Born Ramón Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, Novarro arrived in Hollywood in 1916 as a refugee from the civil wars that rocked Mexico in the early 20th century. By the mid-1920s, he had become one of MGM's most important leading men, going on to star in a series of now classic films including The Student Prince, Mata Hari, and the original version of Ben-Hur. He shared the screen with the era's most important leading ladies such as Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer and become Rudolph Valentino's main rival in the "Latin Lover" category. But despite his considerable professional accomplishments, Novarro's most enduring claim to fame is his tragic death - his bloodied corpse was found in his house on Halloween 1968 in what has become one of the most infamous scandals in the vast lore of Hollywood.Novarro was a life-long bachelor who had carefully cultivated his image as a man deeply devoted to his family and to his religious convictions. His murder shattered that image as it was revealed to the general public that the dashing screen hero had been not only homosexual, but had been killed by two young male hustlers. Since then, his death has achieved near mythic proportions. Increasingly outlandish stories have become accepted as truth, obscuring Novarro's notable professional legacy.Beyond Paradise presents for the first time a full picture of the man who made motion picture history - from his amazing rise to stardom to the destructive conflicts faced by this traditional Catholic Mexican man who was also a gay film star. Compellingly told and impressively researched - including original interviews with Novarro's surviving friends, family, co-workers and the two men convicted of his murder - Beyond Paradise provides a unique insight into the groundbreaking life and career of one of the most important early Hollywood stars - a man whose myth continues to fascinate today.

    Reports of strange activities at the scene of the crime circulated soon after. When the police arrived, was the head of Paramount Studios burning a bundle of papers in the fireplace, and was a well-known actress searching the house for letters she claimed were hers? Despite a full-scale investigation, the case was never solved; for sixty years is has remained a lingering Hollywood scandal. In 1967, more than forty years after Taylor's death, the great King Vidor, whose directing credits include Northwest Passage, The Fountainhead, Duel in the Sun, and War and Peace, determined to solve the mystery, which had haunted him throughout his career, in order to make a film about it. Through his intimate knowledge of both the studios and the stars, he succeeded, where dozens of professional detectives had failed, in discovering the identity of the murderer. But because his findings were so explosive, he decided he could never go public and locked his evidence away. After Vidor's death in 1982, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, Vidor's authorized biographer, gained access to the evidence and reconstructed the amazing story of Taylor's murder and Vidor's investigation. With a cast of suspects that includes the actress Mabel Normand, a reputed drug addict; the beautiful ingénue, Mary Miles Minter; Mary's domineering mother, Charlotte Shelby; Taylor's homosexual houseman; and Taylor's secretary, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Taylor's mysteriously elusive brother, this true crime story has all the elements of a classic murder mystery. Covered up for more than half a century, the full story can now be told in all its riveting, shocking detail.

    She started her film career at seventeen, competed all her life with her famous sister Olivia de Havilland, and was pursued by men like Howard Hughes, Prince Aly Khan, Adlai Stevenson.In her new book, she tells what it's like to be the youngest woman to win the Academy Award, and what it's like to fail on four separate nights. Her name is Joan Fontaine and No Bed Of Roses is the story no one else could write for her. The most glamorous, candid, and personal of all the Hollywood "tell-all" stories with 16 pages of photographs.

    The year was 1951. Dean had recently arrived in Manhattan in search of Broadway stardom. Sheridan was a tall, graceful aspiring dancer. They met one rainy afternoon in the parlor of the Rehearsal Club, a chaperoned boardinghouse for young actresses -- and before long Dizzy and Jimmy were inseparable. Together they hunted for jobs, haunted all-night bars and diners, and gloried in the innocent rebellion of early-'50s bohemian New York. Dizzy Sheridan and James Dean were lovers; they lived together; as even ardent Dean fans may be surprised to learn, they were engaged to be married. But when Dean began to find success on the Broadway stage and then was lured to Hollywood, the couple parted amid tears and broken dreams -- dreams that would be dashed forever when Dean died in a car crash in 1955, not long after seeing Dizzy for the last time.Dizzy & Jimmy marks the first time Liz Sheridan has written about this joyous yet ill-starred romance. She brings us closer than we have ever been to the vibrant young actor before he became a Hollywood icon, capturing his unstudied charm, his complicated psyche, the spontaneous delight he took from the world around him, and the passion he invested in his work and life. It is a journey that takes in many locales, from Dean's boyhood home in Fairmount, Indiana, to Sheridan's recuperative travels through the Caribbean after their breakup. But at its heart Dizzy & Jimmy is the story of a love affair with Manhattan -- of nights spent stealing kisses in Times Square, sharing a walkup in the Hargrave Hotel, dancing after hours beneath the stars in Grand Central Station. And in Sheridan's bittersweet, embraceable telling, it becomes a story no reader, Dean fan or otherwise, will soon forget.

