Levy (Film and Sociology/Arizona State Univ.) wrote 1987's overserious And the Winner Is: The History and Politics of the Oscar Award. His energized, studious Cukor biography differs from Patrick McGilligan's zestful George Cukor: A Double Life (1991) in several striking ways. While McGilligan stresses Cukor's double life as the only gay director of major rank in Hollywood and says that he spent his entire career fearful of a scandal that might cost him his high professional standing, Levy says Cukor's homosexuality was known by all and that people ``went out of their way not to damage him.'' When the vibrant Cukor arrived in Hollywood in the '30s, gay was okay but not great; then, in the uptight '40s and '50s, it became Bad News. Levy agrees with McGilligan that Cukor's emotional life was barren and that all his buoyancy was lavished on his films, his home decor, and his social gatherings. Nor did he like any open show of affection between men. His Hollywood labors began as dialogue director for Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front, but he quickly built up steam, directing Bill of Divorcement, Dinner at Eight, Little Women, David Copperfield, Romeo and Juliet, and—most famously—Garbo's Camille. Cukor, who directed Jean Harlow, Ingrid Bergman, Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, plus Katharine Hepburn in ten films, Judy Garland in A Star Is Born, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, and Marilyn Monroe in two of her later but lesser works, acquired a reputation as a women's director, a label he dismissed. Levy also trashes the tale that Clark Gable got Cukor fired from Gone with the Wind for being a ``fairy'' and assigns the firing to a clash of vision between Cukor and producer David O. Selznick. Strong on actors, acting, and directing. Real film food.
Pub Date: May 25, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11246-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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