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A purported memoir about the last ten years in the life of Rex Harrison (1908–90), this book by British director Garland
is actually a warts-and-all look at the 1981 Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. Although Sir Rex continued working until a few months before his death, Garland (who directed the short-lived revival of the 1956 Lerner and Loewe musical) glosses over the other stage roles Harrison took on when he was well into his 70s (such as his definitive interpretation of Captain Shotover in Shaw's Heartbreak House in 1983) and instead focuses on the actor's mercurial personality during rehearsals of My Fair Lady. He dwells in particular detail upon Harrison’s nasty treatment of Nancy Ringham (who was plucked from the chorus to play Eliza Doolittle after leading lady Cheryl Kennedy lost her voice at the 11th hour), which he believes was ultimately responsible for sinking the production. Garland’s account is not boring. Theater buffs will enjoy reading about Harrison's rivalry with Richard Burton and will marvel at the tales of the beloved trouper Cathleen Nesbitt, who played Higgins's mother in the original My Fair Lady and reprised the role 25 years later at the age of 94 (when her faculties were fading, yet she was still, amazingly, able to charm the audiences once the curtain went up). One begins to wonder, however, whether Garland is simply out to make a quick buck from his association with Harrison: there's just too much information about the actor's favorite obscenity, his mistreatment of his six wives and assorted girlfriends, and his cruel deathbed comments to his sons Carey and Noel—and not nearly enough about what made him “the last of the great high comedians,” as Garland contends. For diehard Rexophiles only—but even they would do better with Alexander Walker's Fatal Charm (1993). (8 pages b&w
photos)Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88064-217-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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