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No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel Mass Market Paperback – September 30, 2003
Sex. Trauma. Abuse. Fashion. Photography. Glamour. Cash. Alcohol. Drugs. Fame. Rock Bottom. Triumph. For Janice Dickinson, life just never stops coming.
“Models are supposed to be dumb, right? And, yes, there are plenty of pretty girls who are thick as posts. But most of us can actually walk and talk and snort coke at the same time. And some of us even ask ourselves Big Questions, like What the f--- does it all mean?”
In more than 25 years on the catwalk, Janice Dickinson has lived out nine lives and more. In the 1970s-era of the all-American blonde-she emerged as a pioneer, the first lush-lipped, exotic brunette to make it big. When models made $150 an hour, she demanded $20,000 a day…and got it. She graced every major magazine, in photos by Avedon and Irving Penn and fashions by Versace and Calvin Klein. In Paris and Milan and Studio 54, she partied and debauched with Gia Carangi and Jack Nicholson, Mick Jagger and Sylvester Stallone. She was called “the most operatic character ever to grace a fashion page”―and her fall from grace only proved it.
Yet the story Janice has lived to tell is no mere diva cartoon. What she reveals in Car Wreck Woman for the first time―about her childhood, her family, her psyche, and her unlikely survival―is unforgettable. And it will make this one of the most talked-about books of the year.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperEntertainment
- Publication dateSeptember 30, 2003
- Dimensions4.19 x 1.01 x 6.75 inches
- ISBN-100060566175
- ISBN-13978-0060566173
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Gisele, Naomi, Kate―none of you would be where you are now without Janice Dickinson. . . the pioneering princess of high fashion.” — New York Post
“Wild . . . surely raising eyebrows―and blood pressure―from Milano to Mullholland Drive. . . . her deft recollections ring tellingly true.” — Elle
“Dickinson gossips like a pro . . . but her tough-girl-survives-against-the-odds attitude manages to make the dirt she dishes shamefully savory. ” — Entertainment Weekly
“Janice . . . speaks with the candor of Cher, the bite of Joan Rivers and the sexual bonhomie of Mae West.” — Liz Smith, New York Post
“Dickinson…set off a revolution. She was the first of modeling’s bad girls, and she did nothing to hide it.” — Michael Gross, author of Model
“She’s a brilliant model, the best ever, I think. She will be talked about for as long as modeling exists.” — Tara Shannon, Model
“Engaging . . . vivid . . . illuminating. . . . [Janice] survives it all--cushioned by her beauty, her rage, and most of all her sense of humor.” — ―W Magazine
“I started this book at midnight and finished at 6 A.M. (she ruined my day!). But she’s High Speed Janice, spirit triumphant.” — Lauren Hutton
“The ultimate insider’s look at the big business of beauty. . . . Janice’s story is unvarnished and raw, with all the energy and humor that has been her lifelong trademark.” — Cheryl Tiegs
“I love Janice. She is crazy, unbearable, flamboyant, excessive--but she is true. There must be a reason she’s been able to survive all her excesses: some kind of guardian angel who was moved by her difficult trials, her profound generosity, her truthful speech, and her lack of arrogance.” — Jean-Jacques Naudet
“A roller-coaster ride through the world of modeling. . . . Dickinson comes across as a triumphant survivor. . . . Her willingness to recognize her own flaws makes it easy to relate to her positive message and should inspire readers.” — Publishers Weekly
“No other catwalker has had such a yeasty life, nor been willing to speak of it so jovially and graphically. Janice . . . speaks with the candor of Cher, the bite of Joan Rivers and the sexual bonhomie of Mae West.” — Liz Smith, New York Post
“Dickinson has managed to take what life has offered and work it . . . what keeps the book from becoming too tawdry is Dickinson’s sense of humor.” — Women's Wear Daily
“One rollercoaster of a read…Dickinson gossips like a pro…but her tough-girl-survives-against-the-odds attitude manages to make the dirt she dishes shamefully savory. B+” — Entertainment Weekly
“Janice Dickinson is a funny and fluid narrator . . . what makes [her book] interesting is her scathing inventory of everyone’s desperate behavior, including her own. . . . She’s like all forces of nature--you take them on their own terms. ” — New York Observer
“Entirely real . . it is the honesty with which it is written that may drive you from beginning to end in a single sitting.” — The Independent
From the Back Cover
A rollicking memoir by one of the greatest (and most outrageous) supermodels of the 1970s.
