But something ominous had taken place during the interval between the time of my proposal and Philip's reply, which I had chosen to disregard. Had I done otherwise , it would have given me the clearest message that the marriage was no more than Philip paying lip-service to my desire to be married.
--Claire Bloom, Leaving a Doll's House (Little, Brown and Company, 1996)
Claire Bloom's life was one of professional success and marital failure. I have never seen Bloom's theatrical work but have always enjoyed her films, from Chaplin's Limelight in 1952 to The King's Speech in 2010. She writes about her films and plays with intelligence and passion and about her marriages with dismay and regret for the red flags she constantly ignored. Her father was a distanced presence until he eventually deserted the family completely and perhaps Bloom was reacting to that. Her happiest liaisons were relatively early in her career -- especially with married Richard Burton -- but her three marriages to depressed and unfaithful men, which she writes about with regretful introspection, were disasters. Rod Steiger, with whom she had a daughter, was followed by Hillard Elkins and then Philip Roth, a serial philanderer and mysoginist (have you read his books, where he doesn't even try to disguise this?) who never wanted children and treated his stepdaughter, Anna Steiger, with unconcealed dislike, often requiring Bloom to choose between them.
Bloom writes intelligently about all this and is relatively honest about the mistakes she made in her personal life, particularly her willingness to give into men, while keeping a grip on her acting opportunities
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