Vanity Will Get You Somewhere

About this book

Cotten takes us from his Tidewater, Virginia, beginnings and his life as a Miami "potato salad tycoon" to his first break on the New York stage. We learn about his warm, abiding association with the flamboyant Orson Welles, from their first meeting at a radio audition (where Welles sets a wastebasket on fire) to their involvement in the Mercury Theatre and their work together in the screen classics Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Third Man. We go behind the scenes of Cotten's stage plays and movies with funny, intimate stories of his adventures with Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, David Niven, David O. Selznick, Alfred Hitchcock, and many others. Sensitive to his own motivations, frank about his marriages, and warmly revealing about himself and his friends, Cotten has written much more than the usual film star autobiography. His skills as an actor have made him a master of character and dramatic momentum, and he brings these skills to his writing. he has given us a generous, loving, and humorous portrait of himself and his friends. -- from dust jacket.