Part of the generation of great Shakespearean actors that included Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, and Laurence Olivier, Gielgud outlived them all--to the very end performing in movies, reading Shakespeare on the radio, and hawking California wines on TV--to die at 96, on the verge of the new millennium. Ironically, he was a late bloomer. Early stage appearances in the 1920s were awkward and unsure, as were his first attempts in the movies. But Gielgud, driven by love of the craft and his famous "Terry genes"(nineteenth-century star Ellen Terry was his great aunt), eventually mastered his art, and watching him grow into the giant he became is one pleasure afforded by Morley's rich, lively biography. Morley is passionate enough to be consistently readable, and objective enough to recount such seamier matters as Gielgud's notorious 1950s arrest for sexually soliciting an undercover cop. Oh, the book could have been better edited, for it is somewhat repetitious and chronologically sloppy. Still, it is hard to argue with any 500-pager that maintains its momentum and never bores. (Source: Booklist, Jack Helbig, American Library Association.)
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Publisher: Applause Books
Released: 2003
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