Janice Dickinson was not only the first of the supermodels, she endured a nightmarishly traumatic childhood at the hands of a sadistic, sexually and emotionally abusive father, and emerged in the early 1970s as the first lush–lipped 'exotic' brunette to break into a modelling world dominated by sunny California blondes.
Janice owned the modelling world in the 1970s. Animated by a fierce desire to be recognised, a fearless spirit, and an insatiable hunger for alcohol, cocaine, sex, and fun, Dickinson appeared on every magazine cover, worked with every major designer and photographer (from Calvin Klein and Gianni Versace to Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon), was married three times, and had passionate affairs or one–night stands with everyone from Warren Beatty to Jack Nicholson to Mick Jagger. Though her career waned in the 1990s, her dramatic life story did not: in recent years she has fought a hotly contested paternity suit with Sylvester Stallone, survived a near–fatal car wreck during a tequila/marijuana blackout in St Bart's, and waged a raging battle with alcohol and drug addiction.
About the Author
Janice Dickinson is the world's first supermodel. She has appeared on the cover of every fashion magazine in the world and is the author of No Lifeguard on Duty and Everything About Me Is Fake . . . and I'm Perfect. A former judge on CW's smash hit America's Next Top Model, she lives in Beverly Hills, California, with her two children.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Meet the Parents
My father was a tall, slim, handsome man with a thick head of silver hair, buzzed flat, and gunmetal gray eyes. People liked Ray. He had an easy smile. A pleasant laugh. He was a good storyteller, a good listener, popular with the neighbors.
But I didn't often see that easy smile. Or hear that pleasant laugh. I saw, instead, the way his eyes changed color when he got angry, the whites glowing red. Or the way he balled up his big, freckled fists when he came after me, like a bull in heat. I hated him. I hated his eyes; his hair; that acrid breath; the wife-beater, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts. I hated him with every fiber of my being.
I hated my mother, too; hated her because she was numbed into oblivion with the pills she'd been prescribed for an old back injury. She would come home at the end of the day, floating, and she stayed aloft with the help of those lovely pills. She would glide through the house on a cushion of air, in slow motion, unaware, unseeing, her voice soft, her mind elsewhere, always smiling this benign Hare Krishna smile - like she was At One With God or something; which she was, I guess, at least chemically.
Those were my parents. So I ask you - my two sisters and I - what fucking chance did we have?
They met, appropriately enough, in a bar. My mother, Jennie Marie Pietrzykoski, was the eldest of nine children. Her Polish-born father owned a little pub in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, right next to the railroad tracks, and I guess she felt comfortable around booze. She went to nursing school in Manhattan, and at night she'd hit the elegant nightclubs with her fellow nurses.
One night, at a Midtown watering hole, some asshole came by to harass Mom and her fellow nurses. Ray Dickinson intervened, decking the guy and tossing him into the street. My mother and her friends were so grateful they asked him to join them. He looked good in his Navy uniform. He was a radioman. Mom couldn't stop staring at those gray eyes. Three days later they went down to City Hall and got married.
The following week they ran into the "asshole" from the bar. Turns out he was a friend of Ray's; they'd set the whole thing up to make my father look like a regular hero. My mother thought it was funny. I would have had the marriage annulled.
They got an apartment in Brooklyn, and I guess those first few months were pretty hot. My mother was a looker. She wore stylish pumps and blood-red lipstick - not particularly original, true, but it worked. She loved the camera and the camera loved her back.
Alexis came along a year later. She didn't love the camera. There's a picture of her I'll never forget: She's about five years old and sitting stiffly on my father's lap, and she has a look in her eyes that's a caught-on-film cry for help. He was already into her. I guess five was old enough. I don't know where that picture is today, but I've got it imbedded in my brain. I wish I could erase it.
I came along five years later. My mother was working as a nurse in Manhattan, already dabbling with prescription drugs, and my father was grumbling about his nowhere career with the Navy.
Now there was more bad news: another daughter. Ray was devastated. He'd been hoping for a boy and made no secretabout it. I swear to God, I remember him hating me when I was barely a few weeks old. I know that seems unbelievable - I was way too young to be forming memories - but his hatred was the air I breathed from birth.
