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 George Hamilton says he still dates women because it helps him not be crotchety and self-obsessed. The 69-year-old Hollywood figure's new book is called Don't Mind If I Do. |
Do not mistake George Hamilton for just another pretty face, albeit a deeply tanned one.
The famous actor and recent Dancing With The Stars grad has written a marvellous memoir called Don't Mind If I Do, adding "author" to his impressive list of accomplishments. The producer and bon vivant, 69, tells all about the heyday of Hollywood in his new book, dishing dirt and naming names, but with such wit and charm that there is nothing mean-spirited about it.
Hamilton has always been quite a ladies' man and is alleged to have had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1,000 lovers. The book mentions a few of the more famous: Romance novelist Danielle Steel, Lynda Bird Johnson -- whose father, Lyndon Johnson, was U.S. president at the time -- Alana Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Kohner and Jeanne Moreau, among many others. (The admission that Hamilton's first lover was a much older woman named June Howard, who was married to Hamilton's father at the time, has created quite a kerfuffle in talk-show circles.)
The very best part of Don't Mind If I Do is any story related to Hamilton's family, a fairly eccentric bunch who seemed intent upon living life to the fullest. Hamilton's mother, Anne Potter Hamilton Hunt Spalding, was married four times, and her various adventures locating husbands is just the sort of material that would make a movie. And it has. When she was in her mid-40s, Hamilton's mother put her sons in the car and drove all over the United States, looking among old boyfriends for her next spouse. The Auntie Mame-ish experiences are revisited in My One And Only, a film to be released next year.
Over the phone from his home in L.A., Hamilton calls that episode in the family history, "An extraordinary odyssey right across the United States."
He and Merv Griffin had a script written years ago for the film, but it was shelved because of studio problems.
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"Then suddenly it got made," says Hamilton, noting that Charlie Peters wrote the final screenplay. "Renee Zellweger plays my mother and Kevin Bacon plays my father. She doesn't look like my mother, but I think she's got the essence."
Hamilton himself will be portrayed in the movie by child actor Logan Lerman, who was in 3:10 to Yuma, Hoot and The Number 23. The author treats his friends kindly in Don't Mind if I Do, and the list includes such bright lights as Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley and, weirdly, Imelda Marcos.
And he writes about work. Hamilton had leading-man roles in such films as Home From the Hill, Where the Boys Are, Light in the Piazza and Your Cheatin' Heart, eventually moving into comedy with such spoofs as Zorro, The Gay Blade and Love At First Bite.
These days, the actor has been offered a TV series ("If you're in the business, I think you're obligated to be working in it in some capacity with your face," he says) and he'll do several episodes next year, but he's also happy being a producer.
He's looking forward to a shift in entertain ment values.
"I think we're entering a time when movies will become even more important to our society," he says, "because with things the way they are now, people are turning to the home. They aren't travelling as much, and they want better entertainment."
Meanwhile, the legendary ladies' man still dates regularly. "It's something that helps you not become crotchety and self-obsessed," he says, laughing. "You bring into your life a wom an who has lived and has some female energy, and you do so because there's nothing worse than a man who's lived among men, and doesn't clean up and doesn't change his shirt and has his horse bedded down at home."
Complimented on his style in Don't Mind If I Do and his fashion of presenting the positive aspects of most situations, "That's really the way I was brought up. There's an old saying, 'Life to the feeling man is a tragedy, and to the thinking man, a comedy'. I see the way things affect people and hurt them, but you have to be ... philosophical about life. And you have to have a certain detachment. That's taken me a lifetime to develop. It doesn't mean you're colder or you're less feeling, it's just that you get the joke -- and you may be it!"