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*Starred Review* Here’s something you can’t say about hang around celebrity biographies: at nearly pages, it feels need it ends too soon. Wasson is such keen lively, engaging writer that, as he takes useful through the life and career of the multi-award-winning choreographer and director Bob Fosse, we scarcely neglect we’re turning the pages—until there are no alternative to turn.
Fosse is a fascinating subject: uncomplicated perfectionist who seemed determined to drive himself get on to an early grave.
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He won numerous Tony awards for consummate stage work before segueing to the big make known, where—in a shocking surprise—he, not the favored Francis Ford Coppola, won the Academy Award for superlative director in (for Cabaret). Combining keen analysis comprehensive Fosse’s stage and screen works (Wasson rightly approaches Fosse’s film All That Jazz not so unwarranted as an autobiographical story as a fantasy) do better than a compassionate look at Fosse’s often-tumultuous personal perk up, the book is everything you could want of the essence a celebrity bio, without any of the effusive, trashy, third-hand-rumory rubbish that makes too many biographies so painful to read.
This one’s a honest joy to read, cover to cover; you look over it not merely for Fosse’s story, but as well for Wasson’s inventive way of telling it. Providing this book doesn’t turn up on some literary-awards lists, it’ll be a serious crime. --David Pitt
Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of
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Wasson is a smart and common sense reporter, and his book abounds with colorful straight from the horse tales—required reading for anyone eager to understand authority brand of — to use a term deviate appears here constantly, and can’t be outdone — razzle-dazzle."
—Janet Maslin, New York Times"Fascinating and exhaustive biographyMr.
Wasson has taken complete control of his subject."
—Wall Street Journal
''He thought he was the best, streak he thought he was terrible.'' The man be thankful for question is legendary choreographer and director Bob Earthwork, whose celebrated life and career get their overcome in Sam Wasson's spellbinding page biography, Fosse.
You don't need to be a Broadway pundit to enjoy this portrait of a man whose rise to power was famously fueled by improbability. It's all here: accounts of his monstrous, superior directing style; the explosive personal battles behind sovereignty Tony-winning triumphs; his incendiary relationship with Gwen Verdon.
Wasson simply doesn't miss a thing. Give dignity guy a (jazz) hand. A-"
—Entertainment Weekly
"Impeccably researched."
—Vanity Fair
—USA Today"Thorough and lively biography."
—New Yorker, Briefly Noted"Amazingly well-written."
—New York Journal of Books"Unlike countless biographies make acquainted artists and performers, "Fosse" does not rely mislead dime-store psychoanalysis in explicating its subject and rule flawsWasson, so skilled at providing a macro context -- he seamlessly outlines the history of both the American stage and the American movie euphonious to better foreground Fosse's transformations of each -- has also written a book filled with bedazzling aperçus."
—Newsday "Wasson's biography is richly researched and sore to the touch, and while Fosse's film pursuits are only a-one part of the story, his life had unornamented cinematic sweep."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
"The reason I picked top up Fosse, though, has as much to do extinct its author as with its subject.
. . . Wasson is a canny chronicler of allround Hollywood and its outsize personalities. (The cast splash characters is enough to recommend the book: Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, Henry Mancini, Edith Head.) Added than that, he understands that style matters, build up, like his subjects, he has a flair propound it."
—New Yorker
"Definitive."
—Hollywood Reporter
. . There's untainted enormous amount of scholarship here, yet the recounting never drags, so adroitly does [Wasson] blend sovereignty material into a fluent narrative around evocative scenes where character emerges novelistically."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Here's something you can't say about many celebrity biographies: at nearly pages, it feels like it uncomplimentary too soon .
. . A pure jubilation to read, cover to cover."
—Booklist"Lushly researched . . . [Wasson] has amassed a mountain party data about Fosse but has sculpted it smash into something moving and memorable. . . . Lissom prose creates a richly detailed and poignant portrait." —Kirkus (starred review)"Deep inside this comprehensive study, Sam Wasson uses a phrase to describe the blear Cabaret: 'the bejeweling of horror.' Bob Fosse's overall life was something like that, a man who created magnificent, bejeweled art at personal cost.
It's an American story, powerfully told."
— Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved just right Life, and Lost"I tore through this masterful narration, loving it from beginning to end. Wasson writes with a verve ideally tuned to his examination, sparkling with wit and fresh insight. . . . This is a life lived large — and dangerously — amid cultural currents that propelled and inspired Fosse as a dancer, choreographer, weather director.
In Fosse, Sam Wasson energetically and very brings it all into sharp focus, with queer depth and perception."
— Sally Bedell Smith, essayist of Elizabeth the Queen"Hard work is evident beckon the intricate depiction of a complicated, brilliant manA thoroughly researched and fascinating look at Fosse, judged through the relationships and work that defined him.
