Goldman, author of acclaimed biographies of Fanny Brice (1992) and Al Jolson (1988), continues his excavation of the Jewish stars of the 1920s and '30s. The saucer-eyed Eddie Cantor (18921964) is all but forgotten today except to historians of the musical stage and film, yet he was a master of every medium he attempted, from vaudeville to television, and his variegated career represents a microcosm of 20th-century American show business. Indeed, as Goldman argues, Cantor's success on radio was unprecedented and pivotal in the rise of that medium. Yet his origins were humble indeed. Born on the Manhattan's Lower East Side as Israel Iskowitz, the boy was quickly orphaned and raised by his doting grandma Esther in Dickensian poverty. The boy learned that he had a natural gift for making people laugh, and that this gift could win him approval (and deflect potential beatings in the tough streets of turn-of-the-century Jewish New York). He dropped out of school at 13 but didn't truly enter show business until he was 16, when he worked as a waiter and singer at a saloon, teamed with an equally young Jimmy Durante. Gradually, he drifted into a career in the entertainment business, slowly climbing the ladder of vaudeville success until he was starring in the Ziegfeld Follies. From there his stardom grew steadily, predicated on his boundless energy, boisterous comedy, and way with a song. At the same time, he remained committed to the people he had left behind, a tireless worker for good causes (including the March of Dimes, which he founded), and a powerful advocate for the burgeoning unions in the entertainment industry. But Goldman tells Cantor's story in overly elaborate detail. At times it seems as if he has listed every public appearance the star ever made. This volume is thus unlikely to resurrect Cantor's memory, although it captures some of his appeal. Interesting reading, but ultimately a book for the already committed fan.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-19-507402-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
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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