Lally, managing editor of The Film Journal, offers the first Wilder biography in several years, covering the director's last films. Billy Wilder was a trailblazer: As Lally points out, he was one of the directors who dragged Hollywood kicking and screaming into the real world, pursuing subject matter that the industry generally wouldn't touch. Whether it was adultery (Double Indemnity), alcoholism (The Lost Weekend), the megalomania of fame (Sunset Boulevard), or media irresponsibility (Ace in the Hole), Wilder turned his often jaundiced eye on phenomena that made the Production Code office squirm. He was born in 1906 in Galicia, an area of Poland that was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, a perpetual business failure, pulled the family all over that empire, but most of Wilder's youth was spent in Vienna. Streetwise and energetic, Wilder worked his way into journalism and moved to Berlin in the last heady days of the Weimar Republic. In 1929, after a long campaign, he landed work as a screenwriter, gaining experience and contacts that would prove crucial to his career in America. Wilder fled Germany when the Nazis rose to power, going first to Paris and then, in 1934, on to New York and Hollywood. (His mother, stepfather, and grandmother died in Auschwitz.) After a brief false start, Wilder's career began a meteoric rise: A great success as a screenwriter at Paramount, he swiftly moved into a director's chair, had a string of hits, and made several successful comebacks. Lally tells this story competently and thoroughly. He has talked to Wilder (a notoriously difficult man to interview) and has some fresh insights into the films, although he is often quick to reduce them to their themes. An intelligent if somewhat plodding biography that gets most of its occasional sparkle from the wit of Wilder himself. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 7, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-3119-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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