Walter & Carol

I've just finished reading Carol Matthau's Among the Porcupines. I think it may be out of print and you would need to search 2nd hand stores to track down a copy, but it would be well-worth the effort. This is possibly one of the best biographies I've ever read - warm, sometimes heart-breaking, amusing, jaw dropping, but above all an enduring romance with genuine LOL sections. Harpo Speaks is the only biography I've read that comes anywhere near close. You'll need to read this with a non-judgmental frame of mind as the author is quite frank and open about her sex-life, romances and views on life. Carol Matthau was a woman of incredible strength and great love and understanding up until her death soon after Walter in 2003. She lived an extraordinary life - from foster homes as a child to a fairy tale existence as the teenage daughter of a multi millionaire with 6 maids, 2 butlers and permanent chefs.

Author Truman Capote first set eyes on her at age 14 when she was stark naked and remained a firm friend. He modelled Holly Golightly on her for his short story Breakfast at Tiffany's recounting the times when they would meet for breakfast - coffee and donuts outside the famous jewellers in downtown New York. She counted Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona Chaplin as her closest friends, was a wife of the poet/writer William Saroyan and lover of critic James Agee.

When she met and fell in love with Walter Matthau, he was married to another woman. Her life had changed drastically as a broadway actress and she was to fall deeply in love and spend the next forty years with a man with a major gambling addiction, but also an incredible lust for life coupled with an amazing talent and commitment to his craft which saw him nominated and win both Tonys and Oscars.

Carol's book had me laughing one page and welling up in tears the next with her stories of her love for Walter, the fights, the insights into friends and associates like Chaplin, Wilder, and a myriad of other talented artists. If you can find it, get it and hold on to it. Well recounted, an easy read and a memorable volume of insights  into a group of unique characters and a charmed life.

Burn brightly, Pete.