A warm and well-researched—though not particularly compelling—appreciation of one of the stage’s most beloved performers...
The charmed life and times of Broadway sweetheart Mary Martin (1913-1990).
Longtime theater critic Kaufman’s (Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door, 2008, etc.) biography of stage star Martin will tick all the boxes for ardent fans of the performer—the author deftly summarizes her career and personal history—but those not part of the cult will find a curiously bland subject. Martin’s gift was an endearing quality, a unique ability to emotionally connect to audiences in a live setting; while a more than able vocalist, she lacked a truly distinctive vocal instrument, and her early-career onscreen forays (her attempts at movie stardom would come to naught) proved lackluster and unmemorable. Martin shone on the Broadway stage, where she capitalized on her winsome charm in storied productions of South Pacific, The Sound of Music, and, most famously, Peter Pan. Martin’s work in these roles inspired adoration, but there is precious little to dig into: the shows were masterpieces, she was excellent in them, and that’s about it. Perhaps attempting to invest dramatic stakes in the tale, Kaufman alludes to rumors of lesbian relationships between Martin and actresses Jean Arthur and Janet Gaynor, but gently and without much evidence to support the claims. The author evenhandedly recounts Martin’s longtime marriage to the gay, dictatorial Richard Halliday, a difficult personality who clashed terribly with Martin’s son, the free-spirited actor Larry Hagman (the product of a previous marriage), but even here the narrative lacks any real tension or drive. Kaufman has produced an encomium rather than a page-turner.
A warm and well-researched—though not particularly compelling—appreciation of one of the stage’s most beloved performers and, on the evidence here, least interesting legends.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-03175-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2016
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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