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Don't Mind If I Do | 
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| Authors: George Hamilton, William Stadiem
Publisher: Touchstone
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $17.16
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 28378
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 1416545026
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9781416545026
ASIN: 1416545026
Publication Date: October 14, 2008
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Product Description
Spend a few hours with George Hamilton?Don't Mind If I Do Don't let that tanned, handsome, charming surface fool you. Beneath the bronzed façade is a mischievous mind with a wicked wit. George Hamilton doesn't miss a thing. With a front row seat for classic Hollywood's biggest secrets and scandals, George has the intelligence, heart, and unflappable spirit to tell his story, and the story of Tinseltown's heyday, with great good humor and delicious candor -- as only he can. From Where the Boys Are to Dancing with the Stars; from Mary Pickford to Elizabeth Taylor; from smalltown Arkansas to the capitals of Europe -- it's all here, and George has lived to tell and to laugh about it. As the child of a Dartmouth-educated bandleader father and a glamorous Southern debutante mother whose marriage crumbled early on, George had a childhood filled with misadventures and challenges that his mother always seemed able to turn from tragedy to comedy. Her idea of changing the family's fortunes involved a trip cross-country with three sons and a poodle in a Lincoln Continental, making stops along the way to search for husband/father number three. And she was quick to recognize that George's potential success lay in Hollywood. George starved nobly for his art in the late 1950s, but was soon starring in major motion pictures directed by the likes of Vincente Minnelli and Louis Malle. He has forgotten more about Hollywood than most movie experts will ever know and shares intimate and hugely entertaining stories of his friendships with Cary Grant; Brigitte Bardot; Robert Mitchum; Merle Oberon; Mae West; Sammy Davis, Jr.; and Judy Garland -- not to mention Lyndon B. Johnson and Elvis's Colonel Tom Parker as well as the King himself -- among others. The world is Hamilton's oyster, and this ultimate insider is ready to share it with us. So fasten your seat belt. We'll tell you when it's safe to move about the cabin again.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 By George October 17, 2008
lewis jackman (Sleepy Lagoon)
26 out of 26 found this review helpful
What an enjoyable read! Unlike the all-too-typical angst-ridden star autobiography, George Hamilton (with collaborator William Stadiem) delivers the goods in the same breezy, self-effacing and irreverant tone that has kept his career afloat for nearly fifty years while most of his similarly pretty-faced contemporaries have long drifted out of public memory. Who cares if most people would be hard pressed to name three of his films? What a raconteur!
Impossible to know if this is the real Hamilton but this frequently LOL page-turner expertly maintains the sly persona (sort of a cross between Cary Grant. . . and Seventies-era Burt Reynolds, but with class) he has honed over the years, pulling no punches (yep, there's plenty of dirt--his take on working with Lana Turner is hilarious) yet without ever coming across as mean-spirited.
To avoid sounding like a shill reviewer from someone in the star's (or ghost writer's) camp, I will point out one major flaw: The book is too damn short!
I want to go out to lunch with this guy and hear about the stuff he doesn't even bother to mention. Hell, I'll even spring for the tanning butter!
OH George! October 26, 2008
Verne' (Kaua'i, Hawai'i)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This tasty and sophisticated fast paced book is surely a keeper! It's filled with lot of 'over the top' interesting peaks (a LOT kiss 'n tell?) and memories of George's unbelievable star-kissed life, sufferings and all. It's quite a lusty look into the life of someone blessed to 'do it his way'! You feel you're right there all along the way and the book opens up thought of the lives of others you've never dreamed of.
Right on, George, WOO HOO!
Class act, George November 14, 2008
Mary Hinds (Shoreline, Wa USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If I wasn't exactly a fan of George Hamilton before, I definitely am now! The first chapter, relating his stint on Dancing with the Stars, was worth the price of the book, alone. I was laughing out loud. And I kept on laughing throughout the rest of this well-written story. What a great outlook on life and family he has, with no apologies to anyone. A thoroughly enjoyable read. And, I agree, the only downside was that it wasn't long enough. I could have gone on forever reading about his exploits and adventures!
Georgian Elegance November 17, 2008
HeyJudy (East Hampton, NY USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I only bought George Hamilton's memoir, DON'T MIND IF IF I DO, because I had finished Tony Curtis' new memoir and I was shocked at how distasteful Tony seemed. I was curious, then, to compare his report with a report by one of his cohorts, though Hamilton is about 15 years younger than Curtis.
I knew next to nothing about George Hamilton when I started this book, other than that during those times I had seen him on television, he had appeared to be clever and charming, self-deprecating and funny. It turns out that Hamilton is all of these things and more.
Though he never complains, he has had a sad life, albeit in a very luxurious way. His mother was so involved in her own hedonistic pleasures that George and his brother David barely managed to get conventional educations; George never even graduated from high school.
Yet his mother connived to live in America's finest communities, including Beverly Hills, Beacon Hill in Boston, Beekman Place and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and, most of all, Palm Beach. Being raised in these environments of privileged entitlement gave George an outlook that can only be termed exotic.
George sounds, amazingly, like a loving and unquestioning son. As soon as he was able, he took over the support of his mother and his older half-brother. He views his life with humor and his family with obvious affection, though he probably would have been better served to have hidden from them and not left a forwarding address.
Most of his life has been a series of near-misses, from his romance with Lynda Bird Johnson (which, even all of these years later, still strikes a chord of implausibility) to his single attempt at marriage. Yet he examines all of his adventures with acceptance and good humor.
This is not a typical Hollywood biography, in that it is not as peopled with movie stars as it might have been if he had had a larger career. At the same time, it is filled with folks with whom mere movie stars don't get to hobnob: English nobility, dethroned royalty, Arab gunrunners, Southern gentlemen, Mafia dons, everyday billionaires, leading American military men, Presidents (plural) and Senators, best-selling authors, society bandleaders, Asian dictators....
There is a whole other memoir in what George, ever the gentleman, chooses not to reveal. He doesn't kiss and tell, and he has kissed some very famous women. One can draw any conclusion one wishes.
All in all, George Hamilton has led quite a life.
The pacing of this book is not as tight as it could be and the flow of the narrative often is choppy. In the early pages, where his collaborator is first catching on to his rhythm, the tone is strained. George's father barely is mentioned after the details of his parents' divorce, other than for his death, and there is a brother who is mentioned even less. While there probably was a surfeit of material from which to choose, these faults lie with his co-writer, rather than with George.
George seems to be a man whose generosity of spirit and loving attitudes add up to a genuinely nice person--a genuinely nice person who has led a distinctive and fascinating existence. His story is well worth reading.
 Famous for what? November 7, 2008
K. Peterman (Vallejo, CA USA)
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
I had read excerpts from this book in Vanity Fair and other publications and eagerly looked forward to it. I was quite disappointed. Although his life was certainly interesting his writing style was more like a list of events rather than an engaging story.
In real life he never quite achieved stardom so his book reads like "Little Me" by Patrick Dennis. A fictional autobiography of a female actress who's career never quite took off but writes as if she were a star. Mr. Hamilton seems to have the same affliction but his, unfortunately, is not a witty work of fiction but more a satire of his life.
His mother and brother seem like interesting characters. His mother especially who seemed to have refined the art of sponging off of friends. An art that as one reads through this tome it is obvious that George has learned as well.
Was it interesting? Portions surely were but on the whole not. The portions that were best had already been excerpted. Not unlike the best bits of a movie being in the previews.
Would I read it again? No
Would I recommend it? Probably not.
I went in to this book with a good feeling about Mr. Hamilton. I didn't feel as warmly toward him when I'd finished it. Some things are better left unsaid.
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