An entertaining yet predictable portrait of a flamboyantly iconic family.
A colorful history of the glamorous pop-culture icons of the previous century.
In this latest biography of the Gabors, film historian Staggs (Inventing Elsa Maxwell, 2012, etc.) attempts to “set the record straight” in portraying their larger-than-life history and the numerous legends, rumors, and scandals connected to each family member: sisters Magda, Zsa Zsa, and Eva, and mother, Jolie. As the title indicates, Zsa Zsa takes center stage throughout the narrative. “Clichés about this legendary family seem indestructible,” writes the author in the preface. “I hope, however, to have punctured two of the silliest. The first is that they were famous for being famous….The other outlandish notion is that they somehow foreshadowed the Kardashians and others of that ilk. This one is nourished by those who know nothing of the Gabors and too much about the Ks, not one of whom has the sophistication…of an Eva or a Zsa Zsa.” The Gabors indeed live jet-setting, productive lives and individually achieved a vast array of accomplishments in the entertainment and fashion industries. Yet perhaps their biggest achievement was one of self-invention. As refugees from Hungary landing in the United States, they carefully cultivated their mystique of glittering fabulousness and spent their lives preserving that image. Though certainly more cosmopolitan than the likes of the Kardashians, they frankly did foreshadow the glamorous lifestyles of current celebrity sensations. Ultimately, the book is an old-fashioned Hollywood biography, however respectfully eschewing the malicious Kitty Kelly style of dishing. Staggs diligently references sources and allows their personalities and escapades to come vividly to life, including their numerous love affairs and marriages (more than 20 among the three sisters) and their many career milestones. Beneath all the glitz, these were business-savvy women, and the author misses the opportunity to claim their relevance for contemporary readers, leaving them enmeshed within their long-reigning “camp” status. Theirs is an interesting, occasionally wayward American success story begging for a revisionist approach to the telling.
An entertaining yet predictable portrait of a flamboyantly iconic family.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1959-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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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