Leisurely and ramblingly informative rather than gripping, then: a grand, funny tinsel-town cornucopia bursting with...
Father was optimistic B. P. Schulberg—philanderer, compulsive gambler, publicist (he dubbed Pickford "America's Sweetheart"), scenarist, lieutenant to "Uncle Adolph" Zukor, founder of Preferred Pictures, manager of Paramount, discoverer of Clara Bow, archenemy of L. B. Mayer. Mother was suspicious, pessimistic Ada, devotee of self-improvement, Jewish-intellectual style (later Hollywood's proto-typical woman-agent). And so little Buddy—born 1914—was indeed a Hollywood prince, with the Studio as "composite father." He and chum Maurice Rapf (son of a rival studio chief) played on the Ben Hur set; they cut up by flinging rotten figs at Norma Shearer et al. Buddy was fawned over by the stars, especially B.P.'s doxy Clara Bow—poor "Crisis-a-Day Clara," Brooklyn-accented and desperately seductive, even with a ten-year-old ("Mmmmmm. How wouldja like ta drive up to Arrowhead this weekend, Buddy? Just the two of uz!"). Buddy sat in on story conferences, had a summer job in the publicity department, got an "advanced course" in psychopathology: the miserable kiddie stars, the pathologically insecure biggies, the epic thick-headedness of such endearing egomaniacs as now-forgotten George Bancroft. (Schulberg delights in resurrecting the lesser-knowns.) But: "If I had a silver spoon in my mouth, I was gagging on it." How so? Well, Buddy was a terrible stammerer—unhelped by Ada's Freudian theories or voice coaches; he also, with Maurice, "built fear of the opposite sex into a cult." And while Ada pushed Buddy to achieve, B.P. treated his tries at writing exactly the same as the work of $1000-a-day Ben Hecht ("Lousy!" was the usual one-word critique). But, above all, there was the endless B.P./Ada bickering—peaking when Buddy was 17, when B.P. was carrying on with Sylvia Sidney; Ada screamed ("She's nothing but a little hoot. Cheap little kike!"); Oedipally feverish Buddy, sent east to prep school, dreamed of assassinating homewrecker Sylvia. . . and even made one melodramatic appearance at the Sidney place. A great story of domestic nightmare and adolescent fury? Yes indeed. But Schulberg has chosen not to shape or dwell on it, Haywire-fashion. Instead, drawing on B.P.'s unpublished memoirs as well as his own memories, he cheerfully surrounds the personal drama here with a broad range of Hollywood history and anecdotes.
Leisurely and ramblingly informative rather than gripping, then: a grand, funny tinsel-town cornucopia bursting with first-hand, second-hand, and third-hand tales.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1981
ISBN: 9781566635264
Page Count: 548
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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