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(More customer reviews)Anyone old enough to remember back to 1973 knows the name Tony Orlando. That's the year the singer and his female back-up duo Dawn recorded "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree."
The top-40s ditty about a petty criminal welcomed back from prison became the theme song for returning Vietnam POWs, a rallying point for families of American hostages in Iran and soldiers serving in the Gulf War, and an all-purpose anthem for anyone forced to be away from home. As part of the national soundtrack of the late 20th century, the song earned Orlando a place in pop culture history.
Or, as Orlando puts it in his autobiography --- "Almost like flipping a pancake, 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree' flipped my life over." HALFWAY TO PARADISE is peppered with such passages --- writing that is clumsy, yet gets the point across. One of the book's most distracting shortcomings is Orlando's fondness for clichéd phrases such as, "singing my praises," "walking on eggs," "turned the tide," and "sweating bullets." He also seems confused about the meaning of the word "literally," as when he describes his father "literally sucking the air out of the room."
Nevertheless, Orlando writes with a self-effacing candor, humility and lack of animosity that gives this book a gentle appeal absent from many celebrity autobiographies. Patsi Bale Cox, who has collaborated on the autobiographies of performers including Tanya Tucker and Loretta Lynn, assisted in the writing. But the book's voice sounds as if it's rising straight from Orlando's sentimental soul.
Although he's fond of using the word "ironically" to describe coincidences, irony isn't on his palette. He makes statements like "The band has become like family to me, as all bands should to an entertainer." Talking about his deceased sister, "Rhonda was my angel on earth who now resides in Heaven," he betrays no hint that he blushed when he wrote the words.
Orlando is an entertainer who knows he's not A-list and never was. He drips with awe and gratitude when he talks about the legends --- Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali --- who took an interest in him throughout his career.
He's a man who screwed up in his personal life --- marital infidelity and drug abuse, his two biggest failings --- and counts himself blessed to be coming up on 60 with a loving family and good health.
The book takes him from his boyhood in the close-knit working class neighborhood of Manhattan's West 21st Street, to his entry into show business singing demo songs, to his short-lived run as a teen idol, to his first steady job working for a music publisher. The core of the book takes place during the 1970s, those few heady years when Orlando was a star, recording a string of pop hits and appearing with Dawn in his own network variety show.
It was during Orlando's professional peak that he bottomed out personally. He watched his close friend Freddie Prinze die after shooting himself in the head, then ended up in a straightjacket after entering a mental hospital to battle a cocaine habit.
By the '80s, the drugs were over, but so was Orlando's run as a pop star. Since then, he has struggled to redefine his career, performing on Broadway and in Las Vegas and acting in a movie with Edward James Olmos. In the mid-'80s, he tried to get back into network television with the help of Bill Cosby, who wrote an episode for his own sitcom designed to create a spin-off in which Orlando would star. In a winningly candid moment, Orlando admits he blew the taping.
"The network turned down a spin off, and it's no wonder," he writes. "I've watched it several times over the years and, even with the mellowing effect of time, my performance stunk, then and now."
Orlando now lives in Branson, Missouri with his second wife, Frannie, and their daughter. He performs in Branson and does some touring. He is not rich, and he is famous mostly in a used-to-be sort of way. But he gets to sing and he can support his family, and it seems to suit him just fine.
Ultimately, this book is less interesting as a celebrity autobiography than it as the story of a family man in late middle age, finally getting it right.
--- Reviewed by Karen Jenkins Holt
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