Biographer and novelist Dewey (Marcello Mastroianni, 1993; Reasonable Doubts, 1991) offers a voluminous, highly intelligent look at one of the richest and most complex of Hollywood star personas, not incidentally, one of the industry's most beloved actors. Intriguingly, as Dewey ably demonstrates, Stewart is one of those actors who—thanks to generations of comedians and impressionists—we think we know cold but whose work is continually surprising. Ironically, Stewart had the kind of upbringing that people identify with his film characters: He was raised in Indiana, Penn., a small town in the middle of the state. His father, Alex, was a dominating personality, owner of a large hardware store, one of the town's most successful businesses. It was Alex who determined that his only son would follow his path to the Mercersburg Academy and Princeton. Alex was less than thrilled when Jimmy developed more of an interest in theater than in his chosen field, architecture, but the father was also shrewd enough to give him his opportunity to fail. Needless to say, he didn't. Stewart's rise was swift, moving like lightning from summer stock to Broadway to Hollywood and stardom. Dewey, as interested in the work as he is in the life, examines each of Stewart's films in considerable detail and with real acumen. Nor does he neglect Stewart's private life; he is utterly frank but never titillating about the actor's affairs with Norma Shearer, Ginger Rogers, Marlene Dietrich, and Olivia De Havilland. Also very astute is the analysis of Stewart's career choices, and the detailed recounting of his distinguished record as a bomber pilot and squad commander during WW II is downright moving. Dewey describes everything with a workmanlike prose that may not sing, but it hums nicely. A model of how to do a serious but entertaining Hollywood biography; Dewey never loses sight of the work, which is what makes Stewart important in the first place. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-57036-227-0
Page Count: 521
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
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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