A fast-paced, informative reminder of the importance of speaking out.
A comprehensive history of the embattled, groundbreaking variety program The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
NPR TV critic Bianculli (Dictionary of Teleliteracy: Television’s 500 Biggest Hits, Misses, and Events, 1996, etc.) traces the development of the Smothers’s act, which began in 1967 and featured the stuttering, spacey Tom and his straight-laced brother, Dick, performing acoustic folk songs interspersed with zany asides and brotherly bickering. This family-friendly act would ironically serve as a springboard for some of the most daring commentary and satire to appear in a prime-time program up to that point—a distinction that secured the Smothers’s legacy as TV pioneers and, ultimately, cost them their platform and lead to a disastrous relationship with their network, CBS. The author effectively conveys the excitement generated by the late-’60s heyday of the Comedy Hour in its young fans, as its mandate to present fresh new musical acts, including the Who and Buffalo Springfield, and to comment on social issues stood in sharp relief to the staid fare typical of the day. A fascinating cast of characters, including the writer and musician Mason Williams, faux presidential candidate Pat Paulsen, hippy love child Leigh French and irreverent monologist David Steinberg, keeps the narrative hopping, and Bianculli captures the special essence of each performer. The heart of the story concerns Tom Smothers’s epic clash with the draconian standards and practices (read: censorship) department of CBS. The author details the infamous cutting of Pete Seeger’s anti-Vietnam ballad “Waist Deep in Big Muddy,” the fallout from Steinberg’s edgy religious material and censored appearances by Harry Belafonte and Elaine May, as well as Tom’s cheeky brinksmanship and legal battles with the corporate culture at the network. It’s striking to realize how mild much of the contested material seems today, which speaks to the climate of caution and fear that ruled mainstream TV entertainment in the ’60s. The Smothers Brothers lost their show in 1969, but won victories that continue to pay dividends to this day.
A fast-paced, informative reminder of the importance of speaking out.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4391-0116-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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