Author of an acclaimed biography of Ernst Lubitsch (1991) and a well-regarded history of the coming of the talkies (The Speed of Sound, 1996), Eyman takes on an even bigger piece of film history: the career of John Ford. Ford was not merely a man of contradictions—a voracious reader and a student of literature and American history who disdained intellectuals, a gruff personal reactionary who was a lifelong liberal Democrat, a cinematic poet of family unity who was a terrible parent—he was an out-and-out enigma, even to those closest to him. As Eyman notes early in this lengthy book, “The point was to never let anybody know who the real John Ford was.” To that end, Ford left a genial legacy of lies, half-truths, and fantasies he spun for interviewers and would-be biographers. One of the greatest strengths of this excellent book is that Eyman finally unravels the skeins of legend to reveal the truth about Ford’s background. Legend: Ford went to the University of Maine on a football scholarship. Fact: Ford never went to college after graduating from Portland High. Legend: Ford stumbled unwittingly into the movie business. Fact: Ford came out to Hollywood to join his older brother Francis, already a silent-film star and director, and was eager to break into the film industry. Legend: Ford did all his cutting in the camera, shooting only the footage he needed to make a scene. Fact: almost true, but Ford did shoot “coverage” (alternate camera angles of a scene to be used in the editing process) on occasion. Eyman has drawn on Ford’s personal papers, his letters and notebooks, and hundreds of interviews to create the most balanced and complete portrait yet of the director of The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Although at times inelegantly written, this is as definitive a biography as we are likely to get of one of America’s greatest filmmakers. (b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-81161-8
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
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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