More a résumé than a life. For diehard fans only.
Another conscientious text that plods through its subject’s life yet misses the insights that really inform. Here, British biographer Miller covers all the minutiae but never makes the legendary actor, writer, and director transcend the sum of his many parts.
Unlike many other claimants to the title, Peter Ustinov is indeed a Renaissance man. He’s acted in film, theater, and television; written novels and scripts; and directed plays, operas, and movies. He’s also an exemplary citizen who has worked on behalf of international organizations like UNICEF and founded an institute in England to study prejudice. Born in 1921 in London to Russian parents whose colorful ancestry included Germans, French, and Ethiopians, Ustinov has always had an international perspective and following, which Miller dutifully records. The author covers all the steps in Ustinov’s path to Grand Old Man, including his adolescent drama lessons, first appearances on the English stage, and time out as a private in WWII producing military training films with actors like David Niven. Success as an actor and a playwright was swift, and Miller lists the numerous plays Ustinov acted in as well as those he wrote (The Love of the Four Colonels, Romanoff and Juliet, etc.), the films he acted in (winning Oscars for Spartacus and Topkapi), the books he wrote, the operas he directed, his television appearances, numerous honors including a knighthood, friendships with luminaries like Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Charles Laughton. A convivial man who likes fast cars and tennis, Ustinov is also a great comic and mimic. Miller briefly notes his three marriages, the third now in its fourth decade, and the existence of three daughters and a son. Despite many appreciative testimonies and anecdotes from colleagues, Ustinov remains elusive under his many hats.
More a résumé than a life. For diehard fans only.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-297-64660-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
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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