Jane Wyman R. I.P.

Jane Wyman died yesterday at the age of 90. She is perhaps best know for her role in Johnny Belinda, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Lead Actress.

Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield in St. Joseph, Missouri. She attended Lafayette High School there and in her teen years began her singing career on radio under the name "Jane Darnell." She attended the University of Missouri. Upon graduation, she moved to California and worked various jobs before she finally started getting small parts in movies. Her first appearance on screen was in an uncredited part in The Kid From Spain in 1932. By 1939 she finally received her first starring role, in Torchy Plays with Dynamite. She appeared in many films throughout the Forties, among the more notable being The Yearling, The Lost Weekend, and Magic Town. In 1947 she appeared in her Oscar winning role in Johnny Belinda.

She continued to appear in films in the Fifties, starring in such movies as Stage Fright, Magnificent Obsession, Let's Do It Again, and Holiday for Lovers. Increasingly her career turned towards television. She appeared on such series as General Electric Theater, Summer Playhouse, and Lux Playhouse. She was also the host of her own anthology series, Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre. Not only did she host the series, but she appeared in many of its episodes.

By the Sixties her career had slowed down. She appeared in such films as Pollyanna, Bon Voyage!, and How to Commit Marriage. She also guest starred in the shows Checkmate, The Investigators, and Wagon Train. From the Seventies to the Nineties her career was almost entirely spent on the small screen. She guest starred on such shows as The Sixth Sense, The New Doctors, Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, Love Boat, and Charlie's Angels. She played the matriarch of the Channing family on Falcon Crest. Her last appearance on screen was in a guest appearance on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, where she played Dr. Quinn's mother Elizabeth.

Jane Wyman was truly one of the great actresses of the screen in the Twentieth century. She could play any number of roles and be convincing in any of them. It is no surprise that she did well with the role of the deaf and mute Belinda McDonald in Johnny Belinda. Wyman was also a class act. Her marriage to one day President Ronald Reagan naturally elicited questions about the man. But Wyman always refused to say anything. Even though she could made big money doing so, Wyman never kissed and told. She was a truly great actress, and one of the most talented people to ever emerge from the state of Missouri.

The Return of Led Zeppelin?

Once again rumours of a Led Zeppelin reunion are flying. Fortunately, this time it is with good reason. Talking to NME.Com, lead singer Robert Plant said that reported that the remaining members had met to discuss a possible one-off gig. According to NME.Com, a source reported to them that the reunion will be part of a charity concert at London's O2 Arena organised by promoter Harvey Goldsmith.

Unfortunately, an official announcement has not been made yet, so the reunion is probably not an absolute certainty yet. It certainly seems possible, however, given the fact that November 13 will see the release of Mothership, a two disc set featuring tracks chosen by the remaining band members. November 20 will the reissue of the Led Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same on November 20, complete with previously unreleased material. It would be reasonable for the remaining members of the band to reunite, even for simply a one-off gig, in order to promote both Mothership and the reissue of The Song Remains the Same on DVD. The fact that the event would also contribute to charity could be even more justification for Led Zeppelin to reunite. Since their break up following drummer John Bonham's death, the band has only reunited twice--one of which was for Live Aid in 1985.

I certainly hope that Led Zeppelin does reunite, even if it is for a one time only performance. Naturally, I have seen The Song Remains the Same several times. I also watched them, via MTV, perform at Live Aid, in which Phil Collins inadvertently introduced them as "Led Zeppelin (they had wanted to be introduced as 'Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones')." Given that half The Beatles are dead (making a reunion impossible) and The Rolling Stones have never broken up, a Led Zeppelin reunion would be the music event of the decade. I know I'll certainly look forward to it.

The Family Sitcom Cycle from 1968-1972

The 1968-1969 season saw the return of a genre that had been largely absent from the networks for much of the Sixties, that of the family sitcom. I myself have always defined a family sitcom as any sitcom in which the focus is on a family and the humour on the series derives from typical family situations. While some might be tempted to define I Love Lucy as a a family sitcom after the addition of Little Ricky, I would not, for the focus of the series remained on Lucy and Ethel's crazy schemes. By the same toke, while both The Addams Family and The Munsters focused on families, the humour did not derive from typical family situations (indeed, the humour derived from the fact that the Addamases and the Munsters were not typical families).

