To call Filichia a devotee of Broadway is an understatement; this book will interest only die-hard fans like himself.
An exuberant look at one year on Broadway.
In this chatty, gossipy history, former Newark Daily Ledger theater critic Filichia (Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks: A Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals that Did Not Win the Tony Award, 2013, etc.) looks back exactly 50 years and insists that the 1963-64 Broadway season—June 1, 1963, to May 31, 1964—was the greatest ever. That season, however, seems no greater than many others. In 1956, to take one example, there were many iconic Broadway openings, including Auntie Mame, starring Rosalind Russell; Bells Are Ringing, with Judy Holliday; Long Day’s Journey Into Night, featuring Fredric March; and My Fair Lady, with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. The season Filichia examines in overwhelming, sometimes-hyperbolic, detail had its hits, to be sure: Hello, Dolly!, Barefoot in the Park, 110 in the Shade and Funny Girl, starring one of the author’s favorites, Barbra Streisand. Filichia offers abundant evidence to support his view, summarizing plots, citing actors, directors, producers, playwrights, choreographers, composers and lyricists, critics, ticket sales and losses, and analyzing the contents and covers of every Playbill for, it seems, every show. He knows which directors turned down scripts and why and which actors didn’t get which parts and why. After Nanette Fabray stubbornly refused a chance to audition for the role of Dolly Levi, Carol Channing campaigned aggressively to get the part and made Hello, Dolly! a smash hit. Filichia is especially interested in the politics behind Tony nominations, winners and losers. He deems Carol Burnett’s failure to win a nomination as best actress in a musical for the now-forgotten Fade Out—Fade In “one of the greatest insults a Broadway musical has ever endured.”
To call Filichia a devotee of Broadway is an understatement; this book will interest only die-hard fans like himself.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05135-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
IN THE NEWS
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
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