num_pages: 316
description: Los Angeles journalist Chip Jacobs put his career on hold to retrace the life of a man he'd once despised: his quadriplegic Uncle Gordon. When a prank in a school gym, left fourteen-year-old Gordon Zahler with a spinal chord injury that permanently paralyzed him from the neck down, his parents' marriage was destroyed and the family reduced to welfare. Through pure chutzpah (and his mother's unpaid labor) young Gordon willed himself into a life of wealth and glamour as a Hollywood mogul. Set on the backlot of Ed Wood's B-movie showbiz, Wheeler-Dealer introduces a set of unforgettable wisecracking, hi-jinx-loving characters who revolved around the little tycoon in a wheelchair. Part biography, part memoir, the author uncovers his family's secrets: murders hidden for fifty years, fortunes won and lost, and the heartbreak of Gordon's martyred mother, discarded when Gordon wooed a bride. The writer comes to understand the huge costs to all involved with disability, while recognizing the triumph of Gordon's, perhaps selfish, but ultimately dazzling, appetite for life.
language: English
title: Wheeler-dealer: The Rip-roaring Adventures of My Uncle Gordon, a Quadriplegic in Hollywood
titlecomplete: Wheeler-dealer: The Rip-roaring Adventures of My Uncle Gordon, a Quadriplegic in Hollywood
characters: Chip Jacobs, Lee Zahler, Woody Woodpecker, Burt Lancaster, Ed Wood Jr., Gordon Zahler, Walter Lantz, Lucille Ball, Muriel Jacobs, Sonny Bono, Bozo the Clown, Ivan Tors, Jerry Lewis
ratings_count: 17
places: Pasadena, California
publisher: First Person Pr