How to Grow Old Disgracefully

After one's dead, people write such terrible things about one. Of course, in my case they'll be true, but I'd rather write it myself and set the record straight." -Hermione Gingold

Described as "an amalgam of Groucho Marx and Tallulah Bankhead", Hermione Gingold was the last of the British eccentrics. The red-headed actress wowed audiences all over the world with her devastating wit and her reputation as a man-eater, witch, and queen of "high camp". Her vigorous acting career spanned seventy-eight years, from childhood appearances on the British stage with young Noel Coward, Shakespeare at London's Old Vic Theatre, to her outrageous comedy performances in West End and Broadway revues. Her enduring film roles include The Music Man, Bell, Book and Candle, and Gigi, in which she sang the unforgettably bittersweet duet with Maurice Chevalier, "Ah Yes, I Remember It Well". At the age of eighty-one, she was once again the toast of Broadway in Side by Side by Sondheim. That same year she enjoyed her last great love affair, with a man fifty-three years her junior.

Written in her own inimitable and very personal style, How to Grow Old Disgracefully is a hilarious, no-holds-barred, outrageous self-portrait of the actress once dubbed "the funniest woman in the world