An insightful, sharp Hollywood memoir that will appeal to fans and newcomers alike.
Academy Award–winning actress Grant recounts the ups and downs of her professional and personal lives.
Grant (born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal) was practically raised on the stage. Beginning at the Metropolitan Opera House, 4-year-old Grant was chosen to play a kidnapped child in L’Oracolo, but she broke scene during the opera’s climax as the star tenor was killed onstage. Grant’s precocious and heartwarmingly earnest attempt to warn the actor that he was about to be stabbed in the back won the affection of the audience. The author’s misstep, however, proved that she had a natural stage presence and that she was fearless and headlong, even if, as in this instance, it was foolhardy. After an unsuccessful attempt at a singing career, Grant truly found her footing at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where she learned method acting from Herbert Berghof, a student of Sanford Meisner. She even did a stint at the famed Actors Studio. Though Grant may not be a household name today, the resilience of her career outlasted the 12-year period when she was blacklisted by HUAC for her political affiliations (her first husband, playwright Arnold Manoff, was a registered communist), and she became one of the most respected actresses of her generation. Among her most well-known roles were in Valley of the Dolls, In the Heat of the Night, Portnoy’s Complaint and Shampoo, which earned her an Oscar for best supporting actress, though she’d previously been nominated for her motion picture debut, Detective Story, in 1951. Rife with appearances from some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including an unsuccessful date with Marlon Brando, Grant’s career proves that the elusive and oft-sought-after second chance can not only be had, it can be triumphantly redeeming.
An insightful, sharp Hollywood memoir that will appeal to fans and newcomers alike.Pub Date: July 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16930-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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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