All-around entertainment veteran Leonard—onetime radio and movie performer, then TV director and producer—recalls his emblematic career in a tough business. It may be hard to believe that the prototypical comic gangster is now in his ninth decade. Maybe even more astounding: Seven of those decades have been spent with just one spouse, Frankie. After a few pages touching his youth and abortive start on Wall Street on the day of the Crash, Leonard attains his voice describing his early work on Broadway with such luminaries as Thomas Mitchell, Albert Dekker, and a juvenile Montgomery Clift, while competing with Sam Levine. The anecdotes mount as Leonard abandons a languishing White Way for Hollywood. He's still remembered as the very model of a modern movie menace, or, as he would put it, ``suave...goniff.'' More appearances by performers like Julie Garfield and Errol Flynn (``a pain in the ass'') and directors like Woody Van Dyke and Raoul Walsh enliven the story. On to the easy radio work with the likes of Jack Benny and a raft of zanies who then did the best writing and now provide the best stories. Finally Leonard jumps into TV, where his credits include Make Room For Daddy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Andy Griffith Show. At one time he had four shows in the top ten, but he lets the record speak for itself. He would rather tell amusing stories about filming I Spy around the world or teach the fundamentals of industry economics. ``Directing,'' he concludes, ``yields great creative satisfaction, producing-packaging pays the most money, but acting provides the most ego gratification.'' No histrionics, no self-serving braggadocio, just a show-biz story told with verve by an old pro. (16 pages illustrations, not seen).
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87910-184-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
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
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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