This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood

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Overview

“[Jack Valenti] lived his life as a gentleman and patriot....He might have been the last of the breed.” —New York Times

An Influential and Varied Life

The list of notable names—people that Jack Valenti knew and with whom he worked—is astonishing. Aside from LBJ, there were Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Robert McNamara, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Julia Roberts, Cary Grant, Lew Wasserman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jack ...

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This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood

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More About This Book

Overview

“[Jack Valenti] lived his life as a gentleman and patriot....He might have been the last of the breed.” —New York Times

An Influential and Varied Life

The list of notable names—people that Jack Valenti knew and with whom he worked—is astonishing. Aside from LBJ, there were Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Robert McNamara, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Julia Roberts, Cary Grant, Lew Wasserman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Warren Beatty, and Bill Clinton, to begin a very long list. This Time, This Place is a candid, unforgettable memoir of the life of an extraordinary key political player and Hollywood rainmaker. It is also a sweeping and important historical record, written by a brilliantly successful man who helped shape politics and entertainment in the second half of the twentieth century, and who always found himself at the center of any storm.

“A wonderful story.” —International Herald Tribune

“[Valenti] offers a rousing account of his WWII bombing missions, JFK’s assassination (he was in the motorcade), and his three-year stint as one of LBJ’s closest aides.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Only the silver screen can really do justice to a man who is bigger than life, moved easily among the stars of politics and Hollywood, and always kept his feet on the ground. An Oscar-deserving lifetime achievement, if ever there was one.”
—Bill Moyers

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Editorial Reviews

Jeanine Basinger
His most enduring legacy from those years was his establishment in 1968 of the motion picture rating system, for which he fought ferociously and which he defended without apology. In the preface to his book Mr. Valenti warns the reader that he is writing for his grandchildren. In other words, he’s going to censor himself. Just as he kept a lid on fear under combat stress, a lid on President Johnson (no doubt a lid the size of Kansas) and a lid on the leaders of Hollywood, Mr. Valenti keeps his memoir firmly under control. He tells only what he wants to tell, disappearing behind platitudes or quotations from Emerson, Faulkner and others when camouflage is needed.
— The New York Times
Library Journal
From LBJ's right-hand man to chair and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Onetime special assistant to LBJ and head of the Motion Picture Association of America pens his memoirs, definitely rated G. It should come as no surprise that when somebody like Valenti (Protect and Defend, 1992, etc.) finally gets around to writing the story of his life, he not only dishes no dirt, but eliminates every hint of grime. As he tells it in a narrative that hops willy-nilly through time, life is peachy, filled well-nigh to bursting with wonderful opportunities, lucky coincidences, helpful friends and memorable dinner parties. Things started out peachy growing up among Greek and Italian immigrants on an unpaved street in Houston and just kept getting better, almost without fail. Sure, serving as a B-25 pilot during WWII had its tough moments, but the GI Bill got him into Harvard Business School, which eventually helped him set up an ad agency back in Houston, so that worked out OK. It was a bummer for this well-connected Lone Star Democrat to have helped arrange JFK's Texas visit in November 1963, but hours after the assassination he was on Air Force One as a special assistant to the new president, so there's a silver lining there too. Valenti accords readers a fascinating and rightfully adoring glimpse of volcanic, passionate LBJ, but his time at the White House ended in 1966, when he was wooed by Hollywood to head up the MPAA. (He finally stepped down in 2004.) It would be nasty to conclude that Valenti comes off here as nothing more than a company man with a toothy Cheshire grin, but it's hard to find anything much more positive to say about a memoir more intent on name-dropping and ticking off plaudits to buddies and bosses than in giving a reckoning of Valenti the man. Abook-length Special Achievement Oscar acceptance speech.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780307346650
  • Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 10/28/2008
  • Edition description: Reprint
  • Pages: 480
  • Sales rank: 1,035,156
  • Product dimensions: 5.10 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 1.20 (d)

Meet the Author

JACK VALENTI wrote numerous essays for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Reader’s Digest, Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, Cox newspapers, and other publications. He was also the author of four other books of nonfiction and one novel.
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Table of Contents

Preface xi

Part I Rewind

Chapter 1 The Longest Day 3

Chapter 2 Lyndon Baines Johnson 33

Chapter 3 Alamo Street 73

Chapter 4 War 107

Chapter 5 The Peace Years Begin 135

Part II The White House

Chapter 6 The Great Society 163

Chapter 7 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 191

Chapter 8 Crossing the Rubicon 219

Chapter 9 Back to the Hill Country 243

Part III Hollywood

Chapter 10 Lew Wasserman: The Hollywood Curtain Opens 265

Chapter 11 Settling in to Run the Show 297

Chapter 12 Icons of the Silver Screen 327

Chapter 13 MPAA Abroad and at Home 363

Chapter 14 The Death of Lew Wasserman and Hollywood's Generational Leadership Change 413

Part IV Racing to the Future

Chapter 15 Stepping Down and Summing Up 431

Acknowledgments 449

Index 451

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