Josh: My Up and Down, In and Out Life

by Joshua Logan

Josh, My Up and Down, in and Out Joshua Josh, My Up and Down, in and Out Delacorte FIRST First Edition, 2nd Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Delacorte Press, 1976. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is very good. Dust jacket is very good with tears to back cover and spine and shelf/edgewear. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 336872 Biography & Letters We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Memoir, Autobiography

408 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1976

Reviews

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guy's a total genius and led a life packed with adventure and excitement! Loved his stories of Marlon Brando and Truman Capote, Peter Fonda.... His prose sparkles and fizzes. He must have been a real firecracker in person! Check out this description of the first night tryouts of a new Rodgers and Hammerstein show:

“I sought refuge in the lobby with Oscar [Hammerstein], praying for it to be over. We could tell the final curtain had come down because of the humiliating sound of a few scattered handclaps. Soon the doors were flung open and the audience started emerging like imprisoned miners. Among them was my old friend, Arthur Schwartz, in town with another show. He caught my eye, which gave him and me a shock, and blurted out, ‘Oh, hello, Josh, I just hated it.’ And then he stumbled away in the dark."

Like imprisoned miners!! Ha!

I also discovered tons of early 20th c. plays that sound really good (like George Kelly’s _The Torch-Bearers_ about amateur theatricals falling flat)

[Russell Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1975, I purchased Josh: My Up and Down, In and Out Life--Joshua Logan’s autobiography. I read it at the time, and I remember I enjoyed it. So, I decided to read it again. Those who follow my reviews know I’m a musical theater nerd, and Logan was a celebrated director/producer/writer of musicals (he shared the Pulitzer Prize for South Pacific,) and he rarely had a play, musical, or movie that flopped. I was once again enthralled by his stories of his shows, wishing he hadn’t glossed over a few and ended his book without telling of most of his film projects, although they had taken place by the time he wrote the book. He goes into depth in telling of many of his projects, and his interaction with theater greats like Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mary Martin, Helen Hayes, and others are priceless to anyone who loves theater history. What is most remarkable about the book is Logan’s candid revelations about his bouts with mental illness. In a time when anyone who had bipolar disease (then labeled manic-depressive) was considered severely mentally disabled and branded with a stigma that was hard to overcome, Logan, in his book, relates two times he got his manic episodes under control and continued his career, achieving greatness each time. At the end of the book, lest we are led to believe the disease is an easy one to overcome, he thanks the scientists who finally discovered lithium treatment, a drug now used to keep the disease at bay. This book is remarkable, and a quick internet search told me it is very close to the truth. (Autobiographists often “color” their own memories.) He has some most revealing tales about the “gods” of American Musical Theater, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein 2nd. But later, we also learn that perhaps his dealings with them were colored by deep-seated father issues. Logan’s book is rewarding, and we were blessed to have him for his eighty years on this earth. If for no other masterpiece other than South Pacific, we also can thank him for Mr. Roberts, Annie Get Your Gun, Sayonara, Fanny, and a host of other shows and movies.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up Josh Logan's memoir as a part of my research on the play and later film Mister Roberts. Logan helped the book author, Tom Heggen, transform the book into a successful stage production on Broadway and then helped bring the film to a successful completion almost ten years later. Born in Louisiana in 1908, he remarkably discovered the theatre while attending Culver Military Academy and then pursued that interest whole heartedly at Princeton University (both on and off campus!). Although he remained active for another ten years after publication of this book, Logan recounts his experiences on both stage and in films in Hollywood as an actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, and film director across more than 40 years. Friends with Henry Fonda and James Stewart (among others) since the Princeton years, he discusses their friendships (both the ups and downs) and his interactions, friendships, falling outs, etc. with a range of talented people from both the stage and film worlds including his period in Moscow before World War II when he observed the lessons of Stanislavski. Most well known for his work in musical theatre, he also worked on straight dramas, comedies, and other genres - including supporting USO 'jeep shows' that went right up to the front lines in Europe. While not a 'tell all' narrative, he writes openly and frankly about various episodes of his life including his recurring battles with manic-depression. An interesting and entertaining glimpse, with many if not all of the warts, of life in the entertainment business in New York, Hollywood, and on the road.

[Marta E C R · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been sitting on our shelves for many years. My husband was given it as a stage crew award in his senior year of high school in 1976. Now, 49 years later, as I attempt to rid my house of at least some acquisitions, I picked it up and read it aloud to him. It’s full of so many names and situations we didn’t know that I’m surprised we enjoyed it as much as we did. The most interesting parts, to me, were the two “nervous breakdowns” he had (he had bipolar affective disorder before lithium was available for treatment, and a wacky doctor who actually was revealed toward the end to suffer from the same illness himself). It was surprising to me that Logan left out of this book the last 20 years of his career, though his accomplishments during that time were listed. Anyway, now we’ve read it and are ready to give it away.

[MH · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of the sort of self-aggrandizement that you'd expect from a show biz memoir, where you're never sure how much to believe (Logan tells us that his IQ is 167, that Marlene Dietrich tried to sleep with him, and that he deserves credit for almost every good idea in Picnic, South Pacific and Mister Roberts), but a lot of it feels pretty honest, especially when he writes about his complicated combination of respect, love, envy and anger towards some of the men he worked with (Richard Rodgers and Henry Fonda especially) and his two terrible nervous breakdowns. He's a good writer, and he tells his stories in a lively way - at one point Maxwell Anderson gives him advice on how to structure a play, and it wasn't until I finished that I realized he's structured his memoir in the exact same way. Very dramatic, and very clever.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nostalgia trip of sorts, though I was not old enough (or even born for half of it) to recall the years Logan was at his heights in popularity and influence. This is a pleasurable read about a comparatively innocent time for entertainment. It was fascinating to read of the early years of Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart, the era of their beginnings as celebrities. By the time I was seeing them in old movies, THEY were already old themselves.

[Geert Verbanck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What a book! At least if you are curious about broadway legends Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Irving Berlin, Henry Fonda... or about broadway hits like Annie Get Your Gun, Mister Roberts and South Pacific. But it’s also one of the best books about writing and the structure of (screen)plays, full with behind the scenes stories of how the adding or removal of one scene changed a flop into a hit. AND with an hilarious bit with Stanislavski (’Forget about my books. I was so young back then’). I absolutely recommend it!