Customer Reviews

And the Show Goes On: Broadway and Hollywood Adventures

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an enjoyable read written by Sheldon Leonard. Sharing memories of his 5 plus decades in motion pictures, radio, and his ultimate success in TV. He has been a major contributor to television comedy beginning with the Danny Thomas Show followed by such greats as Andy Griffith, Gomer Pyle,Dick van Dyke,I Spy, and many others. From his telling he was quite a pioneer in equal opportunity, giving a fairly unknown Bill Cosby his first tv break in an industry still very closed toward black actors. Very interesting reading. Highly recommend to all interested in Entertainment personalities!

This book is a major disappointment from a man who had some of the greatest TV hits of the 1960s. His mind seems fuzzy and he admits in the opening pages that he did no research to verify his information. So instead of getting a book filled with inside details and fascinating facts, Leonard meanders through boring generic stories it sounds like he has told a hundred times at cocktail parties.

The first section of the book is really dull, where he talks about his early years. There is nothing of substance and most people will have no idea what he is talking about when he mentions plays of the 1930s and radio shows of the 1940s. When he gets to his movie years he alludes to some of the films he made but offers no insightful stories. How can you be in the film that Bogie and Bacall fell in love doing and not have stories about it???

He claims to have created the first spinoff in the Andy Griffith Show (completely wrong--about five or six other spinoffs had already been on TV by that time) and he says he picked the woman who played Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) from the start, yet in the actual pilot she played a completely different character and wasn't Aunt Bee. Namely, he doesn't even state his own show's history correctly.

Once he gets to TV he skimps again, telling little about Make Room for Daddy and The Andy Griffith Show. It's interesting that he takes credit, though, for almost every success (discovering stars, coming up with stories, etc.) At one point he claims he is the one who picked Jim Nabors for Gomer Pyle, yet later he tells how the show was put together and he had nothing to do with it! If you are a fan of any of these shows you'll be incredibly upset that the only information he provides has been told many times elsewhere. He only has one or two stories for each show that he spent years doing!

He does, however, redeem himself slightly with the last portion of the book, which is devoted to I Spy. There are many more specifics and he obviously loved doing that show. Many of the I Spy stories have to do with his travels but they are things that have not been told elsewhere and keeps this from being a one-star book.

This great producer should have had a five-star book filled with inside stories about the amazing programs he put together. Instead these are just the forgetful ramblings of an old man who doesn't have much new to say.

There is only one problem with this book. It's just +200 pages. I would like to read more, because he writes so well. If somebody could be called versatile, this author is the one. Sheldon Leonard has tried everything. He is pleasantly modest, but tells about his successes, too. Which are plenty. Read this book, it is one of the best reminiscences by actors/directors/producers. You will love it.