No Second Act

I enjoyed Donna McKechnie's autobiography Time Steps, but it has structural problems. It starts out with a talented young girl who runs away from home (Detroit!) to make it as a dancer, and before she's twenty is in the chorus of a Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. She meets Broadway's bigwigs and goes from one major show to the next--Promises, Promises, Company, A Chorus Line--and wins a Tony Award. So far, so good, but we're only at the halfway point.

While her personal life remains messy--especially her ill-fated marriage to dance guru Michael Bennett--her professional life never again hits these heights.

It's not Donna's fault her life doesn't fit into a fairy tale format, but if Hollywood rewrote it, they'd figure some way to end with A Chorus Line.

PS One page 111, we discover she and Bennett danced to "Gershwin's 'I Won't Dance.'" I wonder if that's anything like Jerome Kern's "I Won't Dance."