Robert Wagner tells 70 years of gossip in memoir, 'You Must Remember This'
Actor Robert J. Wagner shares tales of his life and career in Hollywood in "You Must Remember This," his new book which comes out March 11, 2014. Credit: Viking Press
From caddying at the Bel-Air Country Club to his role as Michael Weatherly's dad on "NCIS," Hollywood has been home to actor Robert Wagner for more than seven decades. Now Wagner, 84, looks back at those years in an affectionate new memoir, "You Must Remember This" (Viking), which comes out Tuesday.
The book, written with Scott Eyman, reads like a guided tour of vintage Hollywood as Wagner revisits celeb hangouts that defined Tinseltown in the 1940s through the '60s -- the Brown Derby, Chasen's and Romanoff's, where the elite went to eat; the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Marilyn Monroe carried on with her "Let's Make Love" co-star Yves Montand, and nightclubs like the Mocambo and the Trocadero.
He also spins tales of gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons; his friendship with silent screen comic Harold Lloyd, whose opulent home had 12 fountains and a 40-rank pipe organ; and partying with Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra.
"I hope this book will be like a good movie," Wagner writes. "A little spectacle, some laughs, a sense of reflection, all of it underlying an emotional authenticity."
