Angels & Demons : One Actor's Hollywood Journey

Rating:
Summary: Demonic Angel
Review: I love Ray.What else can I say? It's the truth. I feel as if I am the only one in the world who owns this book. Or at least I felt that way. You know what attracted me to this book? The words homosexual and gay. I am but a little girl so I can only be expected to snicker. But I could be mature if I wanted to. And I was. Very much. I felt like I was sitting in front of him the whole time and he was telling me his story. Parts were funny, parts were sad, but overall it was beautiful. Beautiful like the world. And like the world, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can love it. I was sad at the end. For it was then that I realized his time on earth was short. And I thought to myself, kill me now, for I am ready to die in the hands that wrote these beautiful words! If only I could tell him that.

Rating:
Summary: An Actor, Not a Writer
Review: I ordered this book and, from the reviews on this site, thought I would enjoy a dishy Hollywood read. But this effort reads more like a diary of an actor's career -- and not a very successful one at that. Kissed by James Dean in Central Park, Stricklyn was unfortunately never kissed by the stardom he so diligently strove for. Although there are lots of remembrances of the bigger stars he worked with on stage and screen, Stricklyn's writing never "lifts" from the page and is ultimately unsatisfying, even as gossip, since there is little new or interesting to be found here, unless you are an actor yourself and looking for a remembrance of Hollywood in the 50's through the 90's. Ray seems to be sensitive to criticism and bad reviews, but his good ones are highlighted in capital letters in their entirety, leaving the reader feeling as though the author is trying to reassure himself that the profession he plugged away in for four decades was not a vain effort. Nevertheless, the author was successful enough to earn a living, and enjoy some success in every acting medium he tried, though never attaining true star status. Stricklyn's reminiscences of some of the stars he worked with are either complimentary or disapproving, without much insight into these names he drops with a dull thud throughout this book. I wish Ray could have dug more into his ambivalence over his homosexuality, which he seems to be somewhat ashamed of, but he doesn't seem one to care much for self-analysis or even to investigate the motivations for the events of his life which he describes rather flatly. Unfortunately this extends even to the motivation that informed the characterizations he brought to the stage and screen so for readers who remember his work, there is little here to sink one's teeth into insofar as how he approached the roles he played throughout his life. Ultimately, it feels like a swim in the shallow end of the pool with the reader feeling, at last that the publicist he became overruled the writer he may have become.

Rating:
Summary: Lite Reading
Review: If someone is going to go to the trouble of writing an autobiography-especially one in which the author announces his homosexuality then the reader would expect some insights and truth seeking. This read more like the author was sitting in the seat next to you on a cross country plane trip. He just keeps talking to make the trip go faster but only lightly touches on various subjects. The fact that I was able to complete this book in one two hour sitting says more about the content than anything else. At the end the main question I had was "why did he bother"?

Rating:
Summary: The must-read book of the decade!
Review: Ray Stricklyn bares his soul in the story of his life as an actor, just as he did in hundreds of roles on the big and small screens. Ray shares the up and downs, the good times and the bad -- and doesn't pull any punches while doing so. "Angels and Demons" is the must-read of the decade for anyone associated with the entertainment industry. This reader was unable to put the book down until the last page was read! My thanks to Ray Stricklyn for sharing his story and shedding more light on the Hollywood of the 1950s and 1960s. Buy this book today!