Well-observed reflections for true fans of the silver screen.
Background becomes foreground in this take on actors with memorable faces and forgotten names.
As a young man in the 1970s gazing up at the silver screens of the Thalia, the Art, and the Bleeker Street—Manhattan’s film classic revival cinemas—Lazar learned about the importance of supporting actors—e.g., Edward Everett Horton and Ruth Donnelly in the comedy Holiday, who upstaged the film’s stars, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. In personal, insightful essays, the author defines the brilliance of second-billed players such as Horton and Donnelly as well as many others (Eric Blore, Jessie Royce Landis, Franklin Pangborn) in Hollywood films from the 1930s through the 1960s. Lazar divides his subjects into two categories: actors whose quirks, mannerisms, and attitudes remained constant in all of their films and actors who created a gallery of completely different characters. Among the former group, the titular Holm, along with Eleanor Parker, Nina Foch, and Eve Arden, played chic, mature, canny women whom male leads ultimately threw over for bland, unthreatening leading ladies. At the time, Hollywood’s version of patriarchy ruled. Throughout, Lazar limns his subjects with wit. Holm’s voice in All About Eve, he writes, was “tonic to [Bette] Davis’s gin.” But his essays transcend reminiscence. A look at the difficult Oscar Levant reflects on the broader nature of character itself, and, inevitably, the observations on the performers reflect on the author. A perceptive chapter on actors notable for playing mothers leads to Lazar’s sensitive memories of his own mother. Most entertaining, though, is the penultimate chapter, about Martin Balsam. The actor was a close friend of Lazar’s father, a successful travel agent who himself knew a bit about acting: He impersonated VIPs on the phone to get “unavailable” rooms and plane reservations, and he once foiled a robbery by feigning a faint.
Well-observed reflections for true fans of the silver screen.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4962-0045-7
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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