Now and then, a politician comes along who is both cantankerous and somehow lovable, highly principled and yet open to argument, possessed of both a sense of honor and a sense of humor.
Curtis doesn\’t fully appreciate how much his on-screen allure owed to his being Jewish
When Ralph Salimpour was six years old in Esfahan, Iran, he had malaria — a blood disease spread by infected mosquitoes that kills millions of people in the developing world every year.
\”Chronicles: Volume One\” by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster), $24.
Toward the end of last year\’s rambling, barely coherent film \”Masked and Anonymous,\” Bob Dylan, its masked and anonymous star, spoke in voice-over one of his most direct and self-revelatory addresses. Fittingly, it was about the limits of what we are allowed to know:
In the biopic "American Splendor," cranky comic book icon Harvey Pekar frets in the supermarket. "This may be the shortest line, but I\’m taking a risk because it\’s an old Jewish lady," he says. When the woman argues with the manager, he storms out of the store.
One of the first things Gene Simmons reveals in his new autobiography, "Kiss and Make-Up," is that he is the child of a Holocaust survivor.
Robert Clary doesn\’t really enjoy sitcoms. Even though he played the French sidekick on one of television\’s most unusual sitcoms, "Hogan\’s Heroes," the POW situation comedy (1965-71) set during World War II.
With the demise of the former Soviet Union and the fall of communism in the early \’90s, the story of Soviet Jewry\’s battle for survival appears to be ancient history. Yet one of the truly remarkable books of our time is the autobiography of one of the famous refuseniks, Yosef Mendelevitch, who struggled valiantly for his right to be Jewish in Communist Russia. Mendelevitch titled his autobiography \”Mevzah Hatunah,\” which translates from Hebrew as \”Operation Wedding.\”
Monty Hall is guiding a visitor past the fine artwork in the foyer of his Spanish-style Beverly Hills home, where you don\’t see a single memento from the game show that made him a TV icon.
Like a box of candy, this numbered collection of memories and anecdotes is best eaten slowly, the better to digest each morsel.
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