Steve Martin: The Magic Years

Rating:
Summary: A poor book on a good subject
Review: First, let me start off by saying that I am a HUGE Steve Martin fan and that I had very high hopes for this book. I had never seen a bio on Steve Martin before, and when I saw that this was more about how he got started with comedy and magic, I was really excited.

But half-way through the book, I found myself bored and confused. For example, the author starts off one chapter by saying that Steve Martin makes a lot of money (he seems almost obsessed with the subject of money and how much of it Mr. Martin makes) and then a few paragraphs later, says how "Steve doesn't like to discuss money". Then only a few paragraphs later talks about how much it costs Steve Martin to live each year ($... million he says)...then says how private Steve Martin is about his money. All of these contradictions within a few paragraphs of each other.

Also, we all realize that the author and Steve Martin were good friends growing up...we don't need to hear about it every other paragraph. It's as if the author feels like he needs to prove it to us every page...like we don't belive him or something. This man has something to prove and we as readers have to pay for it. I got the feeling that the author had been telling these stories at parties for the past 20 years and no one belived that he knew Steve Martin so to get back at them, he wrote a book and put a big picture of the two of them on the back cover.

All this being said, there are some good stories, and if you can get past the author, the subject matter is very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: priceless
Review: I have never before read a biography by someone who actually knew the celebrity personally as a young boy. I found the book to be very special. Evidently the accounts are true and accurate. I've read some other reviews here that were negative, but on the cover of the book, Steve Martin was quoted as saying "Finally a book about me, I loved this book and fell deeply in love with the central character!" I am a lawyer and I can assure you that no celebrity would allow this quote on a book if it weren't actually his words..

The other thing about the book that is intriguing, is that the author has pursued a career in entertaining and failed to make any notoriety, yet he has a wonderful family and success in ways Steve Martin has not discovered. I thought the dicotomy was priceless. I loved the book. The author seems honest and the stories are "great!"

If you love Steve Martin, this insight is priceless.

Rating:
Summary: A truly Wonderful Story!
Review: I loved this book, thank you!

Rating:
Summary: Orange County Kid Makes the Big Time!
Review: Morris Walker's book, 'Steve Martin: The Magic Years' is all that youth is supposed to be. The important of friendships... of mentors... of people who see in us what others overlook.

The story of Martin & Walker's boyhood friendship takes us back to a time when Disneyland was young, and Orange County still grew oranges.

The stories are priceless, and filled with a charm that isn't often found today. This is the tale of two kids; lifelong friends who will always remember the 'Magic Years.'

And it's funny.

Rating:
Summary: 1956 Disneyland Cast Member - STEVE MARTIN !
Review: Morris Walker's book, 'Steve Martin: The Magic Years' reminds us of all that youth is supposed to be. The importance of friends... of mentors... of people who see in us what others overlook. The story of Martin & Walker's boyhood friendship takes us back to a time when Disneyland was young, and Orange County still grew oranges. The stories are priceless, and filled with a charm that isn't often found today. This is the tale of two kids; lifelong friends who will always remember the 'Magic Years.' And it's funny.

Here, you'll read of the early days when Martin began working at Disneyland in 1956 at only 10 years of age (followed the following summer by his friend Morris Walker); first selling souvenir park guides & balloons, and later working at the Disneyland magic shops run by proprietor James A. Hume (aka. "The Great Aldini"!).

This is a warm remembrance of the OC "back in the day"; and of a thousand stories that made growing up there something special indeed. This could easily be the basis for a feature film. The summer camp episodes alone are classic storytelling at its best. Move over, "Stand by Me"... "The Magic Years" are back!

Steve Martin's biography tells of the extraordinary career of one of Hollywood's most celebrated artists. From Disneyland and working with the Golden Horseshoe's Wally Boag; to his early television assignments with the Smothers Brothers, Sonny and Cher, John Denver, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson; to film roles in The Lonely Guy, Three Amigos, Roxanne; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Father of the Bride; and even serving as host of the 75th Annual Academy Awards Oscar telecast. Steve Martin is a magician, musician, comedian, actor, author, and entertainer extraordinaire.

We are pleased to present the SaturdaysToys.com "Award of Merit" to Morris Walker for this heartwarming story, "Steve Martin - The Magic Years."

Rating:
Summary: Different but Great
Review: Steve Martin The Magic Years is not the very best book I have ever read but I read a book a week. It is certainly is an honest and apparently very accurate book and very entertaining. I read biographies almost exclusively so I didn't get this book because it's about Steve Martin. I just like to read biographies.

The book tracks Martin's life from the day he was born and details incredibly funny stories of the author and Martin growing up together. As a reader you feel you are right there with them. But it also relates dozens of stories about Martin that nobody would have ever known. His trials on the road, things about his sex life, and deep private things that were not bad but surprising. Some of the editing is not great but that's not really the author's fault I blame the publisher for that. The writing itself is very engaging and very different from other celebrity biographies.

I think it is a fantastic tribute to Martin and evidently he enjoyed it or he wouldn't have written the quote on the dust jacket "Finally, a book about me, I loved this book and fell deeply in love with the central character" Steve Martin.

Upon finishing the book I found myself wanting more, and I gained a deep respect for the author who spent many years traveling with his family band doing uplifting shows for children. The fact that he spent twenty two years working on the book also is amazing.

What I don't understand is why his superstar friend didn't help him publish the book a long time ago. But I guess that's between them.

