Book Review by Samuel L. Leiter . . .
Casual notes on show-biz books, memoirs and studies, dust gatherers, and hot off the presses.
Al Pacino. Sonny Boy. New York: Penguin Press, 2024. 270pp.
One of our most iconic actors, Al Pacino, soon to turn 85, has finally written a memoir. It’s called Sonny Boy, and it’s reason to celebrate!
I first saw Al Pacino in 1969, when he was a fiery young actor burning up the stage in his Broadway debut as a drug addict named Bickham in Don Petersen’s Does A Tiger Wear a Necktie? A flop, it ran for only nine preview and 39 regular performances, but he won a Tony for his volatile performance.
He didn’t come out of nowhere, though, having been around for several years, working Off-Off (including the Living Theatre and Caffe Cino) and Off Broadway, and doing repertory in Boston. Friends of mine had worked with him, but—apart from having heard about his breakthrough performance Off Broadway in Israel Horovitz’s The Indian Wants the Bronx (1968)—I knew little about Al Pacino.
Then, attending Tiger with a group of students in a theatre party arranged by Prof. Glenn Loney, my colleague at Brooklyn College, I saw a performance of such sizzling intensity I can still recall it, like a blow to the solar plexus, well over half a century later. I had never seen anything quite so powerful onstage. Moreover, this dynamic young actor agreed to speak to us after the show, although he couldn’t stay long because his girlfriend (who would have been Jill Clayburgh) was waiting. But he was sweet, charming, and as quintessentially New York as one could wish. I recognized at once that this was the actor I wish I could have been had I not turned from performing to teaching.
Pacino is only three months older than me, his heritage is Roman Catholic Italian, and he grew up on the mean streets of the Bronx. My background is Eastern European Jewish, and my streets, a bit less mean, were in Brooklyn. He was admitted to Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts but quit when he was 16, followed by random jobs both in the theatre and in various menial capacities before he was able to make a living as an actor. My education and career path, although focused on theater, were more conventional. But through his performances, Pacino became an indelible part of the late 20th and early 21st century zeitgeist.
He belongs to that astonishing pantheon of American stars who came into prominence in the 1970s, a partial list of whom might include Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Harvey Keitel, Martin Sheen, Jeff Bridges, John Travolta, Christopher Walken, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert De Niro. Only a small number of these, however, Pacino among them, consistently shared their gifts with the theater. And, of course, he benefitted enormously from the great directors making their mark in those days, from Sidney Pollack and Sidney Lumet to Francis Ford Coppola, among so many others.
Pacino admits to not being a natural writer; he probably drove his editors crazy working on his book, but it captures just that roughhewn, honest, insightful quality you might have expected if you’ve ever seen him interviewed or giving a talk. It’s of the earth, earthy, but often achieves a kind of everyman’s lyrical beauty, especially when describing the heartbeat of the big city. It’s filled with love and admiration for the many people in his life who cared for and nourished his unique talents, whether it be his wonderful costars and directors, or people like agent Martin Bregman and acting coach Charlie Laughton (not the British actor). Pacino describes one person after the other by announcing his “love” for them and how great they are.
Sonny Boy, the book’s title, was Pacino’s boyhood nickname, taken from the schmaltzy Al Jolson recording of that name (also significant in my own upbringing). His tale pulls you into his life growing up in a Bronx tenement, raised by a beautiful mother, who died too young, and whose memory haunts his pages. Divorced from Pacino’s father—a distant figure in his life—when the boy was just a toddler, she raised her son with the help of Al’s grandparents, whose presence Al sensitively recalls. His risky but exuberant life as a juvenile troublemaker on the Bronx’s streets and rooftops, with close buddies who all died of drug overdoses, is recalled with sorrow and affection; he himself was a heavy abuser—especially of booze—although he managed to survive, eventually straightening himself out. He speaks highly of the help he received from psychiatric treatment. Often, his book feels like therapeutic outpourings.
Sonny Boy covers the actor’s professional career, its highs and lows, but is not what could be considered a comprehensive autobiography. His output was prolific and many important contributions are necessarily overlooked or glossed over (like his appearance in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui). But if you’re looking for behind-the-scene confidences about such movies as the Godfather series, Dog Day Afternoon, Scarface, and Sea of Love, or plays like The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Glengarry Glen Ross, Richard III,or The Merchant of Venice, he delivers golden nuggets, with many shining anecdotes.
Like too many similar works, though, Sonny Boy, although well illustrated, lacks both an index (a reviewer’s lament) and a chronology of its subject’s work, which means one still must go to sources like Wikipedia to fill in the gaps. But when Pacino talks about his choices to do certain films and plays, or what happened in the production process, he provides direct, accessible context that buffs will relish. A worshipful student of Lee Strasberg’s at the Actors Studio, he lives for acting like it’s the air he breathes, and enjoys talking about it; he’s reluctant, however, to theorize about any “method” he uses, or to presume that he can teach anyone to act.
Pacino doesn’t go too deeply into the weeds about his private life, but he does cover his various health issues and his romantic relationships with a select series of actresses. The latter are always discussed with respect, and we get charming insights into such remarkable women as Jill Clayburgh, Kathleen Quinlan, Marthe Keller, Diane Keaton, and others. His relationship with the unmentioned Noor Alfallah, who was 30 when she had the then 83-old actor’s fourth child, is vague; reportedly, their partnership is over. Pacino is not inclined to dwell on snarky gossip, and usually refrains from naming those with whom he came into conflict.
If you want to know how a poor boy—impressively self-educated, it might be noted—from the Bronx felt when overwhelmed by fame, or how such a ragamuffin handled a career that lavished millions of dollars on him while he had little idea of how that money was being handled by his advisors, you’ll find much to ponder inSonny Boy. His casual attitude toward his countless awards and nominations—Tonys, Oscars, Emmys, and the rest—is documented, as is his discomfort among elite circles among whom he feels a definite insecurity.
Pacino doesn’t go into detail about the huge sums he was earning in his heyday, but when he does begin to discuss his wealth, it’s mostly to reveal how much he lost because of his own carelessness combined with managerial malfeasance. Reading his account of his vanished millions demonstrates how easy it is for actors with multimillion dollar earnings to be so financially reckless that they can easily go broke, forcing them to choose questionable projects to regain financial viability. Pacino luckily managed to bounce back, not only through several hit film roles, but also by doing important TV work, making personal appearances for college audiences (which he earlier had done gratis), and even doing commercials.
Even if you’re an avid fan who’s been following the life and career of Alfredo James Pacino for years, you’ll find much to savor hearing his extraordinary story in his own distinctive words. You may even feel like warbling, à la Jolson, “You’ve no way of knowing, there’s no way of showing, what you mean to me Sonny Boy.”
Next up: Nancy Olson Livingstone, Front Row Seat: An Intimate Look at Broadway, Hollywood, and the Age of Glamour.