Download or read book The Hollywood Sign written by Leo Braudy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story behind the massive white block letters set into a steep Los Angeles hillside—and the city and culture they represent: “Terrific.”—San Francisco Chronicle To so many who see its image, the Hollywood sign represents the earthly home of that otherwise ethereal world of fame, stardom, celebrity—the American and worldwide aspiration to be in the limelight, to be, like the Hollywood sign itself, instantly recognizable. How an advertisement erected in 1923, touting the real estate development Hollywoodland, took on a life of its own is a story worthy of a movie itself. Leo Braudy traces the remarkable life of this distinctly American landmark, which has been saved over the years by a various fans and supporters, among them Alice Cooper and Hugh Hefner, who spearheaded its reconstruction in the 1970s. He also uses the sign’s history to offer an intriguing look at the rise of the film business from its earliest, silent days through the development of the studio system that helped define modern Hollywood. Mixing social history, urban studies, literature, and film, along with forays into such topics as the lure of Hollywood for utopian communities and the development of domestic architecture in Los Angeles, The Hollywood Sign is a fascinating account of how a temporary structure has become a permanent icon of American culture. “An entertaining tale.”—The Washington Post
Download or read book Peg Entwistle and the Hollywood Sign Suicide written by James Zeruk, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-11-08 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first complete biography of actress Peg Entwistle, known as the "Hollywood Sign Girl" because of her suicide fall from the HOLLYWOODLAND sign in 1932. It details her childhood, stage and film career, marriage and divorce, and her suicide and almost cult-like pop culture status today. Extensively researched and written with the complete cooperation of the Entwistle family, this work includes excerpts from interviews with Peg Entwistle's brother Milton and her cousin Helen Reid, both of whom recalled much of Peg's years living in Hollywood, her career and private life, and her final weeks. It also features many of Peg Entwistle's own words from extant letters to her family and newly discovered interviews with theatrical reporters. Nearly 30 previously unpublished images from the author's collection, the Entwistle family, and a number of other sources complete an intimate look at a life that was defined by far more than its famously unhappy end.
Download or read book Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign written by David Del Valle and published by . This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Del Valle, writer, curator, collector, and Hollywood historian, takes you on a first person tour of the man-made Shangri La beneath the Hollywood sign, ultimately descending into the smog-shrouded netherworld of Lost Horizons. His candid recollections prove to be a celebration of contrasts, as David hangs out with the reigning pop culture icons of the day, Timothy Leary, Christopher Isherwood, Terry Southern, and Kenneth Anger. David maintained a life-long passion for those artisans that created the Horror genre. He grew up as a monster-watching kid of the 1950s, watching those films unfold on television, and his interactions with genre personalities like Vampira, John Carradine, Christopher Lee, and Barbara Steele testify to his devotion to their legacy. The book also delves into his long relationships with Vincent Price and Curtis Harrington during twenty-five years of living in Beverly Hills, as well as unforgettable moments such as introducing Hermione Baddeley to the Avant Garde filmmaker Rainer Fassbinder in a West Hollywood leather bar while Martha Raye searched her purse for poppers. Ken Russell, one of David's favorite directors, was fond of reminding David "Every day in Tinsle town is Halloween." Enter the realm of Lost Horizons and discover that you are no longer a tourist. You are now one of the attractions.
Download or read book All That Shines Under The Hollywood Sign written by Michele McDannold and published by . This book was released on 2019-11 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writer Iris Berry has always been fascinated by the reality of modern-day Hollywood and its glittery history as Tinseltown, and in her new collection of poetry, All That Shines Under the Hollywood Sign, the two worlds collide. She marvels about the way jazz glides "its way/down translucent highways/at one in the morning" and "ephemeral evenings/draped across Hollywood" and rhapsodizes about such long-lost local landmarks as the Tropicana Motel and the Garden of Allah. Accompanied by evocative L.A.-centric illustrations by Scott Aicher. Berry's portraits of vanishing and changing Southern California are often sentimental but infused with a rueful punk-rock perspective as she mulls over how "A catalog/of catastrophic events/shaped our lives. Falling James, LA WEEKLY
Download or read book Hollywoodland written by Mary Mallory and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Established by real estate developers Tracy E. Shoults and S. H. Woodruff in 1923, Hollywoodland was one of the first hillside developments built in Hollywood. Touting its class and sophistication, the neighborhood promoted a European influence, featuring such unique elements as stone retaining walls and stairways, along with elegant Spanish, Mediterranean, French Normandy, and English Tudor-styled homes thoughtfully placed onto the hillsides. The community contains one of the world's most recognizable landmarks, the Hollywood sign, originally constructed as a giant billboard for the development and reading "Hollywoodland." The book illustrates the development of the upper section of Beachwood Canyon known as Hollywoodland with historical photographs from Hollywood Heritage's S. H. Woodruff Collection as well as from other archives, institutions, and individuals.