By 1968 American network television had been dominated by two, interconnected cycles of sitcoms. One cycle was towards what Sherwood Schwartz termed "imaginative comedies" in his book Inside Gilligan's Island. These were comedies which either had fantastic premises (a mortal man married to a witch in Bewitched and astronauts thrown back in time in It's About Time) or regularly employed fantasy elements in their episodes (Schwartz's own Gilligan's Island and The Monkees are examples of this). Another cycle concurrent with the one towards imaginative sitcoms was one towards spoofs or parodies. This cycle somewhat overlapped with the one towards imaginative sitcoms, in that often times the spoofs and parodies utilised fantasy elements in their episodes. The perfect example of this is Get Smart. A parody of such spy dramas as the James Bond movies and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., it naturally featured elements of science fiction in its plots from time to time. Other spoofs and parodies that aired during this era were F Troop, Pistols 'n' Petticoats, and The Hero. Between the many imaginative comedies and spoofs of the era, there was little room for family sitcoms in the mid-Sixties.

Of course, it must be pointed out that family sitcoms were not entirely absent from American prime time in the mid-Sixties. My Three Sons, having debuted in the Fifties ran throughout the decade and into the Seventies. Debuting in 1961, Hazel, based on the newspaper comic strip of the same name, ran until 1966. Please Don't Eat the Daisies, based on the Jean Kerr book and 1960 Doris Day movie of the same name, debuted in 1965. Centring on the Nash family, it also incorporated some of the zaniness of other sitcoms in the period (in one episode the children thought their father was a spy--it included a guest appearance by Robert Vaughn of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.). It ran two seasons. Debuting the following season, Family Affair was a bit of an anachronism. While the family was rather atypical in structure (Uncle Bill, a bachelor played by Brian Keith, had to care for his nephew and nieces), it could have easily aired in the Fifties. The children not only obeyed their Uncle Bill without question, but even placed him on a pedestal. The show also avoided any controversy or anything suggestive, to the point that the deaths of the children's parents was almost never brought up! Perhaps because it offered a very idealised, even unrealistic view of family life during a period of social unrest and societal change, Family Affair ran for five years.

By 1968 the imaginative sitcoms and spoofs had run their course. Many of them had already went off the air, while those that remained were not receiving the ratings they had once had. It is perhaps reasonable, then, that the networks would return to a tried and true genre, the family sitcom. That having been said, the family sitcoms of this era differed in some ways from those of earlier eras. Traditional families in which there was both a father and a mother were exceedingly rare. Most of these shows followed the formula of Bachelor Father and My Three Sons, in which a single parent is raising children on his or her own. Even when there was a father and a mother present on the show, the family might be far from traditional. As most are well aware from the theme song, The Brady Bunch featured a man and a woman who had both been previously married and had children of their own, perhaps making it the first American series to feature a "mixed" family.

As to why single parents predominated the 1968-1971 family sitcoms, I rather suspect that it was the simple that divorce had dramatically increased in the Sixties and, as a result, there were more single parents. Of course, at that time divorce was very nearly a forbidden subject on prime time network television. It is perhaps for that reason that every one of the single parents in this era (and before that, for that matter) were referred to as being widowed. In fact, it is possible that the climbing divorce rate played a role in the creation of The Brady Bunch. The Brady Bunch represented an increasingly new phenomenon, in which previously married parents would remarry, each spouse bringing their own children into the new family. Of course, since divorce was a tabbo topic on network prime time television at the time, Mike and Carol were referred to as having been widowed.

Many of the family sitcoms of the era also differed from previous family sitcoms in that they often combined other genres with that of the family sitcom. An example of this is Nanny and the Professor, in which the nanny to Prof. Everett's children is portrayed as having psychic, even magical abilities. To a degree Nanny and the Professor resembled earlier imaginative sitcoms such as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, although the focus of the series remained on the family and the comedy on the series usually emerged from typical family situations rather than Nanny's abilities. Another family sitcom which combined genres was The Partridge Family. Based very loosely on the career of singing family The Cowsills, The Partridge Family centred on a family who was also a band (every member of the family having a part). The TV show featured a song in every episode, much the same way as The Monkees once did. That having been said, it was a very different show in that the comedy generally emerged from typical family situations (at least, typical for a family band).

