LEVY, Shawn 1961-

PERSONAL:

Born October 22, 1961, in New York, NY; son of Jerome Sanford and Agnes Madeline (Shand) Levy; married Mary Elizabeth Bartholemy, December 30, 1985; children: Vincent, Anthony. Education: University of Pennsylvania, B.A., 1982; University of California-Irvine, M.F.A., 1985, M.A. 1989.

ADDRESSES:

Office—American Film Magazine, 6671 Sunset Blvd., Suite 1514, Hollywood, CA 90028.

CAREER:

Box Office Magazine, Los Angeles, associate editor, 1989-90; American Film Magazine, Los Angeles, senior editor, 1990-?; Oregonian newspaper, Portland, film critic.

WRITINGS:

King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Rat Pack Confidential: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Joey, and the Last Great Showbiz Party, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1998.

Ready, Steady, Go!: The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor of numerous articles to magazines and newspapers, including New York Times, Los Angeles times, Guardian (Manchester, England), Sight and Sound, Movieline, and Interview.

SIDELIGHTS:

Shawn Levy's first book, King of Comedy: The Art and Life of Jerry Lewis, has been hailed both as a "penetrating unauthorized biography" by a critic from Publishers Weekly, and as a "meticulously detailed and resolutely unflattering" book by Michael A. Lipton of People. Jerry Lewis was abandoned by parents who were busy pursuing their own stage career, and he was often ridiculed by his peers when he was a child. Despite his grim early life, Jerry won the hearts of theatre-goers with the goofy character he created to play against the straight-man role of partner Dean Martin. Lewis went on to star in such films as The Nutty Professor, The Bellboy, Cinderfella, and The Patsy. Later he used his fame to raise funds in annual telethons for muscular dystrophy.

Despite his professional success, however, Lewis gained notoriety as an abusive husband and father and as an obnoxious personality. These darker sides of the star's life, according to many critics, receive fair treatment in King of Comedy. "Levy doesn't settle for rehashing commonly accepted facts," wrote Michael Sragow in the New York Times Book Review, adding that the author "keeps his balance" and strives to be "scrupulously fair." Time writer Bruce Handy noted that "Levy certainly doesn't shy away from psycho-biography" but found that he is "notably restrained in providing it." The book, Handy felt, "should deepen and fix the public conception of Lewis."

Levy's second book, Rat Pack Confidential: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Joey, and the Last Great Showbiz Party, also explores a Hollywood subject. The term "rat pack" was coined by actress Lauren Bacall when the group—Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop—showed up for a benefit looking rather disreputable. Bacall reportedly stated that the men looked "like a goddamn rat pack," and the nickname was born. This group, which sometimes included the actress Shirley MacLaine, was very popular in the 1950s and early 1960s, especially in Las Vegas, where some of them performed regularly and purchased real estate.

A reviewer for Publishers Weekly described Rat Pack Confidential as "commercial biography served up cool and catchy," while a writer for Economist considered it an example of "invisible fly-on-the-wall journalism" that "does little but list name upon name." Booklist critic Gordon Flagg, however, observed that the book "provides …insight into the pack as a cultural force and into the fascination it continues to exert." And Keith Cannon in Journal of American Culture wrote that the book "provides a reference point for understanding how the Rat Pack sensibility is resurfacing in current youth culture."

British culture is the focus of Levy's third book, Ready, Steady, Go!: The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London. This book provides "an intriguing look at pop culture," according to Mark Bay in Library Journal. In conducting research for the book, Levy spent time in London with a British editor who gave him a tour of what had become the ghosts of that culture. In an interview posted on the Powell's Books Web site, Levy wrote that this editor turned out to be "a rabid devotee of the '60s" who showed Levy "around the city not as it is but as it used to be." Everything from the music to the fashions of that era are covered in Levy's book; as a result, wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "the book reads as if he'd lived the era himself."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1996, Gordon Flagg, review of King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, p. 1406; April 15, 1998, Gordon Flagg, review of Rat Pack Confidential: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Joey, and the Last Great Showbiz Party, p. 1410.

Economist, May 23, 1998, review of Rat Pack Confidential, p. 80.

Journal of American Culture, winter, 1998, Keith Cannon, review of Rat Pack Confidential, pp. 93-95.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002, review of Ready, Steady, Go!: The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London, p. 718.

Library Journal, June 1, 1998, Michael Colby, review of Rat Pack Confidential, pp. 110-111; July 2002, Mark Bay, review of Ready, Steady, Go!, p. 106.

New York Times, July 23, 2002, Michiko Kakutani, "Hipoisie and Chic-oisie and London Had the Mojo," review of Ready, Steady, Go!, p. E7.

New York Times Book Review, June 9, 1996, Michael Sragow, review of King of Comedy, p. 26.

People, June 10, 1996, Michael A. Lipton, review of King of Comedy, p. 35.

Publishers Weekly, March 23, 1998, review of Rat Pack Confidential, p. 87; June 3, 2002, review of Ready, Steady, Go!, p. 78.

Time, July 29, 1996, Bruce Handy, review of King of Comedy, pp. 80-81.

ONLINE

Powell's Books Web site,http://www.powells.com/ (April 21, 2003), Shawn Levy, "What's a Nice Yank Like You Doing Writing about Us Lot?; or, How I Came to Write Ready, Steady, Go! "*