Dancing At Ciro's : a Family's Love, Loss, And Scandal On The Sunset Strip

**"Poignant memoir of a not-so-typical New York Jewish family's experiences in the midcentury Hollywood demimonde ... Equal parts emotional tissue-party and shrewd cultural history." - __Kirkus Reviews__** In 1958, young Sheila Weller was living a charmed life with her family in Beverly Hills. Her father was a brilliant brain surgeon. Her mother was a movie-magazine writer whose brother owned Hollywood's most dazzling nightclub, Ciro's. Then her world exploded after she witnessed her uncle's brutal attempt to kill her father. In __Dancing at Ciro's__, Weller has written a deeply felt memoir of her family's life contrasted with those most glamorous days of Hollywood's forties and fifties. While vividly describing Lana Turner's, Frank Sinatra's, and Sammy Davis Jr.'s evenings—and breakdowns—at Ciro's, Weller casts a keen eye on her own family's turmoil and loss. "In 1958, young Shelia Weller was living a charmed life with her family in Beverly Hills. Her father was a brilliant and charismatic brain surgeon. Her mother was a movie-magazine writer whose brother owned Hollywood's most dazzling nightclub, Ciro's. Then Sheila Weller's world exploded. After she witnessed her uncle's frenzied physical assault on her father, a whole store of family secrets and dramas unfolded, rivaling those that transpired in the nightclub's dressing room and banquettes every night.". "Weller has written a deeply felt memoir of her family's richly accomplished but ultimately tragic life, contrasted with those most glamorous days of Hollywood's golden era. While vividly describing Lana Turner's, Frank Sinatra's, and Sammy Davis Jr.'s evenings - and breakdowns - at Ciro's, she captures a whole subgroup of American dreamers: the New York Jews who bounded from Brooklyn to Broadway and finally to Hollywood. They expected that success and proximity to glamour would erase centuries of anxiety and melancholy - but often discovered they'd only found a higher ledge from which to fall."--BOOK JACKET.

"Poignant memoir of a not-so-typical New York Jewish family’s experiences in the midcentury Hollywood demimonde ... Equal parts emotional tissue-party and shrewd cultural history." - Kirkus Reviews

In 1958, young Sheila Weller was living a charmed life with her family in Beverly Hills. Her father was a brilliant brain surgeon. Her mother was a movie-magazine writer whose brother owned Hollywood's most dazzling nightclub, Ciro's. Then her world exploded after she witnessed her uncle's brutal attempt to kill her father.

In Dancing at Ciro's, Weller has written a deeply felt memoir of her family's life contrasted with those most glamorous days of Hollywood's forties and fifties. While vividly describing Lana Turner's, Frank Sinatra's, and Sammy Davis Jr.'s evenings--and breakdowns--at Ciro's, Weller casts a keen eye on her own family's turmoil and loss.