Despite the fact that most of the family sitcoms of this era differed in structure from earlier family sitcoms, the majority of them were very much like them in spirit. They were anachronisms much as Family Affair, in which the children were well behaved and the plots were very basic. Despite the fact that most of them dealt with single parents, then, the various series were very much a throwback to the family sitcoms of the early Fifties and the Sixties.

The cycle began in the 1968-1969 season with the emergence of three different family sitcoms. Two of them focused on single mothers. The Doris Day Show underwent many changes in format over the seasons, but in its first season it was firmly a family sitcom. Star of stage and screen Doris Day played Doris Martin, a widow with two sons who lived on a farm with her father Buck (played by Denver Pyle). In format, it owed something to the rural sitcoms of the era (such as The Andy Griffith Show). The other show featuring a single mother to debut that season would be historic. Julia was the first American TV show to feature an African American in the lead role. It centred on Julia Baker (played by Diahann Carroll), a nurse whose husband had died in the Vietnam War. The show was very much in the mould of the light hearted family sitcoms of this and earlier eras. It never dealt with anything suggestive, political, or controversial.

While The Doris Day Show and Julia were somewhat typical family sitcoms, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir had something of a spit personality. Based on the 1947 movie of the same name, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir centred on Carolyn Muir, a widowed mother who rents a house haunted by the ghost of Captain Daniel Gregg. While its premise put it in the same genre as My Favourite Martian and Bewitched, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir could not make up its mind whether it wanted to be a zany imaginative comedy or a more quiet family comedy. Episodes would vary from imaginative plots in which Captain Gregg must face off against a ghost hunter to more family oriented plots such one dealing with Mrs. Muir's son Jonathan and his problems in little league baseball. In many respects, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir could be considered a transitional show, one marking a shift between two cycles (from one towards imaginative comedies to one towards family sitcoms).

Although it produced some well known shows (The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, The Courtship of Eddie's Father), this particular cycle was not a particularly prolific one. It produced three sitcoms in its first season, two more in its second season, and its three more in its third season. By its fourth season, the 1971-1972, the cycle had clearly run its course. That season saw the debut of only one more sitcom. Curiously, it was one which focused on a more or less traditional family. The Jimmy Stewart Show featured the famous actor as an older, small town professor and father of a young son, whose grown up son and family moves in with him and his wife. Even with Jimmy Stewart in the lead role, it only lasted briefly. for one season.

It is difficult to say why this particular cycle towards family sitcoms began. It is clear that the imaginative comedies and spoofs from earlier in the decade had run their course, leaving the networks to fill time slots with something else. The family sitcom was an old, tried and true genre, dating back to the days of radio, making it a safe bet to please viewers. Indeed, the antiquity of the genre may have well have played its role in its revival. The Sixties were a time of social upheaval and dramatic changes in society. The sexual revolution was well underway, as was the Women's Rights movement. The Civil Rights movement had been ongoing since the late Fifties. The Vietnam War was well under way and was proving very unpopular with much of the public. In the Sixties, the news was often filled with anti-war protests and even riots of various sorts. With so much social unrest taking place, many viewers may have wanted to find solace in the idealised world of family sitcoms. Indeed, it is significant that almost all of these family sitcoms eschewed controversy of any kind, even to the point of ignoring current events (even though Julia Baker's husband had died in Vietnam, Julia never made references to the unpopularity of the war or protests against it).

As to why the cycle ended, that reason is easier to pinpoint. On January 12, 1971, a show debuted that would usher in a new era of sitcoms. Rather than ignore what was taking place at the time, All in the Family openly dealt with social problems and political issues, with a protagonist (Archie Bunker) who was conservative, working class, loud mouthed bigot. Although its ratings were nothing to write home about when it debuted, by the summer it was doing very well in the ratings. With its second season it was a bona fide hit. The success of All in the Family would create a cycle towards socially relevant sitcoms that would mark the end of the simple, quiet, idealised family sitcoms that had preceded them. Indeed, the family sitcom would not return until the Eighties, with the success of The Cosby Show. And even then, with but few exceptions (Full House is an example), they would never again be quite so idealised.