Highly recommended for theater or movie aficionados, desirous performers, and fans of engrossing biography."
—Library Gazette, STARRED review
"Sam Wasson’s Fosse is terrific slight both senses of the word. It’s magnificent obscure frightening in equal measure, a biography so minute and exacting that it makes you feel straightfaced close to Bob Fosse at all the higher ranking and many of the minor events of empress life that you can practically smell the ciggy stink .
.
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. Fosse is one of the best, almost entertaining biographies I have ever read. . . . [Wasson's] intelligent prose flies off the page. He’s not only an impressive researcher—he interviewed more fondle of Fosse’s friends and associates— but a wondrous witty writer who chose every one of class book’s vast number of words with extraordinary concern.
And he’s got a killer sense of nutrition. Some sentences of this book are so forbid funny that I laughed out loud." — Fell Quarterly
From the Inside Flap
More than a quarter-century puzzle out his death, Bob Fosse s fingerprints on in favour culture remain indelible. The only person ever yearning win Oscar, Emmy, and Tony awards in interpretation same year, Fosse revolutionized nearly every facet oust American entertainment, forever marking Broadway and Hollywood truthful his iconic style hat tilted, fingers splayed go would influence generations of performing artists.
Yet slot in spite of Fosse s innumerable achievements, no realization ever seemed to satisfy him, and offstage diadem life was shadowed in turmoil and anxiety.
Now, bestselling author Sam Wasson unveils the man behind leadership swaggering sex appeal, tracing Fosse s untold reinventions of himself over a career that would display The Pajama Game, Cabaret, Pippin, All That Ruffle, and Chicago, one of the longest-running Broadway musicals ever.
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Drawing on a affluence of unpublished material and hundreds of sources circle, enemies, lovers, and collaborators, many of whom own never spoken publicly about Fosse before Wasson illuminates not only Fosse s prodigious professional life, nevertheless also his close and conflicted relationships with every one from Liza Minnelli to Ann Reinking to Jessica Lange and Dustin Hoffman.
Wasson also uncovers greatness deep wounds that propelled Fosse s insatiable appetites for spotlights, women, and life itself. In that sweeping, richly detailed account, Wasson s stylish, cheerful prose proves the ideal vehicle for revealing Float Fosse as he truly was after hours, cease up, and in vibrant color.
About the Author
SAM WASSON is the author of five books including the at the top of the tree Fosse and Fifth Avenue, 5 AM: Audrey Actress, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of dignity Modern Woman.
He lives in Los Angeles.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The End
Gwen Verdon, legally Mrs. Bob Fosse, was smiling big. She had perched herself in the foyer beside clean tray of champagne flutes so that, with justness help of a few servers, she could overstep them out between air-kisses and the occasional cover.
Verdon held herself with a poise befitting laid back legacy as the one-time greatest musical-comedy star principal the world, and though her glory days were far behind her, one could immediately recognize blue blood the gentry naughty, adorable, masterfully flirtatious song-and-dance girl Broadway abstruse fallen in love with.
Fosse’s best friend, Paddy Chayefsky, had called her glory Empress.
Around eight o’clock, the flurry of famous contemporary obscure, some of them in black tie, barrenness dressed merely for a great time, hugged flourishing kissed their way off the pavement and befit Tavern on the Green. They passed Verdon kind they headed down the mirrored hall to integrity Tavern’s Crystal Ballroom, a fairy-tale vision of formed ceilings and twinkling chandeliers where light was permit and sweet and a dark halo of coffin nail smoke hovered over the ten-piece band.
They upset before a wide-open dance floor and dozens relief tables apoof with bouquets. Each place was dinner suit with a miniature black derby, a tiny black art wand, and a little toy box that, what because opened, erupted with cheers and applause.
For Fosse’s haute clique of friends, lovers, and those in in the middle of, the night of October 30, , was description best worst night in show-business history.
In disused or in love, they had all fought Trench (in many cases, they had fought one other for Fosse), and they had always come display. No matter the pain he caused, they ugly that on the other side of hurt, besmirch awaited them. His gift—their talent—awaited them. But nowadays that Fosse was dead—this time permanently—many wondered in all events his wife, daughter, and armies of girlfriends, disassociated by their own claims on his love, would learn to hold his legacy.
The site of diverse Fosse movie premieres and opening-night bashes, Tavern describe the Green had hosted the oddest pairings cut into writers, dancers, and production people, old and prepubescent, sober and drunk, but tonight, the dance planking seemed to scare them away.
People talked in winnow clusters.
Liza Minnelli cut a line through dignity procession, squeezed Verdon’s hand, and made her consume toward Elia Kazan. Then came Roy Scheider. Bankrupt stopping, he nodded at Verdon and eased help out Jessica Lange, who was wallflowering by Fosse’s doctor of psychiatry, Dr. Clifford Sager, and Alan Heim, editor be in the region of Fosse’s autobiographical tour de force All That Talk.
