by Joseph McBride ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 22, 2019
While it lingers over past wrongs, this work about writing Frank Capra’s biography remains entertainingly sincere.
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A memoir recounts the arduous process of producing a book on a celebrated film director.
McBride (Two Cheers for Hollywood, 2017, etc.) explains that creating an extensive, warts-and-all biography of an American icon was no simple task. In fact, it was a monumental time- and energy-consuming process that eventually produced a book in 1992. The story begins much earlier with the author’s efforts in Hollywood. He was a screenwriter with some successes (co-writing, for example, the film that became the Ramones vehicle Rock ’n’ Roll High School), a journalist, and author. His earnest interest in movies pushed him to “seek out and interview every venerable director I admired.” In 1975, he was able to interview Frank Capra while “on self-assignment” for Daily Variety. It would prove the first of many interviews that would lead to seeking out all there was to know about the man behind such classic films as It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But not all of the discoveries would be pleasant ones. Capra, it turns out, made plenty of enemies in his time, particularly during the Red Scare of the 1950s when he had “thrown colleagues to the witch hunters to save his own skin.” McBride battled everyone from lawyers to a distrustful university archivist to uncover and publish the details of Capra’s epic journey. Readers are reminded that this was an uphill battle all the way and that the biography genre “challenges you on every level as a researcher and writer, critic and scholar.” Although the idea of the story behind a biography of a film director may not sound like riveting stuff, the tale is marked with deceit, a car crash, and a desire to know. What does it take to produce a less-than-glamorous portrait of a man who many consider a genius? The author deftly shows exactly what it took and the specifics are most telling. The book dives deeply into concerns like the fair use of material, including presenting information on a court case involving a biography of J.D. Salinger in 1987. Somewhat less thrilling are the many foes McBride seeks to expose. Did a university archivist really send a graduate student to spy on the author while he worked through Capra’s papers? Does it matter at this point? Still, McBride has some intriguing things to impart and he is not afraid to reveal them. He considers Michael Bay “the worst director in modern Hollywood.” And don’t get the author started on the idea of the film director as auteur. While he’s indisputably cranky in places, McBride’s overall honesty strongly comes across in these pages. Who knew something as seemingly innocuous as penning a biography would entail so much lasting conflict?
While it lingers over past wrongs, this work about writing Frank Capra’s biography remains entertainingly sincere.Pub Date: March 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-949950-47-2
Page Count: 601
Publisher: Vervante
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
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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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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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