Autobiography

'50/50" was the first feature script I ever wrote. The reason? When it came to writing, there was nothing exceptional about any of my ideas. I'd always aspired to write movies like the very ones that inspired me: "The Apartment," "Harry and Tonto," "Harold and Maude. " Comedies that are not only funny, they're tragic and they're human. But those movies are experiential meditations, and when I was in my early 20s, the only thing I knew to write about was what it's like to be single, horny and terrified of women.

In his new autobiography, "My Happy Days in Hollywood," which he co-wrote with his daughter Lori, Garry Marshall recalls the time in his life when he wasn't very happy - producing the 1976-83 ABC comedy series "Laverne & Shirley. " "It was a tough show," recalled the gregarious Marshall with his trademark Bronx accent, in his memorabilia-filled office at his Falcon Theatre in Burbank. It was the opposite of the carefree set of "Happy Days," the ABC series about the Cunningham family and leather-jacket clad Fonzie (Henry Winkler)

Autobiography of Mark Twain Volume 1 Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, et al. University of California Press: 738 pp., $34.95 Having created a quintessentially American brand of humor and style of literature, Mark Twain (1835-1910) can now add to his myriad accomplishments the title of America's first blogger. No matter that the "Autobiography of Mark Twain," edited by a team led by Harriet Elinor Smith, weighs in at more than 5,000 pages. Volume One, covering the period from 1870 to 1906, and clocking in at a bit over 700 pages (including 200 pages of notes)

Jim Abbott made a lasting impression not only on Angels fans, but also those who celebrate a validation of the human spirit. Born without a right hand, Abbott won a gold medal with the 1988 U.S. Olympic baseball team, was a first-round draft pick, won 54 games for the Angels in 1989-92 and 1995-96 stints and threw a no-hitter for the New York Yankees in 1993. Abbott, who is now 44 and resides in Southern California, and former Times and current Yahoo Sports baseball writer Tim Brown have produced an autobiography of the pitcher's journey: "Imperfect: An Improbable Life," due in bookstores on April 3. Brown noted that beyond Abbott's accomplishments, "why he's choosing to tell his story" is appetizing.

Crafted by Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujic? (with phenomenal editing and sound design by Dana Bunescu) from about 1,000 hours of footage covering 25 years, "The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu" comprises state visits, speeches and holidays by the former despot, providing a startling sense of dictatorial monomania. The film opens and closes with rough video of the hasty trial before Ceausescu and his wife were executed in 1989, and even there, he is defiant and self-regarding to the very end. With its hefty running time, the film builds an unexpected emotional resonance, though never exactly sympathy, as over the years Ceausescu seems to drift further and further into his fantasy vision of himself, making the film like a loop that repeats endlessly in his head.

"I don't suppose I contributed much when I was with Francis Coppola," said veteran movie maker Michael Powell, "even though I was called senior director in residence, whatever that meant. But what I did do was tell him not to go ahead with two of the films he eventually did make." Now 81, the pre-eminent stylist of the British film industry smiles a lot--never more than when he talks about his eight-month stint at Coppola's Zoetrope Studios in 1981.

Of American writers of this century, Erskine Caldwell can lay an excellent claim to being one of the most prolific and widely read, as well as influential in his prime. His 55 volumes of fiction and nonfiction, many of them about the rural South, have sold 80 million copies in 40 languages. One of them, "God's Little Acre," a story of a family's improbable search for gold, has alone sold more than 8 million copies, chiefly in paperback.

Jerry West is going to hate his autobiography. I will repeat that, for any among you who wish to call a timeout for a further review of the previous sentence. Jerry West is going to hate his autobiography. He wrote it, or cowrote it. He must be proud of finishing it. All or most of it is undoubtedly true. Yet a day is going to come, if it hasn't already, when the subject of "West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life" is going to rue having put his entire life on public display this way, wishing that he had instead flipped the whole manuscript onto a grill and set fire to it. Because, you see, apart from his being an unquestionably successful, uncommonly admired human being, Jerry West, that tall and talented straight-shooter of West Virginia, the West Coast and thousands of basketball points in between, is a man traveling with a lot of demons.

Sequels, as anyone schooled in Hollywood knows, are difficult to pull off. The dilemma ? how much of the first should find its way into the next? ? has confounded many creative minds in this town, so it was probably too much to hope that Michael Caine could beat the odds, though he's made a career of doing just that. "The Elephant to Hollywood," a follow-up to the actor's popular 1992 autobiography, comes lumbering along as more addendum than memoir, more rehash than new dish, but served up with enough warmth and charm that you may be fine with leftovers.

Sugar Ray Leonard alleges in his upcoming autobiography that he was sexually abused as a teenager in the 1970s by an unnamed "prominent Olympic boxing coach," a stunning claim by the former U.S. Olympic and world champion fighter who became one of the most popular fighters in the sport's history. "I'm baffled by all of this coming out now, I had no idea," said veteran fight promoter Bob Arum, who promoted Leonard's victory over Marvin Hagler in 1987. "That's horrible. He never told me, but my experience with Ray is that he's an honest guy. " Leonard's book, "The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring," depicts significant family trauma, including his parents' domestic problems, his own cocaine and alcohol use and becoming a parent as a teenager.

