Through the curious life of Dick Kallman—a real-life celebrity striver, poisonously charming actor, and eventual murder victim—the unforgiving worlds of postwar showbiz and down-low gay sexuality are thrown into stark relief in this “page-turning blast” (James Ellroy, author of Widespread Panic)
"Engrossing…[A] keen portrait of 1980s New York…a pensive, often gorgeous depiction of���gay life in Manhattan before Stonewall and life on the cusp of the AIDS epidemic." —The Washington Post
Dick Kallman was an up-and-coming actor in the fifties and sixties—until he wasn’t. A costar on Broadway, a member of Lucille Ball’s historic Desilu workshop, and finally a primetime TV actor, Dick had hustled to get his big break. But just as soon as his star began to rise, his roles began to dry up and he faded from the spotlight, his name out of tabloids and newspapers until his sensational murder in 1980.
Through the eyes of his occasional pianist and longtime acquaintance Matt Liannetto, a tenderhearted but wry observer often on the fringes of Broadway’s big moments, Kallman’s life and death come into appallingly sharp focus. The actor’s yearslong, unrequited love for a fellow performer brings out a competitive, vindictive edge in him. Whenever a new door opens, Kallman rushes unwittingly to close it. Even as he walks over other people, he can never get out of his own way.
As Matt pores over the life of this handsome could-have-been, Up With the Sun re-creates the brassy, sometimes brutal world that shaped Kallman, capturing his collisions with not only Lucille Ball, but an array of stars from Sophie Tucker to Judy Garland and Johnny Carson. Part crime story, part showbiz history, and part love story, this is a crackling novel about personal demons and dangerously suppressed passions that spans thirty years of gay life—the whole tumultuous era from the Kinsey Report through Stonewall and, finally, AIDS.
Genre: Mystery
"Engrossing…[A] keen portrait of 1980s New York…a pensive, often gorgeous depiction of���gay life in Manhattan before Stonewall and life on the cusp of the AIDS epidemic." —The Washington Post
Dick Kallman was an up-and-coming actor in the fifties and sixties—until he wasn’t. A costar on Broadway, a member of Lucille Ball’s historic Desilu workshop, and finally a primetime TV actor, Dick had hustled to get his big break. But just as soon as his star began to rise, his roles began to dry up and he faded from the spotlight, his name out of tabloids and newspapers until his sensational murder in 1980.
Through the eyes of his occasional pianist and longtime acquaintance Matt Liannetto, a tenderhearted but wry observer often on the fringes of Broadway’s big moments, Kallman’s life and death come into appallingly sharp focus. The actor’s yearslong, unrequited love for a fellow performer brings out a competitive, vindictive edge in him. Whenever a new door opens, Kallman rushes unwittingly to close it. Even as he walks over other people, he can never get out of his own way.
As Matt pores over the life of this handsome could-have-been, Up With the Sun re-creates the brassy, sometimes brutal world that shaped Kallman, capturing his collisions with not only Lucille Ball, but an array of stars from Sophie Tucker to Judy Garland and Johnny Carson. Part crime story, part showbiz history, and part love story, this is a crackling novel about personal demons and dangerously suppressed passions that spans thirty years of gay life—the whole tumultuous era from the Kinsey Report through Stonewall and, finally, AIDS.
Genre: Mystery
Praise for this book
"Thomas Mallon has been America's premier historical novelist for a decade. Up With the Sun cinches the accolade. It's New York City in the aching 80's. The murder of show-biz bottom feeder/monster Dick Kallman and his male lover ramifies throughout the turmoil of the decade--in a stunning hybrid of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and frontline reports from a beleaguered gay demimonde. This book packs period pizzazz and heartbreaking intimacy. And, as always with Mallon--it's a page-turning blast." - James Ellroy
"In this funny, vicious tale of ambition and moral corrosion, Thomas Mallon turns his rapier intelligence and seismographic sense of the workings of power to the worlds of Hollywood and Broadway. Among imperishable legends and declining stars, he chronicles desperate competition and half-open secrets, the longing for the next new thing and the lure of the past. Up With the Sun is a novel as stark as a Greek drama and as delicious as gossip." - Garth Greenwell
"In this funny, vicious tale of ambition and moral corrosion, Thomas Mallon turns his rapier intelligence and seismographic sense of the workings of power to the worlds of Hollywood and Broadway. Among imperishable legends and declining stars, he chronicles desperate competition and half-open secrets, the longing for the next new thing and the lure of the past. Up With the Sun is a novel as stark as a Greek drama and as delicious as gossip." - Garth Greenwell
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