The Man Who Seduced Hollywood: The Life and Loves of Greg Bautzer, Tinseltown's Most Powerful Lawyer


B. James Gladstone - 2013
    Columnists dubbed him “Hollywood Bachelor Number One,” and for good reason. His long-term relationships and momentary conquests were a who’s who of leading ladies, including Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Ginger Rogers, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Jane Wyman, Dorothy Lamour, Ann Sothern, Greer Garson, Merle Oberon, and Peggy Lee, to name just a few.Yet Bautzer was more than a Hollywood Don Juan. As a lawyer, he represented nearly every major star of his era, as well as the richest man in the world, Howard Hughes, for whom he served as adviser, confidant, and best friend. He also handled Hughes’s shadier deals, including writing checks for a harem of kept women and quashing potentially embarrassing tell-all biographies.In Hollywood history, no other lawyer has achieved the movie star–like fame and glamour that Bautzer enjoyed. The Man Who Seduced Hollywood tells, for the first time, the amazing story of a self-made man who for fifty years used his irresistible charm and prodigious legal talent to dominate the courtrooms, boardrooms, and bedrooms of Hollywood.In addition to new stories about Hughes, this biography contains countless anecdotes about Bautzer's other well-known clients and friends including Joan Crawford, Frank Sinatra, Ingrid Bergman, Rock Hudson, Bugsy Siegel, Robert Evans, Kirk Kerkorian and many more of the twentieth century's biggest stars.

Bogart: In Search of My Father


Stephen Humphrey Bogart - 1995
    Along the way, he came up with surprising anecdotes involving Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, John Houston, Audrey Hepburn, and Stephen Bogart's stepfather, Jason Robards, that make the real Humphrey Bogart come vividly to life.

Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake


Veronica Lake - 1969
    In a brief period of time she made twenty-six pictures, became one of the country's top box-office attractions, and then disappeared. After twenty years of rumors, the same girl made headlines when she was "rediscovered" as a waitress in a New York restaurant. Now she makes perhaps the boldest headlines of all with this book--for these are the uninhibited reminiscences of Constance Ockleman, who was made by Hollywood into Veronica Lake.

Dear Cary: My Life with Cary Grant


Dyan Cannon - 2011
    When they began living together, she was 25; he was 58. Three years later, they married, but within a year and a half, she left him, amidst reports of loud arguments and spanking episodes. Their divorce, finalized in 1968, was a major news splash even in that pre-TMZ, pre-internet era. Grant died in 1986, but Cannon has continued to wrestle with the details, the rights, and the wrongs of their relationship. Dear Cary is a memoir that celebrates and scrutinizes the great love of her life.

Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door


David Kaufman - 2008
    While Day symbolized virtuous America to the rest of the world--especially in her heyday, the 1950s and early 1960s--both she and that era are still perceived as being far more innocent and carefree than they really were. Indeed, what makes Day's story so richly fascinating is the fact that she was in many ways the opposite of her image as "the girl next door." She was also a real-life Cinderella who regretted having gone to the ball and who found a series of princes who proved far less than charming. Thanks to Kaufman's dogged diligence in tracking down countless colleagues and intimates, he gives readers scintillating tales of fame, beauty, money, tragedy, sexual ambiguity, and sexual conquests. He also has collected fascinating anecdotes about a vast array of major subsidiary players in Day's life, including Ronald Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Charles Manson, Mickey Mantle, Candice Bergen, and Rock Hudson. Kaufman reveals Day's demons while emphasizing the extraordinary credit she deserves as an artist. In the tradition of great biographies, Kaufman's detailed work not only reveals the surprising story of one of America's most beloved icons, but also compels us to rush back and see her best films--including "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "Pillow Talk," and "Love Me or Leave Me"--and to listen to her unforgettable songs--"Sentimental Journey," "Secret Love," and "Que Sera, Sera." Though she made more than 550 recordings and starred in 39 movies--not to mention her own TV show for five years--the epic story of Doris Day's life has never been told, until now.

