A diverting ancillary note to heavier biographies.
The star of such films and TV shows as A Kiss Before Dying and It Takes a Thief revisits the architecture, fashion, restaurants and pastimes of Hollywood’s golden age through anecdotes and personal memories.
With veteran biographer and film historian Eyman (Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille, 2010, etc.), with whom he collaborated on his previous memoir (Pieces of My Heart, 2008), Wagner presents a brisk account of early Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, their surrounding neighborhoods and the silver screen notables who frequented them, including James Cagney, Gloria Swanson, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart and many others. Topical chapters provide generous vistas on a world marked by exclusivity. The author dedicates a substantial, meticulous chapter to houses and hotels, with emphasis on the home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Pickfair; Rudolph Valentino’s Falcon Lair; the Beverly Hills Hotel; and similarly iconic structures. Tracking the shift from a pre-1929 “architecture as entertainment” perspective to a less opulent style, Wagner enlivens many sites and landscapes that have largely disappeared. For dedicated movie buffs, a handful of choice remarks on the personal habits of stars provides respite from tedious details. Other chapters consider facets of privilege, from a preference among certain male stars for English-inspired wardrobes to the nightlife of the times. A few mild, curmudgeonly laments on current realities—such as paparazzi swarms, the bottom-line nature of moviemaking and an increasing informality that sharply contrasts with bygone glamour—underscore the actor's nostalgia for the studio days, yet they stop short of idealizing; he briefly acknowledges the industry's later midcentury problems. Ultimately, the book is a charmed and mostly charming tribute to off-screen lives during a period many may regard as Hollywood's finest.
A diverting ancillary note to heavier biographies.Pub Date: March 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02609-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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
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
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