Customer Reviews

Body and Soul: The Story of John Garfield

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"Body and Soul" is an interesting and engrossing bio of one of my favorite actors who,sadly, is underrated or even forgotten by most. This is much better than the more recent bio, "He Ran All the Way." Swindle paints a complete portrait of the actor unlike the 2004 book which reduces Garfield to a bit of a cartoon. Swindle provides insightful stories of Garfield's life including his colleagues and family. Especially moving are the last few chapters dealing with HUAC, detailing not only Garfield's struggles but also of his friends including Elia Kazan and Clifford Odets. The book also provides large excerpts from Garfield's HUAC testimony. The book is very fair in assessing Garfield's career and personal life. Seek this bio out rather than Robert Nott's Garfield book. It benefits from having been written in 1975 when many of Garfield's peers were still alive and blacklisting was still painfully fresh in Hollywood's history. Frankly, this is just a better written and more complete biography.

This great biography is one of the few books ever written about the underated John Garfield, and although it's nearly 30 years old it's still the best I've read about Garfield. From his troubled youth to his stardom in Hollywood to his tragic death at the age of 39, it's all covered in depth. There are also 24 pages of photos & thankfully, a complete filmography at the end. Sadly, John Garfield made only 31 films & of these only 15 have been released on vhs &/or dvd. One of his very best movies, "Pride of the Marines", has been unjustly neglected over the years & I can only hope it'll finally be released on dvd someday. For those who want to learn more about this amazing actor this book is highly recommended.

This is a swell bio of an very interesting actor who unlike a lot of actors was an idealist who cared about society. Like most artists his personal life didn't always come up to the high standard of his work, but that work deserves a high place in the annals of film. If Thirties and Forties Hollywood is your thing, and you like anecdotal stuff about actors and their work you're in for a treat. It's been said that Garfield paved the way for Brando, Newman and Dean. Yes, but Tony Curtis, reared in the New York streets, the most improbable of movie stars, is the one that comes more to mind.

.....John Garfield was a product of the streets of New York who fit the characters he played on the stage and in the movies as the kid from the wrong side of the tracks who was born to lose.

.....Through a series of fortunate circumstances he was steered into acting through the efforts of a teacher, Angelo Patri, who ran a school for troubled youths. He became a member of the Group Theater, which included such intellectuals as Lee Strasberg, Clifford Odets and Elia Kazan. Garfield was never an intellectual and although he tried mightly to give that impression, he was merely tolerated by the group as a nice kid but not taken seriously.

.....He fancied himself as a tough guy and tried his hand at boxing but a heart condition and a lack of talent kept that dream from becoming a reality. Odets, who liked Garfield, wrote the Golden Boy specifically for him but a series of circumstances prevented Garfield from playing the lead role both on Broadway or in the movies.

.....Swindell doesn't pull any punches with the many infedelities of Garfield who seemed to want to bed every woman he came into contact with, or his troubles with the Red purges in Hollywood by HUAC, his wife Robbie was a Communist and many of the Group Theater were fellow travelers. Garfield was not a communist per se but he was investigated because of his associates and friends who were, at the least, Red sympathetizers.

.....It is hard to like Garfield in this book. He comes off as a street kid who succeeded far beyond his abilities and died at an early age because he refused to take care of his health in spite of his heart condition. In life, as in the movies, Garfield was born to lose.