Customer Reviews

Reach for the Top: The Turbulent Life of Laurence Harvey (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series)

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I first came across Laurence Harvey in the early '90s, when my seventh grade history class was shown John Wayne's "The Alamo". He was playing Col. William Barret Travis, and I remember thinking, "Wow! He's pretty good." It was some years later that I encountered "The Manchurian Candidate". Again, I was struck by how well Harvey handled the role, this time of a brainwashed assassin. He now seems to be almost a one-hit wonder (he was nominated for an Oscar only once, for "Room at the Top").

This biography by Anne Sinai, Harvey's sister-in-law, reveals a great deal about his brief but unquestionably "colorful" life. While it is interesting to see how he rose up from an obscurity in a Jewish community in South Africa, it is also easy to see why many people who worked with him ended up severely disliking him. His personality (especially in his early life) was a mixture of cut-throat ambition and downright arrogance, and he was known for leading a very extravagant lifestyle. But on the flip side, he also could be funny, generous, and caring. And there's no denying he had talent. The irony lies in the fact that, despite striving for the top, he never really managed to stake his claim there.

The book is fairly long and isn't a light read, but it is very well researched and written. I would have liked more information about his experiences working on a few films--namely "The Alamo"; Col. Travis will always remain my favorite of his roles--but Sinai provides a good chunck of information nonetheless. For those who are interested in the olden days of Hollywood stars, or (like me) are interested in an actor the world seems to have forgotten, then this book is worth your while.

Au contraire, the book is extremely detailed and makes use of all the letters that Lawrence Harvey wrote his family. Anne Sinai reads between the lines and shows us that Harvey was indeed pretended to have been known as "Larushka" as a child, but he dared not sign letters to his family with that endearing diminutive, because he made it all up, God knows why.

His ambition and his sexual predilections made him frantic to be loved, and the early part of the book, where he leaves SA and goes to London to find work is quite moving in its clear-eyed case study of a young man on the make. No wonder he did so well, later on, playing Joe Lapmton in ROOM AT THE TOP. Joe's ambition and lying ways could have been patterned on Harvey's life. He seems to have been attracted to a, cute guys, b, older rich guys, and then c, older women who were fair and severe with him, just as his mother was. His marriage to Margaret Leighton is finally explained in several incisive Sinai chapters here, as well as his long term love affair with the much older soubrette Hermione Baddeley. When he became an international star with ROOM AT THE TOP, he just seemed to live more frantically, perhaps because he was under increased scrutiny and could now only rarely have a "night out with the boys."

James Woolf, the bouyant film producer who took Harvey under his wing and made him a huge success by careful placement, flying him to Hollywood over and over again until Warner took an option, winds up as the hero of the book, the one man who never let his boy down, and whose death spelled the end of Harvey's brief stardom. Sinai tells us innumerable anecdotes about the stars Harvey was involved with, but even more tantalizing are her accounts of the movies he wound up abandoning, including one which would have cast him as the man torn between Lana Turner (!) and Jennifer Jones (!!!!), a hot seat if ever there was one.

Highly recommended even though, once he becomes a star, Sinai rushes through the remainder of his career as though the house was on fire and she had to finish the book quickly to get a pail of water. He was so great--or so bad--that he deserves a slower pace, something more Mediterranean, not this Coney Island roller coaster of a climax.

This over-long and tedious book is one of the worst theatrical biographies I have read recently. Over-weighed with tales of the almost-forgotten film star Laurence Harvey's boyhood and youth (with no real reason given to believe them any more than the tales Harvey himself told), when we finally get on to the years of stardom there is virtually no discussion of the work at all. Whilst one doesn't expect a blow-by-blow analysis, it's a bit much when every film is mentioned then dismissed in a page or two. Even The Manchurian Candidate and the West End stage production of Camelot are more or less brushed aside. One gets the feeling that the author hasn't actually seen any of the films, let alone the stage shows. And even if she has, she has no feeling for the world of stage and screen, making her an unlikely choice to write a book about the subject...unless, of course, she's Laurence Harvey's sister-in-law, although this is mentioned on the cover, not in the text.
The book is a bizarre mixture of hagiography and hatchet job, and is riddled with solecisms, mistakes* and poor research (Margaret Leighton died of a "debilitating" disease, we're told. It's taken me two seconds to find out that it was MS - the author didn't bother). The timeline is shot to pieces and the emphasis is all wrong. After endless build-up the high points of the career are rushed through. There is no final chapter describing what Laurence Harvey means today (nothing, which justifies the near-contempt in which he was held by almost everyone) or touching on his daughter's notoriety. I'm fairly easy to please, and will lap up any old rubbish, but even for me this book is too poor to give even a most cursory recommendation to.

*I'm not giving chapter and verse - I didn't go through the wretched book with a marker pen, but on many occasions I thought "That's wrong", and I was right.

I'm afraid I will have to agree with moviefan, Grell. This is a perfect example of why one's biography should not be written by a relative. As mentioned, the author oddly fails to mention within the pages that she is Harvey's sister in law. One can only assume that old family grudges or resentments lay behind what seems to be the author's distaste for her subject.

There is precious little information on Harvey's films (barely a page on Darling) and most quotes from his co-stars are lifted from other biographies.

The author would have made a wonderful source of information for a less biased and more talented biographer. I cannot recommend spending anything near full price for this bio, though I could justify a few dollars to read about Harvey's early life. Unfortunately, it is so clear that the author has an ax to grind, that I wasn't even sure her descriptions of Harvey's "Mommy Dearest" mother were accurate or the ultimate revenge against her own mother-in law.

This was an excellent biography, written like a novel that covers him from his childhood to his tragic death at forty five. It's beautifully written and reveals him to be a fascinating, self made man. He dreamed a fantasy of himself as a polished, classy individual, a real dandy really, smelling of money like Fitzgerald used to say, and that's what he made himself. But that was only one side of him, the other could still be shockingly coarse, rude and obscene thus adding to the many layers of this complex individual. I also think he was an excellent actor who often rose above his material. Anne Sinai obviously knew him well and painted a rich picture of him. Thanks to her talent, we can all know him now, warts and all, and still be haunted and fascinated by this ultimately tragic actor.

I was very happy to see a book about one of my favorite movie actors.

It was maddening that it was written by his siter-in-law, who obviously has an ax-to grind.

You might get the facts, but not the truth from this "Biography"

See his movies instead of paying for this junk, as I have.

Room at the Top, Manchurian Candidate, Summer and Smoke etc.

It is odd that she does not reveal the nature of her relationship to LH in the narritive----

I suggest reading it if you would like to know names dates etc., but do not expect a balanced insightful portrayal of an artist, that this author probably was resentful of.