Reviews - Riverside Public Library

Booklist Reviews

A former stand-up comedian himself, talk-show host Nesteroff adds an extra layer of professional insight to this absorbing and colorful history of joke tellers and their ilk from vaudeville to the new millennium. Beginning with stand-up comedy's roots during the 1880s through the 1930s, when comedians supplied laughs and pratfalls to burlesque and vaudeville variety acts, Nesteroff paints a grim picture of the ill treatment most performers received during this era. Even comedy greats such as W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers endured meager wages and many nights in flophouses before their stars began to rise in radio and film. Nesteroff's chapter on radio recounts how the medium lifted some comedians, such as Jack Benny, to superstardom and killed others whose stage acts didn't translate well to a voice-only format. Other anecdote-filled chapters describe how stand-up comedy grew in popularity on late-night talk shows, in comedy clubs, and on Las Vegas stages. Must reading for entertainers and an essential acquisition for every library performing-arts collection. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

BookPage Reviews

Heading to Hollywood for the holidays

An unstoppable film franchise. A luminous Golden Age star. A beloved oddball actor. This season's standout entertainment-themed books run the gamut from design to drama, from stand-up to the stage.

THE NAME'S BOND
Whatever your take on the Bond films—including the vastly differing opinions on which actor is the best Bond—the franchise's production value is not up for debate. The large-format Bond by Design salutes the behind-the-scenes artists—including renowned production designers Ken Adam, Syd Cain and Peter Lamont—and features a copious display of artwork, sets, costumes and embellishments, making this hefty tome a must-have for 007 fans and devotees of production design.

With many sections written by Meg Simmonds, the archivist for the Bond empire's production company, the book moves film by film, featuring storyboard sequences, costume illustrations, gadgetry ruminations and more. Styles vary from artist to artist. Adam, whose Bond career dates back to the 1962 debut title, Dr. No, liked to work with a Flo-master felt tip pen. Jump ahead many decades, and the artists embrace digital design; what is consistent is the quality and attention to detail. No wonder Bond is the most successful franchise in film history, with the 24th entry, Spectre, now in theaters and thoroughly represented in this elaborate collection.

A HOLLYWOOD LEGEND
Though she won three Academy Awards, Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman is best known for her role opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Published to commemorate the centenary of her birth, the lavish and loving Ingrid Bergman: A Life in Pictures takes readers on a journey through her career, including her downward spiral and triumphant encore.

With daughter Isabella Rossellini serving as co-editor, this book boasts more than 350 photos—some from Bergman's private collection—an introduction by her co-star and friend Liv Ullmann, a lengthy Bergman interview and texts by various acquaintances.

Her highly controversial liaison with Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini is detailed alongside the image that sparked the media frenzy: Bergman and Rossellini, who were both married to other people, walking hand in hand on the Amalfi coast. Published by Life magazine, the photo established Bergman's reputation as a loose woman. When she became pregnant with Rossellini's child and delivered the baby prior to their marriage, she became a Hollywood pariah.

Beauty, talent, choices and sacrifice—they're all on display here in Bergman's intriguing story, all of it captured by the camera.

THE CULT OF BILL
Whether he's battling gophers, ghosts or zombies, Bill Murray is the quirky king of offbeat humor. As Robert Schnakenberg puts it in The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray, his on-screen persona is that of "the sardonic slacker-trickster who charms his way out of precarious situations."

Topics are arranged alphabetically: Under "cats," we learn that he's allergic to them; under "Chase, Cornelius ‘Chevy,' " we hear about his rocky relationship with his fellow "Saturday Night Live" alum, including their fistfight prior to a February 1978 taping. His movies are all featured, as are the roles he turned down (like porn producer Jack Horner, subsequently played by Burt Reynolds, in Boogie Nights).

As the book observes, the beloved Murray is a complicated guy. (See the listing under "Ramis, Harold," about his two-decade estrangement from his former pal and director.) Comedians usually are.

Photo of Bill Murray in Caddyshack from The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray, reprinted courtesy of the Everett Collection.

MAKE 'EM LAUGH
Speaking of comics, more than a century of stand-up gets the spotlight in The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy. Author Kliph Nesteroff, a former stand-up comic, conducted more than 200 interviews for a book that manages to be both encyclopedic and hugely entertaining.

Did you know that the term "stand-up comic" was invented by the Mob, which owned the early clubs? Or that it was Redd Foxx, of TV's "Sanford and Son," who triggered the comedy album boom in the 1960s?

