“Three Stages, My Journey, Book 1 – Special Selections” Edition of Author Ben Bryant’s Hollywood Memoir coming soon


Hollywood memoir, celebrity stories, entertainment book and keywords like that are all about visibility to the search engines. Don McCauley, my marketing guru and I have decided to do an experiment.

In the next week or two I’ll be releasing a “Special Selections” free eBook of some of the best tales from the first volume of my autobiography, Three Stages. This is the one about my first thirty-seven years and concludes with the end of my acting career in 1972.

Most of the material in the freebie is what Don refers to as “celebrity stories” because book readers search for that a lot along with “Hollywood Memoirs”. And this is very true, the book is full of such memories some of which are outrageous or hilarious, often both. Here’s an example:

The guy playing “Riff” was a lanky, goofy dancer named Chris but half the kids called him Ronnie. Turned out that there was already a Ron Walken in Actors’ Equity when he joined. He was great in the show and went on to even greater greatness not long after.

LesJamesChrisWalkenAndMe

Les James           Chris Walken           Me

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Stan Mazin, who played “Bernardo” (kills Riff at the end of the first act) had the mien of a matador. He also had a running battle with Chris Walken who sort of punched him in the mouth about once a week. The Rumble begins when Riff swings at Bernardo but the actors are not supposed to actually hit one another. It’s called “acting” for a reason. Anyhow, Chris was lanky with long arms and a limited spatial consciousness. From time to time he would misjudge the distance between them when he swung at Bernardo thereby causing his fist to come into sudden contact with Stan’s mouth. Stan found this somewhat inconvenient and was not shy about sharing his displeasure with Chris (and anyone else within a hundred yards). On several occasions actual sutures were needed to repair Stan’s wounds and thus he was dubbed the “stitch queen”.

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“After repeated slight brushings and a couple of actual light hits through ten weeks, Chris finally did it in Mineola. At the start of the rumble his fist made solid contact with Stan’s mouth. Blood flew and Stan went down hard but he bounced off the floor swinging his (blunt) switchblade with fire in his eyes. The audience, thinking it was part of the show, loved it. John Tormey (who was playing “Action”) and I looked at each other ready to grab Stan if he lost it completely which seemed possible. Chris was frozen in his tracks for a moment and then the training kicked in and the choreography took over. Stan went to the emergency room after a yelling spasm at Chris. He needed, I believe, five stitches in his mouth. For the rest of the run Chris never even came close.”

When the Special Selections free edition is ready I’ll announce it here as wall as on social media. Tell your friends to get it. There’s nothing to lose. It’s free. And they may find that they want more.

Here’s where you can find all three books.

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