Life With Heckart: New Book "Just Outside the Spotlight" to Reach Stores in May

By Robert Simonson
03 Apr 2006

"Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up With Eileen Heckart," a new book by Heckart's son Luke Yankee, with a foreword by Mary Tyler Moore, will be published by Back Stage Books in May.

Heckart, the Tony and Oscar-winning actress whose credits included The Bad Seed, Picnic, A View from the Bridge, A Memory of Two Mondays, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Invitation to a March and Butterflies Are Free, died Dec. 31, 2001, at the age of 82, shortly after her final stage triumph in Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery.

In the book, Yankee talks about what it was like to have Marilyn Monroe babysit his brothers; have Ethel Merman teach him how to make martinis; and have Paul Newman give you acting tips. Other chapters include: How Eileen Heckart inadvertently "outed" Ellen Degeneres; How Luke and his mother were enraged by a local caterer named Martha Stewart; How Marlene Dietrich berated Heckart two hours after winning the Oscar; How Lucille Ball offered to buy off Heckart's husband in order to make her a star."

Luke Yankee's father was John Harrison Yankee Jr.

"Just Outside the Spotlight" runs 304 pages and is priced at $24.95.