Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles [Paperback]

John Lahr (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520233778 | ISBN-13: 978-0520233775 | Publication Date: April 1, 2002 | Edition: 1

In Show and Tell, John Lahr reinvents the celebrity profile to get at the essence of performance. Lahr's utterly winning and incisive profiles probe some of the most compelling, elusive, and irresistible public personas of our time, including Woody Allen, David Mamet, Ingmar Bergman, Frank Sinatra, Roseanne, Irving Berlin, Bob Hope, Mike Nichols, Wallace Shawn, Arthur Miller, and Neil LaBute. In these, and in the moving autobiographical portraits of his father, Bert Lahr, and his mother, a former Ziegfeld girl, Lahr charts the geography of fame.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

According to Lahr, New Yorker profiles are exercises in biography that average 10,000 words and take four months to research and write. Here, the two-time winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and author of several biographies, plays, and novels turns in 15 of his New Yorker profiles dating from 1995 to the present. Thirteen cover such celebrities as Woody Allen, David Mamet, Frank Sinatra, and Roseanne; two are devoted to Lahr's parents. All 15 profiles are extremely well written and offer insights into their subjects. Unforunately, the sum of the whole does not equal its parts; the book does not cohere, and it is doubtful whether any single reader would find all profiles of interest, as some of the subjects are not household names (e.g., Liev Schreiber, Neil LaBute). With this in mind, libraries might want to think twice before purchasing, but those collecting compilations of writing by New Yorker contributors should consider.ANeal Baker, Earlham Coll., Richmond, IN
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Lahr is that rarity among American entertainment journalists, a polished and graceful writer. Others may research their subjects as exhaustively as he does, but few who are as fixated on fame and celebrity as he take as much care to produce balanced, witty, readable prose. Of course, he admits that profiles such as those collected here generally take four months each to write, and each is a distillation of "about fifteen hundred pages of transcribed interviews." Also, Lahr is a New Yorker writer, and that journal has always put a premium on exceptionally good writing. Lahr's subjects in these late 1990s pieces include both celebs like Woody Allen, Frank Sinatra, and Ingmar Bergman, and obscurer, rising stars like director Neil Labute and cross-dressing comedian Eddie Izzard. Bonuses come in the form of moving meditations on Lahr's famous father, Bert, the subject of his son's popular memoir Notes on a Cowardly Lion (1969), and mother, Mildred, who is less famous but no less worthy. Jack Helbig
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 348 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (April 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520233778
• ISBN-13: 978-0520233775
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #575,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Defining Essentials, January 10, 2001

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles (Hardcover)

As a lifelong subscriber to The New Yorker, I have especially enjoyed reading Lahr's various "Profiles." Fifteen of his best are anthologized in this volume. The subjects are Woody Allen, David Mamet, Frank Sinatra, Arthur Miller, Liev Screiber, Roseanne, Irving Berlin, Wallace Shawn, Eddie Izzard, Neil Labute, Bob Hope, Ingmar Bergman, Mike Nichols, and the author's parents, Mildred and Bert Lahr. My personal favorites are those which discuss Sinatra, Miller, Roseanne, Hope, Bergman, and Nichols but I was pleased to re-read all of the others also. Lahr has a somewhat specialized form of genius for crafting what are indeed "profiles" rather than portraits, much less in-depth character analyses. Even when fondly discussing his own parents, he seems to have no limiting biases, "baggage" or predilections. It is high praise to note that the reader feels as if she or he is a "fly on the wall" during Lahr's conversations with his subjects...and at other times, as if the reader can hear him thinking aloud while alone and in reflection. Lahr's is a naturally casual style (so sophisticated that it seems effortless), perhaps most evident when discussing Bob Hope. According to Lahr, Hope's wife Dolores and the children were "extras" in his life. "It was hard for anyone in the family to get much of Bob Hope." Lahr shares this without judgment, suggesting implications without manipulating inferences.. With Hope as with each of the 14 others, Lahr's objective is to capture the essence of his subject, the esential qualities and characteristics which are revealed in "defining moments" of inimitable behavior or utterance. Lahr's reader (at least this one) is left to wonder what he would have to say about so many others such as Saul Bellow, Hillary Rodham-Clinton, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Fosse, Jackie Gleason, Sam Peckinpah, Jackson Pollock, Martha Stewart, and Oprah Winfrey.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars John Lahr, the Not So Cowardly Lion, February 26, 2002

By 

sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles (Hardcover)

The New Yorker is famous for its witty prose, "casuals," and most of all---its Profiles of famous and not-so-famous people. The New Yorker is also famous for unbelievably long pieces (sometimes taking up the entire magazine) and occasionally being so "in" that the readers are left "out."

John Lahr has all of the virtues: elegant, thoughtful writing, and he leaves you wishing for more. Mr. Lahr specializes in Entertainment Profiles, a difficult undertaking. He avoids the landmines of sound-bytes, scurrility, fawning and trivia. He delivers fifteen gleaming, sharp-edged Profiles on disparate personalities.

I feel the best are the ones that are not contemporaries and/or friends of the author with the exception of the lovely word portraits of his parents, father Bert, and mother Millie (who might or might not have had an affair with Joseph Cotton!) Mr. Lahr needs a certain amount of distance to do his best work. He is clearly an admirer of Woody Allen, and it shows. I felt we were seeing the brushed up and shiny side of this highly complex entertainer. Bob Hope is given the finest dispassionate treatment; Lahr steps back and allows Mr. Hope produce his own cause and effect. The reader can judge for himself. I was left thinking, as my grandmother would say, "this is NOT a very nice man." To me, Roseanne was frightening with her rage and skewed perspectives. It wasn't what Mr. Lahr said about her; it was Roseanne being herself. The Profile on Frank Sinatra left me with a emotion I would never, ever thought possible in conjunction with Ole Blue Eyes: pity.

I read this book straight through, almost at one sitting. I found it that fascinating. But it can be read at leisure. Just start anywhere; there's not a loser to be found!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A writer worthy of writing about these artists, January 10, 2006

By 

Ian Muldoon (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles (Paperback)

Celebrities are fair game it seems for every hack, two bit journalist, and paparazzi. Their names are money and their pictures, weight loss, ageing, personal crises, and habits appear to be of endless fascination to the reading public or a fair proportion of it. What about Sinatra's links to the mob? What about Woody Allen's prediliction for young women? What about Mike Nichol's anger? What about Igmar Bergman's womanizing and tax evasion? Give me a break! There is much tosh, pap and babble written by those not fit enough to sharpen the pencils of the subjects of these profiles by Mr Lahr, but you will not find it in SHOW AND TELL. Mr Lahr is a writer worthy of these legends and that, dear reader, is indeed saying something. Revealing, interesting, incisive, entertaining and gripping, Mr Lahr and his editor at The New Yorker, have done a brilliant job. Perhaps the best short pieces I have ever read on the subjects contained therein. Brilliant.