What the Manhattan nightclub scene was like from the late 40's through the 60's, with notes on the 70's and 80's. Show-biz folk and fans should find this a nostalgia-packed, glittering earful, though many readers will find themselves reading an endless Rex Reed column full of passing celebrities and revues whose identities self-destruct in the reader's mind but who nonetheless deserve the minor monument of this book. Irreverence distinguished the postwar clubs from the prewar, with entertainers no longer satisfied with simply entertaining—they wanted to put a spin, an edge, on their work. Gavin is rather moving about Spivy Le Voe, a squat and lacquered patter songstress who sometimes owned clubs like Spivy's Roof that featured Mabel Mercer and were smash successes; Spivy was called the ``Bulldog Bulldike,'' lost her last lease in the early 50's, wound up doing movie bits, and died at the Motion Picture County Home and Hospital in California. Top acts were Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Woody Allen, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Joan Rivers, Bobby Short, Dick Gregory, Barbra Streisand, and Bette Midler, while lesser stars Ronny Graham and Paul Lynde shone in outrageously satirical revues at Julius Monk's prestigious cabarets. Monk was a weird North Carolinian who passed himself off as a hybrid Englishman/southerner in Edwardian suits but whose revues at the Up-Stairs at the Downstairs and the Downstairs at the Upstairs were unrivaled—until Monk was replaced by club owner Irving Haber with madly outrageous producer/director Ben Bagley. Gavin concludes with a look at how the top stars began to play supper clubs, and at the emergence in the 80's of new top-dollar acts like Peter Allen and Lainie Kazan. No big audience but a worthy work.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8021-1080-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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