hawkeye Pierce. And I love watching him get down on the asphalt to sniff the exhaust from an electric car on Scientific American Frontiers. But, really? He's not much more than a competent writer, and at least in this book, he doesn't really have anything to say.

Just in case you haven't picked it up from the other reviews, the bulk of this book is a lot of commencement speeches that Alda has given over the years, in which he tried to give crowds of 20-somethings the benefit of his insights into happiness and personal responsibility. These speeches may have been appropriate to the time and audience for which they were originally intended, but reproducing them in a book is pretty pretentious, particularly given that his advice isn't anything that we haven't already heard. Are platitudes about working hard, making time for our families, practicing some kind of social activism, and accepting happiness as it comes to us more valuable because they're uttered by Alan Alda?

Here's a quick rule of thumb for those contemplating a memoir: if you don't have something truly unique to say, stick to telling interesting stories about your life. This would have been a much better book if Alda had just told the anecdotes he uses as padding between the speeches, although even those are often self-serving (we were actors! protesting! in the 70s! you should be more like we were!). Sadly, I find that I like Alan Alda a lot less after having read this book.

Alda's down to earth brief sketch of his life and career was very enjoyable reading. After reading it I thought that Alda turned out to be a fascinating person in spite of being raised by a not with it mother and distant father. He gave some good ideas on how to live with his recalling of the graduation speaches he was asked to give along the way.

Just a short note about Alan Alda's newest book; it's average. I adore Alan Alda and wish I could write something more glowing about this book, but it truly is a collection of speeches he has written and delivered along the way. Yes, you do get an occasional insight into his life, (and, that is the best part of the book) but it is only by way of introduction to an essay or speech he wants to lay out for you. As well, the speeches become redundant and somewhat conflicting as you get deeper into the book. I found myself thinking, "Oh, no, not another commencement address!" Just be prepared not to expect too much and you won't be disappointed. I still adore him...

I reserve a one star review for books I just can't force myself to finish. And this book is one of those. This is a collection of commencement speaches Mr. Alda has given over his career as well as some stories that give background to them. If you love to sit through commencement speaches, this is the book for you. I have better things to do with my time. Sorry Alan.

Well,
Alan Alda obviously loves himself. Nothing wrong with that. What we have here though, is a book that one would have thought was intended for his readers benefit, at least in part. Instead, we have huge doses of pretentious, self-serving and gooshy drivel served up by Alan about himself for all to see how award winning, financially successful, talented, charming, pseudo-intellectual and well-loved by all and well-thought-of by all he thinks he is (and how he successfully worked through his challenging middle class upbringing - yawn). Modesty? You must be kidding! He name drops unmercifully (Peter Jennings washed his dishes and his face was better known than Lincoln's due to his television series). He was asked to speak at many prestigious universities, occasionally by Nobel prize winners, no less. And he then reads his speeches and eulogies to us! Geez! A reason for the book, perhaps? - new mileage for old pretentious material (and it might sell!)- never mind that such material was only intended for its original audience. Where is your integrity, Alan? I couldn't finish it. This book may have some knowledge or wisdom that we humble readers might find provocative, humorous or even practical. I couldn't find it though, and, in my humble opinion, you are much better off using your heartbeats elsewhere. There are much better ways to be educated, amused and entertained. This book was a gift to me and I'm sorry that good money was spent for it - I couldn't even finish it. This book is even in audio form, read by, you guessed it, Alan himself.
Now that would be torture...

Alan Alda has been revered by the feminist community and reviled by the conservative community for his outspoken support for the Equal Rights Amendment. Along the way, he managed to be a fundamental component of one of the best shows ever to appear on television. His acting, writing and directing helped make M*A*S*H one of the funniest and most successful television series. When you consider the context of the show that was a very hard task. Given that the series was set in a brutal war in a foreign land that was stalemated for most of the duration, it is amazing that it was so amusing.
The answer is that it was not really about the Korean War, it was about people coping with problems any way they could. The Alda character of Hawkeye Pierce set the stage for everyone else. His brand of zaniness and love of life was infectious and taught the fundamental lesson that while life is hard; it can be made much more tolerable if you can find something to laugh about and try to take it a little less seriously.
The real Alan Alda was never really displayed in public. I remember him appearing on Nightline to push for the ERA and on the Tonight show to plug his movie projects. Yet, he was always there for a purpose and he avoided personal anecdotes or stories. However, one thing was clear and that was that Alda was an extremely hard worker and generally well liked. Not only was he the star of M*A*S*H, but he also was involved in much of the writing. When the show ended and the news shows interviewed the players, it was clear that they genuinely liked each other.
This book is not a tell-all book full of juicy details of Alda's private life. In that area, it is quite boring. There is nothing in the way of scandal and even the inevitable enemies he has made during his career were due to his drive and determination and not because he played any significant dirty tricks on them. The closest thing to such a problem was in the early days of filming M*A*S*H, when Alda did not intervene to try to eliminate problems.