My Week With Marilyn


Colin Clark - 2000
    The film united Britain's leading actor, Laurence Olivier, with Hollywood's most glamorous sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe - and clashes between them entered film legend.For one glorious week, the world's biggest star sought comfort in the arms of the set's most junior employee. This is the frank, fresh and comic story of how Clark came to share Monroe's confidences - and her bed!This edition combines Colin Clark’s acclaimed 'The Prince, the Showgirl and Me' (191995) and his 'My Week with Marilyn' (2005).'More illuminating than the millions of words and pictures pumped out to expose or dish the dirt on the Monroe legend.' - Sunday TelegraphClark’s extraordinary experiences on and off set have now been turned into a major film starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Judi Dench, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh and Dominic Cooper.

The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century


Margaret Talbot - 2012
    The arc of Lyle Talbot’s career is in fact the story of American entertainment. Born in 1902, Lyle left his home in small-town Nebraska in 1918 to join a traveling carnival. From there he became a magician’s assistant, an actor in a traveling theater troupe, a romantic lead in early talkies, then an actor in major Warner Bros. pictures with stars such as Humphrey Bogart and Carole Lombard, then an actor in cult B movies, and finally a part of the advent of television, with regular roles on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver. Ultimately, his career spanned the entire trajectory of the industry.In her captivating, impeccably researched narrative—a charmed combination of Hollywood history, social history, and family memoir—Margaret Talbot conjures warmth and nostalgia for those earlier eras of ’10s and ’20s small-town America, ’30s and ’40s Hollywood. She transports us to an alluring time, simpler but also exciting, and illustrates the changing face of her father’s America, all while telling the story of mass entertainment across the first half of the twentieth century.

Quentin Tarantino


Wensley Clarkson - 1995
    His uniquely stylish films, with their designer violence, exuberant black humour and rapid-fire, tough-guy dialogue, have won him worldwide critical acclaim and rock star status. Tarantino is walking, talking, Oscar-winning proof that you can break the rules and still triumph over Hollywood. This roller coaster ride through Quentin Tarantino's life and work is based on over 100 in-depth interviews with friends, colleagues and family and was written with the invaluable support of Quentin's mother, Connie. Perceptive and compelling, Quentin Tarantino: Shooting From The Hip penetrates the eccentric world of Hollywood's hottest movie director. It is essential reading for everyone wanting to understand Tarantino the man, and the phenomenon.

Make 'Em Laugh: Short-Term Memories of Longtime Friends


Debbie Reynolds - 2015
    Over her more than six-decade-long career she met presidents, performed for the Queen of England, and partied with kings.In this fabulous personal tour, she recalls wonderful moments with the greats of the entertainment world—Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Phyllis Diller, and many, many more—sharing stories that shed new light on her life and career and the glittering world of Hollywood then and now. Debbie has plenty to tell—and in Make ’Em Laugh, she dishes it in the warm, down-to-earth voice her fans adore.Debbie shares memories of late night pals and some of the greatest comedians of all time, stories from the big screen and small, and tales of marriage, motherhood, and children. Combining her wicked sense of humor and appealing charm, she reveals the personal side of show business and fame in funny, poignant, and delightful reminiscences. Nothing is off limits: Debbie talks about her sex life, her family drama—and even shares a few secret recipes.A true Hollywood icon, beloved by millions of fans around the world, Debbie Reynolds died on December 28, 2016, at the age of 84, just one day after the death of her daughter, actress and author Carrie Fisher.

The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education


Peter Coyote - 2015
    For Coyote, the twin forces Dylan identifies as Texas Medicine and Railroad Gin – represent the competing forces of the transcendental, inclusive, and ecstatic world of love with the competitive, status-seeking world of wealth and power. The Rainman’s Third Cure is the tale of a young man caught between these apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads him from the privileged halls of power to Greenwich Village jazz bars, to jail, to the White House, lessons from a man who literally held the power of life and death over others, to government service and international success on stage and screen.Expanding his frame beyond the wild ride through the 1960’s counterculture that occupied so much of his lauded debut memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, Coyote provides readers intimate portraits of mentors that shaped him—a violent, intimidating father, a be-bop Bass player who teaches him that life can be improvised, a Mafia consiglieri, who demonstrates to him that men can be bought and manipulated, an ex game-warden who initates him into the laws of nature, a gay dancer in Martha Graham’s company who introduces him to Mexico and marijuanas, beat poet Gary Snyder, who introduces him to Zen practice, and finally famed fashion designer Nino Cerruti who made the high-stakes world of haute monde Europe available to him.What begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the road to Transmission---acknowledgement from his teacher that he is ready to be an independent teacher. Through Zen, Coyote discovers a third option that offers an alternative to both the worlds of Love and Power’s correlatives of status seeking and material wealth. Zen was his portal, but what he discovers on the inside is actually available to all humans. In this energetic, reflective and intelligent memoir, The Rainman’s Third Cure is the way out of the box. The way that works.

