The life of the influential Hollywood agent.
From the 1950s through the 1980s, Sue Mengers (1932-2011) represented some of the most famous names in show business, including Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Candice Bergen, Ali McGraw, Ryan O’Neal, Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, Elliott Gould, and, most notably, superstar Barbra Streisand. Not only did she admire the singer’s talents, but the parallels of their lives—growing up poor, losing their fathers while still young, battling judgmental mothers—made her feel they were kindred spirits. As Opera News features editor Kellow (Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, 2011, etc.) amply shows in this gossipy, star-studded biography, Mengers considered Streisand her “alter ego.” Chain-smoking, often with a Gauloises cigarette in one hand and a joint in the other, hard-drinking, and outrageously vulgar, Mengers was smart, savvy, and manipulative. “After a little while with her, people thought they were her best friends,” writes the author. New talent didn’t interest her; stars did, and she pursued them relentlessly until she gained their trust—and business. Unlike agents who kept a low profile, Mengers promoted herself as well as her clients, throwing parties for “top, above-the-title Hollywood stardom.” Those coveted gatherings, her bawdy appearances at premieres and nightclubs, and a profile in Vanity Fair made her as recognizable as her glamorous roster of actors, and she worked tirelessly to promote them—not just to get them parts, but also higher and higher salaries. In the 1970s, movie stars’ earnings were modest; by the time Mengers retired, they had grown to millions of dollars per picture. The author rightly points to Streisand’s defection as a turning point in Mengers' career. Streisand had been “the closest and most powerful reminder to Sue of her own exalted stature in Hollywood,” and when she left for another agent, Mengers was devastated and bitter.
Kellow, an admirer of Mengers’ spunk and achievements, serves her well in this deft, entertaining biography.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-670-01540-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
11
GET IT
The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Did you like this book?
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2020 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
