Golden, author of a well-received bio of Jean Harlow (Platinum Girl, 1991), inaugurates this new imprint with a trip even farther back into film history to examine the career of silent sex goddess Theda Bara. Bara made 41 films in the difficult transitional period between the rise of the motion picture as the handmade product of a cottage industry and the advent of factory-style moviemaking. Bara was, to her eternal regret, known for one thing and one thing only—she was the ``vampire'' woman who drove men to destruction. Although that label would make her one of the first great film stars (and, as Golden astutely observes, the first one who was largely created by publicity machinery), it dogged her whenever she attempted to break from the mold. Bara was born Theodosia Goodman, a nice Jewish girl from Cincinnati who had a yen to go on the stage. After some success in amateur theatricals, she dropped out of the University of Cincinnati to attempt a career on Broadway. She fell into movies almost by accident but soared to instant stardom in A Fool There Was. In order to capitalize on her dark, East European good looks, the Fox studio flacks refashioned her as a half-Egyptian, half-French femme fatale, complete with fake jewels, animal skins, and a hilariously elaborate pedigree. Golden retells this tale with obvious relish, and it is one that hasn't really been told before, as this is the first full-length bio of Bara. Regrettably, most of her films have not survived the nearly 80 years since their original release, so much of Golden's book is taken up with cautious recountings based on contemporary reviews. Worse, her prose is leaden and clichÇ-riddled. The author does make an effort to situate Bara in her historical context, but too often she settles for a superficial rehashing of film history commonplaces. (124 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-887322-00-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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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