Book Club: Kelly Bishop's memoir gives us plenty to chew on (politely, with our mouths closed)

It’s been a while since we held a book club  at The A.V. Club, but we found just the right book to relaunch the format: The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop, which debuted September 17 via Simon & Schuster. In her memoir, Bishop recounts her life in the entertainment industry, from her turbulent childhood to her start as a dancer in Radio City Music Hall’s Corps de Ballet to her Tony-winning performance in the original cast of A Chorus Line on Broadway, to her role as the sophisticated matriarch of the Gilmore family. She also reveals intimate details of her personal life, including the ups and downs of her relationships with family, friends, and lovers.

After reading The Third Gilmore Girl, A.V. Club staffers Mary Kate Carr and Cindy White got together for a very book club-style conversation about the book and what they learned from it. We’ll look for your thoughts in the comments section. 

Were you a fan of Kelly Bishop before reading the book? How much did you know about her going in?

MKC: Like many millennials I know Kelly Bishop best from Gilmore Girls—I’ve seen it a few times through and used to watch it with my little sister, so it’s got a special place in my heart. I’ve also obviously seen Dirty Dancing. And I knew she became famous as a Broadway star, I was vaguely aware she had a Tony, but I had no idea until reading the breadth of her stage career. I know you’re a big theater person, Cindy, so I’m assuming you were maybe a little more familiar before reading the book?

CW: Gilmore Girls was actually the way I came to know her first too. I learned about her work in A Chorus Line and her Tony win later on. I’d seen her in Dirty Dancing too, of course, but that role didn’t really register with me until after I’d gotten to know her as Emily Gilmore. Maybe I was too busy paying attention to Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze.

Were there any revelations in the book that stood out to you?

CW: I used to listen to the cast recording of A Chorus Line a lot when I was a kid, which is kind of surprising looking back on it now, because it’s a pretty risque show. I’ve always loved “At The Ballet,” but I had no idea how much of it was based on Bishop’s actual childhood. It’s pretty incredible to think about all of the performers who have sung that song through the years, and how they’re basically telling her story, over and over. That’s a kind of immortality.

MKC: That’s a really good point. I had no context at all for A Chorus Line so all of that was new to me. The way she describes the collaborative process that sparked the show does sound so exciting and unique, and the book is worth it just to get insight into such an important cultural artifact.

Generally, though, I wouldn’t say the book has a lot of “revelations,” per se. Even though Bishop has clearly had a rich and varied career, she came across as resistant or perhaps just indifferent to writing any kind of salacious Hollywood tell-all. Her anecdotes tend to be pretty matter-of-fact. For example, the most intriguing relationship in the book is between her and Chorus Line director-choreographer Michael Bennett, with whom she had a creatively close but also at times adversarial bond. She gives us a few instances where she had to sass Bennett and put him in her place, but I would’ve loved for her to go deeper there and paint a clearer picture of their collaboration and estrangement.

CW: I definitely agree. Michael Bennett was a giant of the American theater, and it seems like he didn’t get talked back to or turned down very often. So, that was pretty bold of her. It was interesting how she described butting heads with him, and often admitted that he’d been right. Like the story of how he wanted her to wear the flesh-colored leotard as Sheila and she thought it was for sex appeal, but he saw it as a way to show the character as naked and vulnerable. Speaking of which, there’s footage of her performing “At The Ballet” in the show on YouTube. It’s really interesting to watch it again knowing the backstory of that number.

MKC: Oh, I found this after reading the Chorus Line section, and it’s such a necessary complement to the book. I think for those of us who know her as Emily Gilmore, it’s hard to picture Bishop as this kind of performer. Emily was so buttoned up. But Bishop does a good job in the book of creating a through line of her career, identifying what most attracted her to roles—she likes playing smart-mouthed, confident women, and that helped me draw a connection between Sheila and Emily.

What did you think of the writing style?

MKC: Well, as much as I enjoy any kind of behind-the-scenes narrative, I found the writing style hard to connect with. It’s clear that Bishop is a no-fuss, no-frills person, so the language is really clear and frank. That makes the book really easy to read, but the prose isn’t necessarily leaping off the page. I got the feeling that some of these stories would be a lot better if she was telling them to you over a cocktail, as opposed to being written down.

CW: I had less trouble connecting to it than you did, I think. I liked that I could really hear her voice come through in the writing. Is it fancy, polished prose? No, but it made me feel like I was at that cocktail party and she was telling those stories directly to me. And I agree that it made for an easy read. Besides her voice, I think her personality comes through as well. You said she’s a no-fuss, no-frills person, and I got that too. I admire how strong-willed and self-determined she is. Even when she makes mistakes, she makes them confidently. She knows her talents and her limitations, and I have to respect anyone with such a clear picture of themselves.

MKC: It’s probably partially the benefit of hindsight, but reading it you definitely get the sense that Bishop has always known who she is and what she’s capable of. Clearly that’s paid off in her career as she was able to find the right lane for herself in entertainment. I just kept wishing she would go deeper, anywhere, particularly in the post-Chorus Line sections. She hit each major moment of her personal and professional life almost perfunctorily. Seven years of Gilmore Girls completely flies by in her telling, and I don’t really feel like I know much more about the making of the show than I did before, which is a bummer for a memoir called The Third Gilmore Girl.

CW: Yeah, there was not as much Gilmore Girls content as I was expecting, though I know it was just a fraction of her career. I was also a fan of Bunheads, the show she did with Amy Sherman-Palladino [who wrote the memoir’s foreword] after Gilmore Girls, but the section on it in the book is very brief. Apparently, it wasn’t a very good experience for her. It’s totally understandable, since she was going through a rough time with her husband’s health and working far from home, I was just hoping for a little more. 

Did the book leave you with questions you wish it had answered? 

CW: I have a lot of general questions, some of which you’ve already addressed, and one very specific one. She mentions the night the cast of Hamilton celebrated the anniversary of the opening of A Chorus Line at The Public Theater. I’ve watched the footage from that night many times on YouTube. So I went back again and noticed that near the end of the video Bishop is standing next to Ariana DeBose, who was in the ensemble at that time in the show’s history. Bishop talks about giving advice to one of the chorus members who had caught her eye during the show, a sort of passing-the-torch moment. I keep wondering if it was DeBose who she said that to. It would have been poetic, as she would go on to win an Oscar for playing Anita in West Side Story, a role that Bishop once played on stage herself. But in the book she never tells us who it was.

MKC: That’s hilarious, I ALSO instantly wanted to believe it was Ariana DeBose.

I think, as you’ve said, The Third Gilmore Girl gives us a good idea of who Kelly Bishop is as a person, but a much more generalized view of her career. There could certainly be whole books about just her time working on Chorus Line or her time on Gilmore Girls. I feel like I got a little taste of everything, but would’ve loved a full meal out of any one of those experiences from her.

CW: That’s a great summary. It’s a brisk and easy read, which is either a selling point or a shortcoming, depending on what you want out of it. Anything else to add before we wrap up?

MKC: Just that, despite any disappointments I did have with the book, I’m really glad she wrote it and we have this account of her amazing career! She’s clearly a private person, so I thought it was powerful she chose to share difficult things about her childhood or her abortion. I was touched by that. It is wonderful to get insight into the person behind the performer. 

CW: Yeah, she’s had an amazing life, and I’m glad that she was willing to share so much of it in the book.