Many interviews (though none with Connery) give a lift to this otherwise placid celebio of the popular actor, which follows on the heels of Andrew Yule's 1992 Connery bio of the same title—a much stronger work. There's really no need to read this new Parker (Prince Philip and Five for Hollywood—both 1991, etc.) if you've already read the Yule, though readers coming fresh to the life of Connery should find it steadily interesting, with Connery's quotes and maverick- like behavior giving bounce to some pages—as do the interviews. The actor's rise from rags to riches came about by indirection, with Connery—raised in Edinburgh—having many lowly jobs as a youth, then being dropped by the Royal Navy for a stomach ulcer after a year's service. His interest in bodybuilding led to a small part in a British roadshow of South Pacific, which led to larger parts on stage and TV, his first big role being the punch-drunk lead in Requiem for a Heavyweight. Connery, Parker tells us, liked Marlon Brando's underplaying and studied Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant's ways of bringing their roles to themselves rather than changing themselves for the roles. Parker respects his subject's private life far more than Yule does, and doesn't dig as deeply into the acting. Most interesting here is the information about Connery's avid pursuit of being paid well and to the penny for what he does, which brought about his suit against producer Albert R. Broccoli to collect money due for the actor's James Bond performances. Strong pages here and there, but many in Sunday supplement style. (Photographs)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8092-3668-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
SEEN & HEARD
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