Thomas is intent on celebrating the talent and career of Hartman, but he offers little conclusive insight into what was all...
An admiring, often granular report on the life and tragic death of comedian and Saturday Night Live veteran Phil Hartman (1948-1998), a man “adored by millions and slain in his prime.”
Chicago Sun-Times arts/entertainment writer Thomas (The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater, 2009) uses a combination of previously published materials, police reports, letters, and firsthand interviews with family members and famous comedians—including Jay Leno and Julia Sweeney—to put together a chronological narrative of the life and murder of the beloved comedian. Hartman was the star of the NBC sitcom NewsRadio, the voice of several classic roles on The Simpsons and an eight-year veteran of SNL, where he was nicknamed “The Glue” for his versatility and skill at keeping the cast cohesive. At 49, Hartman was murdered in his sleep by his third wife, Brynn, who killed herself several hours later. Thomas begins with exhaustive quantitative details from Hartman’s childhood—such as a nearly full list of his middle school report card grades—but the pace and quality of the book pick up once it moves into Hartman’s adult life. Readers will be entertained by learning the lesser-known facts about the beginning of his career—Hartman did a stint designing album covers for high-profile clients like Crosby, Stills & Nash for his brother’s production company—and the illustrative anecdotes of the Hollywood and New York comedy scenes in the 1980s and ’90s. While Thomas provides some clues about Hartman’s often guarded personality, large questions about his personal life and untimely death go unaddressed.
Thomas is intent on celebrating the talent and career of Hartman, but he offers little conclusive insight into what was all too clearly a troubled marriage. Fans will likely find it an entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-02796-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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