Bogart was only eight when his famous father died; now that he's a grown-up, a published author (Play It Again, 1995), and a TV producer, he is ready to confront the legend. As a young man, Stephen Bogart was troubled by the fame of his father; he felt abandoned after the actor's premature death at 57 and oppressed by his equally famous mother's enshrining of Bogie's memory. When MomLauren Bacall (who will contribute the book's forward)urged him to learn about his father, Stephen resisted mightily, ``fleeing my father's ghost at every turn.'' Now an adult with kids of his own, Stephen is ready to confront his family past, and this biography of Bogieas much about Stephen's growing up as about his father's life and careeris the result. The book opens by paraphrasing the sappy pop song ``Key Largo'': ``When I was a kid I had it all. Just like Bogie and Bacall. In fact, I had them, too.'' It's a bad omen. The author in fact has little to add to the already familiar story of his father's roots in wealth, rebellion against his parents, ups and downs on Broadway, sputtering Hollywood career, and eventual skyrocketing takeoff with High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca. He repeats some familiar anecdotes about his old man's excessive drinking and needling wit, talks to some of his cronies, and offers us the results in artless, flat prose that does nothing to engage the reader. Bogart contributes nothing to our knowledge of his father's films, his politics, his sex life, or his marriage to Bacall. He spends entirely too much time making inappropriate comparisons between his father's habits, beliefs, and conduct and his own. A memoir clearly written to exorcise some personal ghosts. (First printing of 125,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-93987-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
