Scenes in search of a point of view. (photos)
A detailed, yet shapeless biography of a charming actor.
With the blessings of the late David Niven’s family, British novelist and journalist Lord (James Herriot: The Life of a Country Vet, 1997) provides a full account of what happened in Niven’s life, while offering little consideration of why they did. Why, for example, did Niven (1910–83) turn to acting? Lord suggests the familiar explanation: Niven lost his father at five, then was raised by a distant mother and an unloving stepfather, which made him insecure, a feeling assuaged by playing the clown in school plays. Growing up in England, Niven discovered the other pleasures that set his course: sex and beautiful women. Lord documents the actor’s prodigious conquests, referring several times to Niven’s considerable endowment. Did Niven become, as it appears, a serial seducer and alcoholic, particularly after the tragic death of his first wife? Lord leaves the matter largely unexplored, as he does the reasons for Niven’s staying in an apparently horrific marriage to a second wife. As for the actor’s film career, the author is again heavy with facts but light on commentary. That Niven remained an audience favorite for decades seems remarkable considering how many flops he lensed—The Brain, The Statue, and Vampira made the marquee along with Separate Tables and Around the World in 80 Days. Lord provides little anaylsis of Niven’s films, attributing his success largely to his skill at light comedy. Lord corrects the many tall tales with which Niven regaled friends and readers in two bestselling autobiographies. Leaving unexamined the actor’s reasons for fibbing, Lord writes that “one excellent joke is worth a hundred facts.” He certainly has the facts. Along with the conquests, films, and bottles of alcohol consumed, Lord tallies virtually every check the wealthy Niven issued to his family.
Scenes in search of a point of view. (photos)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32863-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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