by Donald Spoto ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2010
A worthy but toothless consideration of one of Hollywood’s most distinctive performers.
Hollywood biography machine Spoto (High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly, 2010, etc.) presents the life and career of screen queen Joan Crawford (1905–1977), a movie star whose iconic status owed as much to the actress’s sheer willpower as to her perfect bone structure and improbably large, expressive eyes.
Crawford, in marked contrast to her rival Greta Garbo, employed a maniacal determination and inhuman work ethic to earn and maintain her place in Hollywood’s firmament of stars. Born into poverty, uneducated and profoundly insecure, Lucille LeSueur parlayed a successful dancing career on Broadway into a movie work, acquiring the name Joan Crawford in a magazine contest held to christen MGM’s newest contract player. Spoto deftly analyzes Crawford’s changing persona through her long career, from plucky flapper to suffering matron to leering grotesque, and recounts her failed marriages, numerous affairs and alcoholism with great sympathy. In fact, this perhaps overly reverential treatment is a bit of a letdown, as Crawford’s outsize diva histrionics, promiscuity and alleged abuse of her adopted children are key components of her continuing fascination for film audiences. Spoto discounts or explains away Crawford’s less-than-salubrious reputation, and the result feels a bit whitewashed. Crawford’s daughter Christina’s infamous autobiography Mommie Dearest (1978), and the subsequent film, cemented the public image of Crawford, perhaps unfairly, as an unhinged martinet, obsessed with order and cleanliness. Spoto works hard to refute Mommie Dearest’s damning portrait of the actress, but Crawford’s housekeeping mania, strict discipline and emotional instability are widely acknowledged. Christina’s brother Christopher, who corroborated her account, is described by the author as a troublemaker who was constantly running away from home, which begs a fairly obvious question. Still, the book is useful for its diligent consideration of Crawford’s films and legacy.
A worthy but toothless consideration of one of Hollywood’s most distinctive performers.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-185600-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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