A son's funny, frank, and "endlessly fascinating" memoir of his father, Wizard of Oz star Bert Lahr ( Harper's Magazine ). Bert Lahr, best known for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz , made audiences laugh from burlesque stages to vaudeville to Broadway--and impressed them as Estragon in the American theater debut of Waiting for Godot . But reality wasn't always funny for the legendary actor and comedian, or his family. Drawing on personal recollections and the memories of his father's colleagues, a veteran writer for the New Yorker and renowned theater critic brilliantly explores both the long and glorious professional career of a Hollywood icon and the experience of growing up with him. Here, in rich detail, is Bert Lahr evolving from a low-comic star to a Ziegfeld Follies sophisticate, hamming it up with the Scarecrow and Tin Man on the set of The Wizard of Oz , and garnering rich praise as he performed in Samuel Beckett's masterpiece. But while Lahr could be equally raucous and polished in public, in private he was painfully insecure and self-absorbed, keeping his family at arm's length as he quietly battled his inner demons. "A work of literature, a work of history, a subtle psychological study," Notes on a Cowardly Lion is more than one man's quest to understand his father. It is an extraordinary examination of a life on the stage and screen ( Harper's Magazine ).

From a writer with an intimate knowledge of the theater and show business world, this is both a "frank and objective" ( The New York Times Book Review ) family memoir that will appeal to readers of Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking or Alan Cumming's Not My Father's Son , and a "book-length love letter. To open it is to enter a life, to participate in a sensibility and, perhaps most important, to laugh. Uproariously" ( Life) .