Elvis, sex, Bruce Willis and marriage

I chose this book because it was on the Karina Longworth’s, (You Must Remember This podcast) list of great Hollywood memoirs and the kindle edition was only $.99. I vaguely remembered the actress from her tv shows, Moonlighting and Cybill but it was actually the negative reviews on Amazon that convinced me to read the book.

Cybill Sheppard was a southern beauty queen turned model turned actress. She was also proudly promiscuous and a believer in nontraditional relationships. The book is a loosely chronological set of vignettes about her life, including a closet full of skeletons and some gleeful calling out of people she felt who had wronged her.

The top two slots on her grudge list are held by Bruce Willis and Christine Baranski, her costars from each of her television series. Cybill’s rage is toward the actor, the showrunners and society that values male performers over female. Cybill sleeps with many costars, married or not, cheats in relationships and blows up relationships over and over again. But she calls Willis out on his many relationships before he settled into monogamy with Demi Moore, a relationship that lasted decades longer than any of Sheppards.

Baranski upstaged her and actively hated her by the end of the Cybill tv show. Sheppard gets her own back by basically calling her a cold bitch with less talent. Mm-hmm.

It’s delightfully trashy and very one-sided. What is the point of writing a memoir if you aren’t brave enough to call out people you don’t like and share tales of impressive sexual conquests. After all, this woman dated Elvis and is willing to dish.

It’s a fun read even if you have to google some of the people she name drops. Shes a proud feminist working to advance the causes of reproductive freedom and civil rights for minorities and I am happy I got a chance to learn more about her.