Miyoshi Umeki R.I.P.

To film buffs Miyoshi Umeki was probably best known as the first Asian to ever win an Oscar. To the majority of people she might well have been best known for her role as Mrs. Livingston on The Courtship of Eddie's Father. She died in Licking, Missouri at the age of 78 after a long battle with cancer.

Umeki was born on May 8, 1929 in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan. She entered show business as a nightclub singer in Japan using the name Nancy Umeki. She recorded for RCA Victor and also made several musical shorts. Eventually she was noticed by a talent scout who convinced her to move to the United States. In the United States she became a regular on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and recorded songs on the Mercury Records label. In 1957 she appeared in her best known film role, as a naive Japanese woman who marries an American Air Force sergeant (played by Red Buttons). For the part she won the 1957 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first actor of Asian descent ever to do so.

From December 1, 1958 to May 7, 1960 she appeared as Mei Li in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical The Flower Drum Song. She would reprise the part for the 1961 movie based on the musical (like the movie Memoirs of the Geisha, both the play and the movie The Flower Drum Song disregarded ethnicity in casting). Umeki would appear in a few films throughout the Sixties: Cry For Happy, The Horizontal Lieutenant, and A Girl Named Tamiko.

For the most part, however, her career was spent on television. She guest starred on The Donna Reed Show, Rawhide, Mr. Ed, The Virginian, and Burke's Law. She may be best known as housekeeper Mrs. Livingston on the late Sixties/early Seventies TV series The Courtship of Eddie's Father.

Following The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Umeki retired from acting. She ran a business which rented film editing equipment to studios until retiring around five years ago. She moved to Licking to be near her son.

Although her acting roles rarely gave her a chance to prove it, Miyoshi Umeki was an actress of real talent. She certainly deserved her Oscar for Sayonara. She was also a gifted singer, with a gift for American pop standards. Even now she may have been the best known actress of Japanese descent to have performed in the United States. I must say that I am a bit saddened by her passing.

Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon Preempted by Golf

Every year, for literally decades, KOMU has always joined the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon after its 10 o'clock news on Sunday night. I have never known a time when they preempted the telethon for anything, until this Labour Day. This Labour Day my brother and I were watching the telethon when, suddenly at 1:00 PM, KOMU switched to NBC's coverage of some golf tournament. The golf tournament ran from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, taking out nearly the whole part of the telethon on Labour Day afternoon.

To say the least I was shocked. After joining the telethon at 11:00 PM Sunday night, KOMU has never preempted any portion of it. That they did so this year surprised me. And I must admit I was a bit dismayed. Okay, I'll confess I only watch a very small portion of the telethon each year. For the most part the entertainers featured on the telethon do not appeal to my tastes (although they did have Cheap Trick on this year). That having been said I watched the telethon when I was a kid growing up when all we could get were two television stations (we didn't even have an ABC affiliate then), so it is somewhat of a holiday tradition. Besides which, I do enjoy seeing how our local fund raising efforts for the MDA Association are going. Neither of those reasons, however, are why I was a bit dismayed at the MDA Telethon being preempted by golf.

Instead, I can think of a more important reason, and that is the fact that the Jerry Lewis MDA Marathon does raise a good deal of money for the MDA Association. And to me it makes sense that the more time the telethon spends on the air, the more money will be donated to the cause. In preempting the MDA Marathon for golf, then, KOMU effectively reduced the amount of money that could have been donated to the MDA Association. Now I realise that during coverage of the golf tournament KOMU could have still gone to cutaways of the local fund raising efforts--I don't know if they did or not--but I rather suspect that it would not have mattered if they did. I rather suspect that most of the audience simply switched the channel when the golf tournament came on. I know that is what my brother and I did. While I have no doubt that golf is an enjoyable game to play, I have never had any real desire to watch it.

