Scholarly, impassioned and riveting—a dandy corrective to an undervalued legacy and an immersive trip through a vanished era...
The life and career of a protean figure from Hollywood’s early days.
The present obscurity of Victor Fleming (1889–1949) doesn’t reflect the extent of his influence and achievements, suggests Baltimore Sun film critic Sragow (editor: James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism, 2005, etc.). Displaying an early fascination with and facility for things mechanical, the California native occupied himself with automobiles before devoting his energies to photography, which led him to work as a cinematographer and director for MGM. Sragow authoritatively discourses on Fleming’s strengths as a filmmaker, analyzing the director’s knack for conveying the kinetic excitement of what were, after all, moving pictures, his ease with a diverse range of genres and his deft touch with actors. Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Jean Harlow were among those who developed much of their iconic personae through their associations with Fleming. Sragow provides ample evidence that his male stars incorporated the director’s mystique into their own on-screen identities, quoting family members and colleagues who inevitably described Fleming as an uncommonly charismatic man’s man: a sportsman, gentleman and irresistible catnip to the ladies, including lovers Clara Bow and Ingrid Bergman. (He directed Bergman in Joan of Arc, a punishing project and critical flop that may well have lead to his premature death.) Fleming’s most famous accomplishment is his miraculous 1939 double-header. After The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind foundered in early going with their original directors, he stepped in and stewarded two of cinema’s all-time classics to the screen despite impossibly difficult technical demands, studio politics and temperamental talent. The section on these two films alone, filled with backstage gossip and expert insight into the methods of Golden Age studio filmmaking, is worth the price of admission, but the rest of Sragow’s meticulously researched and engrossing history of this largely forgotten great director is a must for any serious movie fan.
Scholarly, impassioned and riveting—a dandy corrective to an undervalued legacy and an immersive trip through a vanished era of popular entertainment.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-40748-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2008
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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