Knopf
February 2023
On Sale: February 7, 2023
Featuring: Matt Liannetto; Dick Kallman
352 pages ISBN: 1524748196 EAN: 9781524748197 Kindle: B09ZSSKL4T Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
Through the curious life of Dick Kallman—a real-
life celebrity striver, poisonously charming actor, and
eventual murder victim—the unforgiving worlds of
postwar showbiz and down-low gay sexuality are thrown into
stark relief in this “page-turning blast” (James
Ellroy, author of Widespread Panic)
Dick
Kallman was an up-and-coming actor in the fifties and
sixties—until he wasn’t. A costar on Broadway, a
member of Lucille Ball’s historic Desilu workshop, and
finally a primetime TV actor, Dick had hustled to get his
big break. But just as soon as his star began to rise, his
roles began to dry up and he faded from the spotlight, his
name out of tabloids and newspapers until his sensational
murder in 1980.
Through the eyes of his
occasional pianist and longtime acquaintance Matt Liannetto,
a tenderhearted but wry observer often on the fringes of
Broadway’s big moments, Kallman’s life and death
come into appallingly sharp focus. The actor’s
yearslong, unrequited love for a fellow performer brings out
a competitive, vindictive edge in him. Whenever a new door
opens, Kallman rushes unwittingly to close it. Even as
he walks over other people, he can never get out of his own
way.
As Matt pores over the life of this handsome
could-have-been, Up With the Sun re-creates the
brassy, sometimes brutal world that shaped Kallman,
capturing his collisions with not only Lucille Ball, but an
array of stars from Sophie Tucker to Judy Garland and Johnny
Carson. Part crime story, part showbiz history, and part
love story, this is a crackling novel about personal demons
and dangerously suppressed passions that spans thirty years
of gay life—the whole tumultuous era from the Kinsey
Report through Stonewall and, finally, AIDS.