Mamie Van Doren Releases Memoir at 95, Detailing Hollywood's Casting Couch

1 articles · Updated · Fox News · Jun 6

Mamie Van Doren, 95, has published “You Thought I Was Dead,” a new memoir that recounts her decades in show business and describes Hollywood’s casting couch as a lasting part of the industry’s “shameful legacy.”
In the book, Van Doren says the #MeToo movement helped expose conduct long ignored, citing Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby while arguing young actresses were routinely vulnerable to powerful producers, stars and studio heads.
Van Doren also writes from personal experience, recalling feeling “used” and guilty in her early career as she navigated what she portrays as a predatory studio system during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Beyond Hollywood, the memoir revisits her Vietnam War troop tours, including the death of an 18-year-old Marine who gave her a Zippo lighter days before he was killed in an ambush.
The release comes as a documentary about Van Doren’s life is in production, extending renewed attention on one of the last surviving blonde bombshells of classic Hollywood.