Thoughtful and entertaining, an engaging example of determination both on screen and in real life.
A memoir from a physically disabled actor who navigated the rough-and-tumble world of showbiz.
You may not recognize his name, but there’s a good chance you’ve seen Mahon in a TV show or movie. Since the 1970s, this veteran character actor has appeared in numerous works—usually portraying a police officer or military man—such as The Exorcist, The Rockford Files, The X-Files, L.A. Confidential and Armageddon. But for Mahon, the path to Hollywood wasn’t easy; as detailed in his memoir, he spent most of his life facing personal and professional obstacles. In 1950, at the age of 12, Mahon contracted polio, which caused him to lose the use of his left arm; his descriptions of the illness put into perspective just how devastating the disease was at the time. While polio may have dashed his athletic ambitions—he refers to himself as a “gimp,” a rather sardonic term for a physically disabled person—Mahon found his calling in acting: “The fact was acting, although scary sometimes, made me feel a great deal more alive.” Yet he also admits that the decision to become an actor with a physical disability was “harebrained,” and while in search of his big break, he took on various jobs such as being a caseworker for the New York City Welfare Department, taxi driver and busboy. In auditions, sometimes his bum arm would cost him a part, though other times it didn’t matter. “I remember at one audition a tactless female producer in a loud voice announced: ‘He can’t even use his arm!’ ” The ongoing thread through this book is that, despite his physical disability and some professional setbacks, Mahon never gave up: “I didn’t want to be an actor. I had to be one.” Along the way, Mahon offers anecdotes about some of his acting roles; his friendship with Jason Miller, best known as Father Karras in The Exorcist and the playwright of the Pulitzer Prize–winning work That Championship Season; and his encounters with fellow actors such as Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, James Garner and James Coburn. Perhaps because Mahon isn’t a recognizable famous star and he didn’t live a tremendously glamorous lifestyle, the book’s tone is quite unassuming and modest compared with other gossip-laden celebrity tell-alls. Managing a dash of humor, he’s frank about some of the not-so-pleasant aspects of the profession—whether it’s dealing with a particular actor or director or working on projects that never got off the ground. Mahon’s straightforward, honest perspective about his craft could benefit aspiring actors who take heed of his wisdom and experience.
Thoughtful and entertaining, an engaging example of determination both on screen and in real life.Pub Date: May 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495942495
Page Count: 346
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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