Strange As It Seems: The Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler

by Chip Jacobs

Overview

Paralyzed from the neck down, Gordon Zahler rose from his deathbed to a fast-talking, Hollywood entrepreneur/idea man who traveled the world, lived hard, married, fantasized about water-skiing and chased his dreams to create one of the largest independent postproduction shops in Hollywood. While this is Jacobs' story about his coming to grips with his deformed uncle, himself and his mother, the silent victim to Gordon's recklessness, Strange As It Seems is also a tip of the hat to the man who turned his back on the notion of I can't.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942600244
Publisher:	Rare Bird Books
Publication date:	01/12/2016
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Chip Jacobs is the author of five other books: Strange As It Seems: The Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler; The Vicodin Thieves: Biopysing L.A.’s Grifters, Gloryhounds and Goliaths; The Ascension of Jerry: Murder, Hitmen and the Making of L.A. Muckraker Jerry Schneiderman; Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles (with William J. Kelly); and the privately issued Black Wednesday Boys. Jacobs’ reporting has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg View, the Daily News of Los Angeles, and LA Weekly, among other outlets. Jacobs, the recipient of numerous writing commendations, lives in Southern California. Visit chipjacobs.com to learn more.

Table of Contents

Note to Readers xiii

Part I Reel

Prologue: The Flaming Signal 3

Chapter 1 The Local Bad Boy 11

Chapter 2 The Lash 23

Chapter 3 The Late Corpse 33

Chapter 4 Men with Steel Faces 41

Chapter 5 The Great Swindle 49

Chapter 6 Happiness C.O.D. 59

Chapter 7 Dark Skies 69

Chapter 8 Silly Oddities 83

Chapter 9 Scenes Around Hollywood 91

Chapter 10 Roaring Timber 99

Chapter 11 The Big Bluff 109

Chapter 12 Here Comes Flash 121

Part II Roll

Chapter 13 The Little Big Top 133

Chapter 14 Strange As It Seems 145

Chapter 15 The Fine Art of Kissing 157

Chapter 16 What's Your Racket? 171

Chapter 17 Ladies Crave Excitement 185

Chapter 18 Pasadena's Rose Parade 191

Chapter 19 Code of the Fearless 197

Chapter 20 The Whispering Shadow 209

Chapter 21 Law of the Ranger 221

Chapter 22 King of the Wild 233

Chapter 23 Million Dollar Baby 247

Part III Redeem

Chapter 24 The Vanishing Legion 263

Chapter 25 Cavalcade of the West 277

Chapter 26 Kid 'N' Africa 285

Chapter 27 Tars and Stripes 293

Chapter 28 The Lost Jungle 305

Chapter 29 The Lost Jungle 313

Chapter 30 Gordon of Ghost City 321

Chapter 31 Secrets of Hollywood 329

Epilogue: The Speed Reporter 335

Acknowledgements 341

Editorial Reviews

03/07/2016
Journalist Jacobs (The People's Republic of Chemicals) is an exceptional storyteller, and his lively look at the extraordinary career of Gordon Zahler (1926–1975) is a peculiar page-turner. Zahler, the author's uncle, achieved success on the margins of show business despite a spinal injury that left him using a wheelchair from age 14. Jacobs uses his investigative skills (while giving himself artistic license to invent dialogue and streamline the narrative) to craft an imaginative biography about this unusual figure, who carved out a distinct place in post-WWII Hollywood by repurposing the music of his father, Lee Zahler, a prolific film composer. Along the way, readers meet a colorful cast of characters, including animator Walter Lantz, actor Burt Lancaster, and fringe film directors Ed Wood Jr. and Samuel Fuller. Zahler's life was filled with difficulties, but Jacob refuses to frame his cantankerous uncle as a tragic figure and cleverly uses his story to expound on the larger history of his family. This fast-paced account of a life lived to its fullest is a triumphant tribute to Zahler as well as those who helped him through good times and bad. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

“This amazing book is all heart…Chip Jacobs blends the skills of an investigative journalist, the glitz of Hollywood, and the smooth storytelling of fiction to weave a profile of his larger-than-life uncle that will leave you crying, laughing and gasping in wonder, often on the same page. Bravo!”—Denise Hamilton, Bestselling author of Los Angeles Noir and Savage Garden

“Family memoirs are rife with grandiose tales of triumph over adversity, and while it would be easy to dismiss Jacobs’ portrait of his unorthodox uncle as another such unvarnished encomium, his professional background as an award-winning investigative journalist for the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, and CNN prevents this from being so. With both dramatic flair and detached fairness, Jacobs eloquently reveals the soul of a charismatic and courageous character. Had Gordon’s career taken place on the screen instead of behind it, he would have been the Christopher Reeve of his day.”—Carol Haggas

“Readers looking for a glamorous Hollywood story or a tale of gentle uplift should be warned: This is not that book. Instead, Chip Jacobs has written something far better—a witty, clear-eyed account of a charming and utterly impossible man whose ferocious willpower transformed his personal nightmare into a lifelong Technicolor hallucination.”—A. J. Langguth, Bestselling author of Patriots, Our Vietnam, and others

“FDR’s body and Sammy Glick’s brain? No, but close—and better. Mon Oncle d’Amerique has nothing on Chip Jacobs’ Mon Oncle d’Hollywood, the picaresque, quadriplegic Gordon, who is at least as good a story as anything he helped to put on film: welfare case to Oscar-caliber movies, co-starring Ed Wood and Pope John XXIII, with snappy dialogue and auto crack-ups, lions and tiger rugs and TV bears, one Serene Highness and many spectacular lownesses. Gordon is a premiere citizen of Hollywood As She is Spoken—unsentimental but believing utterly in the art of the possible.”—Patt Morrison, award-winning Los Angeles Times columnist and author

“Though not about a celebrity or newsmaker, this life being told by Chip Jacobs is an extraordinary one in the history of Hollywood. The raw courage and almost unbelievable stamina of Gordon Zahler—abetted by both love and luck—turns this irresistible biography into a page turner.”—William Robert Faith, author of Bob Hope: A Life In Comedy

“Chip Jacobs captures the turbulent ups, downs, successes and failures of a life well lived in a biography which is vivid, exciting, and thoroughly engrossing.”—Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher