Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Arts & Entertainment

Fifty years ago, a little boy was cast in a movie with some of Hollywood's brightest stars. The movie: It's a Wonderful Life; the boy: Jimmy Hawkins; today, he tells his story. Through personal recollection, careful research, and interviews with cast and crew, actor Jimmy Hawkins, who played four-year-old Tommy Bailey, takes you behind the scenes for a first-hand look at the American movie classic It's a Wonderful Life.

A welcome surprise: more than 50 prose pieces, gathered together for the first time, by one of America's most revered and admired novelists and short-story writers, whose articles, essays, and cultural commentary - appearing in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere - have been parsing the political, artistic, and media idiom for the last three decades.

To many people, the Marx Brothers always seemed cartoonish. Small wonder that film animators plucked their personas from their first appearances in The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930) and caricatured them in countless animated appearances in theatrical cartoons. Their animated likenesses have since been wisecracking in television cartoons, direct-to-video movies, fan films, commercials, flip books, avatars, emoji, a slot machine, and two TV pilots so rare they were once thought not to exist.

In clear and entertaining prose, Plotkin explores a thousand years of music, introduces listeners to more than 100 great works, and profiles in depth many significant composers, including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Dvoxak, and Mahler. He describes all the musical instruments in the orchestra, defines major musical terms, and makes music theory comprehensible for the uninitiated. There are also conversations with important musicians who offer fascinating insights about their art.

Drawing on his own life and career and the rich lore of The Lion King, Alton Fitzgerald White, Broadway's longest-running "King", delivers his message of service - taking responsibility for and deriving happiness from commonplace achievements - as a philosophy that anyone can get through each day with satisfaction, pride, and a sense of accomplishment.

Kelly Corrigan talks with Lysa Williams of Blackstone Audio about her new book, The Middle Place.

Blackstone Audio is proud to present the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Measure for Measure, Shakespeare’s compelling tragicomedy that explores restraint—and lack thereof. The duke’s authoritarian deputy, Angelo, is hell-bent on stamping out moral decay. He reactivates outdated draconian laws and aims his arrogant crosshairs at a young man whose fiancée is pregnant, sentencing him to death. Angelo is sternly incorruptible—until he meets Isabela....

Created exclusively with and for teen musicians, this hands-on, step-by-step program uses insight, enthusiasm, and humor to teach teens how to brainstorm ideas, craft effective lyrics, and put those lyrics to music. An award-winning and Billboard-charting songwriter and teacher, Alex Forbes has taught dozens of teens via her Manhattan workshops and coaching sessions how to turn their thoughts and feelings into incisive, evocative songs.

Join us in this exclusive audio program for candid conversations with luminaries in the food world. Kitchen Round Table brings you inside the homes and hearts of Lidia Bastianich, Madhur Jaffrey, Judith Jones, Betty Fussell, and Deb Perelman. We hear about their earliest food memories and how each slowly made their way into the kitchen and ultimately inspired generation upon generation of home cooks. We'll learn how complicated recipes are translated for those of us who don't dice and julienne in our sleep, but we'll also hear about memorable gourmet feats and culinary fireworks, and unforgettable meals.

The national debate over popular music's effect on character is both furious and confused. Conservatives complain primarily about lyrics, appealing to public decency and safety. Liberals, swift to the defense of any self-expression, simultaneously celebrate rock's liberating ethos and deny its cultural influence.

The fascinating life of storyteller and humorist Mark Twain is revealed in this one-man performance based on Twain's writings. The early years of Samuel Clemens, the Mississippi River experiences, and his move to the silver mining area of Nevada are portrayed by exuberant actor McAvoy Layne; some of the most famous tales, from "The Blue Jay Yarn" to "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" are woven into the history of this most colorful author.

In Lost Sound, Jeff Porter examines the vital interplay between acoustic techniques and modernist practices in the growth of radio. Concentrating on the 1930s through the 1970s, but also speaking to the rising popularity of today's narrative broadcasts such as This American Life, Radiolab, Serial, and The Organist, Porter's close readings of key radio programs show how writers adapted literary techniques to an acoustic medium with great effect.

When Adam Parfrey tracked down Walter Keane - the credited artist of the weepy waifs - for a San Diego Reader cover story in 1992, he discovered some shocking facts. Decades of lawsuits and countersuits revealed the reality that Keane was more of a conman than an artist and that he forced his wife, Margaret, to sign his name to her own paintings. As a result those weepy waifs may not have been as capricious an invention as they seemed.

In 1903 at the soon-to-open Luna Park on Coney Island, an elephant named Topsy was electrocuted, likely with advice from Thomas Edison,whose film crew recorded the horrible event. Over the past century, this bizarre, ghoulish execution has reverberated through popular culture with the ring of an urban legend. But it really happened, and today, Edison’s footage can be found on YouTube, where it has been viewed nearly two million times.

Until now, Hollywood's political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the nightmare of the Red Scare and how it victimized political innocents. But Ronald and Allis Radosh tell for the first time the “backstory” behind this myth. They show how the Soviet Comintern targeted the film capital in the late 1920s, taking us inside the cells and discussion groups that Communist Party members formed, the guilds and unions they tried to take over, and the studios they aimed to influence.

Helen Hayes, acclaimed "First Lady of the American Theatre", has been on stage, screen, and television for more than fifty years. In that time she moved among the world's most famous and talented: actors, film stars, writers, businessmen. She speaks with wit, wisdom, and candor on topics both public and private.

Stephen Colbert is far more than a comedian and improv genius. As head of his fanciful Colbert Nation, the quick-witted host of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and former host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report has delighted fans with his wit, audacity, and innovative uses of language and the media.

The Los Angeles Times affectionately referred to Freddy Powers as the "Ol Blue Eyes' of Country Music" and wrote that if you were to "ask country superstars Willie Nelson, George Jones or Merle Haggard (they'll)...tell you that he's one of country music's best-kept secrets". The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame inductee has been to the top of the charts as both a producer for Willie Nelson's Grammy-winning LP Over the Rainbow and a songwriter for many of country music legend Merle Haggard's number one hits.

The greatest creators in human history - from Mozart to Meryl Streep, Jackson Pollock to Jay Z - don't just have talent - they also understand their motivations for pursuing art. What's Your Creative Type? helps artists do the same in a fun and witty way. Stepping away from the hyperfocus on how people create, What's Your Creative Type? instead explores why. By identifying your creative motivation type, you'll be able to find renewed energy, overcome creative blocks, and release the artist within.

Doty Meets Coyote is an audio tapestry of traditional and original Native American stories from the American West told by master storyteller Thomas Doty. It is Thomas Doty's work as a storyteller not only to perpetuate the Old Time myths with integrity but to add new stories to the collective basket of folklore, just as tellers before him have done for centuries. Storytelling is an ancient tradition as well as a living art.