Product Description

The comedian and host of The Tonight Show offers a hilarious collection of anecodtes about growing up, his careers as a mechanic and stand-up comic, life on the road, and success. Read by Jay Leno. Simultaneous.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1772082 in Books
• Published on: 1996-09-01
• Released on: 1996-10-02
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Amazon.com Review
So what do you expect from a celebrity autobiography? Tales of an impoverished childhood and an unappreciated early career? Angst-ridden revelation? In Jay Leno's take on the genre, tales have only one purpose--laughs. This is a book of jokey anecdotes and humorous stories marking the comedian's progress to the top. The persona of the young Leno is not so different and just as likable as the one appearing nightly on television. Whether it is his mother's advice, his teachers' complaints, or the awkward situations he finds himself in (for example, standing before an Orthodox Jewish audience who have been mistakenly led to expect a Yiddish storyteller) Leno always sees the funny side.

Review
An amiable, mildly funny pastiche of anecdotes, most interesting for what it unfortunately avoids about the talk-show host's career. -- Entertainment Weekly

From the Publisher
Long before he became the host of the tonight show, Jay Leno was dubbed by the media and his peers alike as the "Hardest-working Man in Show Business." Performing comedy at a breakneck pace, he played more than 300 dates a year and traveled to every corner of the nation. Or as his mother who never quite understood what he did for a living, liked to say, "Going from town to town, putting on his little skits."

In Leading with My Chin, Jay recounts many of the ridiculous steps (and missteps) that have led him on maybe the unlikeliest of paths -- from college campuses to Carnegie Hall to Las Vegas, and finally, to The Tonight Show.

Unlike many comedians whose acts reflect broken homes and neurotic backgrounds, Jay reveals in his wholesome Andover, Massachusetts, upbringing. As the child of a Scottish mother and an Italian father, he had a home life that was equal parts absurd and loving. Which is plain to see in Jay's heartwarming stories about his parents: like the time his mother knocked him out cold with a pot when caught ditching high school. Or the night at Carnegie Hall when she shushed people actually laughing at his show. Or when Jay said to his dad that crushing the roof on the family car wasn't all that bad.

Out on the comedy circuit -- a virtual battle zone for Jay -- he encountered every humiliation a performer has ever known. From the club owners who didn't pay, to mobsters who spared his life and loaned him their guns, to the agent who wanted him to be America's first comedy wrestler, to the brave and naked strippers who beat up his hecklers for him. Then there were the triumphant performance nights when he was literally mugged on stage, when his clothes were set afire, or when he merely punched out and taunted with death threats. And also that romantic night at the Comedy Store -- working with the likes of David Letterman, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman and Steve Martin -- when he met his future wife, Mavis, outside the ladies' room!

In Hollywood, Jay was told that his was a face that would frighten children. He went on to explore every facet of movies and television sitcoms, playing thuggish goofballs, before he finally took to the road and ultimately became what he had always wanted to be: host of The Tonight Show.

Brimming with stories that are heartwarming and endearing, humiliating and just downright embarrassing, Leading with My Chin demonstrates the silly things you have to go through to make people laugh.

Customer Reviews

What a nice man!
Jay Leno either is a very nice man or he's a total liar. I don't believe that it's the latter. LEADING WITH MY CHIN is his autobiography, and it certainly confirms his niceness.

This is the brief, "official" version of his childhood and early years, in which he gives what seems to be an honest appraisal of his failures every bit as much as his successes. Many of the anecdotes, hardly unexpectedly for a person of Leno's skill, are hilarious. A few are oddly touching. Over and over, he proves himself to be caring and observant.

It would be impossible to read such an autobiography without learning something about the making of a star comedian, and about the hard work it requires. Certainly, the determination to get as far as Leno and that handful of others have gotten must be fierce. It says a great deal about Leno's humanity that he has managed to keep intact his decency while he climbed to the very top of his industry.

FUNNIEST BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE!
I have read this book at least THREE times. I've given it to almost everyone I know. I gave it to my nephew when he was 14. One day, we saw him shaking and crying on his bed. When I asked what was wrong, he rolled over and handed me this book!!!! He couldn't even speak, he just pointed to the part he wanted me to read. It is soooo funny. Whenever my mother feels down, she just opens it up to any page and it cheers her up. If I ever met Jay, I'd tell him this is my favorite book. I made the mistake of taking it when I was waiting to see if I would be picked for jury duty. I kept laughing out loud and everyone kept looking at me. It really is funny. I don't know if his life was this funny, or if he left out most of the bad stuff, but if you have ANY sense of humor at all, GET THIS BOOK!

His personal stand-up comes through
I love Jay Leno. I've always found Letterman a bit too smug and self-consciously hip--except for moments with his mom and the Top Ten Lists. And for critics who derided Jay Leno's championing of Schwarzenegger, Jay, a dyslexic, has a tendency to promote the guy everyone else laughs at (and who Jay laughs at too, but never mean-spirited).

There's plenty of comedy here but what I find most touching is Jay's courtship with his wife Mavis, his relationship with his Italian father and Scottish mother, and the loving way he chronicles his parents' eccentricities. This is the same spirit in which he memorialized his father and mother on-air. Jay Leno truly is Mr. Nice Guy.