Nesteroff takes us through the history of stand-up, with vivid stop-offs in burlesque, radio, early television, Vegas and the talk show circuit. Of course, comedy has a dark side. Nesteroff uses Robin Williams to remind us that the funniest guy in the room is sometimes hiding a world of pain.

BROADWAY'S BEST
Celebratory and jam-packed with facts and great imagery, Musicals: The Definitive Illustrated Story focuses on more than 140 great musicals of stage and screen from the past century. The enduring classics are all accounted for, from Show Boat to The Phantom of the Opera, from Jesus Christ Superstar to Hair. Lush production photos, fascinating essays and facts about the genre's geniuses, including Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse, make this a choice coffee-table tome. There's much to sing about here, in what could easily become a favored reference work.

This article was originally published in the December 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Kirkus Reviews

A comprehensive history of American stand-up comedy, from vaudeville to Twitter. At the beginning, Nesteroff, a former stand-up comedian and host of Classic Showbiz Talk Show, makes two important assertions. First, he sets out to dispel the myth of the tragically flawed funnyman who uses comedy as a way of hiding his insecurities. While there is some truth to the trope, not all comedians fit the stereotype of the tragic clown figure. Second, Nesteroff states that comedy does not age particularly well. It is an art form very much of its time, one that is not typically designed for posterity. It's a worthwhile distinction, because while the author describes the acts of the comedians he profiles, clearly explaining their differences and similarities, he is careful not to excerpt too much of their actual acts. A good comedian is principally judged by his peers, and Nesteroff reclaims the legacy of many of the older, forgotten comedians. For instance, the name Shecky Greene has lo ng been shorthand for out-of-touch and dated comedy, but Nesteroff restores some of Greene's credibility by showing how his contemporaries considered him "one of comedy's great nonconformists" and a "genuine comedian's comedian." Developing out of vaudeville, stand-up comedy was officially created by Frank Fay, who began emceeing in between acts to entertain the crowd. Nesteroff's narrative follows the form through the mob-run nightclubs of Las Vegas and Miami Beach, radio and TV, and the emergence of comedy-specific clubs in the 1970s. The author skews toward midcentury comics with only a passing mention of the new millennium, but this is in part because that was when comedy was a business and culture unto itself. The high stakes of comedy at its peak is perhaps best evidenced by the purported assassination attempt on comedian Jackie Mason in 1966. Anecdotes, firsthand recollections, and gossip like this are what distinguish Nesteroff's history as a definitive volume. A liv e ly, raucous, and immensely entertaining love letter to the funny business. Copyright Kirkus 2015 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

Nesteroff, a stand-up comedian-turned-writer, conducted 200 original interviews and extensive archival research to chronicle American comedy over the last 100 years. He combines anecdotes and gossip with scholarly evidence to explore American comedy from its roots in burlesque and vaudeville (Groucho Marx, Phil Silvers, and Buster Keaton were popular child acts) to radio, an industry in which Ed Wynn, Jack Benny, and "Amos 'n' Andy" reigned. Mob-run nightclubs spawned the "blue comedy" that came under fire from Sen. Estes Kefauver in the 1940s, but it was television that boosted comedians to the heights: Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, and Silvers all starred in popular programs. Nesteroff also highlights the importance of the late-night talk show as a vehicle for showcasing stand-up comedians and how the craft changed in the 1950s from the impersonal telling of jokes. ("This guy went into a bar") to the personal ("I went into a bar") with the emergence of comics Lenny Bruce, Red Foxx, and George Carlin and eventually Eddie Murphy and today's stars, Louis CK and Marc Maron. VERDICT Both pop culture enthusiasts and entertainment scholars will relish this important history of American comedy. [See Prepub Alert, 5/11/15.]—Rosellen Brewer, Sno-Isle Libs., Marysville, WA

PW Annex Reviews

Nesterhoff, a former stand-up comic and the host of the Classic Showbiz Talk Show event series in Los Angeles, artfully charts the evolution of American comedy as an industry, from its beginnings in 1920s vaudeville to the podcasts of today. Nesterhoff deftly interleaves the biographies of renowned comics, such as Abbot and Costello, Buddy Hackett, Joan Rivers, and Chris Rock, with those of lesser-known but equally influential performers such as Frank Fay, the first comedian to perform his routine standing in one place, in a narrative tracing changes in the industry such as the introduction of television. Though he doesn't dwell too long on any performer or subplot—the mention of the influence of the Internet seems particularly brief—this is still an informative and, above all else, entertaining study. (Nov.)