Sterling Hayden’s Wars
By Lee Mandel
University Press of Mississippi, $35
Surely no studio-era Hollywood star biography has ever evinced less interest in its subject’s films: it’s not until 35, with comments on , that biographer Lee Mandel offers a definitive indication of having seen any of Hayden’s performances. Mandel, a retired Navy doctor and History Channel talking head whose previous books could be shelved adjacent to military history, allows his narrative to be dominated by Hayden’s own most substantial public reminiscences, particularly his autobiography (1963)—named for the schooner on which he sailed to Tahiti and back, bringing his children with him in defiance of a court order. Liberal quotation from the colorful enlivens Mandel’s debriefing-memo prose.