Download or read book The Gentle Art of Wandering written by David Ryan and published by . This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop written by Richard M. Isackes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Once a guarded cinematic secret, this definitive history reveals for the first time the art and craft of Hollywood's hand painted-backdrops, and pays homage to the scenic artists who brought them to the big screen." -- Slipcase.
Download or read book Signs of Life in the U S A written by Sonia Maasik and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hollywood Park written by Mikel Jollett and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** “A Gen-X This Boy’s Life...Music and his fierce brilliance boost Jollett; a visceral urge to leave his background behind propels him to excel... In the end, Jollett shakes off the past to become the captain of his own soul. Hollywood Park is a triumph." —O, The Oprah Magazine "This moving and profound memoir is for anyone who loves a good redemption story." —Good Morning America, 20 Books We're Excited for in 2020 "Several years ago, Jollett began writing Hollywood Park, the gripping and brutally honest memoir of his life. Published in the middle of the pandemic, it has gone on to become one of the summer’s most celebrated books and a New York Times best seller..." –Los Angeles Magazine HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer. We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went. They would arrive like ghosts, visiting us for a morning, an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds, to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed. Then they’d disappear again, for weeks, for months, for years, leaving us alone with our memories and dreams, our questions and confusion. ... So begins Hollywood Park, Mikel Jollett’s remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s “School.” After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic. In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician. Hollywood Park is told at first through the limited perspective of a child, and then broadens as Jollett begins to understand the world around him. Although Mikel Jollett’s story is filled with heartbreak, it is ultimately an unforgettable portrayal of love at its fiercest and most loyal.
Download or read book Hollywood Godfather written by Gianni Russo and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood Godfather is Gianni Russo's over-the-top memoir of a real-life mobster-turned-actor who helped make The Godfather a reality, and his story of life on the edge between danger and glamour. Gianni Russo was a handsome 25-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, the husband of Connie Corleone, who set her brother Sonny—played by James Caan—up for a hit. Russo didn't have to act—he knew the mob inside and out: from his childhood in Little Italy, where Mafia legend Frank Costello took him under his wing, to acting as a messenger for New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello during the Kennedy assassination, to having to go on the lam after shooting and killing a member of the Colombian drug cartel in his Vegas club. Along the way, Russo befriended Frank Sinatra, who became his son's godfather, and Marlon Brando, who mentored his career as an actor after trying to get Francis Ford Coppola to fire him from The Godfather. Russo had passionate affairs with Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli, and scores of other celebrities. He went on to become a producer and starred in The Godfather: Parts I and II, Seabiscuit, Any Given Sunday and Rush Hour 2, among many other films. Hollywood Godfather is a no-holds-barred account of a life filled with violence, glamour, sex—and fun.
Download or read book Lakewood Theatre written by Jenny Oby and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-12 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning as a humble vaudeville hall in the Skowhegan-Madison trolley park, Lakewood Theatre has graced the southwestern shore of Lake Wesserunsett in Madison, Maine, since the turn of the 20th century. Under the masterful guidance of Herbert L. Swett, a Bangor native and Bowdoin graduate, Lakewood eventually developed into a nationally renowned playhouse that was called the "Broadway in Maine" by the New York Times in its heyday, from 1925 until World War II. In the years following the war, Lakewood was operated by Swett's heirs and became a virtual who's who of both Broadway and Hollywood, until it nearly went dark in the early 1980s. Operating today as a nonprofit community theater, Lakewood is the official state theater of Maine and the oldest continually running summer theater in the country.
Download or read book Hollywood Hills written by Joseph Wambaugh and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2010-11-16 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary Hollywood Hills are home to wealth, fame, and power -- passing through the neighborhood, it's hard not to get a little greedy. LAPD veteran "Hollywood Nate" Weiss could take or leave the opulence, but he wouldn't say no to onscreen fame. He may get his shot when he catches the appreciative eye of B-list director Rudy Ressler, and his troublemaking fiancée, Leona Brueger, the older-but-still-foxy widow of a processed-meat tycoon. Nate tries to elude her crafty seductions, but consents to keep an eye on their estate in the Hollywood Hills while they're away. Also minding the mansion is Raleigh Dibble, a hapless ex-con trying to put the past behind him. Raleigh is all too happy to be set up for the job -- as butler-cum-watchdog -- by Nigel Wickland, Leona's impeccably dressed art dealer. What Raleigh doesn't realize is that under the natty clothes and posh accent, Nigel has a nefarious plan: two paintings hanging on the mansion's walls will guarantee them more money than they've ever seen. Everyone's dreams are just within reach -- the only problem is, this is Hollywood. A circle of teenage burglars that the media has dubbed The Bling Ring has taken to pillaging the homes of Hollywood celebutants like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and when a pair of drug-addled young copycats stumbles upon Nigel's heist, that's just the beginning of the disaster to come. Soon Hollywood Nate, surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam, and the rest of the team at Hollywood Station have a deadly situation on their hands. Hollywood Hills is a raucous and dangerous roller coaster ride that showcases Joseph Wambaugh in vintage form.
