Above-average celebio, showing extra research, by the author of Fast Fade (1988). Pacino is a rich subject, both as man and actor. Yule does fairly well on the acting, though one wants even more than is given. Pacino's private life—for which there was some secondhand input from Pacino through other interviewees—is well done, but Yule draws back from getting into Pacino's long love affairs with Jill Clayburgh, Tuesday Weld, Kathleen Quinlan, and Diane Keaton, about which Pacino and friends are closemouthed. Most amusing is Pacino's rivalry from Off-Broadway to Hollywood with fellow short- person Dustin Hoffman, which climaxed when they were approached by a fan in Rizzoli's bookstore and passed themselves off as each other. Pacino was raised in the Bronx by his grandparents, his mother having left him when he was three. This seems to be the reason he has never married: His memories of his mother are strong and warm, and he apparently doesn't want to be left behind again by a woman. Pacino was also something of a child prodigy as an actor, would memorize and act out movies before he could read, was called ``The Actor'' throughout his school years. As Yule shows, he had a fabulous gift for comedy but fell into roles as a psychotic and never got the full release of his comedic talent until his role as Big Boy Caprice, which stole Dick Tracy and won him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor—while his third take on Michael Corleone, in Godfather III, failed to win even a nomination. Pacino's poor choices in material, Yule explains, come about when he parts from producer Martin Bregman, and his trials with Shakespeare have been unsuccessful stretches. Some pictures, damned on opening (Scarface among them), have later returned as classics when stripped of hype. Well done but not as memorable as Fast Fade, with Pacino emerging as admirable. (Photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1991
ISBN: 1-55611-274-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
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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