Dust jacket notes: "Notes on a cowardly Lion is the chronicle, public and private, of the life of Bert Lahr, the last of the great clowns. Its author is Bert Lahr's son, the drama critic John Lahr. Drawing on his father's recollections ad on the memories of those who worked with him, the younger Lahr brilliantly re-creates the actor's life: the first imitative Kid Acts; burlesque, where he introduced the hilarious, 'What's the idea?'; two-a-day in vaudeville; backstage life, with its intimacies and rivalries, babes and booze, practical jokes; the triumphant years on Broadway with the great Ziegfeld and the notorious George White, with Beatrice Lillie and Ethel Merman, with Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and E. Y. Harburg; the disappointments in Hollywood surrounding the glorious months as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz; and the last years in serious drama, when Lahr burst forth in Waiting for Godot and The Beauty Part. And always, in the wings, is his sometimes tangled, sometimes buffoonish private life: an aimless, misunderstood boyhood; a tragic marriage to a woman (his partner in burlesque) who collapsed into schizophrenia; a headline-making scandal before his second marriage; a brooding insecurity that underlined Lahr's entire career, a career of greater duration and diversity than that of any other American comic star. Notes on a Cowardly Lion is a search -- by the critic for the kernel of an actor's immense and gaudy talent, by the son for the reality of his father's life. It is a superb work of theater history and biography."