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Shadow and Substance: My Time with Charlie Chaplin Kindle Edition
Enter Charlie, now confronting the man whose job it is to discredit his legacy. Together Charlie and Cooper explore today's and yesterday's LA, from the Brown Derby and Musso & Frank Grill, to Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Along the way familiar figures emerge, including Fatty Arbuckle, William Randolph Hearst, and Doug Fairbanks.
With a fondness for Chaplin and a knowledge of his times, Gerry Mandel has brought two worlds together in a compelling story.
“SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE: MY TIME WITH CHARLIE CHAPLIN”
BRIEF EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS
“Gerry Mandel’s time-traveling Shadow and Substance exhibits both an abiding affection for Chaplin’s little tramp and a deep knowledge about the world and art of his creator. As an added bonus, it’s a thoughtful meditation on the dilemmas facing the biographer who admires the artist he’s researching.”
Charles Maland, Prof. of Cinema Studies, U. of Tennessee
“In this story within a story, Mandel doesn’t just explore the life of the legendary Charlie Chaplin, but takes the bold step of placing him in the action, allowing Chaplin himself to answer to the controversies that continue to surround his extraordinary life. It is a dangerous literary device in the hands of an accomplished writer and Mandel is up to the task.” Dan Fenton, Bookscape
“Gerry Mandel's debut novel "Shadow and Substance: My Time with Charlie Chaplin" melds the genres of love story, mystery, and time travel while tracing layers of creative process. Most of all, though, Mandel's novel is an old-fashioned morality tale for this age.” Janet Riehl, RiehlLife.com
“It's a most improbable story --but Gerry Mandel just pulls us through it.
You get drawn into the place and time, the Los Angeles of the 1920s and 30s. And you learn facets of Charlie Chaplin you never knew about."
Herbert Krill, Hollywood Correspondent for German TV
“... an entertaining trip to the glory days of Hollywood and an interesting exploration of the human desire to uncover unsavory facts about respected figures.” Jennifer Alexander, West End Word
“...rich in detail and characterization, for both the famous (I'd love to meet this book's version of Chaplin's beefy co-star Mack Swain) and newfound (the many underlings who swirl in McDaniels' orbit). The reader comes away with a new respect for Chaplin and for celebrity in general.” Steve Bailey, Chaplin-Yahoo Groups, Jacksonville, FL
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateOctober 14, 2011
- File size718 KB
Product details
- ASIN : B007PX6GDU
- Publisher : Hue Vista Publishing (October 14, 2011)
- Publication date : October 14, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 718 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 317 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,242,398 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #9,944 in Biographies of Actors & Entertainers
- #35,158 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies
- #80,027 in Literary Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
After writing commercials for many years with ad agencies, I finally turned to novels, short stories and plays... and a couple of blogs. My novel about Charlie Chaplin was a labor of love; I've produced Chaplin film festivals, lectured on him, have a blog - timewithcharliechaplin.blogspot.com - and continue my love affair with his movies. I've had several plays produced, short stories published in literary journals, and a novelette which made the short list for a national award and is now available on Kindle. I am currently working on a new novel, and a play. Jazz and classical music keeps me going throughout the day, although I used to play keyboards in a blues band.. but that got old. My two golden retrievers are my constant pals. Biography interests me; I also do video and written biographies, just finished a video biography of a 94 year old woman with a clear memory and wonderful stories. Her kids and grandkids never knew this much about her. But writing, in all its myriad forms, is at the center of my soul. Thanks for stopping by.
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Top reviews from the United States
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With an unassuming style Mandel investigates important life questions. What is the nature of integrity? Why is it important? How do you resolve the tug between desire and making good? Shouldn't an artist be judged by his art, not the dips and turns of his personal life? Shouldn't personal life remain--well, personal?
These questions inform the core of the novel's plot, character, and descriptions. Mandel's dialogue crackles with relaxed humor while pursuing the mystery and moral challenge.
Cooper Thiery, Midwestern native, lands in Hollywood for an assignment of a lifetime--make a documentary at FlashBack Productions. The subject is Charlie Chaplin--the film maker Cooper's been passionate about for decades. But, who recommended him--really? How do all the clues and resources come his way--and, from whom?
