In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

VII a C k n o w l e d g m e n t s i deCided to write this biography after I had a long telephone conversation with Susan Andrews about her father. At the time I knew relatively little about Dana Andrews, although I had watched Laura three or four times, entranced with the actor playing Mark McPherson. He reminded me of my father, a plain-clothes detective in 1940s Detroit. Like Mark, my father was a romantic who kept his emotions hidden behind a male mask. If I were to recreate my father’s biography, it would be as a film noir. Susan described the substantial archive her father had amassed: a diary , letters, photographs, and other documents. I could already see that I would be able deal not only with a career I admired, but also with the whole man. And I would have the enthusiastic cooperation of his family —not just Susan and her sister, Katharine, and Katharine’s husband, Tim Smith, and Dana’s son Stephen, but also Dana’s grandchildren: Abigail, Ilena, and Matthew. I explained that I would need complete freedom to research and write the book, but that I would value their contributions and wanted them to review what I wrote before it was published. In the end, however, it was to be my book and subject to no one’s censorship. Susan readily agreed, and so did her siblings. So I began. My biographer’s blood was up. To say that the members of the Andrews family have been helpful is an inadequate acknowledgment of what they have contributed to this book. In the course of many interviews and hundreds of email exchanges , they provided candid and openhearted memories, often writing passages that have been integrated into the narrative of this biography. They also sent me DVD copies of the 16-millimeter film that Dana shot or had taken of him, his family, friends, and those he encountered on trips abroad. That generosity is a tribute to Dana Andrews, who was about as open about himself as a human being can be—while remaining, in certain fundamental respects, enigmatic. Of course he told the truth in his own a C k n o w l e d g m e n t s V I I I way. We all do. And like so many self-invented figures, he constructed a life narrative that looked somewhat different from the way I have fashioned it. That is the difference, of course, between autobiography and biography. I have tried to let him have his say, even as I choose other angles from which to take his measure. I have had the great good fortune to speak with Jeanne Andrews, the wife of Charles Andrews, Dana’s younger brother. She was able to take me back to the time when Dana first hit Hollywood. She also knew Dana’s father and the rest of the large Andrews family, and could share with me her memories of Texas in the 1930s and 1940s, when she and her husband returned to stay for twelve years before going back to California. Her son, Dana, named after his uncle, spoke with me about sailing and drinking with his father’s favorite brother, and in addition provided the precious resource that is Charles’s unfinished novel about Charles Forrest Andrews, the father who made such a deep impression on his progeny. A conversation with Dana and his sister Jeanne Marie also added considerably to my understanding of their Uncle Dana and his family. Angela Fabry, the daughter of Dana’s brother David, devoted herself to answering my innumerable questions about what Dana and his brothers were like. She knew them all and has taken a special interest in the family’s genealogy. Angela put me in touch with Aimee Abben, the daughter of Dana’s sister Mary. Aimee sent me photographs and other memorabilia full of invaluable details that helped to paint a picture of what it was like to grow up in Texas during Dana’s lifetime. My narrative would be much poorer if I had not had access to reminiscences contained in the material Aimee sent to me. At a crucial moment, Sheila Simpson came through with valuable information about Janet Murray, Dana’s first wife, and about Janet’s family . Sheila also made many helpful suggestions, and I benefited from the dozen or more email exchanges I had with her. Through David Andrews, a...

Share