Charmed Lives: A Family Romance

Informative with many personal details.

Michael Korda's style puts you right in the room where the events he writes about take place. He gives you enough detail to bring it to life, but also keeps the narrative moving. And he has excellent laugh out loud humour. A most enjoyable read.

Michael Korda wrote two autobiographical books—Charmed Lives, first, published in 1979, and Another Life, published in 1999. Since I have read the books concurrently, I’m treating my review of them as one. You can, of course, read the books chronologically with Korda’s early life recounted in Charmed Lives and his later experiences in America detailed in Another Life. I chose to read them together, and it was a grand experience.Why read them at all, you want to know. Well, Michael Korda, apart from being the son and nephew of some extraordinarily important cinematic professionals (his uncle Alex an ostentatious movie mogul and noteworthy director, his uncle Zoli a formidable director as well, and his father Vincent an award winning art director) and disregarding the fact that he was the editor in chief of Simon and Schuster for over 40 years and is himself a well-known and respected author, the real reason to read them is that he is one of the best story tellers around with exemplary descriptive powers and a sense of humor and satire that make pooh-poohing the pomposities delicious fun while retaining a sympathy for the imperfections of humanity.To observe, to be aware, to create a world, and to write with a certain elegant flair that is fluid and fascinating—this is the mark of an excellent writer, which Mr. Korda certainly is in the telling of his own story in both these books. As his first title hints at, you will be charmed by his extraordinary life and his remarkable style. You will also be rewarded with incisive and yet compassionate descriptions of the friends, enemies, lovers, and acquaintances he encounters on this journey through his growth from a boy in the capitals and grand towns of Europe and the back lots of Hollywood studios into adulthood as an editor in the frantic publishing house cauldrons of New York City.The famous, the infamous, the longing-to-be famous, and the once famous all inhabit these two books in glorious vignettes. Lawrence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Carol Reed, Orson Welles, and Charles Laughton, for example, mosey through the first book. And Jacqueline Susann, Harold Robbins, Graham Greene, and Irving Wallace, traipse through the second one.In the first book, there are descriptions of the predicaments around the making of such classic movies as 1949’s The Third Man, produced by Alex Korda with art direction by Vincent Korda staring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, 1933’s The Private Life of Henry VIII with Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester directed by Alex Korda with sets by Vincent Korda, and 1941’s That Hamilton Woman staring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, produced and directed by Alex with production designed by Vincent.But the first book is primarily about Alexander Korda, the impresario of the British film industry after the Second World War. He was a true dynamo of a movie mogul in Britain—the embodiment of the saying, “living well is the best revenge.” He lived in a suite at Claridge’s in London for several years and owned a collection of paintings at his death that included Renoirs and Cézannes. From poor circumstances in his early life in Hungary, he wound up through extraordinary effort and focused intelligence to live large, work hard, and make some great movies in the process, all the while being the Napoleon of the Korda family and a well-respected peer in British society. Although he directed over a hundred films himself, he preferred in his later years to produce and finance them. His nephew’s tribute to him in this book delves into the complexity and the contradictions of a larger-than-life financial genius and cinema titan who happened to be his beloved uncle.Near the end of Charmed Lives, Korda recounts his naïvely-conceived “adventure” to the war-torn Budapest of October 1956 with some poignant anecdotes, including a few with a shadowy British figure ostensibly called Major Temple and one with the doomed prime minister of Hungary Imre Nagy who tried to fight the Russians but sadly lost.At the end of the first book, Michael Korda comes to grips with his own life at age 23 and what he must do and presents a simple yet profound analysis of what made his uncle Alex a great and generous man. It is a lovely tribute to an admired relative, someone who transformed a nephew’s life in many meaningful ways.In the second book, his characterization of Charles D. Bluhdorn, for example, the