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TAKE MY LIFE, PLEASE!

``I'm so old that when I order a three-minute egg here [at the Friars Club], they make me pay up front.'' Henny Youngman (Take My Wife...Please!: My Life and Laughs, 1972) is now 86 and still ``the King of the One-Liners,'' as he was dubbed by Walter Winchell (uh, some time ago). ``I don't have any enemies—I've outlived them all...Take my life, please. It's all been a big mistake. Even at 86, I still don't know what the hell happened.'' Now that Sadie, his wife of 57 years, is gone, Youngman is ready to tell stories he couldn't before. Born in London, he was raised in Brooklyn: ``I knew I was born to the stage when my first-grade teacher picked up my option for 26 weeks.'' His father was an opera buff, hounded him to practice his violin. His first job was fiddling to silent films in his uncle Morris's movie house—no pay, but he was fired anyway. For quick cash, he fiddled on the Staten Island ferry, began cribbing jokes from vaudeville comics. After forming his own band, he became a tummler (noisy emcee, gagster, scenic designer, electrician, busboy, schmoozer who danced and flirted with unattractive women) on the borscht belt in the Catskills: ``You schticked just to survive.'' Soon he found himself befriended by Milton Berle and doing insult humor to gangsters in speak-easies (``This place was so rough the hatcheck girl's name was Rocco''). Among his more dismal tales is one about mobster Waxey Gordon asking Youngman to hold his automatic pistol, then following a waitress into the Lido Venice's kitchen and raping her on the floor. Always a bum to his mother-in-law, Youngman went on to perfect the mother-in-law joke: ``I just got back from a pleasure trip. I drove my mother-in-law to the airport.'' No match for George Burns but socko about the laws of comedy and show-biz. Nice for shut-ins. (Eight pages of b&w photographs- -not seen.)

Pub Date: Oct. 18, 1991

ISBN: 0-688-07744-7

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991

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NUTCRACKER

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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