I am on book two of three by Toller Cranston procured via interlibrary loan, and I must strongly recommend that fans looking for more information, perspectives, and/or reading material give him a read. He fills in holes when it comes to understanding personalities and events, he entertains, and he does not hold back in the slightest.
Read Toller's stuff
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skatesindreams
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Agreed...
dramagrrl
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Toller's books are also highly entertaining!
Aussie Willy
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His books are really good and very entertaining.
aliceanne
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Toller's books are entertaining and he doesn't mince words, but by his own admission and that of others he exaggerates to tell a good story.
Another good biography of that era is the recent one about John Curry. John skated during the era of snail mail so many people who knew him kept his letters. His longtime sponsor made them available to the author. You can hear his story in his own words. Like Toller his impressions of people could be brutal. John's story is much darker than Toller's though.
Rudy Galindo's biography is pretty frank, without a lot of whining. Scott Hamilton is also surprisingly open. Most of the other skater biographies that I have read are pretty generic and sound like they were written by a PR person.
Another good biography of that era is the recent one about John Curry. John skated during the era of snail mail so many people who knew him kept his letters. His longtime sponsor made them available to the author. You can hear his story in his own words. Like Toller his impressions of people could be brutal. John's story is much darker than Toller's though.
Rudy Galindo's biography is pretty frank, without a lot of whining. Scott Hamilton is also surprisingly open. Most of the other skater biographies that I have read are pretty generic and sound like they were written by a PR person.
Japanfan
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I loved Toller's books. But yeah, he's got a serious ego thing going on.
Foolhardy Ham Lint
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Declaring himself the skater of the century took some b****, but hey, if you've got it, you've got it.
To be fair, that was part of his charm. Cranston's paintings were beautiful, too.
On the flip side, his interactions with Rob McCall and Brian Pockar (when they were both diagnosed with HIV and dying of AIDS), made for powerful reading.
skatesindreams
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Ice Cream is the most accurate/important of his books.
quartz
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I love his ego. He had it, he flaunted it, he made no apologies for it.
eta....one of my favourite finds is a first edition, autographed copy of “Toller” by Elva Olganby (sp?) that I scavenged in a pile of old books at an antique shop. Ten bucks!!
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I thoroughly enjoy Toller's books. As noted above, some of his stories are exaggerated; or, based on gossip. Once I asked him about a particularly far-fetched allegation in his first book, and he responded, "Well, I was on tour at the time, and that's what everyone on the bus was saying."
Yes, I figured as much after he tried to exaggerate the score he gave Torvill/Dean at World Pros just to seem extra evil
Frau Muller
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Absolutely love Toller’s books. He wasn’t one to keep his mouth shut for diplomacy’s sake, LOL!
Japanfan
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IIRC, it got him fired from his commentator job with the CBC (Canadian Public TV).
Lemonade20
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I thought it had to do with him saying some rude things about a certain up & coming skater?
jenniferlyon
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Toller was someone who called 'em as he saw 'em.
Japanfan
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Which skater was that?
Frau Muller
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Because he dared to be honest. My kind of person...non fake. Society calls people like Toller “loose cannons.”
Dave of the North
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CBC fired Toller in 1991. CFSA was unhappy because he was coaching Christopher Bowman and felt he had been talking down Kurt Browning while building up Bowman. Toller sued CBC and won his case in 1994
Except that’s not at all why they fired him.
Erin
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That’s interesting about the Bowman connection - I always had the impression Toller was fired because of the incident discussed in Kurt’s book, where Toller was critical of Kurt leading up to 1990 Worlds after Kurt’s bad performance at Canadians and the world “disgrace” was thrown around. Toller wasn’t coaching Bowman at that point. But I guess it didn’t happen right after that because Toller was still doing commentary by 1991 Junior Worlds, so he must have been fired much later than I had understood. Perhaps coaching Bowman was the last straw for the CFSA to push back after they were already annoyed he was too critical of Kurt.
Whatever the cause, the CFSA’s position was ridiculous. I have mixed feelings about Toller’s commentary (frequently hilarious, but also mostly useless at explaining to the audience how the sport is judged), but his job shouldn’t be to be rah rah Canada all the time. Unfortunately, I think we have seen the influence of the CFSA/Skate Canada in subsequent commentators.
As for his books, I’ll be the one to dissent on that. I tried reading Zero Tollerance and couldn’t make it past the first chapter.
Lemonade20
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Whatever hard feelings Toller had towards Browning was resolved later down the road. They actually became good friends and Browning even visited him in Mexico.
Erin
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I don’t think there was ever animosity between Kurt and Toller. Kurt discussed the “disgrace” incident in his book and said that he and Toller talked about it shortly after. While Kurt wasn’t a fan of the word choice, they basically agreed to disagree on that point and moved on. And Toller may have taken issue with Kurt’s win at Canadians, but it was clear he still had a lot of respect for Kurt’s skating. He gave a lot of praise to Kurt’s skate at Worlds that year, even if he thought it would go behind Petrenko.
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jenniferlyon
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IIRC (and I may not because this was thirty years ago), Toller also had an issue with the Motley Crue T-shirt that Kurt wore to a practice session.
Erin
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Yes, that’s correct! I think that might have been what triggered the word disgrace.
Aerobicidal
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I was afraid to say this, but I had the exact same reaction to that book.
The writing style drove me crazy, but I have a very low tollerance for certain writing and it's just a personal preference.
I'd love to read a book about Toller by someone else as I admire him and (some of) his choreography.
Erin
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There was one written by Elva Oglanby, but I doubt the writing in that one would be better, as she sounds like she was off her rocker.
Frau Muller
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I preferred listening to Toller’s spot-on comments than the silly “Elvis has left the building” stuff from others!
Lemonade20
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How many books did Toller write?
jenniferlyon
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There were 3 that I know of: Zero Tollerance, Ice Cream, and When Hell Freezes Over, Should I Bring My Skates?
Brenda_Bottems
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Good for her. Hedonism and Satanism,even by association, have absolutely NO place in a figure skating rink.
-BB
