Description

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Through the curious life of Dick Kallmana reallife celebrity striver poisonously charming actor and eventual murder victimthe unforgiving worlds of postwar showbiz and downlow gay sexuality are thrown into stark relief in this pageturning blast James Ellroy author of Widespread Panic

EngrossingA keen portrait of 1980s New Yorka pensive often gorgeous depiction ofgay life in Manhattan before Stonewall and life on the cusp of the AIDS epidemic The Washington Post

Dick Kallman was an upandcoming actor in the fifties and sixtiesuntil he wasnt A costar on Broadway a member of Lucille Balls historic Desilu workshop and finally a primetime TV actor Dick had hustled to get his big break But just as soon as his star began to rise his roles began to dry up and he faded from the spotlight his name out of tabloids and newspapers until his sensational murder in 1980

Through the eyes of his occasional pianist and longtime acquaintance Matt Liannetto a tenderhearted but wry observer often on the fringes of Broadways big moments Kallmans life and death come into appallingly sharp focus The actors yearslong unrequited love for a fellow performer brings out a competitive vindictive edge in him Whenever a new door opens Kallman rushes unwittingly to close it Even as he walks over other people he can never get out of his own way

As Matt pores over the life of this handsome couldhavebeen Up With the Sun recreates the brassy sometimes brutal world that shaped Kallman capturing his collisions with not only Lucille Ball but an array of stars from Sophie Tucker to Judy Garland and Johnny Carson Part crime story part showbiz history and part love story this is a crackling novel about personal demons and dangerously suppressed passions that spans thirty years of gay lifethe whole tumultuous era from the Kinsey Report through Stonewall and finally AIDS