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GEORGE BURNS

AND THE HUNDRED-YEAR DASH

A breezy trot through the life and career of a true show business legend. After writing biographies of artists who were far more likable on-stage than off (Nobody's Fool: The Lives of Danny Kaye, 1994, etc.), it must have been a pleasure for Gottfried to turn to the thoroughly lovable near-centenarian George Burns (this book will be published on his 100th birthday). However, in writing this first biography of the comedian, the author encountered a major obstacle that he has not entirely conquered. Burns himself has written several autobiographies and memoirs, and despite Gottfried's extensive research, there is little in the first two-thirds of this work that will come as a surprise to readers of those books. Here again is Burns's childhood poverty, his long period of failure in vaudeville, his professional and personal courting of Gracie Allen, the great success of the Burns and Allen team, his loving, laugh- filled friendship with Jack Benny, etc. It is in detailing the period following Gracie's retirement in 1958 that Gottfried comes into his own. Burns has written of this time as well, but Gottfried gives the story new perspective. We see Burns's fears of working solo and his failed attempts to recreate the old act with new partners (among them Ann-Margaret, whom he discovered), leading to the near-total collapse of his career entering the '70s (and his 70s). And then the miracle: Benny, nearing death, passes the lead in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys to Burns, who wins an Oscar and begins a second career at 80. Gottfried paints the artist's comeback years with compassion and insight. According to Gottfried, this last year has been a sad one, with ill health leading to cancellations of many 100th birthday tributes. This leaves 99 wonderful years of George Burns. It's not enough. The love Gottfried has for George Burns matches that of the reader, making this biography an occasion for laughter and misty eyes. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1996

ISBN: 0-684-81483-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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

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