Download or read book The Hollywood Jim Crow written by Maryann Erigha and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of racial hierarchy in the American film industry The #OscarsSoWhite campaign, and the content of the leaked Sony emails which revealed, among many other things, that a powerful Hollywood insider didn’t believe that Denzel Washington could “open” a western genre film, provide glaring evidence that the opportunities for people of color in Hollywood are limited. In The Hollywood Jim Crow, Maryann Erigha tells the story of inequality, looking at the practices and biases that limit the production and circulation of movies directed by racial minorities. She examines over 1,300 contemporary films, specifically focusing on directors, to show the key elements at work in maintaining “the Hollywood Jim Crow.” Unlike the Jim Crow era where ideas about innate racial inferiority and superiority were the grounds for segregation, Hollywood’s version tries to use economic and cultural explanations to justify the underrepresentation and stigmatization of Black filmmakers. Erigha exposes the key elements at work in maintaining Hollywood’s racial hierarchy, namely the relationship between genre and race, the ghettoization of Black directors to black films, and how Blackness is perceived by the Hollywood producers and studios who decide what gets made and who gets to make it. Erigha questions the notion that increased representation of African Americans behind the camera is the sole answer to the racial inequality gap. Instead, she suggests focusing on the obstacles to integration for African American film directors. Hollywood movies have an expansive reach and exert tremendous power in the national and global production, distribution, and exhibition of popular culture. The Hollywood Jim Crow fully dissects the racial inequality embedded in this industry, looking at alternative ways for African Americans to find success in Hollywood and suggesting how they can band together to forge their own career paths.
Download or read book D W Griffith written by Richard Schickel and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He transformed a nickelodeon novelty into a new art form and a powerful, glamorous American industry. He codified the rules and techniques of screen story-telling, and pioneered the conventions that brought films to life, from surging spectacle to soul-baring close-ups. A poor farm boy from the South, Griffith rose to fame with The Birth of a Nation, a cinematic masterpiece stained by the racism that infected his heritage. Though he went on to direct some of the most legendary films of the silent era, Griffith was doomed by his over-reaching drives, and he died an embittered man, shunned by the community he had largely created. His story is told here with unsparing truth and compelling narrative sweep.
Download or read book Haunted Hollywood written by Dinah Williams and published by Bearport Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the filmmaking capital of the world, Hollywood has produced lots of scary movies. Ghosts, monsters, and mummies from its studios have made unforgettable on-screen appearances. Yet what if this world-famous spot in southern California is itself haunted by ghosts? What if some of Hollywood’s most famous residents cannot bring themselves to leave the limelight? In Haunted Hollywood, children visit 11 of Tinseltown’s spookiest sights and meet its most legendary ghosts. Among them are an aspiring but unlucky actress who haunts the Hollywood sign, a horror-movie actor who is still seen on his old set, and a world-famous magician who seems to have escaped death. The haunting photographs and chilling nonfiction text will keep children turning the pages to discover more spooky stories.
Download or read book West of Eden written by Jean Stein and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West of Eden is the definitive story of Hollywood, told, in their own words, by the people on the inside: Lauren Bacall, Arthur Miller, Dennis Hopper, Frank Gehry, Ring Lardner, Joan Didion, Stephen Sondheim – all interviewed by Jean Stein, who grew up in the Forties in a fairytale mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The book takes us from the discovery of oil in the Twenties with the story of the tycoon Edward Doheny (There Will Be Blood) and traces the growth of corruption through the syndicates, the mob, and the movie studios – from the beginnings of the film industry to the end, with News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch (who bought the Stein mansion in 1985). West of Eden is about money, power, fame and terrible secrets: the doomed Hollywood of the late Fifties, early Sixties – ‘the rotten heart of paradise’. Like her last book, the best-selling Edie, this is an oral history told through brilliantly edited interviews. As this is Hollywood, it’s a book full of sex, drugs and celebrity glamour; but because it’s built from the firsthand accounts of people who were actually there, many of them writers, actors and artists, it’s also strangely claustrophobic, seductive, and completely compelling.
Download or read book Matthew Frost I Saw the Sign written by and published by Damiani Limited. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matthew Frost?s series - 'I Saw The Sign' - began like most of his work usually does; with a simple observation. After moving to Los Angeles the filmmaker and photographer began going on daily runs up the Hollywood Deep Dell, which happens to take him past the famed vista point where people flock to take pictures and selfies in front of the Hollywood sign. He began documenting each visit with his phone drawn in by the wealth of absurd satirical observations. But as a daily habit formed, he found these moments increasingly touching. In particular he focused his attention on the two flat rocks that people stand on for the ultimate Hollywood shot: ?Why do they line up to step on this rock? It?s only inches higher than the ground and doesn?t really change the scale or the perspective of the shot! Not knowing what I?m going to find up there fills my routine with unknown and excitement. It?s forced me to be open and pay attention to others therefore getting over myself first thing in the day. It?s been therapeutic! Sure, for some it evokes a fascination with the movie industry or celebrity culture but what I love the most is to witness such different people aiming for the same goal in that one moment; creating memories together.?
