Flashy and funny, with flamboyance to burn, just like Hamilton.
Colorful, charismatic star of stage and screen recounts 50 years of the Hollywood life, with the assistance of veteran co-author Stadiem (Too Rich: The High Life and Tragic Death of King Farouk, 1991, etc.).
After Hamilton dishes out some spicy insider information from his stint on Dancing with the Stars in 2005 (steroid use, allowing his partner to blatantly mask his lack of dancing acumen), the actor dives right into his turbulent, nomadic childhood. After his parents divorced, Hamilton’s Christian Scientist mother swiftly moved the family to Hollywood, where many years earlier she had unsuccessfully attempted a film career. The random relocations continued as she discovered better ways to live—and better men to live with. In 1950, when Hamilton was not yet 12, he was shipped off to live with his father, a bandleader in New York City. His urban “adult education” prospered by way of illicit sex with his stepmother, time spent at military school in Mississippi and a short-lived stay in Boston with his newly remarried mother. Following her from there to Washington, D.C., Acapulco and Palm Beach, he realized at an early age that he could garner attention with “the smile I had learned to use to cover all my fears.” His love of the stage took hold at Palm Beach High School, and once he was back in Los Angeles Hamilton’s career mushroomed from smaller roles into a prestigious contract with MGM. From this moment on, he drops Old Hollywood names with wild abandon. Some of the narrative reads like tabloid fodder, with Hamilton right in the middle of all the Tinseltown commotion. (The 69-year-old actor has two sons nearly 30 years apart in age.) His bountiful life has had its share of blunders, the dapper “silver fox” admits, but he is still able to “laugh at myself.”
Flashy and funny, with flamboyance to burn, just like Hamilton.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4502-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
