Download or read book The Life and Death of Thelma Todd written by William Donati and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American film favorite Thelma Todd was much more than the beautiful blonde of the 1930s who played opposite Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers. Todd's tragic death transformed her into an icon of Hollywood mystery: The photograph of the 29-year-old actress slumped in her luxurious Lincoln Phaeton shocked fans in 1935. How did she die? Was it murder, suicide, or an accident? This definitive biography covers a fascinating era in Hollywood history. In the course of his exhaustive research, the author interviewed Todd's cousins Bill and Edna Todd, as well as such friends and coworkers as Ida Lupino, Lina Basquette, Anita Garvin, Dorothy Granger, William Bakewell and Greg Blackton. Also examined is Hollywood's first major sex scandal of 1913, involving Jewel Carmen, the future spouse of director Roland West--the man Thelma Todd loved.
Download or read book Ice Cream Blonde written by Michelle Morgan and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed look at the charmed life and tragic death of one of Hollywood's earliest stars A vibrant and beloved Golden Age film comedienne who worked alongside the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Clara Bow, and dozens of others, Thelma Todd was one of the rare actors to successfully cross over from silent films to "talkies." This authoritative new biography traces Todd's life and career, from a vivacious little girl to a young woman who became a reluctant beauty queen to her rapid rise as a Hollywood comedy star to her mysterious death at the age of 29. Increasingly disenchanted with the studio star system, Todd opened the successful Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Café, attracting adoring fans, tourists, and Hollywood celebrities. Life appeared blessed for the beautiful and outspoken Hollywood rebel. So the country was shocked when Todd was found dead by her housekeeper in a garage near the café. An inquest concluded that her death was accidental, caused by inhaling the car's exhaust fumes. In a thorough new investigation that draws on FBI documents, interviews, photographs, reports, and extortion notes—much of these not previously available to the public—author Michelle Morgan offers fresh evidence and conclusions about the circumstances surrounding Todd's death, proving what many people have long suspected, that Thelma had been murdered. The cast of suspects includes Thelma's Hollywood-director lover; her gangster ex-husband; assorted thugs who were pressuring her to install gaming tables in the room above her popular café; and a new, never-before-named mobster. Coinciding with the 80th anniversary of Todd's death, The Ice Cream Blonde is sure to interest any fan of Thelma Todd, Hollywood's Golden Age, or gripping real-life murder mysteries.
Download or read book Testimony of a Death written by Patrick Jenning and published by . This book was released on 2020-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a chilly Monday morning in 1935, a young maid opened the garage door of a Southern California seaside villa onto a grim scene. Her employer, a popular motion picture comedienne, lay dead in the front seat of her expensive automobile. Within hours, the news of Thelma Todd's death was making headlines throughout the nation. Was it murder, suicide, or accident? Cast against the background of Hollywood and Los Angeles, the film industry and the growing metropolis, her death baffled both the public and the investigating authorities. After numerous attempts to solve the mystery over the last eighty years, a powerful myth remains, obscuring the facts of the case as well as the character of Thelma herself. For the first time, however, the mystery of Thelma Todd's death will unfold as it originally did in 1935. Not only does Testimony of a Death narrate the events of that December but it also explores the forces and personalities central to the tragedy. The book examines the various contexts of Todd's death, including the motion picture business in its Golden Age and the city of Los Angeles hovering on the verge of its greatness. It looks beyond the legends and distortions to the darker reality that lies beneath the myths.
