Excluding Fred Astaire, jauntily perched up there on a peak all his own, the two most graceful performers I have seen in thirty years of reporting on show business were not Fonteyn and Nureyev but Leigh and Bloom. Vivien and Claire, that is.
No dancers (although each of these not disimmilar women studied it as youngsters), actresses Leigh and Bloom move with the most exquisite elan of all stage-screen-TV stars in my ken. I recall most particularly Leigh's performance in the otherwise standard 1963 Broadway musical Tovarich. She portrayed a White Russian grand duchess reduced to working as a maid, and the elegance with which she wielded a broom was something to behold. With Bloom, a standout was again a 1960's performance of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Bloom remains the finest Anna I have seen, more calculating than the tragically all-suffering errrant wife and mother of most interpretations, and surpassingly graceful: gliding about the rather bunched-up TV rooms of period Russian decor, she sometimes seemed to be passing wraith-like right through the furniture.
I chatted briefly with Bloom at a cocktail party in New York soon after the program was telecast, mentioninng my high regard for her unconventional Anna. I noted that she had given this enduring literary heroine more dimension by making her less sympathetic than was popular in dramatazations, to which she remarked, "Oh, yes. she was a destroyer."
Coincidentally, Vivien Leigh also played Anna in a rather chilly 1948 Alexander Korda film, while in 1958 Leigh and Bloom starred together on the London stage in the aptly titled Duel of Angels.
Bloom doesn't mention her Anna Karenina in her new autobiography, Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress (Harper & Row, $13.95). But then, her husbands (actor Rod Steiger and producer Hillard Elkins) and lovers (currently, writer Philip Roth) are brushed aside with little or no mention, too. She does tell us that her younger brother is the successful film editor John (The French Lieutenant's Woman) Bloom. Claire Bloom's dignified little volume is the straightforward story of the overly serious but talented and beautiful London Lass, born to middle-class Jewish parents in 1931, who became a professional actress at age fifteeen and was soon somewhat stultifyinglly dubbed "The English Rose."
Little but acting mattered to her then, and little but acting matters to her in this book. She keeps her skirts firmly tucked around her. Limelight and After just may be the least anecdotal star memoir I have ever read. It is certainly the most single-minded and direct such work in recent tell-all years. Although few living actresses (if any) have co-starred with os many distinguished names of the English-speaking theatrical world, Bloom does not tell all she may know of colleagues Olivier, Gielgud, Richardson, Scofield, Burton, Scott, Newman and Leigh; and certainly she does not say what she could about her marriage to Rod Steiger, which produced their interestingly named daughter Anna (now studying for an operatic career). It is almost a relief. If grace has been one of her great attributes while acting, it is no less evident in her lean, but eminently readable prose.
Her story, furthermore, is handled with considerable charm; if one is a Claire Bloom fan (as I have long been) it is sure to be a joy. She has not had the publicity she deserves, and her book fills in the gaps. It is also touching, as when, after coldly rejecting her n'er-do-well re-married father, she learns a short time later that he had died suddently.
A highlight is her vivid recounting of the early-1950's making of her first film hit, Limelight, opposite Charles Chaplin. To her initial annoyance, the legendary filmmaker acted out for her even the smallest moments of her role as a suicidal ballerina, and insisted that she imitate his every nuance. But she did as he commanded. The result was a classic production that put her on the map- and a Time cover. It is perhaps the most deeply felt, arresting and historically valuable section of the book.
Somehow, though, she never really seems to have felt at home in movies. For years, she writes, filming made her self-conscious and uncomfortable and she disliked living in Hollywood. She made a number of films there (including The Brothers Karamazov, The Buccaneer, The Chapman Report, Charly, The Illustrated Man), but prefers the British-made ones (such as Richard III, Look Back in Anger, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold).
Bloom clearly favors the stage. Scoring her first notable success in that medium in 1952 in the Old Vic's Romeo and Juliet, opposite Alan Badel, she went on to acclaim here and abroad in Rashomon, A Streetcar Named Desire, Ivanov, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler and The Cherry Orchard. Classical theater, obviously, has been her metier.
Claire Bloom is not a lighthearted woman. She is intense and no doubt dedicated , as well, it would appear from her words, somewhat bitter that she has not become the kind of theatrical diety to whom all the best new roles are offered. Despite her pervasive tact, she allows herself at least one startling opinion when she says, "On Broadway I would say I played almost consistently to dud audiences." That will come as a surprise to the many aisle-sitting "duds" such as I who have faithfully, attentively and demonstratively enjoyed her performances on that thoroughfare over the years.
Perhaps the Big Role, the one that would send her name soaring, has not come along for Claire Bloom- yet. But there have been enough good ones to have established her not only as one of the handsomest actresses of her generation but also one of the most accomplished. Limelight and After, in spite of her modest self decprecation, is a charmingly civilized record of just that.

Photos accompanying the article: 1. Ninth page black and white of 'Claire Bloom in The Haunting.' 2. Fifth page black and white- 'Claire Bloom & Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.' 3. Twelth page black and white-'Richard III with Claire Bloom & Laurence Olivier.' 4. Fourth page black and white- 'MGM's The Outrage in a scene with Paul Newman & Claire Bloom. 5. Fourth page black and white- The Chapman Report. (L to R) Claire Bloom, Glynnis Johns, Jane Fonda, Shelley Winters. 6. Fourth page black and white- Charly with Cliff Robertson & Claire Bloom. 7. Half page black and white- Limelight with Charles Chapllin & Claire Bloom. 8. Fourth page black and white- Look Back in Anger with Claire Bloom & Richard Burton. 9. Fourth page black and white- Claire Bloom in The Bucaneer, directed by Anthony Quinn.