Haywire (book)

Haywire is a 1977 memoir by actress and writer Brooke Hayward (born 1937), daughter of theatrical agent and producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan. It is a #1 New York Times Best Seller and was on the newspaper's list for 17 weeks. In Haywire, Brooke details her experience of growing up immersed in the glamorous and extravagant lifestyle afforded by her parents’ successful Hollywood and Broadway careers and tells the story of how her privileged, beautiful family and their seemingly idyllic life fell apart.

Leland Hayward – Brooke’s father, who was a charismatic person and prominent theatrical agent and stage, film, and television producer "who taught Fred Astaire how to dress and whom Katharine Hepburn called 'the most wonderful man in the world'–even after he ended their romance," who "thrived on the glamorous Hollywood scene." His clients included Fred Astaire, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Ernest Hemingway, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Billy Wilder, Gene Kelly, Myrna Loy, Herman Mankiewicz, Gene Fowler, Gregory Peck, William Wyler, Fredric March, Boris Karloff, Lillian Hellman, Helen Hayes, Dashiell Hammett, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn. He was a Tony Award-winning Broadway producer of Call Me Madam, South Pacific, Gypsy, The Sound of Music, and Mister Roberts, among others. His marriage to Margaret Sullavan (another client) ended in 1948, and he later married Nancy "Slim" Hawks (later Lady Keith), and Pamela Digby Churchill (later Harriman).

Margaret Sullavan – Brooke's mother, who was both a Hollywood and a Broadway star, by all accounts a superb actress, and known for her husky voice and "irresistible crooked grin." She performed with the University Players at Harvard, made her Broadway debut in 1926, and starred in 16 films including the classics Only Yesterday (1933), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and Back Street (1941). Before Leland Hayward, she was married to actor Henry Fonda and director William Wyler. According to Brooke, she loathed Hollywood, was fanatical about her privacy, and was determined to bring up her children properly in a perfect, beautiful home. Her death at age 50 (in 1960) by barbiturate poisoning was ruled an accident.

Brooke Hayward – Brooke, who appeared on the cover of Life magazine when she was 15, became a model and actress before she wrote Haywire. Her film and television credits include Mad Dog Coll, the Twilight Zone episode "The Masks," and Six Degrees of Separation. She has been married to Michael Thomas, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Duchin, and lives in Connecticut and New York.

Bridget Hayward – Brooke’s younger sister. She was in and out of mental institutions in her teens, and worked at the Williamstown Theatre as an apprentice. She “succumbed to a recurrent, unexplained illness marked by epileptic seizures and bouts of severe depression” and her death at age 21 is considered to be a suicide.

William (Bill) Hayward – Brooke’s younger brother. He, too, was in and out of mental institutions such as the Menninger Foundation. He produced Easy Rider in partnership with Peter Fonda and loved motorcycles for the rest of his life. He shot himself in the heart in 2008.

Throughout Haywire, Hayward uses snippets of oral history from interviews she conducted with people who knew her immediate family members (several of whom were "family friends") to provide outside perspectives on what they were like and on how the family operated. These contributors include:

Although their contributions (of “time, memories, and love”) are not marked as quotes in the text, Hayward acknowledges: