All-around entertainment veteran Leonard - onetime radio and movie
performer, then TV director and producer - recalls his emblematic
career in a tough business. It may be hard to believe that the
prototypical comic gangster is now in his ninth decade. Maybe even
more astounding: Seven of those decades have been spent with just
one spouse, Frankie. After a few pages touching his youth and
abortive start on Wall Street on the day of the Crash, Leonard
attains his voice describing his early work on Broadway with such
luminaries as Thomas Mitchell, Albert Dekker, and a juvenile
Montgomery Clift, while competing with Sam Levine. The anecdotes
mount as Leonard abandons a languishing White Way for Hollywood.
He's still remembered as the very model of a modern movie menace,
or, as he would put it, "suave...goniff." More appearances by
performers like Julie Garfield and Errol Flynn ("a pain in the
ass") and directors like Woody Van Dyke and Raoul Walsh enliven the
story. On to the easy radio work with the likes of Jack Benny and a
raft of zanies who then did the best writing and now provide the
best stories. Finally Leonard jumps into TV, where his credits
include Make Room For Daddy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Andy
Griffith Show. At one time he had four shows in the top ten, but he
lets the record speak for itself. He would rather tell amusing
stories about filming I Spy around the world or teach the
fundamentals of industry economics. "Directing," he concludes,
"yields great creative satisfaction, producing-packaging pays the
most money, but acting provides the most ego gratification." No
histrionics, no self-serving braggadocio, just a show-biz story
told with verve by an old pro. (Kirkus Reviews)
(Limelight). From Booklist: Actor-director-producer Leonard has a
real gift for storytelling that he displays to the fullest in a
breezy, readable memoir of his life in show business. Starting out
as an actor in 1930s New York in such forgotten hit plays as Hotel
Alimony, Fly Away Home, and Kiss the Boys Goodbye, Leonard had the
foresight and financial need to leap first to radio and movies,
then to television, in which he created or produced such rerun
perennials as Make Room for Daddy, The Andy Griffith Show, and the
controversial (for its time) I Spy . Along the way, Leonard met
lots and lots of fascinating people--John Garfield, Jack Benny,
Danny Thomas, Carl Reiner, and Bill Cosby, to mention a few of the
dozens about whom Leonard has a funny story or three to tell. Some
of these stories are well known, such as those of the closeness of
the writers, actors, and staff of The Dick Van Dyke Show; others
are not, such as those of Leonard's various, sometimes dangerous,
adventures around the world while filming I Spy . Jack Helbig
General
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