Intelligent, candid, humorously self-deprecating: the memoirs (only up to 1965, alas) of an actor's actor on stage and screen— who also turns out to be a stylish raconteur, an intrepid adventurer, and a sometime producer/writer...as well as, of course, the longtime husband/partner of Oscar-winner Jessica Tandy. Cronyn's early years are surprisingly dramatic: shocking his upper-crust family by dropping out of college for acting; contracting VD at a brothel; entering a brief, secret marriage with a young actress from a rich (and strange) Georgia family. And his career, though not flashy, has involved the choicest colleagues. In the 30's there was a big break from George Abbott, a useful put- down from Clifford Odets. In the 40's came film work with Spencer Tracy (touchingly boosted by K. Hepburn), the great Hitchcock, the insufferable Tallulah. Later on there was lots of TV (with self- indulgent James Dean and no-nonsense Olivier, among others), lots of Broadway (one juicy episode involves a drunken Jason Robards, a furious Lauren Bacall), the joyful inauguration of the Tyrone Guthrie Rep—and the hilarious tedium of shooting Cleopatra, with Cronyn a prime confidant in the Burton/Taylor scandale. And, always, there's the fine, flinty Jessica—wooing her, touring with her (sometimes on a shoestring), raising kids, buying a tiny Caribbean island. Serious about acting and scripts, wry and rueful about everything else: a first-flight theatrical autobiography, unpretentiously anecdotal and immensely likable but never merely charming and chatty.
Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1991
ISBN: 0-688-10080-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
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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