Hollywood mother of the year

the long version

He was the handsome, velvet-voiced heartthrob of Oklahoma!, Carousel, and a dozen other Hollywood musicals. She was his loving wife and stage partner, and theirs was a storybook romance. They had four children, success in show business, money and fabulous friends--Sinatra, Lucy and Desi, movie moguls, top stars, royalty, and some of the biggest names in politics. Yet, behind the glitz and the glamour lurked tragedy. And in Hollywood Mother of the Year, Sheila MacRae reveals how her ideal marriage fell apart...and how she put her life back together. Gordon MacRae was a reckless alcoholic and compulsive gambler whose film career was on the skids. Sheila faced the private heartbreak of Gordon's binges and sudden disappearances, his gambling debts and the hounding of the IRS as it sought to recover unpaid taxes. And when, at last, the marriage reluctantly ended in divorce, a woman who had always been "Mrs. Gordon MacRae" suddenly had to begin a life on her own and search for her own identity. In this candid and memorable autobiography Sheila reveals how she picked up the pieces. For a time she starred as Alice Kramden on "The Honeymooners" with Jackie Gleason, and eventually launched "The Sheila MacRae Show," a syndicated TV talk show. Hollywood Mother of the Year is peppered throughout with Sheila's compelling remembrances involving the stars of Hollywood--from Shirley Jones to Frank Sinatra (who became Sheila's lover)--and an unforgettable scene in which President Lyndon Johnson tried to bed her in the White House. And throughout this remarkable story of a woman striving to find herself, there is always Gordon MacRae--her first, true love--and the touching, moving end of his life.