You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
"The drama of a bisexual in the spotlight"--Jacket subtitle.
From the Peter Neil Issacs collection.
A surprising portrait of Gary Cooper, based on authoritative Hollywood sources, reveals his career, personal life, and more.
Celebrity Biographer: New York Times bestselling author Fred Lawrence Guiles is considered the premier biographer of hollywood movie stars. Old Hollywood Charm: Lovers of classic movies and the golden age of cinema will rush to get their hands on the definitive biographies of these universally loved celebrities. Repackaged Glam: The coordinating modern covers breathe life into these classic figures and will be a stunning addition to any hollywood-lover’s bookshelf. Exclusive Pictures and Interviews: Each biography contain previously unpublished photographs and interviews that enhance the fascinating and nuanced lives of these famous celebrities.
Blends history and memoir in an account that in alternating chapters explores the author's quest to understand the impact of his brothers on his life and the complex relationships between iconic brothers, including the Thoreaus, the Van Goghs, and the Marxes.
In 1905 Julius Marx began his vaudeville career with the singing group The Leroy Trio and was abandoned in the middle of the tour. It was an inauspicious start for the person who would become "Groucho." A hundred years later, the Marx Brothers have permeated our culture from the plastic noses and glasses worn at parties to a Smithsonian exhibition which explains DNA recombination using A Night at the Opera. Although they completed relatively few films together, the brothers have become icons, recognizable even to people who have never seen their movies. Most scholarly work on the Marx Brothers has focused on biographical aspects of their careers and lives; A Century of the Marx Brothers suggests a myriad of other useful approaches to their film and stage productions. The collection's eleven essays examine the Marx Brothers' work from a number of critical perspectives ranging from reader-response theory to film semiotics. The contributors include international scholars in a variety of fields, such as literature, cultural studies, performance studies, and film history.
The ground has shifted from the days in which "serious history" and "boring" went hand in glove. Textbooks and lectures have their place, but less traditional classrooms can be powerfully immersive and insightful. Take the 1929 Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts and what it teaches about both the Great Depression and early sound films. The Marx Brothers are among the funniest comedy teams of all time. Four of their 13 films are on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American comedies ever made. For many contemporary viewers, though, "getting" the jokes is not always easy because the humor can be subjective and timebound. This work looks at the American past through the lens of the Marx Brothers' films and other projects. Each of the chapters focuses on a specific film, contextualizing the world at the time and how the Marx Brothers lampooned those subjects. Along the way, the book demonstrates what the Marx Brothers revealed about weighty topics like gambling, gender relations, immigration, medical care, Prohibition, race and war, all leavened with offbeat humor.
Alvin C. York went out on a routine patrol an ordinary, unknown American doughboy of the First World War. He came back from no-man's-land a hero. In a brief encounter on October 8, 1918, during the Argonne offensive, York had killed 25 German soldiers and, almost singlehandedly, effected the capture of 132 others. Returning to the United States the following spring, he received a tumultuous public welcome and a flood of offers from businessmen eager to capitalize on his acclaimed feat. But York, true to his character, went quietly back to his home in the Tennessee mountains, where he spent the remainder of his life working to bring schools and other services to those remote valleys where his...
He was the acclaimed director of such cinematic classics as Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, and Gigi, and equally well known for his tumultuous marriage to the legendary Judy Garland. But to say that Vincente Minnelli's conflicted personal life informed his films would be an understatement. As Mark Griffin persuasively demonstrates in this definitive biography of the Academy Award winning director, Minnelli was not only building a remarkable Hollywood legacy, but also creating an intriguing autobiography in code. Drawing on more than 100 interviews with such icons as Kirk Douglas, Angela Lansbury, Lauren Bacall, Tony Curtis, and George Hamilton, Griffin turns the spotlight on the enigmatic ''elegant director, '' revealing long-kept secrets at the heart of Minnelli's genius.