NONFICTION - July 21, 1991

PETER LAWFORD: The Man Who Kept the Secrets by James Spada (Bantam: $22.50; 504 pp.). It was a sorry ending for Peter Lawford on Christmas Eve, 1983. Broke, alcoholic, addicted to drugs and virtually friendless, Lawford died of kidney and liver failure, and even in death managed to grab only the third lead--one obituary headline read: “Kennedy in-law was last to speak to Marilyn Monroe.” Such reflected glory seems an unpromising subject, but Hollywood biographer James Spada turns it into a compelling morality tale, largely because Lawford’s life was more Dickensian than Dickens. Illegitimate son of a British lord, world traveler by age 10, sole support of his family during hard times, Lawford had seen almost everything before becoming a screen heartthrob in the late 1940s. Befriending or bedding just about everyone in Hollywood, and marrying into the Kennedy clan, should have been just icing on the cake. From then on, however, his decline was long, deep and never-ending, for Lawford’s hedonism--and his insecurity regarding formal education and personal relationships--led him to seek solace in a constant stream of drink, drugs and star-struck women. Spada’s portrayal of Lawford is not subtle, and his attempts at understanding minimal; his book is compulsive reading nonetheless.