blustery emperor of the late 1960s conglomerate known as Gulf + Western and owner at the time of Simon & Schuster, is a priceless example of entertaining satire and an engaging treatise on human psychology. His first encounter with Tennessee Williams is a drop-jaw, laugh riot you will not believe. And his subsequent experience with probably the greatest American playwright at a tribute dinner to him is astonishing as is the description of the playwright’s sad decline in his later years.Luminaries from the publishing world inhabit this book. Dick Snyder (President, CEO, and Chairman of Simon & Schuster), Robert Gottlieb (Editor in Chief of Simon & Schuster), Bennett Cerf (Founder and Publisher of Random House), Harold Evans (President and Publisher of Random House) and Joni Evans (President and Publisher at Simon & Schuster) are some of the executives (and their positions at the time) described in Korda’s second autobiography. His long-standing relationship with Irving “Swifty” Lazar, the uber-talent-agent, is chronicled.The successes (The Love Machine by Jacqueline Suzann) and the failures (Shardik by Richard Adams who also wrote the hugely successful Watership Down) of his time at Simon & Schuster as editor in chief are wittily depicted. Indeed, he edited the memoirs of Charles De Gaulle and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, just to name a few political powerhouses. Speaking of politics, there is a story about a dinner Korda attended at Nixon’s house in Saddle River, New Jersey, with a delegation of apparatchiks from China that is quintessentially Nixonian (self-aggrandizing and delusional) and supremely ironic, satiric, and sad. As he left Nixon’s house and the weird experience that night, he writes: “I left feeling like Dorothy leaving Oz.” Not to be considered one-sided politically, there is an anecdote about Jimmy Carter that is hilarious. And there are sympathetic accounts of frustrating but genial meetings with Ronald Reagan soon after his presidency regarding his memoirs.Toward the end, there is a section on Mafia books that is priceless, especially Joe Bonanno’s (a Mafia don, head of his own family, and labeled by the tabloids Joe “Bananas”) toast to a table of “associates” and Korda and his wife at the start of a meal at an Italian restaurant close to Bonanno’s home in Tucson. Right after that section, there is one on police books, most notably one called Commissioner by Patrick Murphy, Mayor John Lindsay’s police commissioner, that caused a stir in the NYPD because Murphy had the audacity to demand that police be investigated for wrongdoing if there was evidence that there was, and his trip to Detroit during the riots of 1967 to discuss a book with the Detroit police commissioner. At the very end of the tome, there is a tale involving the infamous Claus von Bulow, Andrea Reynolds (his mistress), “Swifty” Lazar, Joni Evans, and Korda that is worth the price of the book.In both books, you will discover wisdom and petulance and everything in between in the great and not-so-great narrated by the author who is a keen observer of the humanity surging around him with all its glories and failings wrapped up in ever-striving egos. Both autobiographies are literary treasures to marvel at, read greedily, and vainly hope that they never end.

Among my favorite childhood movies was Alexander Korda's The Four Feathers, and so it was a thrill to look inside the famous family that produced that epic and so many other iconic films. Michael Korda, Alex's nephew, has written many memorable books and after I read his novel, Queenie, based on his aunt, movie actress Merle Oberon, I was left wanting more of this Hungarian family.The book never bogs down and it was a pleasure to experience, via Michael's memories, the turbulence of making movies through the decades.

A beautifully written memoir of growing up a Korda, by one of its most illustrious members, Michael Korda the former editor-in-chief of Simon and Schuster. It is also the story of the early days of British cinema, as well as of cinema in Hungary, Austria and to a lesser degree Hollywood But, first and foremost this is a celebration of a fascinating family, whose patriarch Alexander Korda lived an extraordinary life in a style few could equal. He was a brilliant, generous, larger than life character, devoted to his two brothers, and nephew, all of whom became very successful as well. His first two marriages to beautiful actresses were quite dramatic, but did not end well - although his first wife managed to save his life (a fact she never let him forget)! Michael Korda has written an enormously entertaining book, lively and full of humor. It is a loving tribute to his beloved uncle who had such an important influence on his life, and on the lives of so many around him.