Showing results for "Hollywood" in Literature & Fiction

There are only three things in this world that are certain: death, taxes, and babies. Nobody knows this truth better than Emily McCoy, a third year resident working in Baby City, the affectionate nickname for the busy Labor and Delivery unit at a New York City hospital. On a typical day in Baby City, Emily delivers more babies than the number of hours of sleep she manages to squeeze in that night. And definitely more than the number of dates she's been on since she started her training in OB/GYN two years earlier.

Morgan Beale is a pop icon - and hates every second of it. He begins adapting the latest best seller, The Chihuahua in the Blue Prada Bag, into a blockbuster movie just before his celebutante wife starts remodeling their Hollywood home, driving Beale to a hotel. Dodging the paparazzi one morning on his way to Starbucks, he spots his writing partner, Luke, who has been dead for over a decade, and who is staring into a mysterious hole in the ground....

William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park.

Newly minted doctor Jane McGill is in hell. Not literally, of course. But between her drug addict patients, sleepless nights on call, and battling wits with the sadistic yet charming Sexy Surgeon, Jane can’t imagine an afterlife much worse than her first month of medical internship at County Hospital. And then there’s the devil herself: Jane’s senior resident Dr. Alyssa Morgan. When Alyssa becomes absolutely hell-bent on making her new interns pay tenfold for the deadly sin of incompetence, Jane starts to worry that she may not make it through the year with her soul or her sanity still intact.

In Why We Suck, Dr. Denis Leary uses his common sense, and his biting and hilarious take on the world, to attack the politically correct, the hypocritical, the obese, the thin - basically everyone who takes themselves too seriously. He does so with the extra oomph of a doctorate bestowed upon him by his alma mater Emerson College. "Sure it's just a celebrity type of thing - they only gave it to me because I'm famous." Leary explains.

Looking for a sign from God, nun Martina leaves her convent and becomes a temporary chef – only to walk straight into a catering crisis of epic proportions. Valentine’s Viennese Patisserie supplies classy Austrian snacks for corporate events, but now their pastry cook has left, no-one knows how to make any of the delicacies they’re offering. And that’s not their only problem – they’re also being chased by clients, up to their necks in bills and cancellations, and stuck with a clapped-out delivery van that keeps breaking down.

Getting our hands on this source material was dangerous, legally questionable, and career-threatening, but I felt it was worth the risk–these aren’t just Hollywood outtakes, folks, these are far-out-takes. Did Duke and JFK have a reckoning in the Oval Office? Did Yoda have anger issues? Did Sean Connery struggle with crappy dentures? The answers to these–and many more unanswered questions–lay within the treasure trove of The Lost Recordings, Vol. 1: Hollywood.

A lost literary gem of Hollywood in the 1930s, I Lost My Girlish Laughter is a thinly veiled send-up of the actors, producers, writers, and directors of the Golden Age of the studio system.

My Favorite Husband hit the CBS Radio airwaves in 1948, starring Lucille Ball and Richard Denningas Liz and George Cugat - who later became Liz and George Cooper when confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change. Set in the fictitious town of Sheridan Falls, the show follows the happily married couple, residents of 321 Bundy Drive, through mischief and various predicaments, from faked illnesses to trouble with exes.

Benny’s radio and television shows entertained audiences for more than three decades and is generally regarded as the high-water mark in twentieth century American comedy.

Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman auditioned for the roles of a married couple in a radio pilot for a new comedy, My Favorite Husband, based on the novel Mr. and Mrs. Cugat by Isabel Scott Rorick. The concept was very well received and within a few weeks the weekly sitcom was established. Bowman was replaced by Richard Denning and during the first season, the Cugats were renamed the Coopers, who lived “in a little white two-story house” in the bustling, small suburb of Sheridan Falls.

This collection contains twelve of the greatest comedy shows ever broadcast during the golden age of radio. You'll hear Ozzie and Harriet Nelson in The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll as Amos 'n' Andy, Robert Young in Father Knows Best, Jim and Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee and Molly, William Bendix as Chester A. Riley in The Life of Riley, Lucille Ball in My Favorite Husband, and more.

