When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time at my maternal grandparents' home. They strongly nurtured my love of reading. It was in a small room in their house that I first read The Lord of the Rings as a seven year old. When I wasn't in the spare room falling in love with philology and etymology, I was often in the dining room, watching my grandad reading at the kitchen table. For some reason, whenever I subsequently pictured my grandad sitting at the table reading, the book I saw was "The Moon is a Balloon" by David Niven. So last year I finally got around to reading it myself, and it was entertaining. The stories were fun and he came across as a very interesting man. Finding out after reading it that most of the stories had often only a tangential relationship to something that might in dim light be mistaken for the truth left me feeling a little disappointed. 

Which is why I decided to read Sheridan Morley's biography of Niven called "The Other Side of the Moon." I am glad I did, because the overriding impression the book left me with is that Niven's collection of stories was indeed autobiographical — not in spite of being little more than a collection of amusingly enhanced anecdotes but because of it.  Morley's book makes it plain that that is who Niven was. The account of Noël Coward and a friend scoring Niven's storytelling after an evening out really drove that home. 

Morley's work was very detailed, and something that stood out from it was how often so many different people said almost exactly the same thing about Niven. Comments made decades apart tended to sum up Niven in the same way, as these examples show. 

Morley's book really shone when it touched on the not fun parts of Niven's life, which were numerous and significant, and almost without exception not mentioned at all in his own work. The impact of losing his beloved first wife through a tragic accident, the strains of a career that never completely took off for a combination of reasons, and the description of his final years suffering from motor neuron disease really rounded out the picture of David Niven. Morley writes sympathetically and with compassion. 

The only issue I have with the book is its length. It is very clear that the overwhelming bulk of Niven's film career was largely forgettable. Indeed that's almost the point of much of this biography. That being the case, it seems to me the book could have been 50-100 pages shorter had it contained fewer lengthy passages detailing many of those forgettable works. While most of those mediocre to bad films outlined in this biography did contribute something to the picture of Niven the person, there were many that did not, and their absence would not have harmed this book at all.  The thrust of almost of all them could be summed up in one comment from an actor about a film they appeared in together:

Of course, the one thing that it seems Niven liked to do more than anything else was make people laugh, and it's appropriate that there are many passages in this book which do exactly that. One that literally had me laughing out loud also made me think of the title of Niven's follow-up to "The Moon is a Balloon" , "Bring on the Empty Horses" – although in this case it seems the problem was that the horses were anything but empty.  In case anyone who reads this decides to read the book (and you should), here's the setup for that very funny anecdote:

Overall I enjoyed this book for what it taught me about a man who I as a child assumed must've been really famous because of the amount of time my grandfather spent reading his books.  Indeed Morley makes clear just how remarkable the success of Niven's raconteur reminiscences really was.

It was also interesting to see something of an insider's perspective on other famous screen names of the era. Such as Peter Sellers, the star of the Pink Panther series of films who this book makes clear  was never supposed to be the star of the first Pink Panther movie. The description of that "theft" and its subsequent long lasting effect on Niven is a great example of why this was a very worthwhile read. Thanks again, Dean Street Press!