A revealing look behind the curtain—if not the persona—from the man who helped Garland reclaim the limelight after Hollywood...
Hollywood producer Luft reflects on his relationship with show business legend Judy Garland, whom he married (and managed) during the final great phase of her performing career.
The author, who died in 2005, had a reputation as a controlling Svengali, but he comes across here as concerned, pragmatic, and, more often than not, right about Garland’s professional trajectory. Luft was instrumental in the production of her critically heralded film comeback, A Star Is Born (1954), and he orchestrated her triumphant performances at the London Palladium and Broadway’s Palace Theatre, epochal shows that cemented her late-period legacy and led to the creation of her own TV series. Throughout, Luft credits Garland’s genius and gallantly excuses her erratic behavior, drug dependency, and financial recklessness as the inevitable results of a lifetime of exploitation at the hands of Hollywood. More interestingly, he candidly expresses his physical attraction to Garland and appreciation of her unconventional sexual appeal—his ardor reads as completely sincere—and expresses concern about the consequences of his laissez faire disposition toward Garland’s peccadilloes. Luft’s memoir was written in fits and starts over a period of many years and completed after his death with the aid of interview transcripts and other scattered sources, and the narrative frequently feels choppy, with strangely abrupt transitions. Still, Luft, a former boxer and test pilot, has a winningly direct and confident authorial voice. A Hemingway-esque man’s man, he doesn’t delve too deeply into psychology, but Garland fanatics will gobble up his detailed, insightful backstage accounts of Garland’s classic late productions and gossipy tidbits about their social circle, which included Humphrey Bogart and the Prince of Wales. The story ends darkly, as Garland falls under the sway of agents Freddie Fields and David Begelman, who, according to Luft, ruthlessly manipulated Garland into excising him from her career and personal life. On the evidence here, that was a terrible mistake.
A revealing look behind the curtain—if not the persona—from the man who helped Garland reclaim the limelight after Hollywood let her down.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61373-583-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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