by Stefan Kanfer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 2008
An inspiring, depressing, riveting story.
History of the legendary actor’s life.
Kanfer (The Voodoo That They Did So Well: The Wizards Who Invented the New York Stage, 2007, etc.) portrays Brando as a man unconsciously at war with himself. He hated his profession but was unable to do anything else. Compelled by his gluttonous appetite for women, he indulged in numerous sexual conquests but was unable to maintain a long-term relationship. He was so uncomfortable with his physical beauty that he eventually destroyed it with junk food–induced obesity. The actor could be enormously difficult to work with, a moody, spiteful troublemaker, exacting swift vengeance for any perceived slight. Yet despite his hang-ups, Kanfer joins the ranks of biographers and fans who believe that Brando was the greatest actor of the 20th century. He had an irresistible intensity, and the force of his stage and screen presence warped many a script into orbit around his character, most famously with his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. His influence on younger actors such as James Dean and even Elvis Presley—indeed, on an entire generation of young men eager to emulate his tough, rebellious charm—was unmistakable. Still, after covering the initial years of rapidly rising stardom, this biography becomes a detailed register of Brando’s many successive failures: theatrical, financial, emotional and romantic. Kanfer’s thesis wavers little; he traces all of Marlon’s woes back to his malignant relationship with his father, whose praise Brando sought and never gained, leading to his notorious disrespect for acting in general and his own accomplishments in particular. Swift, witty prose keeps the narrative moving through a chronicle of every production with which Brando was involved. Kanfer skillfully weaves in Broadway and Hollywood history, and his behind-the-scenes analysis of Brando’s films will send you running to rent the classics, the reluctantly acknowledged cult favorites and even the bombs.
An inspiring, depressing, riveting story.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4289-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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