I would think that anybody that wants to know what Martin is like deep down and personal would not want to miss this book.

I've only seen a handful of Martin's movies but now I want to see more because I feel like I know him.

It's a great book. I really enjoyed it.

Tracy Bowman

Rating:
Summary: Pathetic. Leech-Like
Review: This book is not really a biography of Steve Martin. As a fan of Martin, I had high hopes for The Magic Years, but they were soon cruelly dashed. The author, Morris Walker, was Steve Martin's closest childhood friend (something that Walker insists on pointing out every other sentence), and the book he has written is supposed to chronicle this period in Steve Martin's life, when Martin was growing up, and before he became a huge star, a period that Martin himself has described as the happiest in his life. But there is no apparent system to the narrative, it is just a loose collection of confused anecdotes, coupled with a bewildering jumping back and forth in time, so that you have no idea what really happened where and when, or why. This is more a book about Walker himself growing up together with Steve Martin, but even from that point of view, it is still incoherent. Add to that the fact that Walker consistently, and very annoyingly, sounds like a spaced-out hippie from the 60s, and you will come to understand why this is not a pleasant read. And he keeps gushing about God and love on every other page, which doesn't help either.
Martin and Walker were, as Walker tells it, the kings of comedy in all the schools they went to, the celebrated class clowns that consistently put on hilarious shows for all the other students. But to me, it only sounded as if they had been extremely childish and immature. And if you read between the lines, you begin to see that they weren't quite as funny or popular as Walker tries to make it appear. And then, Steve Martin matured and moved on to have an amazing career, while Morris Walker didn't.
There were a few passages and anecdotes that were of particular interest to me, for example, the episode when the two protagonists were lured into participating in a Pentecostal church service. That one was worth reading, and there were a couple others. Also of interest was the little information Walker provides about Steve Martin's religious beliefs. Here are two quotes: "I say Steve could have been anything he wanted, except a preacher. Although Steve had the stage ability to be a great preacher, I believe that is one occupation where he might not have found success. He would have felt hypocritical in that vocation. As a teenager and a young man, he could have been described most accurately as an agnostic - although, as a small boy he was always prim and proper in his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. He looked good but his mind was elsewhere. As a teenager, Steve rarely went to church and was never involved in organized religion of his own volition. He was more like a mystic: very private, intense, and introspective" (p. 40). And, "Steve admitted that he has always been secretive about his religious views, but it was never fair to assume that he was an atheist. Agnostic would be a better choice of words. Despite his great attendance record in Sunday school, Steve never had much use for organized religions" (p. 224). To my mind, it is very telling that the intellectual agnostic Steve Martin has had a great career, whereas the obviously deeply religious (although certainly not in any evangelical or fundamentalist sense) Morris Walker has seemingly always been down on his luck. There is a lesson to be learned there.
Walker also makes a point of repeatedly pointing out how "blessed" he himself is with his loving family, and how sad it is that Steve Martin has never had any luck with his relationships with women. But, given the choice, I think there are very few people in the world who would choose to be Morris Walker rather than being Steve Martin.
I will admit that my respect and admiration for Steve Martin only deepened after having read this book. His obvious intelligence, his admirable intellectual pursuits of art and literature, his love of writing, and his pure decency as a truly good human being (the rarest type of human there is), these things are all clearly there to be seen, despite the way this book was written. Steve Martin has never abused his power and influence, he has, for example, never been a "womanizer," and he was even celibate for a year. It is rare for an entertainer to consistently be able to take the long-term view, to be able to look at the big picture, in stead of falling into the pit of instant gratification, like all the other lowly human animals. And it is even rarer for an entertainer to have no scandals in his life (Tom Hanks, another truly great individual and a friend of Steve's, comes to mind, and that's pretty much it).
To conclude, this is strictly for fans of Steve Martin, and many of you will be disappointed. Not disappointed in Steve Martin, but in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Steve Martin MUST be more interesting than this...
Review: Though the stories are occasionally interesting, they seem only to scratch the surface of what kind of person Steve Martin is. If you want to know more about Steve Martin, you will certainly learn some things in this book.

What frustrated me most about this book is that it was not well edited. It's hard for me to enjoy what this book is about when I am constantly finding spelling errors throughout.

Additionally, though the anecdotes are sometimes mildly amusing, the loose connections drawn between Steve's past and some of the scenes from his movies don't seem justified. For example, the tale of the author accidentally firing a shotgun with Steve Martin in the room could hardly be connected to Steve Martin's use of a gun in "Three Amigos!".

If this is the only biography of Steve Martin that will ever be written, then I guess I have to take what I can get. But in the meantime I will be on the lookout for a better written, more in-depth biography.

Rating:
Summary: Not for everyone
Review: You will believe that Morris Walker was best buddies with Steve Martin for six years in school a long time ago. You will also agree that while Mr. Martin has made some very smart career decisions and been quite lucky, Mr. Walker has had the opposite experience. This is, at essence, an extremely honest and open book about two show business careers with wildly differing trajectories.

The world is better that this book was written. The author is a gifted storyteller with a couple of dozen good tales to tell. His loving outlook on life will charm many people. It made me nostalgic for my own high school days, about 12 years after these two.

Ultimately, however, I felt more uncomfortable than charmed, because Steve Martin has so clearly moved on from his high school days and comes across as patient and tolerant of his old friend's two-decade obsession with writing this book. I don't need to know about the author's sister's hookup with Steve. Too much sharing for my taste.