Of course, a less important reason that I was displeased when KOMU preempted the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon is simply that to me it is a tradition. It is to Labour Day what the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is to Thanksgiving or It's a Wonderful Life is to the Yuletide. One simply does not overturn decades of tradition simply for a golf game. Television has so few traditions now, it seems a shame to do away with what few they have had. Indeed, I would not have been happy if they had preempted it for a Cardinals or Rams game, sports I might watch!

I do realise that almost from the beginning other stations have preempted portions of the telethon. Since the Seventies, WGN has preempted it for baseball (either the Chicago Cubs or the White Sox). And I know in the past some CBS affiliates have broken away from coverage of the telethon to air coverage of the U.S. Open during Labour Day afternoon. But I never thought KOMU would be one of those stations which would preempt the Labour Day Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon for anything but the most important news (assassinations, disasters, terrorist attacks, and so on). While I still think KOMU (along with our other mid-Missouri stations) is among the best stations in the United States, I was a bit disappointed in KOMU this Labour Day.

7 Faces of Dr. Lao

"Every time you watch a rainbow and feel wonder in your heart. Every time you pick up a handful of dust, and see not the dust, but a mystery, a marvel, there in your hand. Every time you stop and think, "I'm alive, and being alive is fantastic!" Every time such a thing happens, you're part of the Circus of Dr. Lao." (Dr. Lao, from the film 7 Faces of Dr. Lao

Among the earliest films I ever saw was 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. It was one of my favourite movies as a child (it seemed as if NBC showed every year for several years). And it remains a movie I enjoy very much as an adult.

In fact, in all my years I think the only complaint I have heard about the film is that it departs from its source material, The Circus of Dr. Lao, a good deal. There is some truth to this. While The Circus of Dr. Lao is set in the Depression, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao is set at the turn of the century. While The Circus of Dr. Lao is a rather cynical and even sarcastic work, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao is somewhat lighter in tone. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two is in their structure. The Circus of Dr. Lao has no central plotline, instead being a collection of vignettes interrelated only by the fact that they take place at the circus of Dr. Lao. 7 Faces of Dr. Lao has a primary plotline, along with a romance that does not appear in the book.

That having been said, I am not sure criticisms that the film departs from the book are quite justifiable. Most films based on books depart from those books in some ways. And, from my standpoint, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao is more faithful to The Circus of Dr. Lao than many movies are to their source material. Many of the vignettes that appear in the film play out much as they do in the book. Dialogue from the book is even quote word for word in the movie. And while 7 Faces of Dr. Lao does have a lighter tone than The Circus of Dr. Lao, both works share the theme that the average American would not recognise a miracle if he came face to face with one. The difference is that 7 Faces of Dr. Lao also has a more central them that we should look for the miracles in everyday life.

Indeed, the fact that many of the vignettes from the book made their way into the film, and played out much as they did in the book, makes 7 Faces of Dr. Lao a darker film than many would expect. While the circus of Dr. Lao produces changes in many people in th movie as they come face to face with miracles, like most of the characters in the book, there are others who fail to recognise the miracles they see and don't change at all. And while the movie does not contain the undercurrent of eroticism that the book does, there is one particular scene in the movie (very similar to the same scene from the book) in which there is a strong current of sexuality. Those who have seen the film probably know the one I am talking about, in which Barbara Eden's character becomes, how shall we say, hot and bothered.

Of course, the strongest point in the film are the performances of Tony Randall. Randall played seven different roles in the film, aided by the work of legendary makeup artist William Tuttle (for which he won an honourary Oscar). Under the makeup, Randall is nearly unrecognisable in his various roles, given away only by his voice (and sometimes not even that). George Pal had originally wanted Peter Sellers for the roles, but it is hard to see how anyone, even Sellers, could have done a better job than Randall. The rest of the cast is largely made up of many faces recognisable from television: John Ericson (who played Sam Bolt on Honey West), Noah Beery Jr. (a regular in films and television from the Thirties to the Forties, who late played Jim Rockford's father on The Rockford Files), Lee Patrick (who played Henrietta Topper on Topper), Frank Cady (general store owner Sam Drucker on Petticoat Junction and Green Acres), and Douglas Fowley (Doc Holiday from The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp). Of course, the most recognisable face may well be the exquisite Barbara Eden, a year before she appeared on I Dream of Jeannie. Even in turn of the century clothing, Miss Eden was never sexier than she is in this film

As mentioned earlier, the film is boosted considerably by the makeup work of William Tuttle. It also has some very good special effects for its time, complete with stop motion animation provided by FX legend John Danforth. Over all, the special effects still hold up well today. Sadly, the special effects of the time did not permit the appearance of many of the creatures that appear in the book (there is no chimera or werewolf in the movie).