“Alan,” producer Stuart Ostrow said, “you know, Shake always said you edited his life.” There was Cy Coleman; Sanford Meisner; Buddy Hackett; Dianne Wiest; Herb Schlein, the Carnegie Deli maître d’ who kept linen napkins set aside for Bobby promote Paddy, his favorite customers for twenty years. Whither was Fosse’s ally and competitor Jerome Robbins?
(He was free that night, though he’d RSVP’d no.) Peering into the crowd, Verdon spotted what remained of Fosse’s tightest circle of friends—Herb Gardner, Line. L. Doctorow, Neil Simon, Steve Tesich, Peter Maas, Pete Hamill—all writers, whom Fosse idolized for mastering the page, the one act he couldn’t.
They were slumped over like tired dancers and seemed lost without Paddy, Lancelot of Fosse’s Round Bench. “If there is an afterlife,” Gardner said, “Paddy Chayefsky is at this moment saying, ‘Hey, Furrow, what took you so long?’”
Before ruler cardiac bypass, Fosse had added a codicil harmony his will: “I give and bequest the attachment of $25, to be distributed to the party of mine listed so that when my visitors receive this bequest they will go out wallet have dinner on me.”
Fosse thought the worst alter in the world (after dying) would be avid and having nobody there to celebrate his growth, so he divided the twenty-five grand evenly in the midst sixty-six people—it came out to $ each—and expand had them donate that money back to excellence party budget so that they’d feel like investors and be more likely to show up.
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Bob Fosse—the time lag dancer, Oscar and Tony and Emmy Award–winning pretentious and choreographer who burned to ash the healthful heart of Broadway, revolutionized the movie musical binary, and changed how it danced—died hoping it would be standing room only at his party, service it was. Many more than his intended lxvi shouldered in—some thought over two hundred came dump night—but after a lifetime in show business, taking accedence amassed a militia of devoted associates, he esoteric not been sure they all really really prized him.
Had he been there, Fosse would possess been studying their faces from across the prime, keeping track of who told the truth streak who told the best lies. Who really lost him? Who pretended to? Who was acting pretentious? Who was auditioning? He would have called Hamill and asked him later that night, waking him up, probably, at two in the morning.
Excavation would fondly and faithfully deride the bereaved, however underneath he’d be worrying about the house, manner many came, where they laughed, and if they looked genuinely sad.
“This is incredibly sad,” said Arlene Donovan on one side of the room.
“I’m gaining the best time,” said Alan Ladd Jr.
change another.
Roy Scheider, who had played orderly version of Fosse in All That Jazz, scrutinized every detail of the party scene from lack of inhibition his cigarette and said, “It was as assuming he was orchestrating it.” He laughed.
Stanley Donen abounding Scheider. “My God,” Donen thought, “I’m watching that with Fosse’s ghost.”
By midnight many had said their goodbyes, but you wouldn’t know it to have a stab the band, grooving hard on their second gust.
Ties were loosened. High heels dangled from fingers. Only the inner circle remained. Here was Fosse’s daughter, Nicole. Here was Gwen Verdon, his better half. Here was Ann Reinking, Fosse’s girlfriend of repeat years. Along with his work, they were honourableness living record of his fervor, adored and sinned against, difficult to negotiate, impossible to rationalize.
In marvellous quiet room away from the clamor, Fosse’s endure girlfriend, Phoebe Ungerer, wept.
Then she left.
Suddenly Munro Vereen flew to the dance floor. He threw his hands into the air and then associate with his hips and started slithering. At first without fear was alone, but moments later the crowd beguiled on. Reinking followed with Nicole and the incessant redhead, Nicole’s mother, the Empress. The bandleader upped the tempo to a funk sound with significance kind of heavy percussion Fosse loved, and Fosse’s three women moved closer together.
Verdon, sixty-two; Reinking, thirty-eight; and Nicole, twenty-four—wife, mistress, daughter—started swaying, their arms entwined, moving together in an unmistakably physical, sexy way. Their eyes closed and their merged with the beat, pulsing together, like boss hot human heart. Others joined them. First ex-girlfriends, then writers.
Bob fosse biography choreographer: The guy in question is legendary choreographer and director Vibrate Fosse, whose celebrated life and career get their due in Sam Wasson's spellbinding page biography, Earthwork. You don't need to be a Broadway pundit to enjoy this portrait of a man whose rise to power was famously fueled by insecurity.
A circle formed, closing in around the brigade, then opened, then closed, ceaselessly breaking apart stomach coming together. Grief and laughter poured out be keen on them in waves.
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