by Cari Beauchamp ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2009
An engrossing, important forgotten chapter in the history of Hollywood and America’s premiere political dynasty.
Beauchamp (Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood, 1998, etc.) uncovers the largely untold story of the Kennedy patriarch’s adventures in the early days of Hollywood.
Kennedy demonstrated preternatural business instincts, ambition and self-promotional flair in his hometown of Boston, winning fame as “America’s youngest bank president” by the age 25 before being seduced by the spectacular profits to be made in the movie business. Employing his enormous personal charm, financial acumen and public-relations savvy, he quickly moved to the head of three movie studios and began amassing a personal fortune that would help establish him as one of the richest men in the country. Beauchamp’s exhaustive research details Kennedy’s every stock manipulation and cost-cutting measure, but the meat of the story is in the tyro’s ruthlessness and single-minded pursuit of the bottom line. This approach led to, among other things, the death of vaudeville, as Kennedy’s purchase of the K-A-O theater chain left that medium’s performers without a venue for their art; the ruined career of cowboy star and Kennedy friend Fred Thomson, who represented competition for Kennedy’s new hire Tom Mix; and the spectacular career flameout of Gloria Swanson, superstar and Kennedy paramour. The section dealing with Swanson’s epic, uncompleted fiasco Queen Kelly, hemorrhaging money as out-of-control director Erich von Stroheim descended into autocratic perversity, is a riveting account of filmmaking in the nascent sound era. It also provides a welcome bit of color in a narrative that, owing to Kennedy’s relative lack of interest in the creative side of the business, tends toward a dryness in its dogged reportage of wheeling and dealing. Beauchamp doesn’t attempt a psychological investigation of Kennedy; he appears simply as a predatory animal, a grinning shark instinctively improving his position without sentiment for those suffering in his wake.
An engrossing, important forgotten chapter in the history of Hollywood and America’s premiere political dynasty.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4000-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2008
Share your opinion of this book
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.