Praise for Suzanne Hansen and
You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again
"Filled with juicy tidbits that will be enjoyed by anyone who loves to read about the bad behavior... of the rich and famous."
—LA Times
"[A] story that Hansen tells with real comic energy, sparing no unlibelous detail."
—Boston Globe
"After the publication of Hollywood nanny Suzanne Hansen's memoir, former employer and hardballing Uber-agent, Michael Ovitz might swear bitterly: You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again."
—Vanity Fair, January 2006
"Think The Nanny Diaries, but juicier—and it's all true! Suzanne Hansen's tell-all book about her real-life adventures in Tinseltown babysitting (she was the nanny to the kids of super-scary super-agent Michael Ovitz) will have you howling with laughter—and rage."
—Marie Claire magazine
"Veterans of the serving class ourselves, we thought we'd seen it all, but You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again offers an intriguing peek into the never-before-revealed family lives of Hollywood's elite. Hansen's memoir poignantly proves that truth can be more powerful than fiction."
—Leanne Shear and Tracey Toomey, authors of The Perfect Manhattan
"Just when you think you've heard everything about the behind-the-scenes world of celebrities, along comes You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again, a humorous yet down-to-earth account of the vagaries of warped Hollywood parenting. Author Suzanne Hansen's experiences as an L.A. nanny expose the absurd—and yet achingly funny—differences between the rich and famous and the rest of us."
—Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner, authors of
Hollywood, Interrupted
"A funny, absorbing true tale that will once again leave readers wondering why anyone would want to work in the insane asylum that is Hollywood."
—Robin Lynn Williams, author of The Assistants
"Funny and engaging enough to be a novel, that You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again is true takes it to another level—a stunning exposé of our culture's impossible expectations of mothers."
—Ariel Gore, author of The Hip Mama Survival Guide
and The Mother Trip
"A jolly holiday with Mary it most certainly was not. At 18 years old, long before Nanny 911, Suzanne Hansen left the WiIlamette Valley of Cottage Grove to pair her au with late-'80s Hollywood excess... Hansen's just-released tell-all You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again chronicles her caregiving escapades with Debra Winger, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, and especially the Ovitz clan."
—Portland Monthly magazine
Reviews of
You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again
Publishers Weekly
"Misadventures in nannyhood" is how Hansen, an Oregon teen who'd trained at the Northwest Nannies Institute, characterizes her amusing account of several years as live-in drudge to the stars. Readers of James B. Stewart's DisneyWar are already acquainted with her first employer, Michael Ovitz, then still the superagent commander of the CAA talent agency, and parent, with his wife, of three children...
complete review»
The Book Standard
Ovitzes, Wingers, DeVitos—and the Hollywood live-in babysitters and all-around household gofers who make their busy lives bearable—are the subject of former nanny Suzanne Hansen’s You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again, to be released by Crown on Dec. 27...
complete review»
Boston Globe
I must confess that I have a real weakness for seeing awful people, fictional or otherwise, portrayed in all their monstrousness. This being the case, I was immediately drawn to Suzanne Hansen's You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (Crown, $22). I read it through in one sitting, feeling ashamed of myself for getting such pleasure from the rich and powerful being exposed as the mean-spirited, exploitative vulgarians they so often are. Could this feeling be based in the ressentiment of which Friedrich Nietzsche wrote so unflatteringly? I'll leave that question for another day, and say that this is an account of Hansen's stint as a nanny in the mid-1980s for a few Hollywood big shots, with special emphasis on her year working for then super-agent Michael Ovitz and his wife.
Hansen arrived in Hollywood from a small town in Oregon with a certificate from Northwest Nannies Institute, two unsuitably warm dresses, and the ability to cook a casserole of broccoli, cheddar cheese, Campbell's cream of chicken soup, mashed potatoes, butter, and half-and-half. She also came with a love of children and a desire to please, both of which were ruthlessly exploited by the Ovitzes. It is this story that Hansen tells with real comic energy, sparing no unlibelous detail. These people are simply too ghastly for words, representing the excess and brute selfishness that took hold in the 1980s and that flourish today in all their glory.
Hartford Courant
Sometimes you want to read a book that uplifts, inspires or informs. And sometimes you just want an author who will dish shovels-full of dirt. Suzanne Hansen does the latter in her gossipy gloss on the family life of the rich and famous in You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (Crown, $22), in stores this week.
Hansen, a graduate of a school for nannies in her native Oregon, landed a job with the Michael Ovitz family, taking care of the three kids of the mega-mighty Los Angeles agent. Soon she learned the ways of the Tinseltown servant class (way too much work and responsibility, way too little pay for same) and the ways of the wealthy but chintzy:
$20,000 private cruise. Parents don't give it a second thought.
$15 phone call to check on the kids. Parents think this is way too spendy.
It wasn't all bad. Hansen had much better experiences in subsequent nanny jobs with Debra Winger and the Danny DeVito/Rhea Perlman families, and she got to meet such stars as Sylvester Stallone, Sean Connery and Paula Abdul.
Well, OK, maybe it was all bad.
But she tells her tales of the hollow life in Hollywood with verve in this insider's look at what happens to the kiddies when famous parents are busy puttin' on the glitz.
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Suzanne grew up in the small town of Cottage Grove, Oregon. After attending Northwest Nannies Institute in Portland, Oregon, she moved to Los Angeles and lived through a variety of high-profile nanny jobs. 