Shirley MacLaine Books In Order

Publication Order of Shirley MacLaine Biographical Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLean Beaty was born April 24, 1934 in Richmond, Virginia, and named after Shirley Temple (who was six years old at the time) and is an actress, author, activist, singer, and former dancer.

Her dad, Ira Owens Beaty was a professor of psychology, a real estate agent, and a public school administrator, while her mom, Kathlyn Corinne, was a drama teacher, originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Shirley’s younger brother is writer, director, and actor Warren Beatty. They were raised as Baptists. Her uncle was A.A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s.

Shirley played baseball on an all-boys team, and held the record for most home runs, earning the nickname “Powerhouse”.

While she was a toddler, she had weak ankles and fell over with even just the slightest misstep, so her mom decided to enroll her in ballet class at the Washington School of Ballet when she was three. This was the start of Shirley’s interest in performing, and never missed a class, being strongly motivated by ballet.

In classical romantic pieces such as The Sleeping Beauty and Romeo and Juliet, she would always play the boys’ roles since she was the tallest in the class and because there were no males in the class. Eventually, she had a substantial female role as the fairy godmother in Cinderella; while she was warming up backstage, she broke her ankle, but was able to tighten the ribbons on her toe shoes enough and then danced the entire role before calling for an ambulance.

She decided not to make a career of professional ballet because she had gotten too tall and wasn’t able to acquire perfect technique. She explained that she didn’t have the ideal body type and lacked the required flexible ankle, beautifully constructed feet with high insteps and high arches. She also slowly realized that ballet’s propensity for being too all-consuming, and ultimately limiting, she moved on to other forms of acting, dancing, and musical theater.

Shirley made her acting debut as a teen with some minor roles in the Broadway musicals “Oklahoma!” and “The Pajama Game”. She was understudy to Carol Haney on “The Pajama Game” and in May of 1954, Carol injured her ankle during a matinee, and MacLaine replaced her. A few months later, with Haney still injured, Hal B. Wallis (a film producer) saw her performance, and signed her to work for Paramount Pictures.

And after some minor appearances as an understudy in various other productions, she made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s black comedy called “The Trouble With Harry”, winning the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year-Actress.

In the year 1959, she sued Hal Wallis over a contractual dispute, which is a suit that’s been credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.

She has received numerous accolades including two British Academy Film Awards, an Academy Award, six Golden Golden Globes, and a Primetime Emmy. She’s also been awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2012, the Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1995, and Kennedy Center Honor in 2013 for her contributions to American culture, through performing arts. And in 1998, she was given the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.

From 1954 to 1982 she was married to businessman Steve Parker until they divorced, with whom she has a daughter, named Sachi.

“You Can Get There From Here” is a non-fiction book that was released in the year 1975. Immensely gifted with intelligence, sensitivity, curiosity, warmth, and profound openness to places and people outside of her own experiences, Shirley MacLaine brings a very special quality of mind and heart to her writing, her acting, and to her travels. This book is a remarkable memoir: the revealing and exciting journey of one woman that rediscovers the world and herself.

From one ill-fated TV series in the early seventies that went against everything she believed in, to her impassioned efforts on behalf of a major presidential candidate. To her emergence as one of the important voices in the international women’s movement. To her life-affirming odyssey to the People’s Republic of China, this is the unforgettable tale about Shirley’s road from a crisis of self-doubt to a joyous new chapter in her life.

“Don’t Fall off the Mountain” is a non-fiction book that was released in the year 1985. Shirley has always felt that she’d never develop into a really fine actress because she cared more about life beyond the camera than life in front of it. Over the years her search has gotten even more broad. After working for two months on a movie, her car seemed to veer in the direction of the airport on its own. She still loved acting. She was a pro, but was more interested in the people she was playing than the movies she was working on.

A keen observer, an outspoken thinker, and a truly independent woman, she takes on a remarkable journey into her inner self and into her life. From her Virginia roots, to stardom, motherhood, marriage, and enlightening travels into the more mysterious corners of the world, her story’s poetic and exciting, moving and humorous. The life-changing and varied experiences of one intelligent, talented, and extraordinary woman.

“Dancing in the Light” is a non-fiction book that was released in the year 1986. At a turning point in her life, comes her most exciting and revealing book to date. Controversial, outspoken, perceptive, and talented, Shirley takes readers on a fascinating and intimate personal odyssey. In the year 1984, she won an Oscar, wrote a bestseller called “Out on a Limb”, starred on Broadway. And turned fifty.

In this special year, at this special time, she was now ready to continue the spiritual journey that she had started during her early forties. In this book, she bares her innermost self and explores the lives, present and past, which affected and touched her own. She sheds some new light on her losses, her loves, her passions, her childhood, and her inner ambitions and drives.

She asks some poignant questions and finds some rather surprising answers. Shirley confronts her conflicts and challenges her beliefs. Ultimately, she takes us with her through one life-changing experience which provides a stunning new vision of herself, her future, and the fate of this world.

One Response to “Shirley MacLaine”

1. susan murar: 9 months ago

   I read her books years ago – with an enthusiasm for the esoteric knowledge that she possessed, naturally, as an evolved being on this Earth. Now I am a writer and have three books of esoteric value to humanity, which I hope will be published soon. I will always be glad she existed in life. Shirley MacLaine is a golden treasure, and will BE in the universes beyond time.

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