The eldest daughter of TV actor/writer/director/producer Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, etc.) tells her side of the Landon story—and tells her father's as best she can. Wilson is the daughter of Landon's second wife, Marjorie Lynn Noe, and has eight siblings or quasi-siblings. Landon, dying of cancer at 54, expressed his regret to Wilson that he'd not been allowed by her biological father to adopt her—but that she'd always been his daughter anyway. With this book, she returns the favor by protecting and honoring Landon's memory and by showing how he was her dad even though she'd had weekend contact with her biological father during her mother's marriage to Landon—who had his problems. The son of a mentally disturbed woman, he popped pills during his early years on Bonanza and never gave up heavy use of cheap vodka. But friends and others envied his Romeo-and-Juliet tie with Marjorie, an immense lovey-doveyness that would not allow his eyes to leave her. Landon clearly was a marvelous father to all his children, and much of his home life became grist for scripts he wrote and directed for his various series. Wilson's darkest moment came with an auto accident that killed her three fellow passengers and nearly killed her, and that left her with lifelong pain and a dependency on Percodan. Her use of the painkiller got out of hand and she had to enter rehab. Another tough time came when Landon left Marjorie for his young third wife. The kids were hurt, but the younger ones recovered as part of Landon's new and growing family- -although Wilson felt whipped when Landon shrank her inheritance to much less than expected. The high points here are quite moving, especially Landon going on The Tonight Show to fight the tabloids two months before dying. Well done. (Photos—24 pp. b&w—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-79352-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
In keeping with celebrity autobiographies, Redgrave offers a tell-all memoir—except that the passions she reveals are for politics, not sex. Theater and film star, daughter and mother of famous actors, Redgrave writes about her life, her craft, and her very controversial politics. But where other actors grow tiresome in describing their love lives, Redgrave does the same in talking about her 20-year affair with the Marxist Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party. And instead of spicing her book with nasty comments about fellow artists, she directs her bile toward capitalists, imperialists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and, of course, Zionists. Of all the controversial causes with which Redgrave has been associated, she is best known—and, in some circles, most hated—for her antipathy toward Zionism and support for the Palestinians. Redgrave offers no apologies here for any of her political beliefs, nor does she express any regrets for the many roles, especially in Hollywood and on Broadway, that she has lost because of her activism, particularly on behalf of the Palestinians. Redgrave, who has refused for years to talk to journalists about her politics, uses this book to present her case, and it is as much a treatise as a memoir. The politics often stop the flow of the book, especially when she segues from a fascinating discussion of how she played a certain role to a tedious discourse on such a topic as dialectic materialism—the movie Isadora gives way to the war in Vietnam, Macbeth to her Hollywood lectures on Marxism. Overall, however, Redgrave's sincerity overwhelms both skepticism and boredom. The result is a book that should fascinate anyone who cares about how an artist's inner life illuminates and motivates his or her work. Redgrave's central premise is that she would not have been half the actor she is if she had led a different life. She makes this case so convincingly that the reader is left wanting to go back and see every part she has played—more often than not brilliantly—with the new eye this book provides.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40216-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
Flem, a Franco-Belgian psychoanalyst and author, takes a bit of a busman's holiday with this biography/critique of the 18th century's most famous rake. The 12 volumes of Casanova's History of My Life constitute one of the most delightful memoirs ever written. An elegant and witty- -and unexpurgated—-1966 translation by Willard R. Trask finally became available in paperback this spring from Johns Hopkins University Press. So the timing of Flem's biography of Giacomo Casanova, the self-styled Chevalier de Seingalt, is fortuitous. Casanova was not, as he is casually styled, a mere libertine, a heartless and careless seducer of women. Rather, as Flem points out, he was a mercurial figure, a man of many guises—author, actor, soldier, priest, alchemist, scientist, gambler, lottery director, spy—who turned his life into ``an endless carnival.'' Most of all, he was a connoisseur of pleasure and happiness who dedicated much of his life to offering them to women. Yet he was, as Flem notes, ``born under the sign of loss.'' His greatest loves ended tragically, he outlived his closest friends, he was duped repeatedly by women. The Casanova depicted in Flem's book echoes the memoirs, which along with his letters are the main source for this volume. He sought out women who were his intellectual equals, placing a high value on exchanges of the mind as no less important than exchanges of bodily fluids. He is, Flem asserts, a lover of women in the best sense. Flem herself is, in Temerson's graceful translation, a skilled and passionate writer, as befits her subject. But her tone is darker and more elegiac than that of the memoirs and the result is not nearly as entertaining. Flem's book suffers from a peculiar organization in which Casanova's life is explored thematically rather than chronologically; those who are unfamiliar with his memoirs may find this volume opaque at times. A thoughtful and intelligent examination of the great lover, but more effective as analysis and literary criticism than as biography.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-374-11957-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
