The fine documentary Turn Every Page profiles two American literary stars and their collaboration of over fifty years, which is, amazingly, still ongoing. Robert Caro, America’s top biographer and political writer, is 87-years-old. Robert Gottlieb, the most important American publisher, is 90. These are important guys, and their story is irresistible.
Turn Every Page is directed by Gottlieb’s daughter Lizzie Gottlieb – the only person who could get the cooperation of these two quirky masters – and she tells a great story.
The two began their collaboration with Caro’s 1972 The Power Broker, which has become de rigeur among observers of and participants in America’s politics and government. The two then launched the greatest political biography in history, Caro’s four-volume revelation of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Caro is defined by his meticulousness. To understand the background that molded LBJ, Caro moved his family for three years to the Texas Hill Country. Turn Every Page contains plenty of nuggets for Robert Caro geeks like me:
- The moment when Caro and Gottlieb decided to abandon a Fiorello La Guardia bio for the LBJ project.
- The space over Caro’s refrigerator, into which is crammed, a few pages at a time, carbon copes of his entire oeuvre.
- How a change in the health of LBJ’s younger brother, Sam Houston Johnson, opened up the reality of LBJ’s childhood family for the first time.
- How Caro’s incredible doggedness led him to find a man thought long dead, who handed Caro the smoking gun evidence for his biggest literary revelation.
Note: Turn Every Page discusses the Big Reveal in the second LBJ volume, Means of Ascent – that LBJ’s victory in the 1948 election for US Senate was stolen. What Turn Every Page leaves out (understandably because the movie is about the LBJ books, not about LBJ) is that Means of Ascent also proved that the preceding US Senate election was stolen FROM LBJ.
Those of us who are addicted to Caro’s LBJ series have been awaiting the final volume nervously, in light of the actuarial inevitabilities and Caro’s unsatisfying response that it will be published when he is ready; Turn Every Page doesn’t offer any different answer.
Gottlieb is arguably even more important than Caro. He broke through in 1961 by discovering Joseph Heller and publishing Catch 22. Since then he has guided the completion and publication of the work of Toni Morrison, Salmon Rushdie, John LeCarre, John Cheever, Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, Barbara Tuchman, Nora Ephron, Jessica Mitford, Antonia Fraser, Doris Lessing and a host of celebrity memoirs by the likes of Bill Clinton, Katharine Hepburn, Bob Dylan and Lauren Bacall. As obsessive as Caro, but in different ways, Gottlieb is also a bit of a Renaissance Man, with a surprising role in ballet and as an offbeat collector.
Turn Every Page has concluded its all too brief run in arthouse theaters, but I’m sure it will be streaming (or perhaps televised) soon; I’ll let you know when you can see it.
