Stritch bio is glib and gossipy

Elaine Stritch was the quintessential Broadway survivor. She got as much press for her hard living as for her up-and-down career. Stritch finally got a Tony at age 77, in 2002, for the autobiographical one-woman show “At Liberty,” which cemented her public image as “Broadway’s enduring dame”: brazen, boozy and blunt.

Stritch famously loved a good time and a good story, so she probably would have enjoyed Alexandra Jacobs’ gossipy bio, studded with juicy anecdotes. This onceover-lightly approach is perhaps appropriate, given that Stritch was not inclined to introspection.

“I was the girl who sang the songs and told the jokes,” she told a reporter in 1961. “I figured the only way to make people love me was to be a million laughs.” As that quote indicates, Stritch didn’t lack selfawareness; she simply preferred to focus on having fun, onstage and off. Shortly after she arrived in New York from suburban Detroit, in 1943, she was getting frequent mentions from gossip columnists for her saloon-hopping and highprofile dates. Jacobs follows the columnists’ example by giving plenty of space to Stritch’s drinking and her relationships before her 1973 marriage to fellow actor (and fellow alcoholic) John Bay.

Jacobs’ show-by-show narrative captures the professional life of a working actor in the commercial theater. But Stritch also gained a reputation as a lush, difficult with directors and a selfish performer. By 1969, she had become “an obvious employment risk,” according to Jacobs, when Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim cast her in “Company.”

Stritch was such a smash in the iconic role of Joanne that she negotiated a 50% raise for the show’s run in London. She and Bay stayed for the rest of the 1970s. She even quit drinking for several years, but Bay’s death, after their return to New York in 1982, pushed her off the wagon, and she hit bottom after her parents died in 1987. Stritch went to AA and proclaimed her sobriety, although her commitment was intermittent.

Stritch’s tumultuous life and career make an absorbing story. Readers looking for something deeper will wish that “Still Here” displayed greater empathy and insight when discussing Stritch’s bad behavior, so obviously rooted in insecurities whose origins Jacobs might have done more to explore. For those content with a capable recounting of a colorful life, “Still Here” will do just fine.