Still Here

The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch

By: Alexandra Jacobs

Narrated by: Andréa Burns

"Narrator Andrea Burns is amazing! Her performance of New York Times editor Jacobs's charming, well-researched look at the life of actor Elaine Stritch (1925-2014) is at once intelligent, amusing, and illuminating.... Wonderfully entertaining listening." (AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner)

The ebullient, troubled life of a Broadway legend who became a heroine to a younger generation.

Still Here is the first full telling of Elaine Stritch’s life. Rollicking but intimate, it tracks one of Broadway’s great personalities from her upbringing in Detroit during the Great Depression to her fateful move to New York City, where she studied alongside Marlon Brando, Bea Arthur, and Harry Belafonte. We accompany Elaine through her jagged rise to fame, to Hollywood and London, and across her later years, when she enjoyed a stunning renaissance, punctuated by a turn on the popular television show 30 Rock. We explore the influential - and often fraught - collaborations she developed with Noël Coward, Tennessee Williams, and above all Stephen Sondheim, as well as her courageous yet flawed attempts to control a serious drinking problem. And we see the entertainer triumphing over personal turmoil with the development of her Tony Award-winning one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, which established her as an emblem of spiky independence and Manhattan life for an entirely new generation of admirers.

In Still Here, Alexandra Jacobs conveys the full force of Stritch’s sardonic wit and brassy charm while acknowledging her many dark complexities. Following years of meticulous research and interviews, this is a portrait of a powerful, vulnerable, honest, and humorous figure who continues to reverberate in the public consciousness.

©2019 Alexandra Jacobs (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Narrator Andrea Burns is amazing! Her performance of New York Times editor Jacobs's charming, well-researched look at the life of actor Elaine Stritch (1925-2014) is at once intelligent, amusing, and illuminating.... Wonderfully entertaining listening." (AudioFile Magazine)

Thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this broadway legend

What a great telling of one of Broadway’s originals. Interweaving her storied career with her addiction battle, her story leaves a lasting impact and realisation of just how tough this old broad must have been. I am off to watch my dvd of her ‘At Liberty’ xx

Everybody Rise

As someone who fell in love with Elaine Stritch in her later years, I think this book is a wonderful and moving tribute to an amazing legend of the American Musical Theater. Everything about this book was done right. The narrator truly captured Stritch’s essence.

Amazing narrator

Portrait of a true legend told by a superb narrator! Well worth anyone’s time if at all interested in the history of American stage.

Phenomenal account of a Broadway Icon

I can't say enough about this powerhouse biography of a powerhouse of talent. I've been a Stritch fan for years,
but hearing from an 'insider to an outsider,' I am grateful for this. The narrator is stunning: when she quotes Stritch
AS Stritch... she almost brings chills. There are many laugh out loud moments, and many that bring tears.
I wish there was more...

A Send-up to a True Broadway Legend

This book captures the essence of Elaine, as far as her fans know her to be. Overall there are many personality traits that are brought out that make her incredibly relatable. I have always wanted to have a conversation with her. This book takes care of that.

The performance is wonderful, even when the reader imitates, it is done with sincerity and accuracy.