Richly intelligent (auto)biography by Montand (1921-91), who said yes to French journalists Hamon and Rotman when they offered to write his biography. He gave candid interviews and is quoted at length about his life and career, while his biographers interviewed pals and enemies and fill in the blanks. Montand rose from hairdresser's apprentice to French music- hall star before being claimed by the movies and becoming the embodiment of the sensitive French male with the working-class background. Born in Italy to a Communist family, he remained a leftist throughout life, though during his last decades, when many hoped he would run for president of France, he was deeply disaffected with Communism. He had triumphed as a mock American singing cowboy when France's greatest star, Edith Piaf, took him under her wing during WW II, let him open her act, and empowered him as star and lover. The Little Sparrow, however, grew jealous as Montand's legend flowered, and she took flight, leaving the young star wounded. In film, Montand's first big moment came when he replaced Jean Gabin in Marcel Carne's Les Portes de la Nuit (1946), then shined in Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953). Montand married fellow star Simone Signoret, remained with her for nearly 40 years, and was with her in Hollywood when she took the Best Actress Oscar for Room at the Top—while he filmed Let's Make Love with Marilyn Monroe. The Monroe-Montand affair was a steaming earthquake of scandal, with Signoret asking the press, ``Do you know many men who would sit still with Marilyn Monroe in their arms?''; here, Montand speaks frankly and tenderly about MM. The marriage turned tragic during its last decade as Signoret self- destructed physically, aging Montand flirted with power, and daily the couple acted out Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Smart and revealing. Celebrities don't write 'em like this in America, sad to say. (Twenty-four pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Aug. 24, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41012-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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