Bette Davis


James Spada - 1993
    Pub Date: October 1994 Pages: 528 in Publisher: Warner A biography of Bette Davis. Revealing a life replete with scandal. The sex. Violence courage sacrifice and hearteak. After three years of research and more than 150 It doesn'' James Spada has written a revealing biography of one of the greatest Hollywood Legends. Spada has convinced Bette Davis's relatives and friends to speak out for the first time. and he has gained new access to court documents. long-lost inquest transcript. and personal correspondence to paint a portrait of one of the most complex and misrepresented women in Hollywood history. This book reveals Bette Davis' oddly close relationship with her mother (who bathed her until she was in her teens); her ambivalent feelings about the sex act. as revealed by a directorlover; her possible role in the ain damage of her adopted daughter; the bizarre be...

Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind


Gavin Edwards - 2013
    Putting him at the center of a new generation of leading men emerging in the early 1990s— including Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage, and Leonardo DiCaprio—Gavin Edwards traces the Academy Award nominee’s meteoric rise, couches him in an examination of the 1990s, and illuminates his lasting legacy on Hollywood and popular culture itself.

The Making of The African Queen Or How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind


Katharine Hepburn - 1987
    And why —Come hell or high waterThrough thick and through thinFor better and for worseBut not quite until death did we part —It was great fun. — K. H.

Hollywood Babylon


Kenneth Anger - 1959
    Originally published in Paris, this is a collection of Hollywood's darkest and best kept secrets from the pen of Kenneth Anger, a former child movie actor who grew up to become one of America's leading underground film-makers.

Love, Lucy


Lucille Ball - 1996
    The legendary star of the classic sitcom I Love Lucy was at the pinnacle of her success when she sat down to record the story of her life. No comedienne had made America laugh so hard, no television actress had made the leap from radio and B movies to become one of the world's best-loved performers. This is her story--in her own words.The story of the ingenue from Jamestown, New York, determined to go to Broadway, destined to make a big splash, bound to marry her Valentino, Desi Arnaz. In her own inimitable style, she tells of their life together--both storybook and turbulent; intimate memories of their children and friends; wonderful backstage anecdotes; the empire they founded; the dissolution of their marriage. And, with a heartfelt happy ending, her enduring marriage to Gary Morton.Here is the lost manuscript that her fans and loved ones will treasure. Here is the laughter. Here is the life. Here's Lucy...

Forever Young : The Life, Loves, and Enduring Faith of a Hollywood Legend ; The Authorized Biography of Loretta Young


Joan Wester Anderson - 2000
    The real life and faith journey of Loretta Young -- her strong devotion to her Catholic faith and her passion for helping others in need.

Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood


Karina Longworth - 2018
    But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, Seduction is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.

You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation


Susannah Gora - 2010
    You’re a bonafide Brat Pack devotee—and you’re not alone.The films of the Brat Pack—from Sixteen Candles to Say Anything—are some of the most watched, bestselling DVDs of all time. The landscape that the Brat Packmemorialized—where outcasts and prom queens fall in love, preppies and burn-outs become buds, and frosted lip gloss, skinny ties, and exuberant optimism made us feel invincible—is rich with cultural themes and significance, and has influenced an entire generation who still believe that life always turns out the way it is supposed to.You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried takes us back to that era, interviewing key players, such as Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, and John Cusack, and mines all the material from the movies to the music to the way the films were made to show how they helped shape our visions for romance, friendship, society, and success.

My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir


Shirley MacLaine - 1995
    In My Lucky Stars Shirley MacLaine talks candidly and personally about her four decades in Hollywood, especially about the men and women--her "lucky stars"--who touched and challenged her life.

Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film


Patton Oswalt - 2015
    It wasn’t drugs, alcohol, or sex: it was film. After moving to Los Angeles, Oswalt became a huge film buff (or as he calls it, a sprocket fiend), absorbing classics, cult hits, and new releases at the famous New Beverly Cinema. Silver screen celluloid became Patton’s life schoolbook, informing his notion of acting, writing, comedy, and relationships.Set in the nascent days of LA’s alternative comedy scene, Silver Screen Fiend chronicles Oswalt’s journey from fledgling stand-up comedian to self-assured sitcom actor, with the colorful New Beverly collective and a cast of now-notable young comedians supporting him all along the way.

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.

Hot Toddy: The True Story of Hollywood's Most Sensational Murder


Andy Edmonds - 1989
    Set against the Hollywood industry where Toddy worked and played--an industry infiltrated by the Mob. 21 photos.

Sophia Loren: A Biography


Warren G. Harris - 1998
    Detailing both her personal and professional life, this biography of Sophia Loren describes her impoverished childhood, discusses the making of her early films and examines her enduring love affair with Carlo Ponti, to whom she has been married for nearly 40 years.

Garbo


Barry Paris - 1994
    In this richly illustrated volume, renowned biographer Barry Paris offers the definitive biography of this fascinating and complex woman -- from her hardscrabble childhood in Sweden to her arrival in Hollywood at the age of nineteen, from her meteoric rise to stardom to her unintentional retirement from filmmaking at the height of her fame, from the new life she crafted for herself to her surprising, and failed, plans for a comeback. Drawing on hitherto unavailable material, including one hundred hours of tape-recorded conversations, fifty years of correspondence, and interviews with Garbo's surviving friends and family, Paris reveals the real woman behind the enigma.

Gracie: A Love Story


George Burns - 1988
    This story brings to life the charming woman who was smart enough to become the dumbest woman in show business, told with intimacy and humor by the man who loved her most--her husband George Burns.