by Ellis Amburn ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002
They deserve better, as does Beatty himself.
Thorough but twisted portrait of Warren Beatty as a sex maniac who somehow became a popular, powerful Hollywood actor and producer.
Amburn, biographer of Roy Orbison (Dark Star, 1990) and many other performers, here offers a tabloid account of Beatty’s hedonistic private life and his rise to fame. In this largely disapproving narrative, based on gossipy tidbits from other tell-all books and the anecdotes of movie extras, waitresses, and other passing acquaintances, the star’s libido gets blamed for everything from the Manson Family murders to tooth decay. The author seems to relax and warm toward his protagonist only in the final pages when Beatty settles down to marriage and parenthood with the actress Annette Bening. It’s unfortunate that Amburn is so intent on his subject’s every indiscretion, because there actually is much interesting information here about how a handsome high-school football star rose from ’50s art films and The Dobie Gillis Show to help create the New Hollywood, expanding the vocabulary and reach of American film with such innovative movies as Bonnie and Clyde, Shampoo, and Reds. There is also valuable background here about Beatty’s formative friendships with playwrights William Inge and Tennessee Williams and movie directors Arthur Penn and Elia Kazan. No biography could ignore the actor’s reputation as a man with a roving eye, but Amburn’s credibility is undermined by his apparent loathing for his subject. He depicts Beatty by turns as a vain and untalented loser who likes to gaze at himself in mirrors; a cold-hearted lover (and premature ejaculator); a ruthless businessman who takes advantage of his friends; a sniping, disloyal sibling to older sister Shirley MacLaine; and a brown-noser with ambitions of becoming a politician. Once the author’s bile gets stirred up, it can’t help but splash onto several other people, including Barbra Streisand, Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski, Goldie Hawn, and Hugh Hefner.
They deserve better, as does Beatty himself.Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-018566-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperEntertainment
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
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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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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
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