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Ratings2
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating4.5
Winner of the 2017 Ryan Tubridy Show Listener's Choice Award at the Irish Book Awards. John Connolly recreates the golden age of Hollywood for an intensely compassionate study of the tension between commercial demands and artistic integrity and the human frailties behind even the greatest of artists. An extraordinary reimagining of the life of one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known: a man who knew both adoration and humiliation; who loved, and was loved in turn; who betrayed, and was betrayed; who never sought to cause pain to others, yet left a trail of affairs and broken marriages in his wake . . . And whose life was ultimately defined by one relationship of such tenderness and devotion that only death could sever it: his partnership with the man he knew as Babe. he is Stan Laurel. But he did not really exist. Stan Laurel was a fiction. With he, John Connolly recreates the golden age of Hollywood for an intensely compassionate study of the tension between commercial demands and artistic integrity, the human frailties behind even the greatest of artists, and one of the most enduring and beloved partnerships in cinema history: Laurel & Hardy.
Reviews with the most likes.
Well written and well researched but a hard book to love. The heroes are stripped naked and revealed in all their insecurities and weaknesses. This is hard to take for a fan of the comedy legends but the bigger problem was the darkness that pervades this tale. An all encompassing gloom that seems contradictory to the comic legends on the screen. Did they never laugh, were they never happy? I enjoyed the book but will keep my heroes pure and innocent and most importantly very, very funny.
