The ubiquitous TV emcee (his occupation: —personality—) presents a prototypical show-biz autobiography with the significant help of a seasoned amanuensis (All My Best Friends, with George Burns, 1989, etc.). McMahon (Here’s Ed, 1976; Ed McMahon’s Superselling, 1989; etc.) invented a character—a hearty, bibulous Irish salesman and straight man named Ed McMahon—and played it to the fullest. He has appeared on the small screen for an amazing half century. (Somehow, it seems longer.) Before he was a second banana, he performed as bingo caller, door-to-door vendor of pots and pans, and boardwalk pitchman. The carney talent for hokum that he perfected then has endured. The justifiable pride he earned as a marine fighter pilot has also lasted. He has always worked at his profession and now clearly enjoys his perhaps exaggerated fame. (Surely, not everyone in the world knows Ed McMahon?) The core of the book, naturally, is the 30-year gig as a very obsequious Falstaff to Carson’s Prince Hal. He says that much of their repartee was unrehearsed. (Why, then, did it often seem like a slick routine?) Old gags and adventures with Carnac and Aunt Blabby are recalled. There developed a wary fellowship as the two performers went through myriad marriages. McMahon describes his three uxorious escapades and the resultant family relationships. He talks of show-biz folk with an encomium for each (there’s “the great” Dick Clark, “the brilliant” Freddy de Cordova, “the incredible” Jonathan Winters, and “the legendary” Bob and Ray), and there’s a persistent lunge for a one-liner at the end of each paragraph. It’s all in character, like the fabled imbibing. Now, at 75, Ed has cut down to one glass of red wine a day, though he may “cheat a little: it’s still one glass, but I fill it twice.” A gregarious hustler’s autobiography, pure theatrics for those who take a rousing call of “Hi-yoooo!” for wit. (16 pages photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1998
ISBN: 0-446-52370-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
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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