    He started out as an actor (he debuted on the stage in his sixth-grade production of Finian’s Rainbow); he watched actors work (he went to the theater every week from the age of thirteen and saw every important show on, or off, Broadway for the next decade); he studied acting, starting at sixteen, with Stella Adler (his work with her became the foundation for all he would ever do as an actor and a director).Now, in his new book, Who the Hell’s in It, Bogdanovich draws upon a lifetime of experience, observation and understanding of the art to write about the actors he came to know along the way; actors he admired from afar; actors he worked with, directed, befriended. Among them: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, John Cassavetes, Charlie Chaplin, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Karloff, Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Frank Sinatra, and James Stewart.Bogdanovich captures—in their words and his—their work, their individual styles, what made them who they were, what gave them their appeal and why they’ve continued to be America’s iconic actors.On Lillian Gish: “the first virgin hearth goddess of the screen . . . a valiant and courageous symbol of fortitude and love through all distress.” On Marlon Brando: “He challenged himself never to be the same from picture to picture, refusing to become the kind of film star the studio system had invented and thrived upon—the recognizable human commodity each new film was built around . . . The funny thing is that Brando’s charismatic screen persona was vividly apparent despite the multiplicity of his guises . . . Brando always remains recognizable, a star-actor in spite of himself. ” Jerry Lewis to Bogdanovich on the first laugh Lewis ever got onstage: “I was five years old. My mom and dad had a tux made—I worked in the borscht circuit with them—and I came out and I sang, ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ the big hit at the time . . . It was 1931, and I stopped the show—naturally—a five-year-old in a tuxedo is not going to stop the show? And I took a bow and my foot slipped and hit one of the floodlights and it exploded and the smoke and the sound scared me so I started to cry. The audience laughed—they were hysterical . . . So I knew I had to get the rest of my laughs the rest of my life, breaking, sitting, falling, spinning.”John Wayne to Bogdanovich, on the early years of Wayne’s career when he was working as a prop man: “Well, I’ve naturally studied John Ford professionally as well as loving the man. Ever since the first time I walked down his set as a goose-herder in 1927. They needed somebody from the prop department to keep the geese from getting under a fake hill they had for Mother Machree at Fox. I’d been hired because Tom Mix wanted a box seat for the USC football games, and so they promised jobs to Don Williams and myself and a couple of the players. They buried us over in the properties department, and Mr. Ford’s need for a goose-herder just seemed to fit my pistol.”These twenty-six portraits and conversations are unsurpassed in their evocation of a certain kind of great movie star that has vanished. Bogdanovich’s book is a celebration and a farewell.From the Hardcover edition.

    Now, at last, in this long-awaited autobiography Lana Turner separates fact from gossip - to reveal the sometimes humorous, often heartbreaking reality of the life behind the legend.

    Her long-awaited autobiography casts Neal in her greatest role--as the indomitable heroine of her own incredible real-life story.

    After years of research, with the full cooperation of the Disney family and access to private papers and letters, Bob Thomas produced the definitive biography of the man behind the legend--the unschooled cartoonist from Kansas City who went bankrupt on his first movie venture but became the genius who produced unmatched works of animation. Complete with a rare collection of photographs, Bob Thomas' biography is a fascinating and inspirational work that captures the spirit of Walt Disney.

