A meticulously researched and well-balanced portrait of a classic Hollywood talent.
Krampner examines the life, work, and eccentricities of one of Hollywood’s greatest screenwriters in this entertaining biography.
Raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Ernest Lehman got his start as a freelance writer before becoming a press agent for Broadway publicist Irving Hoffman. This occupation inspired his acclaimed novellas Tell Me About Tomorrow (later retitled Sweet Smell of Success), from 1950, and 1952’s The Comedian, leading to a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1952. Lehman’s much-lauded screenplay for 1954’s Executive Suite established him as a gifted adapter of other works, confirmed by back-to-back critical and box office hits, including Sabrina (1954), The King and I (1956), and Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). But it was Lehman’s collaboration with director Alfred Hitchcock on 1959’s North by Northwest that cemented his status. The author has done exhaustive research, revealing how the pressure of creating that movie’s original screenplay strained Lehman’s anxious nature to the point he nearly quit the project: “Given his deeply rooted fear of failure, the idea of having a multimillion-dollar film rest squarely on his narrow shoulders may also have been a factor.” More success and stress followed: Lehman’s adaptation of The Sound of Music (1965) saved 20th Century Fox from financial ruin, but his first opportunity to produce as well as write (on 1966’s controversial Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) was marred by conflict with director Mike Nichols. Krampner excels at juxtaposing Lehman’s prodigious talent with the personal flaws that undermined him—his aversion to confrontation, for example, often allowed his contributions to be undercut. The author also highlights the tension between Lehman’s focus on profitability and his desire for critical acclaim: “Few screenwriters—few people—will ever attain the level of success Lehman did. But can you imagine Franz Kafka or Edgar Allan Poe going on about profit participation?” For a man who so adroitly skewered the drive to succeed in his early work, Lehman demonstrated a single-minded focus to do just that. It is Krampner’s recognition of this character trait, balanced with his admiration for Lehman’s accomplishments, that makes this an exceptional biography.
A meticulously researched and well-balanced portrait of a classic Hollywood talent.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 9780813195957
Page Count: 396
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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