ALL THAT.(celebration of Betsy Blair's new book 'The Memory of All That')

The other night, several generations of show-biz people gathered to celebrate the actress Betsy Blair's new book, "The Memory of All That,"a glamorous, name-filled memoir about her career, in the mid-twentieth century, on Broadway and in Hollywood, and about her marriage, at the age of seventeen, to Gene Kelly. The party was the first given at home on the Upper West Side by Phyllis Newman since the death, last October, of her husband, Adolph Green.

It was cozy in the apartment, with Blair, in a green raw-silk high-necked dress, looking and sounding not too different from the lonely, dateless girl she played in the 1955 movie "Marty."A young man at the Steinway played a few bars of "Body and Soul,"and Blair gamely sang, "I'd gladly surrender myself to you, body and soul,"then stopped and smiled quietly when nobody else joined her around the piano.

Guests arrived in batches, drank champagne, and ate little ham-and-cheese sandwiches and crab cakes. Blair exchanged hugs with all the old friends: Boaty Boatwright, Sidney Lumet, Meryl Streep, Lauren Bacall.

Mike Nichols hugged Blair and said, "Your book is remarkable. It's the only honest memoir I've ever read. You don't kiss up to anybody in it."

"How could I have left Gene, this wonderful man, after sixteen years of marriage?"Blair said cheerfully. "This perfect husband, father, friend, protector, provider, hard worker. I loved and admired him as a brilliant actor and dancer as well as a good, good man! To this day, I can't explain it.”

She went on, "It had nothing to do with sex. It was freedom. The word my grandchildren use to describe it is 'cool.' "She laughed.

At the age of thirty-six, she moved to London and soon married the director Karel Reisz, who died last November. " 'My second and eternal husband,' I call Karel in the book,"Blair ...