.03 Wheeling the Deal
Spurred by a 1993 wildfire that torched his grandfather’s piano, journalist Chip Jacobs became haunted by ancestors he knew precious little about as a youth. His search for the truth led him to quit his job as a zealous, young newspaper reporter to retrace the life of a man he once despised: his Uncle Gordon. Gordon Zahler was a fun-loving prankster who broke his neck at the age of 14 in a horrifying gymnastics fall at a Pasadena, California junior high school. The 1940 accident nearly killed Gordon, bankrupted the family, and shattered what had been a peaceful life. Gordon’s father, Lee, a prolific Hollywood composer, died from the stress, and the Zahlers were forced onto welfare provided through the Motion Picture Fund.
Paralyzed from the neck down, Gordon Zahler decided he’d had enough pity. He rose from his deathbed, reinventing himself into a fast-talking, Hollywood entrepreneur/idea man who traveled the world, lived hard, married, fantasized about water-skiing, and chased his dreams to create one of the largest independent post-production shops in Hollywood by selling his father’s music to television and movie studios.
While this is Jacobs’ story about his coming to grips with his deformed uncle, himself and his mother, the silent victim to Gordon’s recklessness, Wheeling the Deal is also a tip of the hat to the man who turned his back on the notion of “I can’t.”
Reviews and Accolades
“Family memoirs are rife with grandiose tales of triumph over adversity, and while it would be easy to dismiss Jacobs’ portrait of his unorthodox uncle as another such unvarnished encomium, his professional background as an award-winning investigative journalist for The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, and CNN prevents this from being so. With both dramatic flair and detached fairness, Jacobs eloquently reveals the soul of a charismatic and courageous character. Had Gordon’s career taken place on the screen instead of behind it, he would have been the Christopher Reeve of his day.”
– Foreword Magazine
“It’s one of the most inspirational things one can see in the world - a man who is paralyzed from the neck down deciding that invalidism isn’t for him and making something of themselves … Wheeling the Deal is a brilliant and uplifting true story and is highly recommended for anyone in a similar position or has a relative there - to open their eyes to the possibilities.”
– Midwest Book Review
“This is one of those books that will take you a good week or so to read through (if you are an avid reader - if not, maybe a little longer). It’s a big book, in more ways than one. You will want to sink your teeth into this one, savor it, roll it around in your head … this author is one to watch. The writing is beautiful and grabbed me from the very start. But more than that, it felt honest. When he’s at the fire with his family members, I was there with him. I felt that heat.”
– bookcrossing.com
” when Chip started to research the story, against his earlier misgivings, he found a more complicated, more fascinating character … exceptional level of personal detail here … Jacobs has documented a marvellous life, and done so without the sentimentality that ruins so many life stories of people with disabilities.”
– The Internet Review of Books
“FDR’s body and Sammy Glick’s brain? No, but close - and better. Mon Oncle d’Amerique has nothing on Chip Jacobs’ Mon Oncle d’Hollywood, the picaresque, quadriplegic Gordon, who is at least as good a story as anything he helped to put on film: welfare case to Oscar-caliber movies, co-starring Ed Wood and Pope John XXIII, with snappy dialogue and auto crack-ups, lions and tiger rugs and TV bears, one Serene Highness and many spectacular lownesses. Gordon is a premiere citizen of Hollywood As She is Spoken — unsentimental but believing utterly in the art of the possible.”
– Patt Morrison, award-winning columnist, commentator and author of RIO L.A.
“This amazing book is all heart …Chip Jacobs blends the skills of an investigative journalist, the glitz of Hollywood, and the smooth storytelling of fiction to weave a profile of his larger-than-life uncle that will leave you crying, laughing and gasping in wonder, often on the same page. Bravo!”
– Denise Hamilton, author of EVE DIAMOND mystery series
“Readers looking for a glamorous Hollywood story or a tale of gentle uplift should be warned: This is not that book. Instead, Chip Jacobs has written something far better — a witty, clear-eyed account of a charming and utterly impossible man whose ferocious willpower transformed his personal nightmare into a lifelong Technicolor hallucination.”
– A. J. Langguth, author of MY VIETNAM
“Though not about a celebrity or newsmaker, this life being told by Chip Jacobs is an extraordinary one in the history of Hollywood. The raw courage and almost unbelievable stamina of Gordon Zahler - abetted by both love and luck - turns this irresistible biography into a page turner.”
– William Robert Faith, author of BOB HOPE: A LIFE IN COMEDY
