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LAST MAN STANDING

MORT SAHL AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN COMEDY

A sympathetic, evenhanded biography of a man notorious for his savage wit.

Biography of the acerbic, irreverent comedian who inspired a new generation of performers.

When Mort Sahl (b. 1927) debuted on stage in 1953 in San Francisco, he wanted his pithy social and political jibes to change comedy. In an entertaining, abundantly—sometimes overwhelmingly—detailed biography, Curtis (William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come, 2015, etc.), biographer of Spencer Tracy, Preston Sturges, and W.C. Fields, makes a strong case for Sahl’s influence. For Woody Allen, Sahl opened up “a whole new style of humor” that led him to become a performer rather than just a writer. Dick Cavett called Sahl’s performances “stunning.” Among early admirers were Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, and Milton Berle. Skewering presidents, platitudes, and hypocrisy, Sahl got his material from daily newspapers, which he often carried onstage. “Wherever there is political bloat,” Hubert Humphrey remarked, “Mort sticks a pin in it.” He set out to shock and discomfit. “Are there any groups we haven’t offended yet?” Sahl often asked his audiences. Curtis had Sahl’s cooperation and also interviewed colleagues, one ex-wife, and assorted friends. While celebrating Sahl’s career, he is forthright about his subject’s many shortcomings. Foremost among them was a tendency to bitterness, anger, and paranoia. He was certain, for example, of an “industry-wide conspiracy” to keep him off TV even though his appearances were not always successes. He was convinced, as well, that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy and, to the point of obsession, embraced the theories advanced by Mark Lane and Jim Garrison. “In time,” Curtis asserts, “the conspiracy Sahl blamed for keeping him unemployed got conflated with the one he saw as being responsible for the death of the president.” The author follows Sahl’s life chronologically, accounting for every nightclub, movie, TV, radio, and stage appearance; the women he dated, married, and broke up with; the colleagues he befriended or alienated; and the demons that beset him.

A sympathetic, evenhanded biography of a man notorious for his savage wit.

Pub Date: May 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4968-0928-5

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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