This is the season of celebrity for the Navy SEALs. The takedown of Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan thrust the institutionally secretive SEALs into the modern-media spotlight. Soon the SEALs seemed to become America's favorite warriors: silent, deadly, mysterious. There have been innumerable news stories about SEAL Team Six, which killed Bin Laden. Also, a Newsweek cover story ("Navy SEALs: Obama's Secret Army") and a new movie,"Act of Valor,"featuring real SEALs.

"The Fry Chronicles -- An Autobiography" Stephen Fry The Overlook Press: 438 pp, $29.95 Actor, writer and British humor icon Stephen Fry would like you to know that he picks his nose and pees in the shower. He also can't stand the sight of his naked body. And in case you were wondering, he's a rotten dancer, a spaz on the athletic field and none too confident in the sack either. It takes a mighty big ego to flaunt these sorts of imperfections, and that's the paradox that makes "The Fry Chronicles" such a chatty delight.

The Man Within My Head Pico Iyer Alfred A. Knopf: 256 pp., $25.95 Writers don't always get the critics and biographers they deserve, but since his death in 1991 Graham Greene has been on the whole pretty lucky. Norman Sherry completed his three-volume biography, a magnificent monument. National Book Award winner Shirley Hazzard wrote a sharply exquisite memoir of how she and her husband, the biographer Francis Steegmuller, got to know Greene on the isle of Capri, where Greene lived some months of each year during the 1950s and 1960s.

The records that brothers Ira and Charlie Louvin made in the 1950s and early '60s are some of the most revered and influential in the history of country music. The songs, many of them written by the Alabama-born siblings, have been widely recorded by succeeding generations of singers; their distinctive harmonies on songs such as "I Don't Believe You've Met My Baby," "When I Stop Dreaming," "If I Could Only Win Your Love," "Every Time You Leave" and "Don't Laugh" created a template that strongly affected groups from the Everly Brothers to the Beatles and the Byrds, to the Judds and forward to Lady Antebellum.

So let me get this straight: Former NBA great Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal, better known as Shaq (or Diesel, or the Big Aristotle) is really a stuttering showman who fears embarrassing himself, so he overprepares, develops a second career as a rapper, buys a 64,000-square-foot dream house and feuds mercilessly with his costars but really, truly credits his no-nonsense grandma and heavy-fisted soldier stepdad for giving him the values he needed to succeed?...

'50/50" was the first feature script I ever wrote. The reason? When it came to writing, there was nothing exceptional about any of my ideas. I'd always aspired to write movies like the very ones that inspired me: "The Apartment," "Harry and Tonto," "Harold and Maude. " Comedies that are not only funny, they're tragic and they're human. But those movies are experiential meditations, and when I was in my early 20s, the only thing I knew to write about was what it's like to be single, horny and terrified of women.

"Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain" Hal Holbrook Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 468 pp., $30 Actor Hal Holbrook, still etching craggy characterizations at 86, recollects his difficult beginnings in "Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain. " This is his version of "Act One," Moss Hart's irreplaceable theatrical autobiography tracing his climb from a hardscrabble boyhood in the Bronx to his first intoxicating whiff of Broadway success. But Holbrook's memoir, written as though he felt the need to offer a clerical hand for his entry in the Book of Life, is too ploddingly encyclopedic to become another classic of the genre.

Sometimes he stared up out of his earthen prison and cursed U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno for not sending help. Sometimes he wrote his autobiography in his mind. And sometimes he just wanted to die. "I begged my captors to take me out and shoot me and leave me on the road where my family could find my body," Harvey Weinstein recalled.

"Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain" Hal Holbrook Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 468 pp., $30 Actor Hal Holbrook, still etching craggy characterizations at 86, recollects his difficult beginnings in "Harold: The Boy Who Became Mark Twain. " This is his version of "Act One," Moss Hart's irreplaceable theatrical autobiography tracing his climb from a hardscrabble boyhood in the Bronx to his first intoxicating whiff of Broadway success. But Holbrook's memoir, written as though he felt the need to offer a clerical hand for his entry in the Book of Life, is too ploddingly encyclopedic to become another classic of the genre.

Jerry West is going to hate his autobiography. I will repeat that, for any among you who wish to call a timeout for a further review of the previous sentence. Jerry West is going to hate his autobiography. He wrote it, or cowrote it. He must be proud of finishing it. All or most of it is undoubtedly true. Yet a day is going to come, if it hasn't already, when the subject of "West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life" is going to rue having put his entire life on public display this way, wishing that he had instead flipped the whole manuscript onto a grill and set fire to it. Because, you see, apart from his being an unquestionably successful, uncommonly admired human being, Jerry West, that tall and talented straight-shooter of West Virginia, the West Coast and thousands of basketball points in between, is a man traveling with a lot of demons.