By DAVID GROVE (BearManor Media; 2016)

The Edge of Greatness is far from the ideal account of the life of the late Jan-Michael Vincent, but it is (as of 2021) the only one.  Mr. Vincent was an actor of great promise that was to remain tragically unfulfilled.  His story, of an acting career derailed by drugs and bad behavior, certainly isn’t unique, but few other performers have had a more calamitous or dramatic downfall than Jan-Michael Vincent.

This book’s subtitle is somewhat misleading, as author David Grove makes it clear throughout that Vincent was never “great” by any means.  He apparently had little desire to become an actor, being a small town boy roped into the profession in the late 1960s by an assortment of talent agents and producers who seemed more interested in his good looks and photographic memory (which allowed him to memorize pages of dialogue with very little effort) than his thespian abilities.

Vincent’s roles in 1970s-era high profilers like BIG WEDNESDAY, THE MECHANIC, HOOPER and DAMNATION ALLEY saw him overshadowed by his more established co-stars (such as Charles Bronson, Burt Reynolds and, in DAMNATION ALLEY, giant insects).  His fortunes declined ever further in the 1980s, when, following a string of high profile arrests, alcoholism got the better of him.  Vincent’s role in the TV program AIRWOLF was marked by long periods of drunkenness that upset his co-stars and, in conjunction with even more arrests, destroyed what was left of his reputation.  Things got even worse in the nineties, when Vincent was involved in no less than three major car accidents that left him with permanent facial disfiguration (as the author notes, “he finally looks his age”) and extensive vocal damage.  He finished off his career with several forgettable straight-to-video potboilers, and died in 2019.

This book was written while Vincent was still alive, although the author admittedly had zero contact with his subject.  Instead he relies on interviews with colleagues and employers, such as the directors Jonathan Kaplan and John Hancock (who claims Vincent “needed acting lessons”), AIRWOLF producer Donald Bellisario and Vincent’s longtime pal Robert Englund.  The result is a satisfying, if perfunctory, portrait of unfulfilled talent and rampant self-destruction, as well as an especially damning portrait of an industry that quite literally devours the very stars it so eagerly grooms.