When I was just eighteen months old, in 1957, the family moved from Brooklyn to Florida. "Ray dear" - as my mother called him - had been tossed out of the Navy for assaulting an officer. He was going to start again, in sunny South Florida. Become Captain of his Own Goddamn Ship.
Only it never quite happened for him. He got a gig with the Coast Guard, but he didn't think much of those "pussies," so he ended up with the U.S. Merchant Marine. He hated taking orders, but he loved the sea. And he loved the long trips he got to take. So did we. Life was different when he wasn't around. At night I'd kneel next to my bed and pray that the Seaman's Union would call in the morning and drag him off to some remote hellhole, where he'd fall overboard in a storm and get eaten by a shark. Alas, all my prayers went unanswered. Ray always returned to the family. He couldn't get enough of his family. Ray dear had a problem, see. He liked to be serviced. And with four women in the house, he felt entitled.
I was nine years old when he came to my room one night and told me we were going to play the lollipop game, a special game for a father and a favorite daughter. And - We have a winner! - I was that favorite daughter ...
(Continues...)
Excerpted from No Lifeguardby Janice Dickinson Copyright © 2003 by Janice Dickinson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.Copyright © 2003 Janice Dickinson
All right reserved.
Product details
- Publisher : HarperEntertainment (September 30, 2003)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060566175
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060566173
- Item Weight : 7.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.19 x 1.01 x 6.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,169,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,328 in Pop Culture Art
- #3,578 in Rich & Famous Biographies
- #33,204 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Does this sound like just another dreary tale of a beautiful woman who let fame go to her head. drugs muddle her brain and life pass her by? Think again. Pick this one up and I doubt you'll put it down again till you've read every sentence. FOr one thing, Dickinson has the courage to spill almost all about the ups and downs of her life (although I'd LOVE to read what she doesn't reveal) and that, in itself, is compelling. She's honest about many of her flaws and revealing about the lives of celebrities who cross her path, including Sylvester Stallone, Christie Brinkley, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and others. This makes for a juicy read. I'll leave it to you to decide what is true and what isn't. What I CAN say is that this book definitely isn't boring or dry. CAUTION: There are some nude photos in the photo spread so, depending on your values, you may not want to leave this one lying around the house.
She's surprisingly hilarious, cusses like a sailor, brutally honest & had me LMAO throughout the book. I couldn't put it down because I was dying to read the next chapter, so I finished it in on new day!
After reading this it will make you understand Janice Dickinson in a way you'd never have thought. I give it a 10/10 & that's a very rare thing for me!
Just read it already & prepare to be SHOCKED!
Top reviews from other countries
-Quick and entertaining read
-Sheds some light into J's early life and how she turned into the person she is today
-Lots of celebrity name dropping/scandalous stories
-Fun to hear about the model scene in the 70s, Studio 54 etc.
Cons
-A little repetitive
-Writing is pretty basic
-Janice fluctuates between self-loathing and self-aggrandizement - makes me wish she had undergone more therapy
Conclusion: An entertaining beach read.
This is a story of her life warts and all, she wrote honestly and openly about her family life, her abusive father, her struggle to become a model, the men that came and gone in her life, the drugs and alcohol she had problems with and finally her eventual happiness she sought throughout her life and did feel. It aS really good and interesting. You see Celebrities and see them successful, but you don't often here about how hard, or the hardships they suffered to get where they are today and not as honest as Janice has been in this book. So I like her and I enjoyed reading about her in this book. I do recommend this book, although some might not approve of her life style when she started out.
Okay its hardly a masterpiece on epic proportions but it got me so engrossed straight away that I had to read it all in one day . I loved her on Americas Next Top Model....she made me laugh out loud , sat next to Tyra (got a rod up my ass) Banks and then in the Jungle and Come dine with me...although these shows are well after the time covered in the book.
It does cover serious issues with her abusive father 'the rat bastard' as she rightly calls him and her pill popping mother who was next to useless. I found myself really rooting for the young Janice to prove the rat bastard wrong and make something of herself. Which of course we know she does but my goodness theres a lot of things on the way that make a really good read , some that shock and some that make you feel so sorry that she had such a crappy start and the feeling that with two loving parents things would have turned out differently.