Overview
From one of the most successful and influential producers in the entertainment industry -- responsible for classics such as Roots, The Thorn Birds, L.A. Confidential, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory -- comes a fascinating memoir of life at the very hub of Hollywood.David L. Wolper and television were both born in 1928, and their futures would be forever linked, as Wolper grew up to become one of the most significant television producers. His entrepreneurial talents were obvious from the start, when he sold homegrown radishes to his mother for a penny each and delivered sealed envelopes for the wiseguys who hung around New York's Copacabana nightclub.
Part salesman, part visionary, Wolper began his television career in 1949 by peddling films to the newly created TV stations across the country. He left the distribution business in 1958 when he produced his first award-winning television documentary, Race for Space, about the competing U.S. and Russian space programs. From that point on, Wolper's career skyrocketed. His company, Wolper Productions, has created thousands of hours of diverse programming, including the two highest-rated miniseries of all time, Roots and The Thorn Birds; such landmark spectacles as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics; hit comedies like Welcome Back, Kotter; the classic movies L.A. Confidential and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; film biographies of John Lennon and Elvis Presley; and acclaimed documentaries with Jacques Cousteau and the National Geographic Society.
Despite Wolper's staggering success and his countless Oscars, Emmys, and Golden Globes, he remains street-smart, wry, and surprisingly down-to-earth. Told in a conversational, comfortable voice, Producer is filled with funny and surprising anecdotes about such varied personalities as Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace and John Travolta, the Kennedys and Richard Nixon, and legends Orson Welles and Federico Fellini.
By combining flexibility, resourcefulness, and determination, Wolper produced some of the landmark documentaries, films, miniseries, and entertainment events of the twentieth century. Producer is the engaging and inspiring memoir of a true pioneer.
Synopsis
From one of the most successful and influential producers in the entertainment industry -- responsible for classics such as Roots, The Thorn Birds, L.A. Confidential, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory -- comes a fascinating memoir of life at the very hub of Hollywood.
David L. Wolper and television were both born in 1928, and their futures would be forever linked, as Wolper grew up to become one of the most significant television producers. His entrepreneurial talents were obvious from the start, when he sold homegrown radishes to his mother for a penny each and delivered sealed envelopes for the wiseguys who hung around New York's Copacabana nightclub.
Part salesman, part visionary, Wolper began his television career in 1949 by peddling films to the newly created TV stations across the country. He left the distribution business in 1958 when he produced his first award-winning television documentary, Race for Space, about the competing U.S. and Russian space programs. From that point on, Wolper's career skyrocketed. His company, Wolper Productions, has created thousands of hours of diverse programming, including the two highest-rated miniseries of all time, Roots and The Thorn Birds; such landmark spectacles as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics; hit comedies like Welcome Back, Kotter; the classic movies L.A. Confidential and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; film biographies of John Lennon and Elvis Presley; and acclaimed documentaries with Jacques Cousteau and the National Geographic Society.
Despite Wolper's staggering success and his countless Oscars, Emmys, and Golden Globes, he remains street-smart, wry, and surprisingly down-to-earth. Told in a conversational, comfortable voice, Producer is filled with funny and surprising anecdotes about such varied personalities as Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace and John Travolta, the Kennedys and Richard Nixon, and legends Orson Welles and Federico Fellini.
By combining flexibility, resourcefulness, and determination, Wolper produced some of the landmark documentaries, films, miniseries, and entertainment events of the twentieth century. Producer is the engaging and inspiring memoir of a true pioneer.
The New Yorker
In both good ways and bad, Wolper's book is a perfect specimen of the mogul memoir. The television pioneer responsible for such classics as "Roots," "The Thorn Birds," and "Welcome Back, Kotter," Wolper writes with a ghostwriter, who seems to have barely refurbished the dictated text. Amid the unfiltered egotism -- the credit-taking and self-puffery -- are unexpected finds, as when Wolper suddenly gossips about an illegitimate son of Elvis Presley or offers a shrewd assessment of the power of the early networks. While he dismisses ex-wives and families in a single sentence, Wolper finds time to tell us about the most well-endowed animal in the world (the water rhinoceros). Regrettably, the story lacks the campy excess of, say, Robert Evans's "The Kid Stays in the Picture": Wolper's tepid, fame-gilded life -- he made a lot of money, not a lot of enemies -- just isn't the stuff of high entertainment.