Ghost Light: A Memoir |  | Author: Frank Rich
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 1447882
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0679452990
Dewey Decimal Number: 792.092
EAN: 9780679452997
ASIN: 0679452990
Publication Date: October 17, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
When Frank Rich was an anxious, unhappy kid marooned in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the fact his parents were divorced was discussed "only in the whisper that Grandma Ross used when talking about being Jewish or having cancer." Like so many others who feel painfully different, Frank found refuge in the theater, particularly the classic musicals of Broadway's golden age. After an enchanted trip to see Bells Are Ringing in 1956 when he was 7, Rich writes, "I was now destined to trace my childhood almost exclusively through an accelerating progression of plays, good and bad, that would captivate and kidnap me." Many of the tickets came from his stepfather, who was sometimes generous and fun but often frighteningly abusive. Once again, the theater helped him cope: when Frank saw Gypsy, its portrait of troubled family relations "made me feel less lonely." Similarly, when chronicling his attendance at such legendary shows as Bye Bye Birdie, Fiddler on the Roof, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, among many others, Rich concentrates on his responses rather than the productions themselves. What interests him most here is the theater's power to shape lives. Paying tribute to the men who both shared and cultivated his passion for the theater, Rich draws touching portraits of Scott Kirkpatrick, manager of Washington's National Theatre, who hired young Frank as a ticket taker, and of Clayton Coots, a company manager who befriended him. Those who admired (or excoriated) Rich's work as drama critic for The New York Times will find Ghost Light an intriguing look at the personal history that lies behind his critical judgments. --Wendy Smith
Product Description
There is a superstition that if an emptied theater is ever left completely dark, a ghost will take up residence. To prevent this, a single "ghost light" is left burning at center stage after the audience and all of the actors and musicians have gone home. Frank Rich's eloquent and moving boyhood memoir reveals how theater itself became a ghost light and a beacon of security for a child finding his way in a tumultuous world.
Rich grew up in the small-townish Washington, D.C., of the 1950s and early '60s, a place where conformity seemed the key to happiness for a young boy who always felt different. When Rich was seven years old, his parents separated--at a time when divorce was still tantamount to scandal--and thereafter he and his younger sister were labeled "children from a broken home." Bouncing from school to school and increasingly lonely, Rich became terrified of the dark and the uncertainty of his future. But there was one thing in his life that made him sublimely happy: the Broadway theater.
Rich's parents were avid theatergoers, and in happier times they would listen to the brand-new recordings of South Pacific, Damn Yankees, and The Pajama Game over and over in their living room. When his mother's remarriage brought about turbulent changes, Rich took refuge in these same records, re-creating the shows in his imagination, scene by scene. He started collecting Playbills, studied fanatically the theater listings in The New York Times and Variety, and cut out ads to create his own miniature marquees. He never imagined that one day he would be the Times's chief theater critic.
Eventually Rich found a second home at Wash-ington's National Theatre, where as a teenager he was a ticket-taker and was introduced not only to the backstage magic he had dreamed of for so long but to a real-life cast of charismatic and eccentric players who would become his mentors and friends. With humor and eloquence, Rich tells the triumphant story of how the aspirations of a stagestruck young boy became a lifeline, propelling him toward the itinerant family of theater, whose romantic denizens welcomed him into the colorful fringes of Broadway during its last glamorous era.
Every once in a while, a grand spectacle comes along that introduces its audiences to characters and scenes that will resound in their memories long after the curtain has gone down. Ghost Light, Frank Rich's beautifully crafted childhood memoir, is just such an event.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 22
 Ghost Light Shimmers! November 1, 2000
Eric Price (Bloomington, IN)
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
Fifty years ago, legendary playwright and director Moss Hart published an authobiography entitled Act One that instantly became a classic and held its place among the greatest theatrical memoirs ever written. This month, former New York Times Chief Drama Critic Frank Rich published his own story, full of passion, literacy, and wonder, that at once pays homage to Act One and transcends it. Rich has crafted the definitive stagestruck story, and there is no more significant book on growing up in the theatre. Rich's boyhood becomes a spellbinding play, a story that is joyous, crushing, funny, moving, and indelible. Anyone who cares for the American theatre, who has ever been shaken by the pulse of an orchestra begining an overture, who can find in himself even a glimmer of the passion bursting from Rich on every page, must read this book.
Magic Nights, Magic Lights January 18, 2001
HeyJudy (East Hampton, NY USA)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
GHOST LIGHT was so moving that my mother, who read my copy after me, became almost hysterical about the treatment that Frank Rich, his sister and step-siblings, received at the hands of their parents and step-parents. Since all of this happened a long time ago, in the dark ages before child abuse was frowned upon, it is a credit to author Rich's writing skills that he made his report so real that it could elicit such a reaction forty years after the events described. Of course, all of us who are New Yorkers, all of us who have spent the last twenty or so years reading Mr. Rich in the NEW YORK TIMES, hardly can be surprised by his exquisite prose.Still, this book was fascinating in revealing the evolution of genius, a child who took refuge from the trauma of a broken home (both physically and emotionally) in an obsession with the legitimate theatre. The childish obsession ended with Rich's becoming the chief drama critic of the TIMES for the better part of two decades. Tolstoy is credited with saying that happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is different. GHOST LIGHT proves that theory; it is a story unlike any other. Lovers of both theatre and fine writing will be well-served by this memoir.
A thoroughly engrossing memoir April 17, 2001
James V. O'Connor (Lake Forest, IL United States)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I heard this book on audio tape in my car and found myself longing to go to work or do an errand so that I could get to the next chapter of Frank Rich's fabulous memoir.He remembered so many details of his life and presented them in such a candid way, that he endeared himelf to me. We listen to his feelings intenetly because he doesn't hide a thing. His joys and fears are all there and we experience them with him. I felt like I really got to watch him grow up, and I could feel his passion for the theatre grow along the way. I greatly identified with Mr. Rich because I also came from a divorced family with a very difficult stepfather. My only regret with this book is that it ended! I can't wait for the sequel.
Life begins in the theatre May 6, 2007
Lyric (New Jersey)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a beautifully written, sensitive memoir of a painful childhood and coming of age. Anyone who has ever listened to the original cast album of a Broadway show and been transported in their mind to a theatre will find a kindred spirit in Frank Rich. Rich grew up in a home which had an abundance of material goods but also contained an abundance of pain. His love of the theatre and some lovely people he met along the way helped him to endure until he went away to college and his adult life.
Mr. Rich was for many years the very astute theatre critic for the New York Times. He now writes incisive OpEd pieces for the Times. This memoir is very courageous in light of the private pain that it reveals which helped to mold this public man.
An interesting personal history February 15, 2010
Mary Karey (Lakeland, FL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really enjoy Frank Rich's columns. This book tells you all about his childhood which was quite sad, in an upper-middle class sort of way.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 22
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