Current:Home > MyBook excerpt: "The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir" by Griffin Dunne-LoTradeCoin
Book excerpt: "The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir" by Griffin Dunne
View Date:2024-12-23 23:33:45
We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.
In Griffin Dunne's new memoir, "The Friday Afternoon Club" (to be published June 11 by Penguin Press), the actor-producer-director who grew up in Hollywood in a literary family writes of a life of bold-faced celebrity, tragedy, and well-told stories.
Read an excerpt below, and don't miss Kelefa Sanneh's interview with Griffin Dunne on "CBS Sunday Morning" June 9!
"The Friday Afternoon Club" by Griffin Dunne
$27 at AmazonPrefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.
Try Audible for freeThe morning I was born, Dad was a wreck. Having gotten Mom safely to Doctors Hospital, he was told that she required an emergency C-section, and to sit in the waiting room until he was called. Five hours later, he'd gone through a pack of Luckies, and after making a nuisance of himself to every nurse who passed, he went to buy more smokes at a deli across the street. Walking back to the lobby, he saw the surgeon who was to perform the C-section about to step into a cab. He ran to him and practically grabbed the doctor by the lapels.
"What happened?"
"What do you mean, what happened?"
"My wife! Is she all right?"
"Which one is your wife?"
"Lenny Dunne, for God's sake!"
"Oh, Mr. Dunne, my apologies, didn't anyone tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"We did the C-section hours ago. She's fine. Baby's fine. Someone should have told you, but it's been a crazy day. I've done three since."
More relieved than pissed, Dad let the man get in his taxi. Before it pulled away from the curb, the doctor yelled out the window, "Oh, and don't worry about the foot!"
On the long walk back to the maternity ward, Dad pictured me growing up in a wheelchair or with a prosthetic leg, but while my right foot did curl inward when I was a newborn, it turned itself out by the time I could walk.
From the moment I was born, my father told me I was always trying to get somewhere else. My first word was taxi. I had a toy suitcase that I'd carry around the living room and raise my hand to hail a cab, yelling, "Taxi, taxi," as if late for an important meeting. Elizabeth Montgomery, who later played Samantha in Bewitched, was my first babysitter. She was a struggling actress with a small part in Late Love when she met my mother, and though Elizabeth was her employee, my mother and she became close friends. Elizabeth once told her, while changing my diapers, that I had a bigger dick than her husband. That marriage was, needless to say, short-lived.
There is a kinescope from an early episode of the Today show in which Arlene Francis, also from the cast of Late Love, interviews my mother, billed as the "typical New York housewife," while a camera follows her on a routine day. (The daughter of a rancher who went to Miss Porter's was hardly a relatable housewife, but somehow Dad got her the gig through his connections at NBC.) There wasn't much content in the early days of morning talk shows, so this segment is a mundane, fifteen-minute blow-by-blow of the life of a young family. It begins with Dad heading to work like a character out of a John Cheever story, while Mom does household chores, runs errands, and takes me to Central Park to feed the ducks. At one point in the clip, she enters a shoe store on Lexington Avenue and leaves me in my pram on the sidewalk, as if we lived in Grover's Corners.
When she tries to lay me down in my crib at the end of the day, I nuzzle into her neck, not wanting her to leave. Anyone tuning in that morning would have seen a little boy who loved his mother more than anything in the world. When the camera cuts back to Mom in the studio, having just watched the segment she narrated, she looks lost in the moment, as if still savoring my affection. Arlene Francis ends the interview by saying to her viewers, "We wish Lenny, Nick, and Griffin all the luck in the world as they begin their bright future."
As it turned out, we were going to need it.
An excerpt from "The Friday Afternoon Club," published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Thomas Griffin Dunne.
Get the book here:
"The Friday Afternoon Club" by Griffin Dunne
$27 at Amazon $30 at Barnes & NobleBuy locally from Bookshop.org
For more info:
"The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir" by Griffin Dunne (Penguin Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available June 11
veryGood! (276)
Related
- These Michael Kors’ Designer Handbags Are All Under $150 With an Extra 22% off for Singles’ Day
- FAA orders temporary grounding of certain Boeing planes after Alaska Airlines door detaches midflight
- South Korea says the North has again fired artillery shells near their sea border
- Student loan borrowers face long hold times and inaccurate bills, feds find
- Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger welcome their first son together
- Police probe UK Post Office for accusing over 700 employees of theft. The culprit was an IT glitch
- NFL Week 18 playoff clinching scenarios: Four division titles still to be won
- ESPN responds to Pat McAfee's comments on executive 'attempting to sabotage' his show
- Asian sesame salad sold in Wegmans supermarkets recalled over egg allergy warning
- Clemson coach Dabo Swinney shows up to basketball game with black eye
Ranking
- Patrick Mahomes Breaks Silence on Frustrating Robbery Amid Ongoing Investigation
- Baltimore Ravens' Jadeveon Clowney shows what $750,000 worth of joy looks like
- Offensive lineman Seth McLaughlin commits to Ohio State after leaving Alabama for transfer portal
- Norwegian mass killer attempts to sue the state once more for an alleged breach of human rights
- Shawn Mendes quest for self-discovery is a quiet triumph: Best songs on 'Shawn' album
- What makes this Michigan-Washington showdown in CFP title game so unique
- Judge grants MLB star Wander Franco permission to leave Dominican Republic amid sexual exploitation allegations
- Glynis Johns, known for her role as Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins, dead at 100
Recommendation
-
US Election Darkens the Door of COP29 as It Opens in Azerbaijan
-
The son of veteran correspondent is the fifth member of his family killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza
-
ESPN issues apology for Aaron Rodgers' comments about Jimmy Kimmel on Pat McAfee Show
-
LeBron James gives blunt assessment of Lakers after latest loss: 'We just suck right now'
-
John Krasinski Reveals Wife Emily Blunt's Hilarious Response to His Sexiest Man Alive Title
-
Jordanian army says it killed 5 drug smugglers in clashes on the Syrian border
-
'Wait Wait' for January 6, 2024: New Year, New Interviews!
-
The 2004 Golden Globes Will Give You A Rush Of Nostalgia