Download or read book Hot Toddy written by Andy Edmonds and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When she was found battered and bloodied in her Lincoln Phaeton convertible, authorities declared it suicide. Others called it murder. Thelma Todd, one of America's mpst popular comedians, was dead. And no one knew why. She was the blonde with style. The bombshell with the wisecrack. Thelma Todd wanted to be a schoolteacher :instead she became a star. She wanted to run a restaurant; instead she ran into the mob. In 1935 more than five hundred letters were sent to her weekly by fans. But the ones who attracted her most were dangerous men. More than fifty years after the notorious Thelma Todd murder case was closed, unsolved, Andy Edmonds fingers the killer."--Excerpt taken from the title page verso
Download or read book Testimony of a Death written by Patrick Jenning and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-07-18 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a chilly Monday morning in 1935, a young maid opened the garage door of a Southern California seaside villa onto a grim scene. Her employer, a popular motion picture comedienne, lay dead in the front seat of her expensive automobile. Within hours, the news of Thelma Todd's death was making headlines throughout the nation. Was it murder, suicide, or accident? Cast against the background of Hollywood and Los Angeles, the film industry and the growing metropolis, her death baffled both the public and the investigating authorities. After numerous attempts to solve the mystery over the last eighty years, a powerful mythology remains, obscuring the facts of the case as well as the character of Thelma herself. For the first time, however, the mystery of Thelma Todd's death will unfold as it originally did in 1935. Not only does Testimony of a Death narrate the events of that December but it also explores the forces and personalities central to the tragedy. The book examines the various contexts of Todd's death, including the motion picture business in its Golden Age and the city of Los Angeles hovering on the verge of its greatness. It looks beyond the legends and distortions to the darker reality that lies beneath the myths.
Download or read book Ida Lupino written by William Donati and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British-born actress, singer, director, and producer Ida Lupino (1918-1995) cut one of the most alluring profiles of any Hollywood persona during the forties and fifties. The star of classic films such as They Drive by Night (1940), High Sierra (1941), and Road House (1948), she was a stalwart of the screen throughout her early career and frequently received top billing ahead of stars such as Humphrey Bogart. While her talent was undeniable, her insistence on taking only roles she felt would challenge her professionally often put her at odds with the demands of studio executives. It was in those periods of frustration and suspension as an actor that Lupino fostered a talent for the filmmaking process. In a bold decision for a woman of the era, she founded her own independent production company where she became widely regarded as one of the most prolific filmmakers working at the height of the Hollywood studio system. She has been described by fellow directors such as Martin Scorsese as "resilient, with a remarkable empathy for the fragile and heartbroken." William Donati's Ida Lupino: A Biography chronicles the dramatic life of one of Hollywood's most substantive and innovative artists who lived her life unapologetically both behind and in front of the camera. Now considered a classic biography of an amazing talent, Vanity Fair praised the book as "masterful." Celebrating 27 years in print, this edition has a new cover, all new photographs, and a poignant preface by the author.
Download or read book Hollywood Horrors written by Andrea Van Landingham and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The name “Hollywood” conjures up fantastical images of bright lights, glamorous dreams, and impossible riches. From its humble beginnings as a ranch sprawling northwest of Los Angeles in the late 1800s, Hollywood has spanned lifetimes as a factory of dreams, a dazzling place where all things are possible. This collection of stories takes you on a journey into the golden age, illuminating the space between the airy fantasy and the gritty reality of life in Hollywood. In a transient city where nothing lasts, thousands of stories have taken place in their time here. From the offscreen debauchery of the silent era, to countless dramatic and mysterious deaths, to the sinister past lives of world-famous LA landmarks, vestiges of Hollywood’s checkered past can still be found all over the city. With generations of Tinseltown’s luminaries living and working under the sunny guise of paradisal prosperity, their real stories reveal the sordid underbelly lurking directly beneath the surface. A dangerous collusion between the studios, the press, the mob, and the LAPD forms an impenetrable behind-the-scenes network of corruption, power and control, where the truth is always up for sale. A network in which the most glamorous and well-known figures are merely players in this elaborate charade. It’s magical and gritty, it’s ugly and dirty, it’s the land of dreams...it’s Hollywood.
