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A review by moto1480
My First Five Husbands...and the Ones Who Got Away by Rue McClanahan
4.0
Rue McClanahan is well-known for her roles on Maude and the Golden Girls, but her own story would have been worth a sitcom of it's own. From her early days in Ardmore, OK (where she called her mother Mother and her dad Bill) to her decades of cross-country travel working at her craft, Rue took on any role she could. And what appears to be almost any man. (As Blanche would say, "Many, many men.")
Mostly, I found it hard to not want to grab her and tell her she was deserving of the love and affection she didn't receive from most of the men in her life. Rue bounds through her story at times being brutally honest about what she went through to be successful (for example, the abortion she had in Mexico) and utterly flippant (glossing over physical abuse she and her son endured from her third husband and also detailing a nighttime drunken sexual encounter with a friend that she doesn't seem to think the friend remembers). I found all of these things to be hard to reconcile with the cheerful tone she takes through each chapter. In addition, while this book was published three years before she died, she barely goes into any detail about what happened between 1992 and 2007.
I walked away from this with a better appreciation and understanding of who Rue McClanahan wanted us to see her as. I'm just not sure I could bring myself to be as candid as she was. This is a true "warts and all" autobiography. If you want that, read this.
Mostly, I found it hard to not want to grab her and tell her she was deserving of the love and affection she didn't receive from most of the men in her life. Rue bounds through her story at times being brutally honest about what she went through to be successful (for example, the abortion she had in Mexico) and utterly flippant (glossing over physical abuse she and her son endured from her third husband and also detailing a nighttime drunken sexual encounter with a friend that she doesn't seem to think the friend remembers). I found all of these things to be hard to reconcile with the cheerful tone she takes through each chapter. In addition, while this book was published three years before she died, she barely goes into any detail about what happened between 1992 and 2007.
I walked away from this with a better appreciation and understanding of who Rue McClanahan wanted us to see her as. I'm just not sure I could bring myself to be as candid as she was. This is a true "warts and all" autobiography. If you want that, read this.