Shelley II: The Middle of My Century

1989, 1990 Pocket Books edition
Shelley Winters
Shelley II: The Middle of My Century
Possibly bought newish for $5.95
Very worn paperback
B-

I didn't find this as funny or overall good as the previous book, although things pick up once she divorces Tony Franciosa.  The anecdote about how Richard Nixon became her housesitter, for instance, was good.  She covers from her divorce from Vittorio Gassman to JFK's assassination, with some glimpses of her life in the '70s and '80s.  As I noted with Shelley I, she hoped to write a third autobiography but never got around to it.  As before, she juggles the order on some things, including her age.  (She's 32 a few pages after she's 33, and then she's 30 sometime after that.)

She writes here that she'd done only one sitcom, but a couple years after this she started appearing as the beloved grandmother of the title character on Roseanne.  She was a bit young, in her 70s, for the role (and only seven years older than "daughter" Estelle Parsons), but she did look and act uncannily like Roseanne.  Winters didn't make it to a century, dying at 85 in 2006.  She swears here she had no intention of getting married again, but she did marry on her deathbed.

This is not only the third book in a row with the word "my" in the title, but it marks the end of the 1980s.  With 175 posts, this is a new record, although I suspect that the 1990s will eventually pass it.