Smith, having developed a self-image that cast him as a coward, opines that one’s best life is lived by facing up to the things that hold us back. “I watched my father’s negative emotions seize control of his ample intellect and cause him over and over again to destroy beautiful parts of our family,” he writes, good reason for him to sublimate negativity in the drive to get what he wanted-money, at first, and lots of it, which got him in trouble with the IRS in the early 1990s. For Smith, all of life is a challenge in which one’s feelings are largely immaterial.
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The mantra-which Jones intoned 50-odd times during the two hours it took for the Hollywood suits to draw up a contract for the hit comedy series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air-is telling, for hidden within this memoir lies a powerful self-help book. Smith was propelled into stardom thanks to the ministrations of Quincy Jones, who arranged an audition in the middle of his own birthday party, bellowing “No paralysis through analysis!” when Smith begged for time to prepare.
The author’s imagination took him from a job bagging ice in Philadelphia to initial success as a partner in the Grammy-winning rap act DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. “My imagination is my gift, and when it merges with my work ethic, I can make money rain from the heavens.” So writes Smith, whose imagination is indeed a thing of wonder-a means of coping with fear, an abusive father with the heart of a drill instructor, and all manner of inner yearnings. One of Hollywood’s biggest stars delivers a memoir of success won through endless, relentless work and self-reckoning. Klam’s persistent curiosity pays off in a lively portrait of her “weird family.”Īn entertaining, rambling journey into the past. Instead, she lived for more than 30 years in an insane asylum in St. Nor did the sisters’ mother die when they were young. Marcella, for example, who apparently became a successful financier, never had an affair with J.P.
Often, she checked in with one of her relatives, whose stories sometimes yielded useful nuggets and sometimes assumptions that Klam discovered were preposterous. Louis Southampton, where the sisters endowed a local library and Romania, where she found a congenial, helpful guide. With no training in genealogy or history, the author depended on the generosity of librarians and archivists, whose correspondence she includes. Her breezy family history recounts whatever she could find about the sisters’ lives as well as the surprises and frustrations she encountered during her research. When Klam heard the story from various family members, enough contradictions emerged that she decided to investigate. Most astoundingly, Marcella became a millionaire, donating generously to Brandeis University. They moved to New York City, lived in one house together, and finally relocated to Southampton, on Long Island. Thereafter, the sisters became inseparable.
Their father promised to return to get them when he failed to appear, Marcella managed to leave the orphanage and go to work to pay for her siblings’ release. Louis but soon were put into an orphanage when their mother died in childbirth. According to family lore, they had come to America from Romania in the early 1900s and settled with their parents in St. Growing up, Klam heard tantalizing stories about Selma, Malvina, Marcella, and Ruth Morris, her first cousins twice removed, who led astonishing lives. Unraveling the thread of a tangled family history.
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