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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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