Someone in town has a macabre passion for beautiful young men. Healthy, gym-toned male bodies keep turning up, tortured, drained of blood, missing parts, and quite, quite dead. Someone is using the Creative City as a canvas of gruesome, sadistic creativity. Someone... or something. At the end of her investigative rope, WeHo city coroner Becky O’Brien calls upon the aid of an old college friend, Christopher Driscoll, who is an expert on serial killers.

Liza Day’s mother isn’t dead, but leave it to Darla Day to throw herself a funeral anyway. It’s the kind of attention grab Liza left behind to build a quiet life for herself and her rebellious teenage daughter, Avery. But between her students discovering her old daytime TV show—putting her teaching job at risk—and her mother’s unexpected funeral invitation, Liza’s life feels truly like a soap opera.

Sie brauchte ein Kindermädchen. Ich brauchte eine Hauptdarstellerin. Irgendwie wurde ich Mr. Nanny. Ich habe schon nicht mehr daran geglaubt, als Drehbuchautor in L.A. durchzustarten. Aber zu meinem Glück hat mein Agent vor ein paar Wochen einen Investor gefunden. Hurra, alle meine Probleme sind gelöst! Der Haken? Der Investor ist nur bereit, meinen Film zu finanzieren, wenn ich eine bestimmte Schauspielerin verpflichte. Und natürlich muss es dieselbe Schauspielerin sein, die ich vor ein paar Monaten über den Tisch gezogen habe. Aber dieses winzige Detail braucht sie ja nicht zu wissen, oder?

Our Miss Brooks was a highly popular radio sitcom that was eventually adapted for both television and film. It starred Hollywood film and New York stage veteran Eve Arden, who specialized in playing the wisecracking friend. She often did it better than anyone else, receiving an Oscar nomination for the 1945 film Mildred Pierce. Since her skill with the wicked one-liner was beginning to lead to typecasting, Arden signed on for the lead in radio's Our Miss Brooks to find a new image.

When local baseball player Junior Jones receives death threats over the color of his skin, the team's wealthy owner hires Sam Rockwell to solve the case and stop a murder before it happens. Sam goes undercover as a minor league pitcher to strike out the culprit. Follow the clues along with Sam's curmudgeonly ghost of a father Frank Rockwell, and Sam's wife Amelia, who holds a secret that will forever change the lives of the entire Rockwell family. It's another laugh-filled, madcap mystery in the warm, witty 1950's Hollywood-style of author Jason Anspach.

Was, wenn man dem Weihnachtsmann schreibt... und der auch noch antwortet? Für die kleine Lu startet so eine ungewöhnliche Brieffreundschaft, die zeigt, was passiert, wenn wir unsere Augen und Herzen ein bisschen weiter öffnen. Denn das schönste Weihnachtswunder liegt oft viel näher, als man denkt - vielleicht sogar fast vor der eigenen Haustür. Erzählt wird diese Kurzgeschichte von der deutschen Stimme von Jennifer Lawrence, Maria Koschny.

Diesmal wird es brandgefährlich: Lauert der Tod im Zug? Für Auftragskiller gelten besondere Regeln: keine Frauen, keine Kinder... und keine unerledigten Aufträge. Wer diese ungeschriebenen Gesetze bricht, muss sich um seine Rente garantiert keine Sorgen machen. Zwischen den Stationen beginnt schleichend ein Wettlauf gegen die Zeit, erzählt von der deutschen Stimme von George Clooney.

Gleich zum Auftakt unseres Hollywood-Quartetts wird's richtig haarig. Denn schließlich steht nichts weniger als Weihnachten auf dem Spiel! "Wer hat dem Christkind die Haare geklaut?" fragt sich unser aufgeweckter Erzähler, gesprochen von der deutschen Stimme von Robert Downey Junior. Schließlich droht ohne die himmlische Lockenpracht das ganze Weihnachtsfest ins Wasser zu fallen.