Often engaging, but lacks the consistent depth and keen judgment of John Kobal’s People Will Talk (1986). (120 photos)
Following up Who the Devil Made It (1997), a solid collection of pieces about directors from film’s Golden Age, Bogdanovich presents a series of uneven takes on film stars he has known.
The director of The Last Picture Show, etc., here attempts to enshrine 27 actors he has worked with or known, whose candlepower, he fears, is dimming with time. A strong writer, Bogdanovich creates sharp images of such famous stars as James Cagney, Lauren Bacall, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda, but also pays just tribute to the less well-known Ben Gazarra and John Cassavetes. The author, who’s done some acting himself, ably captures his subjects at work, as in his descriptions of Jack Lemmon on a soundstage in Irma La Douce. But some of Bogdanovich’s enthusiasms seem misplaced. His adoring, 75-page profile of Jerry Lewis is especially irksome for the comic’s self-serving, foul-mouthed remarks. Bogdanovich’s selection of River Phoenix and Sal Mineo as “great names of the past” is questionable, and he does not always tell a full story. He brushes aside “rumors” that Mineo, Cary Grant, and Anthony Perkins were bisexual or gay, overlooking or ignoring considerable documented evidence that Mineo and Perkins, at least, had many gay relationships, and that, more importantly, their sexual orientations may have shaped their lives. The author’s inclusion of many tales from his own life is sometimes irritating, sometimes fascinating. His frequent mentions of Cybill Shepherd wear thin, but his stories about Marlon Brando, Stella Adler, and the Actors Studio evoke the vital New York theater of the 1950s. Inside this anthology, an autobiography is trying to get out.
Often engaging, but lacks the consistent depth and keen judgment of John Kobal’s People Will Talk (1986). (120 photos)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-40010-9
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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.
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
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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