Review: Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch

Elaine Stritch was a well-known Broadway and television star that embodied the old-time image of a bawdy female: hard-living, drinking and smoking with a complex and contradictory personality. I have described in one sentence what Alexandra Jacobs does in 298 pages. This book is clearly written for Broadway participants or aficionados familiar with the many, many names tossed about by Jacobs in the extensive filler material. I found the book tedious and difficult to read.  

Vaguely familiar with Stritch through her appearances on talk shows, I looked forward to discovering more about her life and her 60-year career. However, the Prologue gave me all the information I needed to know: Stritch was a life-long heavy drinker, alternately charming and abrasive, generous and self-absorbed, consumed by private self-doubt and public arrogance. 

She remained a Broadway persona by simple will and determination, never getting the roles she really desired, but making the roles she was able to secure her own. Stritch achieved her greatest success in her later-years with her one-woman show, and when she became sought after for roles that highlighted her brash and brazen personality.

I do feel that I know Stritch now and appreciate her as a Broadway standard. Yet, I cannot give this book a high recommendation. Despite the accolades on the book’s cover, I found the work less than satisfying and a hard-sell. It won’t find a place on my bookshelf.        

Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch by Alexandra Jacobs, is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and local booksellers. Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 2019. This article contains affiliate links.