The Legendary Mizners

By Alva Johnston

Book Overview

The real-life adventures of Addison and Wilson Mizner, the subjects of a new Stephen Sondheim musical Gold! Alva Johnston's joint biography of Addison and Wilson Mizner is a delightful portrait of two of the early twentieth century's most clever and infamous rascals. Born in the 1870s in California, the brothers quickly rose to prominence during the various booms of the 1920s. Addison, the elder, was a self-made architect and real-estate dealer who designed many of the fantastic homes of the fantastically rich in Palm Beach. He could "age" a house and its furnishings to any period his client desired--and would pay for. Wilson's adventures were even more daring and varied, and his quick wit was legendary. In addition to getting rich on the Alaskan gold rush, he had careers as a singer, playwright, prizefight promoter, con man, real-estate salesman, and shady hotel owner. Perhaps his most famous quip was one he delivered on being told that President Coolidge had died: "How do they know?"

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374519285
• ISBN13: 9780374519285
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.9" x 5.6"

Customer Reviews

Past is Prologue

I think that before anyone moves to Florida, or does business in Florida, they ought to read this book. If you've spent any time there this book will be very funny. The Art Basel enthusiasm which has made Miami hot in recent years has a distant echo in Mizner's clients for whom he created charming amalgams of various Spanish styles. At least they got a big house out of it, whereas what those who purchased at Art Basel acquired is open to some question. This book clearly shows that a certain kind of classy hucksterism is endemic to the Florida experience of art, or architecture. But it does it by telling a very amusing and in the end, sad story. Appropriately enough Boca now has Mizner Park, which is naturally is not a park at all, but a shopping mall. The Boca Museum is in there too, and the many works-on-paper contained therein, as well as drinking-fountains with their own dedicatory plaques from benefactors, show that Mizner's spirit of genial elitism continues.