Be patient. With wry wit and an easy narrative voice author Gerry Mandel answers all these questions in this page-turning novel. The novel is set in the Hollywood of the 1920s and the Hollywood of today that seems hell-bent on dragging Chaplin through the dirt.
Some of the personalities we meet in the 1920s scenes include Fatty Arbuckle, William Randolph Hearst, and Doug Fairbanks. Mandel gives us a front row seat to Chaplin's greatest movies and haunts as secrets from Chaplin's past are revealed. The dilemma is to tell or not to tell.
Along the way Chaplin materializes to both direct and misdirect Cooper's search for the truth. Chaplin's slight of mind tests Cooper's loyalty. Matisse said that "Creativity takes courage." So does saying "no" and walking away. What Cooper does with that struggle lies at the heart of this compelling story.
The plotting is engaging and the dialogue rings true to life from beginning to end. Even if you never cared much about Charlie Chaplin before, this puts him in the middle of a story full of characters you will care about.
Obviously the author knows his stuff about Charlie and this lends a sense that we may be hearing the truth for the first time.
Jim Coyne
It can't happen, of course - but the very next best thing is the novel "Shadow and Substance: My Time with Charlie Chaplin." And the highest compliment I can pay to author Gerry Mandel is that he does justice to his famous subject.
The story concerns Cooper Thiery, a life-long Chaplin buff who has lucked into a possible Hollywood job. A Los Angeles producer, Kevin McDaniels, wants to create a TV series of muckraking documentaries that bring down the heroes of yesteryear. He wants to start with Chaplin, and he wants to hire Cooper for the job based on a glowing letter of recommendation for Cooper that an Oxford professor sent to Kevin.
The problems start when the niceties end and McDaniels shows his true colors to Cooper. He wants all the dirt on Chaplin, and he wants it yesterday. Cooper is thrown for a loop at having to denigrate one of his childhood heroes in order to make a career for himself.
Luckily for Cooper, he is rewarded a muse - in the form of none other than Charlie Chaplin himself. And this is where Mandel scores his biggest points. He brings Chaplin back to life as an otherworldly conscience for Cooper, and he assists Cooper in meeting some of Chaplin's contemporaries as well. This is pretty much the ground on which the novel is built, and if the conceit had been presented in a mawkish or cutesy way, the story would have collapsed.
Happily, by the time Chaplin himself is brought into the story, we've come to identify with Cooper so much that we feel his shock at meeting the "reincarnated" Chaplin, which goes a long way toward making the fantasy plausible. And after all, the story does take place in Hollywood, where Cooper keeps running into one miracle after another, anyway - why not meet his long-lost idol as well?
"Shadow and Substance" is rich in detail and characterization, for both the famous (I'd love to meet this book's version of Chaplin's beefy co-star Mack Swain) and newfound (the many underlings who swirl in McDaniels' orbit). And the reader comes away with a new respect for Chaplin and for celebrity in general. You end up feeling, as Chaplin does here, that maybe it's time to let sleeping idols lie and to quit callously digging up dirt on them unnecessarily.
My only concern about the book is how it will "play" with non-Chaplin buffs, who might not share in Cooper's reverence for his subject and instead be eager for the story to move on a little. Conversely, those knowledgeable in Chaplin trivia might be slightly bothered when Mandel slows down the story every so often to explain an "inside" anecdote for those not in the know. (The method reminds me of a condescending moment in Chaplin's movie "A Woman in Paris," where the characters were eating champagne truffles and Chaplin felt compelled to include a subtitle explaining the food's origin.)
But this slight fault should not deter anyone, Chaplin buff or otherwise, from savoring this rich novel. "Shadow and Substance" brings Charlie Chaplin to life just one more time and makes it worth the effort.
Top reviews from other countries
I recommend this novel to anyone who is drawn to our beloved Charles Chaplin and the work he created, the legacy he left behind and the inspiration that still lingers to this day. This novel takes you right back in time and places you gently down back to current day.
For old Hollywood enthusiasts, you'll surely relive much as though you were once there.
I simply love it. Very few books (and movies for that matter) take me on such a journey. Speaking of which; this would make a wonderful screenplay.
Gerry Mandel has an obvious built-in knowledge of Charles and an impressive crafting of old Hollywood that fills this novel like no other.