her magic: listen to her Carnegie Hall album in the dark for that.
Apr. 2000 ISBN:
A corker of a biography that reveals Judy Garland as a peerless artist careening wildly through a life that could have ended even sooner than it did. Biographer Clarke (Capote, 1988) notes Frances Ethel ("Baby") Gumm's early rise, moving steadily from a boffo solo on a vaudeville stage at two years old to an MGM contract a decade later. As Judy Garland (a name she, not the studio, chose), she dazzled in her early movies (including The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, and the Andy Hardy series) and became "Metro's prime asset" by the late 1940s. As a female vocalist, her inimitable blend of vulnerability and longing ("like a woman carrying a torch for Valentino," said George Jessel) culminated in history-making performances at the London Palladium and Carnegie Hall. By her 20s, though, she was already dependent on pills, had attempted suicide, was treated for mental exhaustion, and had searched for the right man through affairs with Tyrone Power, Joseph Mankiewicz, Orson Welles, and Yul Brynner—among others. Her husbands also abounded: Billy Rose (whose baby Judy reluctantly aborted), Vincente Minnelli (discovered in a homosexual embrace at their home), Sid Luft, and Mickey Deans. Mother Ethel makes an appearance, too, grooming her daughter for stardom yet denying her love. By portraying Garland as a multifaceted individual rather than MGM pawn or sad pill popper, Clarke separates Judy the person from Judy the icon. But while the meticulous reporting impresses (and will likely result in a deeper appreciation of Garland’s career), its immediate effect is to deaden the shock of her death by drug overdose in 1969. Clarke’s closing image, outside the funeral home, does not evoke unity with the bystanders there so much as a disconnection from Garland and her messy life. An unstoppable read that demystifies Garland yet still details her international appeal. Don’t, however, expect it to convey
her magic: listen to her Carnegie Hall album in the dark for that. (photos, not seen) (Author tour)Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50378-1
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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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