Devotion to genius characterizes the life of Eugene O—Neill’s daughter and Charlie Chaplin’s wife in this respectful overview. Drawing on extensive research, arts journalist Scovell (who has been co-author to Elizabeth Taylor and Kitty Dukakis) moves quickly from the proverbial family tree to chart the messier human trail left by mother Agnes Boulton O’Neill’s flightiness and father Eugene’s nearly lifelong absence and rejection of their daughter. Aside from a vivid fit of despair, Oona’s youthful feelings are not deeply documented here. But her early actions are, as a beautiful New York society girl, Hollywood ingenue, and, at age 18, fourth wife to 54-year-old Chaplin. Though Scovell draws the requisite links between father O’Neill’s neglect and Oona’s need for Chaplin’s adoration, the author doesn—t dwell on them. She speculates that the mutual protection offered by the marriage somewhat diminished and compromised the couple’s awareness of the world; Gold Rush co-star Georgia Hale even questions their union’s perfection. But Scovell, like Oona’s friends and family, largely accepts the idea that when a marriage lasts for four decades and produces eight children, one should stop seeking its flaws and instead celebrate its duration. As for whether Oona ever wanted more for herself, Scovell’s as clear as her research allows. She notes that Oona may have screamed, in her last days, “What the f— did I do with my life!” but that she never sought artistic parity with Chaplin (and rejected invitations to write a memoir). Hardly a story of marital victimization, this tells instead of how Oona made a choice, lived her life afterward, and in Chaplin probably found exactly what she wanted: “father, lover, provider and protector.” Only upon his death did her drinking grow debilitating. Nevertheless, her dependent position and habitual self-effacement inevitably make Oona, however finely realized, a limited subject for a biography. A semi-hidden life of unbroken allegiance, compassionately rendered. (16 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 4, 1998
ISBN: 0-446-51730-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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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