Cary Grant: A Biography


Marc Eliot - 2004
    Exploring Grant’s troubled childhood, ambiguous sexuality, and lifelong insecurities, as well as the magical amalgam of characteristics that allowed him to remain Hollywood’s favorite romantic lead for more than thirty-five years, Cary Grant is the definitive examination of every aspect of Grant’s professional and private life and the first biography to reveal the real man behind the movie star.

Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society


Richard Dyer - 1986
    He draws on a wide range of sources, including the films in which each star appeared, to illustrate how each star's persona was constructed, and goes on to examine each within the context of particular issues in fan culture and stardom. Students of film and cultural studies will find this an invaluable part of there course reading.

Considering Doris Day


Tom Santopietro - 2007
    America's favorite girl next door may have projected a wholesome image that led Oscar Levant to quip "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin," but in Considering Doris Day Tom Santopietro reveals Day's underappreciated and effortless acting and singing range that ran the gamut from musicals to comedy to drama and made Day nothing short of a worldwide icon.             Covering the early Warner Brothers years through Day's triumphs working with artists as varied as Alfred Hitchcock and Bob Fosse, Santopietro's smart and funny book deconstructs the myth of Day as America's perennial virgin, and reveals why her work continues to resonate today, both onscreen as pioneering independent career woman role model, and off, as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor. Praised by James Cagney as "my idea of a great actor" and by James Garner as "the Fred Astaire of comedy," Doris Day became not just America's favorite girl, but the number one film star in the world. Yet after two weekly television series, including a triumphant five year run on CBS, she turned her back on show business forever.             Examining why Day's worldwide success in movies overshadowed the brilliant series of concept recordings she made for Columbia Records in the  '50s and '60s, Tom Santopietro uncovers the unexpected facets of Day's surprisingly sexy acting and singing style that led no less an observer than John Updike to state "She just glowed for me." Placing Day's work within the social context of America in the second half of the twentieth century, Considering Doris Day is the first book that grants Doris Day her rightful place as a singular American artist.

Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne


James Gavin - 2009
    Though limited, mostly to guest singing appearances in splashy Hollywood musicals, "the beautiful Lena Horne," as she was often called, became a pioneering star for African Americans in the 1940s and fifties. Now James Gavin, author of Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, draws on a wealth of unmined material and hundreds of interviews -- one of them with Horne herself -- to give us the defining portrait of an American icon.Gavin has gotten closer than any other writer to the celebrity who has lived in reclusion since 1998. Incorporating insights from the likes of Ruby Dee, Tony Bennett, Diahann Carroll, Arthur Laurents, and several of Horne's fellow chorines from Harlem's Cotton Club, Stormy Weather offers a fascinating portrait of a complex, even tragic Horne -- a stunning talent who inspired such giants of showbiz as Barbra Streisand, Eartha Kitt, and Aretha Franklin, but whose frustrations with racism, and with tumultuous, root-less childhood, left wounds too deep to heal. The woman who emerged was as angry as she was luminous.From the Cotton Club's glory days and the back lots of Hollywood's biggest studios to the glitzy but bigoted hotels of Las Vegas's heyday, this behind-the-scenes look at an American icon is as much a story of the limits of the American dream as it is a masterful, ground-breaking biography.

Katharine Hepburn


Barbara Leaming - 1995
    She is the last of the great ones: a celebrated actress, a brilliant personality, an original.Barbara Leaming has discovered thousands of never-before-seen documents that finally illuminate the mystery of this enigmatic, fascinating woman. Based on letters by Hepburn, her friends, and her family, as well as interviews with Hepburn herself, Leaming's book is a family story that brings alive three generations of fearless women, personal and political crusaders who shaped the history of women in our century.