The author
Detroit did not want her. The world got her anyway.
Orphaned before her first birthday, on a stage by thirty, and a published author at eighty-three. This is the life the two memoirs describe.
In her own account
The whole of it, written down
She was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a mother who did not want the pregnancy and tried to end it. She was orphaned at six months old and adopted by a German family. The memoirs do not soften any part of that opening, and they do not soften what came after it either — an assault at sixteen, eleven marriages, and a long stretch of years she declines to defend.
Around the age of thirty, at an age when most dancers are leaving the profession, she started. A performing career followed: an appearance in the film Porky's, and a season singing with Beverly Sills at the Palm Beach Opera.
She is eighty-three now, and living a better life than the one she was handed. That is the sentence both books are built to earn.
Read the new memoirA life in chapters
Eighty-three years, unabridged
Every entry below appears in the books. Nothing has been tidied for comfort.
Born unwanted
Her mother did not want the pregnancy and tried to end it. She was born anyway.
Orphaned, then adopted
Left without parents before her first birthday, she was taken in by a German family.
The year she stopped being a child
An assault the memoir refuses to skip over, and which shaped everything that followed.
Married, and married again
Eleven marriages across a lifetime — recounted plainly, without apology or explanation.
She started dancing
A performing career began, including an appearance in the film Porky's.
Singing with Beverly Sills
A season sharing a stage with one of America's great sopranos.
The first memoir
Someone Please Love Me is published — the dancer's story, told for the first time.
Secrets Are Out Now
At eighty-three, the complete account arrives from Brookscraft Publishing.
I was told to keep it quiet for eighty years. I gave it eighty. That seemed like enough.
Crystal Gellata
What the books are about
Four threads run through both of them
Being unwanted
What it does to a person to know the story of their own birth, and to write it down anyway.
Adoption and belonging
A German family, an American childhood, and the question of where a person actually comes from.
The stage as escape
Dancing that started far too late and worked anyway — Porky's, the opera, the road.
Getting better late
Eighty-three, living well, still writing. The books end where most memoirs would not dare start.
Out now
The secrets are out. You may as well read them.
Published 13 May 2026 by Brookscraft Publishing. ISBN 978-1-9696-8262-9.