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Jeff Chandler ReviewRarely has a book inspired such intensely mixed feelings in me. For years I wanted to know more about the life and career of Jeff Chandler, who was intriguing in so many ways--a handsome, prematurely grey, Jewish leading man who played almost everything but Jews, a good-looking man in an offbeat way, scarred from a motor accident, a man revered for his friendship and loyalty, who offered his own eye when his friend Sammy Davis was in danger of losing both his own, and a tough guy who died far too young from medical misadventure. So despite grave misgivings when I saw that this new book was a vanity publication (i.e., published by financial arrangement by the author rather than being chosen for publication based on its merits), I leapt at the chance to read it. And indeed it answered, and elaborated on the answers to, many questions and curiosities I'd had about Chandler. There is much herein that is interesting to read about his early life, his accidents, his friendships, and in particular his demise. But there is a HUGE caveat: Marilyn Kirk is a fan and, despite her bio blurb, apparently not a professional writer. Now neither of these factors prevent anyone from producing a fine book. But this is not a fine book. As books go, it is not even a good one. The author's style is nonexistent, beyond a fulsome adoration of her subject. Chronology is so utterly dispensed with that it becomes nigh impossible to keep facts straight, as the author jumps willy-nilly through Chandler's life, almost giving the surreal impression that the events of that life occurred all at the same time. A chapter about Chandler's boyhood will have long passages about his funeral, or some other event from much later, not because the jump in time improves our understanding of the boyhood event, but apparently because the author simply flew off on a tangent. Similarly, the author bounces from calling Chandler "Jeff" to using his birth name "Ira" and back again, to the point of disorienting even the well-informed reader. The book suffers also from the worshipful, non-critical fan's point of view. The barest lip service is paid to the idea that Chandler might not have been a saint, and controversial aspects of his nature and rumors that might to some seem shameful are studiously avoided. Worst offense of all, though, for anyone expecting to read the truth about a subject is not the absence of critical analysis of the man and his work, nor the jumbled syntax and timelines, but the overwhelming reliance on fan magazines as a primary source of information. Fan magazine stories, as every serious student of film history knows, were concocted extensively by studio publicity people or by their lackeys at the magazine and can never be relied upon as source of factual information. Yet author Kirk cites 55 publications in her bibliography, 75% of which are fan magazines. And her notes indicate that the other, comparatively reliable, publications used as sources (the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, etc.) were cited almost exclusively as regards Chandler's illness, death, and the subsequent investigation. The conclusion is unavoidable that virtually everything preceding that portion of her book is based most extensively on the completely unreliable material in fan magazines. Indeed, Kirk herself lists nearly seven pages of fan magazine articles, calling them "a very useful source of information on the life of Jeff Chandler."In the end, it is not my intent to denigrate the effort Kirk has put into this book, nor the devotion she obviously holds for her subject. I've written biographies and I know how difficult the task is to complete one at all, let alone well. And truth be told, even knowing what I know about this book, if I had it to do over again, I would buy and read the book, such is my interest in the subject. But though this is the only biography of Jeff Chandler in print (and very likely the only one that will ever be), it is not the definitive biography, nor is it a reliable or well-written one. It serves to whet the appetite for a real book by someone who knows how to research and organize, who has stylistic skills and a critically subjective point of view, and who isn't afraid someone might not like the guy she's writing about. And if ever there were a warning about the mixed-blessings of print-on-demand vanity pressings, this is it. A good-sized book on an interesting but probably not very commercial subject got published. But it misleads those uninformed enough to believe anything published must be good, and it disappoints those who hoped for something of note. And even if you know your film history, the knot of truth and flack-generated fancy presented here is impossible to untangle. It's a pity.Jeff Chandler Overview
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