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CHRISTMAS IN JULY

THE LIFE AND ART OF PRESTON STURGES

Two so-so recent biographies of the euphoric film-director Preston Sturges (1898-1959), by James Curtis and Donald Spoto, and Sturges's posthumous autobiography, Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges (1990), are now followed by a critical biography that has a keener eye for the nuts and bolts of Sturges's scripts and his filmmaking than Curtis, Spoto, or even Sturges himself had. Film-historian Jacobs draws on interviews with Sturges's wives and survivors, including his fellow workers and artists, and from his personal letters, diaries, scripts, and photographs. Before he even leaves for Hollywood in the early 30's, Sturges has already lived several lives—and is only 34. After his birth in Chicago, his much-married mother leaves his father, elopes with wealthy Solomon Sturges, tours Europe with her best buddy—free-styled bacchante Isadora Duncan—and starts up her own line of cosmetics, with 16-year-old, penniless Preston as her New York office manager, salesman, and factotum. Loathing culture and Shakespeare, Sturges keeps these early years a screwball frolic, desires most to be an inventor. In 1929, Strictly Dishonorable makes him a hit Broadway playwright. He marries an heiress; writes three flops; and gets called to Hollywood, where scriptwriting at last pays off, leading him to a rare slot as writer-director. Here, we follow Sturges through draft after draft of The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Hail the Conquering Hero, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, Unfaithfully Yours, and many lesser works that Jacobs sifts for comic genius. For fun, Sturges is also a restaurateur. Then, after 13 years on top, the descent begins and the third highest-paid man in America ends up busted and a wanderer. Jacobs rarely smiles, but this dig into the archaeology of Sturges scripts and photos (54 b&w) is most welcome—and raising Preston is still enough.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-520-07926-4

Page Count: 538

Publisher: Univ. of California

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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