A well-crafted, detailed biography of the director of such classics as Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and the 1936 version of Showboat. Though he is usually identified as a “horror film” director, Whale, in the best tradition of the old-time Hollywood directors, took on all genres, from war films to musicals. His directing career was relatively brief and late in life but, as Preston Sturges biographer Curtis (Between Flops, 1982, etc.) convincingly demonstrates, Whale, like Dr. Frankenstein, has been unfairly overshadowed by his creations. He had a real style, a precise directorial vision that inflected everything from shot selection to costumes and scenery. Whale came to film by accident. A POW during WW I, he participated in a number of prison theatricals and realized he—d finally found his mÇtier. At the end of the war, he used his substantial gambling winnings from rich officer prisoners, to stake an acting career. He enjoyed some minor success, but eventually turned to directing, again with little success, until the WW I drama Journey’s End became a surprise hit. He would direct the film version as well and its worldwide boffo box office made him the new golden boy in Hollywood. A little more than ten years later, a string of flops spelled the end of his career. In a notoriously closeted town, Whale made no secret of his homosexuality and the fact that he lived with another man. Current critical theory demands that an artist’s homosexuality be reflected in his/her work, and others, including Vito Russo, have argued, for example, that Frankenstein is about the tragedy of being in the closet. Curtis tends to dismiss this line of thought, arguing that the most significant celluloid aspect of Whale’s homosexuality was his inability to direct passionate heterosexual love scenes. While this is not an in-depth, psychologically rich biography, and Curtis’s writing tends to be wooden, as an account of Whale’s work, it is first-rate. (60 b&w photos)
Pub Date: May 29, 1998
ISBN: 0-571-19938-0
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