7 Faces of Dr. Lao is hardly a perfect film. It does have its share of flaws. But for the most part those flaws are very few and will not take away from enjoying the movie for most viewers. While it bombed at the box office upon its debut, I can easily see why it has become a cult film over the years. 7 Faces of Dr. Lao is one of director George Pal's best films. And one of the best works of fantasy to ever be filmed.

The Circus of Dr. Lao

"Science? Science is nothing but classification. Science is just tagging a name to everything." (Dr. Lao)

This weekend I read The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney. Many of you may be familiar with it as the source material for the George Pal movie 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Others might know it as one of the classic fantasy novels of the mid-Twentieth century. Published in 1935, it would have an influences on novels ranging from Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes to Stephen King's Needful Things.

People like me, who saw the movie long before they read the book, will find very much that is familiar in The Circus of Dr. Lao. Like the movie, the book is centred around the visit of Dr. Lao's circus to the small Arizona town of Abalone. The movie also quotes lines of dialogue from the book almost verbatim. The movie played out many of the scenes from the book very similarly as well. That having been said, there are some major differences between The Circus of Dr. Lao and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, enough that many purists reject the movie even if it is a cult film regarded as a classic by some. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two works is that while 7 Faces of Dr. Lao has a linear plot with one central plotline, The Circus of Dr. Lao is essentially a collection of vignettes, linked by Dr. Lao's visit to Abalone, without a central plotline. Another difference is that while 7 Face of Dr. Lao is set in turn of the century America, The Circus of Dr. Lao takes place during the Depression.

The Circus of Dr. Lao is also a much darker work. In fact, it is darker even than many of the novels inspired by it, including Something Wicked This Way Comes and Needful Things. Finney's approach is one of both cynicism and irony. While the townsfolk of Abalone go to the circus wanting to see something remarkable, ultimately many of them cannot accept it when they come face to face with genuine wonders. Finney compounds this in the fact that, with but few exceptions, he does not tell us the consequences of the townspeople's encounters with the circus, as if whatever happened to the townsfolk after Dr. Lao's visit matters very little. There is also a current of eroticism and sexuality running through the book that is surprising for something published in 1935. Although there is absolutely nothing explicit and it is mild by today's standards, it is clear that Finney was writing a fantasy work for adults and not children. It is definitely not The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Finney's cynicism, irony, and sarcasm is in fine display in a "Catalogue" he includes after the end of the book. The Catalogue lists every single character, even those we meet in passing, the various mythological figures mentioned in the book, the various towns, and even "Questions, Contradictions, and Obscurities." The Catalogue reads to some degree like Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, with Finney often providing caustic observations and comments rather than definitions and explanations. In some respects, it is the funniest part of the book.

I do have to add a word of warning here. While The Circus of Dr. Lao is in many respects ahead of its time, it is also a book very much of its time. Occasionally terms which we today consider racist do occur (fortunately nothing as severe as the "N" word). The people of Abalone are very much people of their time, which means that they are very much racist in attitude and suspicious of foreigners as well. Charles Finney pulls no punches in this book, so he felt no need to whitewash his characters so that they became something that people in 1935 were not.

It is easy to see why The Circus of Dr. Lao is considered a classic fantasy book and why it has had such influence. The Circus of Dr. Lao is funny, sarcastic, full of irony, unconventional, and, even after so many similar novels, starkly original. I must confess that I have never read a book quite like it. Anyone who is a fan of the movie, appreciates great fantasy works, or has a slightly off kilter sense of humour will enjoy The Circus of Dr. Lao.