A sympathetic, evenhanded biography of a man notorious for his savage wit.
Biography of the acerbic, irreverent comedian who inspired a new generation of performers.
When Mort Sahl (b. 1927) debuted on stage in 1953 in San Francisco, he wanted his pithy social and political jibes to change comedy. In an entertaining, abundantly—sometimes overwhelmingly—detailed biography, Curtis (William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come, 2015, etc.), biographer of Spencer Tracy, Preston Sturges, and W.C. Fields, makes a strong case for Sahl’s influence. For Woody Allen, Sahl opened up “a whole new style of humor” that led him to become a performer rather than just a writer. Dick Cavett called Sahl’s performances “stunning.” Among early admirers were Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, and Milton Berle. Skewering presidents, platitudes, and hypocrisy, Sahl got his material from daily newspapers, which he often carried onstage. “Wherever there is political bloat,” Hubert Humphrey remarked, “Mort sticks a pin in it.” He set out to shock and discomfit. “Are there any groups we haven’t offended yet?” Sahl often asked his audiences. Curtis had Sahl’s cooperation and also interviewed colleagues, one ex-wife, and assorted friends. While celebrating Sahl’s career, he is forthright about his subject’s many shortcomings. Foremost among them was a tendency to bitterness, anger, and paranoia. He was certain, for example, of an “industry-wide conspiracy” to keep him off TV even though his appearances were not always successes. He was convinced, as well, that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy and, to the point of obsession, embraced the theories advanced by Mark Lane and Jim Garrison. “In time,” Curtis asserts, “the conspiracy Sahl blamed for keeping him unemployed got conflated with the one he saw as being responsible for the death of the president.” The author follows Sahl’s life chronologically, accounting for every nightclub, movie, TV, radio, and stage appearance; the women he dated, married, and broke up with; the colleagues he befriended or alienated; and the demons that beset him.
A sympathetic, evenhanded biography of a man notorious for his savage wit.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4968-0928-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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