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THE LENO WIT

HIS LIFE AND HUMOR

A mash note to the current king of the late-night talk shows. For almost five years now, Jay Leno has hosted the Tonight Show, one of American entertainment's great institutions. To get there, he served a hard apprenticeship on the comedy club circuit, touring ceaselessly, playing almost any club that asked. He also worked endlessly at his craft, perfecting his timing, honing his jokes. But despite paying his dues and his growing national visibility, Leno found that succeeding Johnny Carson was an unexpectedly difficult challenge. Critics thought Leno's version of the show was stiff, awkward, and unfocused. And audiences seemed to agree: Ratings sank, and David Letterman was very publicly considered as a replacement. Leno eventually won this battle, and Letterman moved to his own rival show, on which he trounced Leno regularly. Then Leno revamped the show, beginning a long battle back to ratings dominance. These maneuvers and campaigns were recently and expertly covered by Bill Carter in his thorough and entertaining book The Late Shift (not reviewed). Apart from a strong pro-Leno slant, New Yorkbased Walker rarely offers more than a rehash of Carter's work, as well as the sort of broad details and shopworn anecdotes that seem gleaned from celeb interviews in glossy mags. Walker does offer extensive examples of Leno's observational and topical humor. (Leno explained his brand of humor by saying, ``I just travel the country and identify the absurd.'') He also details in some depth Leno's comic process, how he builds and structures his jokes, always seeking ``to get to the punchline as quickly as possible.'' Walker, unfortunately, does not share his subject's unerring concision. He is given to frequent repetitions, tangled syntax, and much belaboring of the obvious. This is more a silhouette than a full-fledged biographical portrait, and no competition for Leno's own current bestseller.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-688-14993-6

Page Count: 252

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 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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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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