Showing results for "Hollywood" in Biographies & Memoirs

Hollywood: The Oral History covers the history of Hollywood from the Silent era up to the 21st century. What makes this book unique from any other survey of Hollywood's history is that it is the history of an art form through the words of those people who created it—from Harold Lloyd to Katharine Hepburn to Warren Beatty to Jane Fonda and beyond, including directors, writers, producers, editors, designers of sets and costumes.

Though there are many factors behind such success, including luck and the contributions of his creative partner Marshall Herskovitz, he’s known to have a special talent for bringing out the best in the people he’s worked with, notably the actors. In those intense collaborations, he seeks to discover the small pieces of connective tissue, vulnerability, and fellowship that can help an actor realize their character in full.

The name “Hollywood” conjures up fantastical images of bright lights, glamorous dreams, and impossible riches. From its humble beginnings as a ranch sprawling northwest of Los Angeles in the late 1800s, Hollywood has spanned lifetimes as a factory of dreams, a dazzling place where all things are possible.

Sir Michael Caine is loved not just for his many films, but for his warmth, honesty, and humour in describing every aspect of his life from his humble South London beginnings to performing alongside the greatest Hollywood actors of the day.

From former screen legends who have faded into obscurity to new revelations about the biggest movie stars, Valderrama unearths the most fascinating little-known tales from the birth of Hollywood through its Golden Age. The shocking fate of the world's first movie star. Clark Gable's secret love child. The film that nearly ended Paul Newman's career. A former child star who, at 93, reveals her #metoo story for the first time. Valderrama unfolds these stories, and many more, in a volume that is by turns riveting, maddening, hilarious, and shocking.

Hollywood and Crime is a ground-breaking true crime series about the most infamous murders in Tinseltown history. In The Black Dahlia Serial Killers, host Tracy Pattin investigates the sensational unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short. Known as the Black Dahlia, Short was a star-struck young woman whose body was found completely severed at the waist in January 1947. Many remember her tragic story, yet few know that more than a dozen other women died in similar circumstances around that same time. In Young Charlie, internationally acclaimed actor Stephen Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe) ...

In the 1950s, Confidential magazine, America's first celebrity scandal magazine, revealed Hollywood stars' secrets, misdeeds, and transgressions in gritty, unvarnished detail. Deploying a vast network of tipsters to root out stars' sexual affairs, drug use, and sexuality, publisher Robert Harrison destroyed celebrities' carefully constructed images and built a media empire. Confidential became the best-selling magazine on American newsstands in the 1950s, surpassing Time, Life, and the Saturday Evening Post. Confidential's spectacular rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall.

In 2019, veteran journalist Mark Seal began investigating the suspicious death of music mogul Peter Ikin. Just 32 days before he was found dead in his Paris hotel room, Ikin had married a handsome, debonair Frenchman named Alexandre, who would claim to be entitled to his late husband’s fortune. As Seal dug into the case, he had no idea that tracing the incredible life of Alexandre Despallieres would take him from Paris to London to Beverly Hills, and unspool a web of intricate plots and deceptions.

Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend tells the incredible story of how a sad, neglected boy became the suave, glamorous star many know and idolize. The first biography to be based on Grant's own personal papers, this book takes us on a fascinating journey from the actor's difficult childhood through years of struggle in music halls and vaudeville, a hit-and-miss career in Broadway musicals, and three decades of film stardom during Hollywood's golden age.

After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, The Pythons made their last performance together in 1983 in the hugely successful Monty Python's Meaning of Life. Writing and acting in films and television then took over much of Michael's life, culminating in the smash hit A Fish Called Wanda (for which he won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor) and the first of his seven celebrated television journeys for the BBC.

The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Eve Babitz posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety. There were the album covers she designed: for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds, to name but a few. There were the men she seduced: Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha, Harrison Ford, to name but a very few.

During the height of Hollywood’s golden age, one man lorded over the city’s lurid underbelly of forbidden sin and celebrity scandal like no other: Fred Otash. An ex-Marine turned L.A.P.D. vice cop, Otash became the most sought-after private detective and fixer to the stars by specializing in the dark arts that would soon dominate the entertainment industry. The Fixer delves into the extraordinary life of Hollywood’s most infamous private detective and “fixer” to the stars, revealing newly discovered shocking revelations from his never-before-seen investigative files.

In her short decade in Hollywood, Jean Harlow created a new genre of movie star - her fans idolized her for her peerless image, her beautiful body, and her gorgeous façade. Harlow in Hollywood is the story of how a town and an industry created her, a story that's never been told before. In this book, renowned Harlow expert Darrell Rooney and Hollywood historian Mark Vieira team up to present the most beautiful - and accurate - book on Harlow ever produced.

In 1975, five young employees of a sclerotic William Morris agency left to start their own strikingly innovative talent agency. In the years to come, Creative Artists Agency would vault from its origins in a tiny office on the last block of Beverly Hills to become the largest and most imperial, groundbreaking, and star-studded agency Hollywood has ever seen - a company whose tentacles now spread throughout the world of movies, music, television, technology, advertising, sports, and investment banking far more than previously imagined.

From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all—a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate as Stompanato's intense jealousy took over.

It was one of the most extraordinary takeovers British football has known. In February 2021, Ryan Reynolds joined with Rob McElhenney to buy Wrexham AFC, a non-league team in North Wales. Wrexham, a former coal and steel town dealing with its post-industrial legacy, suddenly found itself at the centre of global attention, with broadcast networks around the world descending to discover what was going on. Tinseltown tells the story of this extraordinary, unpredictable and often surreal football takeover and the remarkable events that followed.

In this documentary podcast, best-selling crime novelist Michael Connelly returns to his roots in journalism and examines the Wonderland Murders, an iconic and brutal mass murder in a city known for its murders.

With intimate detail, author Maria Riva reveals the rich life of her mother, Marlene Dietrich, the charismatic star of stage and screen whose career spanned much of the 20th century. Opening with Dietrich's childhood in Schöneberg, Riva's biography introduces us to an energetic, disciplined, and ambitious young actress whose own mother equated show business with a world of vagabonds and thieves.

The first in-depth biography of the American actress and humanitarian campaigner who will marry Prince Harry in May 2018, written by the world's best-known royal biographer. When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were set up by a mutual friend on a blind date in June 2016, little could they know that just 16 months later the resulting whirlwind romance would lead to their engagement in November 2017 and marriage in May 2018.

In 1940, the 4th most popular star in the US was a foreign actor from Australia, and unlike other movie stars, he was more notorious for his pursuits off the screen than on it. In an era long before social media, Errol Flynn represented the epitome of a swashbuckling playboy, with enough mystery and intrigue surrounding him and his background to fascinate even those who didn’t see his movies.