    Over the course of his career, he has remained true to a vision of the innocent lost in darkness and confusion, balancing hallucination and surrealism with a sense of Americana that is as pure and simple as his compelling storylines. In this volume, Lynch speaks openly about his films as well as about his lifelong commitment to painting, his work in photography, his television projects, and his musical collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti.

    An Oscar-winning actress, she has lived her entire life in front of the spotlights, and her glamour and smouldering, sensual charisma are the stuff of legend. In Elizabeth, Alexander Walker presents the story of a life that was lived, on and off camera, with a passion rarely matched by even today's outspoken celebrities. From her privileged childhood, the influence of her strong-willed mother, and her rise to stardom in films like National Velvet, A Place in the Sun, and Cleopatra, to her husbands, her obsession with jewelry, and her amazing resilience in the face of public scandal and personal tragedy, Walker shows us the real Elizabeth--as an actress and as a person determined to live on her own terms.

    Features interviews with all the original cast members and a comprehensive episode guide. Photos.

    MY HUSBAND, MY FRIENDTHE REAL STEVE McQUEEN - FROM ABANDONED CHILD TO GLITTERINGSUPERSTAR TO HAUNTED MAN....Now his wife of 15 and a half years, Neile, who rodethe dazzling Hollywood roller coaster with him, revealsA Steve McQueen no one knew – his good side,his crazy side, his dark side....

    Niv, according to his friends, was much the same off-screen. Both men and women were enchanted by his charisma, humour and joie-de-vivre. In addition to winning an Oscar for Separate Tables (1958), Niven was a polished writer, and published two volumes of lighthearted autobiography: THE MOON'S A BALLOON (1972) and BRING ON THE EMPTY HORSES (1975). Yet behind those twinkling eyes, Niv's life was punctuated by tragedy and he was often deeply unhappy. From the death of his father when Niven was five, to his mother's neglect and the stepfather he loathed, through to the death of his beloved first wife and his volatile and disturbing marriage to his second wife, Hjordis, tragedy and hardship were never far away. Graham Lord, using new material from Niven's private papers, manuscripts, unpublished stories and correspondence, has written a fresh, revealing, funny and poignant portrait of a brave and brilliant man. Fully authorised by Niven's family and drawing from dozens of interviews with stars, from Lauren Bacall to Roger Moore and Sir John Mills, NIV: the Authorised Biography of David Niven is a fitting tribute to one of Hollywood's greatest heroes.

    But Olivier was as elusive in life as he was on the stage, a bold and practiced pretender who changed names, altered his identity, and defied characterization. In this mesmerizing book, acclaimed biographer Terry Coleman draws for the first time on the vast archive of Olivier’s private papers and correspondence, and those of his family, finally uncovering the history and the private self that Olivier worked so masterfully all his life to obscure. Beginning with the death of his mother at age eleven, Olivier was defined throughout his life by a passionate devotion to the women closest to him. Acting and sex were for him inseparable: through famous romances with Vivien Leigh and Joan Plowright and countless trysts with lesser-known mistresses, these relationships were constantly entangled with his stage work, each feeding the other and driving Olivier to greater heights. And the heights were great: at every step he was surrounded by the foremost celebrities of the time, on both sides of the Atlantic—Richard Burton, Greta Garbo, William Wyler, Katharine Hepburn. The list is as long as it is dazzling.Here is the first comprehensive account of the man whose autobiography, written late in his life, told only a small part of the story. In Olivier, Coleman uncovers the origins of Olivier’s genius and reveals the methods of the century’s most fascinating performer.

    Chandler also spoke with directors, actors, and others who knew and worked with Davis, and includes brief synopses of all of her theatrical films.Here are some more examples of Bette's wit to be found within these pages: "I'm the one who didn't get the man, which is the more interesting character on the screen, but in real life sometimes I wish I could just have been the girl who got the man, and kept him. I got four husbands and several lovers, but I didn't keep any of them. I was invited to the White House, but no man stayed to share my white cottage.""My favorite actor with whom I never played, professionally or personally, was Laurence Olivier. I admired everything about him. He was a great actor, and he was my dream man. Literally and figuratively. Larry was my fantasy lover, the perfect man, or at least I thought he would be. He was not only beautiful, but intelligent."