Another centimeter-deep celebio from King (Madonna, 1991; Everybody Loves Oprah!, 1987, etc.), and one with no research acknowledgements, pointing up King's failure to land an interview with Hall or anyone close to him. As with Oprah and Madonna, King again chooses a subject whose big mouth supplies the author with magnetic filler for lending a sense of life here and there. Hall was born in Cleveland to an abusive Baptist preacher 20 years older than his wife, and today attributes his talk-show smarts to time spent watching his dad work the church crowd. A single child, Hall would stay up late to watch TV and found his real family of friends on The Tonight Show. Like Johnny Carson, he became a drummer and child magician. In high school, Hall was ever the class clown and, with his first tape recorder, seriously began interviewing classmates, much to the despair of their embarrassed parents. At Kent State, he brought down the house in his speech class when he announced that ``I plan on making my living with my oratory skills, and I'd like to be a talk-show host.'' In short, Hall was as born to the tube as Mozart was to the pianoforte. Hall began moving into the big time as a warm-up act for the Temptations, Dionne Warwick, and Nancy Wilson. His buddy Eddie Murphy drafted him into Coming to America as the hero's sidekick and, though the moneymaking film turned off most critics, reviewers singled out Hall's performance. Meanwhile, Hall had long seen a hole in late-night talk shows—blacks didn't get to chat with Carson as often as whites—so he chose to become ``bicultural'' on his late show. His self-definition: ``I'm just a guy from Cleveland. I ask real ordinary Midwestern questions.'' But he wears $900 suits. Mr. Stardust battles bad vibes from the critics and wins the moon. (Photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 21, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-10827-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
