Description:
This poignant memoir charts the century-long journey of Alan Shayne. His story is a testement to the fact that a well-lived century is a masterpiece in its own right.
Brief description: ALAN SHAYNE was the President of Warner Brothers Television for many years, shepherding hit shows including Alice, Night Court, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Wonder Woman, Growing Pains, and The Dukes of Hazard. He began his career as an actor on Broadway and became a well-known casting director of TV and films such as All the President's Men. He produced TV specials and, after leaving Warners, received an Emmy nomination for producing the mini-series The Bourne Identity. Shayne's dual autobiography with his husband Norman Sunshine, DOUBLE LIFE: A LOVE STORY was published to great acclaim in 2011. Published in 2020, THE RAIN MUST PASS recounts his experiences as a teenager in New England. Alan connects on Cape Cod with a man twice his age in the summer of 1941 and learns more about himself than he ever imagined possible. Shayne and Sunshine also collaborated on the children's Christmas story, THE MINSTREL TREE in 2001. Shayne's mystery/romance novel, FINDING SYLVIA set in Hollywood, Connecticut and around the world, was published in October 2017. He now lives in Palm Beach.
Review Quotes: Shayne's memoir covers 100 years of his remarkable life. His parents wanted different things for him: his mother wanted fame so it would reflect on her, while his father felt he needed to be grounded and find steady employment, like in the insurance business. It also recounts early sexual trauma, which forever changed his view of his older brother. We learn of Shayne's sexual curiosity and his confusion about his own sexual orientation and what that might mean for him in the mid-1900s. We see the courage it takes for him, as a teenager, to go to New York and pursue an acting career, through the highs and lows, and the amazing cast of Hollywood's elite he would meet. His interactions with young Marlon Brando are fantastic and help highlight both of their flaws and personalities. He speaks about his marriage and near-marriage with women he dearly loved, but the passion was never what it should be between a couple. He also describes the moment someone he respects tells him he'll always be able to get acting jobs, but he'll never have what it takes to make it big, which hurts him but helps him change direction in his career. This move will lead him to help create some of the biggest shows on television. But more than anything, we seem him try to find work he respects, and a love that can last. - Mark Heisey
Some memoirs try to tidy everything up so it looks like success was always around the corner. And It Only Took 100 Years... doesn't really do that. It leans into the idea that things take longer than you think they should, and sometimes way longer than feels fair. That's what makes it hit. It doesn't rush to prove anything, it just shows you what it looked like from the inside. - Jessica Morgan What stayed with me wasn't any single famous name, though there are plenty, but the through-line from the frightened boy who sensed "some mystery" in the world to the old man who can finally name the cornerstones as work, love, and the mystery that carries them. I found that moving and unexpectedly grounding. I'd recommend And It Only Took 100 Years to readers who like memoirs with both cultural history and emotional candor, especially anyone interested in queer lives across the twentieth century, old Hollywood, television, and the slow making of a shared life. - 5-star review