A lively and enthusiastic in-depth exploration of an obscure TV horror classic.
Director and historian Irvin presents the behind-the-scenes story of the making of a cult-favorite 1970s monster movie made for British television.
This nonfiction book details the backstage drama that occurred during the making of the 1973 TV movie Frankenstein: The True Story, which starred James Mason, Leonard Whiting (who’d co-starred in Franco Zeffirelli’s film of Romeo and Julietjust five years before), Jane Seymour, and a young Michael Sarrazin (of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? fame) as a rather stylish monster. The movie was helmed by Jack Smight, who’d directed Paul Newman in 1966’s Harper, with a screenplay by novelist Christopher Isherwood and his longtime partner Don Bachardy. The result was what Irvin calls “a sophisticated reconstruction of the Frankenstein story on a grand scale, populated by A-list actors, with sumptuous settings, lavish costumes, a three-hour running time, and an eye-popping budget of $3.5 million.” In this profusely illustrated account, the author goes into granular detail about every aspect of the movie’s development, writing, direction, and casting, from its genesis as a script idea by James Bridges, who’d later become a director and Oscar-nominated screenwriter, to its final star-studded production and subsequent critical reception. Irvin offers the full personal and cinematic history of every major figure associated with the work, from the stars and the writers to, most especially, producer Hunt Stromberg Jr., who’s the subject of the most compelling chapter. Most intriguing is the wide array of LGBTQ+ talent that worked on the film, and how the creative team strove to bring out the original story’s rarely explored homoerotic undertones. That said, literary folk may bridle at Irvin’s dismal rating of the 1818 horror classic by Mary Shelley that started it all, asserting that “by today’s standards, it is tediously didactic.” Overall, though, there’s lots of compelling material here. This book’s foreword is by novelist Anne Rice, whose own Vampire Chronicles notably explored queer themes, and Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water) provides an afterword.
A lively and enthusiastic in-depth exploration of an obscure TV horror classic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798864623428
Page Count: 406
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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