Brian Kellow (1959–2018)

How sad to exist in a world where no one younger than you knows about the Best of Broadway, Ethel Merman, a/k/a The Belter. An Astoria, Queens native (and frequently mistaken for being Jewish because of it, making her much less popular outside the New York metropolitan area), Merman starred in such musicals as Annie Get Your Gun (twice, twenty years apart), Anything Goes, Call Me Madam, and her most famous role as Mama Rose in Gypsy. She worked with the finest songwriters - Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Vincent Youmans, and even Sondheim (they did NOT get along) - and her strong and distinctive voice, untrained, unenhanced by amplification (she WAS the amplifier!), made her the Queen of Broadway, when melodies and boy-gets-girl plots ruled muscial theater, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The changes in theater and in the country left her as an anachronism before she was ready to leave the stage and the spotlight. The author does an excellent job of balancing her trumphs with her romantic miseries (a pitiful 30 day union with Ernest Borgnine that was ended by his violence towards her, among four total marriages) and, as an only child, her touching closeness to and dependence on her parents. Not an intellectual by any means, Merman's strength was her ability to conquer a song quickly and to know exactly what was right for her voice, her limited acting talent, and which musical numbers would make a show a guaranteed hit. The author's success is in his acknowlegment of her commanding strengths and her debilitating stubborness. This should be a textbook read for any fan of musical theater history and denizens of used bookstores.… (meer)

In her eulogy for Pauline Kael, her daughter, Gina, said, "Pauline's greatest weakness, her failure as a person, became her great strength, her liberation as a writer and a critic." It's an interesting idea, that one's strengths may be attributable to one's weaknesses, but I think it may sometimes be true. It may even be true in my own case.

Kael, who at one time was the most influential film critic in the country, certainly had her weaknesses. Among these was her treatment of her own daughter as a virtual slave, depending upon her to type her reviews, run her errands and provide her transportation, while denying her the freedom to live her own life. Kael's friendships so often depended upon those friends agreeing with her and, at least in the case of other movie critics, not becoming as prominent as she. She allowed herself to be courted by directors and others in the movie business, always insisting a favorable review from her could not be bought, even when so many of her reviews suggested otherwise.

Brian Kellow mentions many other Pauline Kael weaknesses in his 2011 biography "Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark," yet the book hardly qualifies as a hatchet job, for his emphasis lies with her significant strengths. She was, whether you agreed with her opinions or not, a terrific writer whose prose jumped off the pages of The New Yorker. Although she rarely wrote about anything other than movies, her reviews managed to be commentary on the times, as well. They were also surprisingly autobiographical. Once urged to write her memoirs, Kael replied, "I think I have."

Kellow's book nicely summarizes Kael's most important and controversial reviews and articles over the years, yet I think he too often inserts his own opinions about these films, faulting Kael when her opinions don't match his own, which seems to be what he criticizes Kael for doing.… (meer)