Frivolous and superficial—but as entertaining as an old B movie on a dreary Saturday afternoon.
A loving but lighter-than-air biography of the hotel that has loomed over Hollywood since the 1920s.
Co-authors Sarlot (who owned the Marmont, 1975-91) and Basten (author of numerous books about Hollywood, including Max Factor’s Hollywood: Glamour, Movies, Make-up, 1995) begin with a glimpse of the place in 1975, then whisk us back to 1926 to watch Fred Horowitz finding the spot where he wanted to build his new hotel. Thus commences a dance through the decades. We learn what was going on in Hollywood in general, who was running the hotel (from management to the garage), and, of course, who was staying there—and what they were doing. It seems that just about everyone notable stopped there (sometimes for years), and the authors often organize subsections of chapters by names (always prefixed with a polite “Mr.,” “Miss,” or “Mrs.” (No “Ms.” at the Marmont!) In the 1920s and ’30s, folks like Jean Harlow and Clark Gable were there. And Billy Wilder, Joan Blondell and other performers. Writers liked to hang there, too—including Thornton Wilder, Ben Hecht and Dorothy Parker. Howard Hughes stayed awhile, as did Grace Kelley (hotly pursued by High Noon co-star Gary Cooper). We learn a bit about the swimming pool, too (installed in 1947), and who liked to splash in scant suits. Some of the most shimmering stars were there at times, Garbo and Monroe among them. And some footage for Myra Breckenridge came from the Marmont. The rock era brought wild times, with some rowdy groups trashing their rooms. And, of course, John Belushi died there in 1982. Most chapters feature paragraphs that are little more than lists of names, and there is precious little analysis or reflection—probably superfluous in such a volume.
Frivolous and superficial—but as entertaining as an old B movie on a dreary Saturday afternoon.Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-14-312311-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
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.
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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