Research Catalog

Why me? : an autobiography

Title
Why me? : an autobiography / by William Gargan.
Author
Gargan, William, 1905-1979
Publication
Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Company, Inc., ©1969.

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Details

Description
311 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits; 22 cm
Summary
This book is about how one life was violently ended, and how another one began. William Gargan was an American film, television, and radio actor. After growing up in Brooklyn, he worked as a store investigator/collector, a private detective, and a bootlegger during prohibition before a visit to the theatre where older brother Edward was employed sent him in a different direction. Gargan was best known for his role as private detective Martin Kane in the 1949-52 radio-television series "Martin Kane, Private Eye", sponsored by U.S. Tobacco. But his acting career came to an end in 1958 when he developed throat cancer, and in 1960 doctors removed his larynx. Speaking through an artificial voice box, Gargan became an activist and spokesman for the American Cancer Society, warning others about the dangers of smoking.
Subject
  • Gargan, William, 1905-1979
  • Gargan, William, 1905-1979
  • 1900-1999
  • Actors > United States > Biography
  • Motion picture actors and actresses > United States > 20th century
  • Antismoking movement > United States
  • Laryngeal Neoplasms
  • Motion picture actors and actresses
  • Antismoking movement
  • Actors
  • United States
Genre/Form
  • Popular Work
  • Autobiography
  • Autobiographies.
  • Biographies.
Contents
"You've got cancer of the larynx" -- Pretty flowers -- Sand in our sandwiches -- I never was a big ginger ale man -- Yellow Charleston, Shorty Hines, and Pinkerton finks -- I am fired...again -- Mr. Bob. Heap big coconuts -- Or, how to handle a Lionel Barrymore -- Why don't we get married? -- We dance on ground glass -- The bridegroom thaws out -- Where's Red? -- We all make these schlemeil pictures -- Dad's in the back room, dying -- Beaten out by a spittoon -- This is the army??? -- "God called. Pick out a contract." -- That's the third disaster today -- Stop whispering -- Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking -- "Practice, man, practice!" -- One man's mouth against another man's ear -- I hit the road -- Through sleet and snow and phlebitis -- Epilogue : why 'Not' me?
LCCN
68010310
OCLC
  • ocm00000794
  • 794
  • SCSB-578891
Owning Institutions
Princeton University Library