![]() They talked to neighbors and watched for fireflies as “the sounds of radios, voices, distant laughter would float on the air.” Young Roger founded the Roger Ebert Stamp Company, published a neighborhood newspaper and read voraciously, developing a passion for the novels of Thomas Wolfe.Īlso emerging was a passion for journalism. On summer nights, the Eberts sipped homemade lemonade on the front porch of a two-bedroom white stucco house with green awnings. His parents sometimes quarreled over money, but mostly Roger’s account of the family’s life in Urbana suggests the Midwestern comfort of a Booth Tarkington short story. ![]() Tales from childhood, interviews with film stars and directors, funny and touching stories about colleagues, and evocative essays about trips unspool before the reader in a series of loosely organized, often beautifully written essays crafted by a witty, clear-eyed yet romantic raconteur.Įbert begins with his childhood, a time when he did not, as one might think, escape an unhappy home at the movies. Five cartoons, a newsreel, a Batman, Superman or Rocketman serial and then a double bill - a Lash LaRue western followed by a Bowery Boys or Abbott and Costello comedy - flashed before him.Įbert’s memoir, “ Life Itself,” resembles one of those movie marathons. ![]() ![]() In the 1950s, long before he won a Pulitzer Prize for his film criticism, Roger Ebert spent many a Saturday afternoon sipping root beer and munching jawbreakers, Necco Wafers and licorice at the Princess Theater in his home town of Urbana, Ill. ![]()
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