Download or read book Carole Lombard written by Michelle Morgan and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2016-10-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carole Lombard was the very opposite of the typical 1930s starlet. A no-nonsense woman, she worked hard, took no prisoners and had a great passion for life. As a result, she became Hollywood's highest-paid star. From the outside, Carole's life was one of great glamour and fun, yet privately she endured much heartache. As a child, her mother moved Carole and her brothers across the country away from their beloved father. Carole then began a film career, only to have it cut short after a devastating car accident. Picking herself back up, she was rocked by the accidental shooting of her lover; a failed marriage to actor William Powell; and the sorrow of infertility during her marriage to Hollywood's King, Clark Gable. Lombard marched forward, promising to be positive. Sadly her life was cut short in a plane crash so catastrophic that pieces of the aircraft are still buried in the mountain today. In Carole Lombard, bestselling author Michelle Morgan accesses previously unseen documents to tell the story of a woman whose remarkable life and controversial death continues to enthral.
Download or read book The Fixers written by E.J. Fleming and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling are virtually unknown outside of Hollywood and little-remembered even there, but as General Manager and Head of Publicity for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, they lorded over all the stars in Hollywood's golden age from the 1920s through the 1940s--including legends like Garbo, Dietrich, Gable and Garland. When MGM stars found themselves in trouble, it was Eddie and Howard who took care of them--solved their problems, hid their crimes, and kept their secrets. They were "the Fixers." At a time when image meant everything and the stars were worth millions to the studios that owned them, Mannix and Strickling were the most important men at MGM. Through a complex web of contacts in every arena, from reporters and doctors to corrupt police and district attorneys, they covered up some of the most notorious crimes and scandals in Hollywood history, keeping stars out of jail and, more importantly, their names out of the papers. They handled problems as diverse as the murder of Paul Bern (husband of MGM's biggest star, Jean Harlow), the studio-directed drug addictions of Judy Garland, the murder of Ted Healy (creator of The Three Stooges) at the hands of Wallace Beery, and arranging for an unmarried Loretta Young to adopt her own child--a child fathered by a married Clark Gable. Through exhaustive research and interviews with contemporaries, this is the never-before-told story of Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling. The dual biography describes how a mob-related New Jersey laborer and the quiet son of a grocer became the most powerful men at the biggest studio in the world.
Download or read book Based on a True Story written by Norm Macdonald and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Driving, wild and hilarious” (The Washington Post), here is the incredible “memoir” of the legendary actor, gambler, raconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran. When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre “one step below instruction manuals.” Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, “Call it anything you damn like.”
Download or read book Forgotten Heroes of Comedy written by Robert Ross and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 684 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this long overdue and affectionate salute, celebrated comedy historian Robert Ross pays tribute to some of the finest, funniest and most fascinating names in comedy from both sides of the Atlantic. Monty Python’s Terry Jones wrote the foreword. With the passionate input of such comics as Tim Brooke-Taylor, Hattie Hayridge, Roy Hudd, Michael Palin, Ross Noble, Chris Addison and Bernard Cribbins, Ross honours these legends of humor who, for a variety of reasons, didn't quite reach the heady heights of stardom or, once they had, couldn't cope with the pressures. Whether it is a favorite from the distant smoke- and ale-stained world of the Music Hall like the great George Robey, or the downbeat poetry of Hovis Presley, who dropped disenchanted bombs on the late 1990s, Forgotten Heroes of Comedy will finally elevate them to the Hall of Fame where they belong. Forgotten, no longer. UK Joe Baker UK Eric Barker UK Alfie Bass UK Michael Bates India (to English parents) David Battley UK Michael Bentine UK Harold Berens UK Wilie Best USA Alec Bregonzi UK Michael Ward UK Douglas Byng UK Marti Caine UK Esma Cannon Australia (but moved to UK) Patrick Cargill UK Jimmy Clitheroe UK Danny Ross UK Billy Dainty UK Janet Davies UK Florence Desmond UK Jerry Desmonde UK Eddie Leslie UK Maidie Dickson UK Charlie Drake UK Jimmy Edwards UK Gus Elen UK Ray Ellington UK Dick Emery UK Pierre Etaix France Barry Evans UK Mario Fabrizi UK Doug Fisher UK Ronald Frankau UK Leslie Fuller UK Dustin Gee UK Peter Glaze UK Tommy Godfrey UK Harry Locke UK Ken Goodwin UK Bernard Gorcey Russia (died USA) Bert Gordon USA Monsewer' Eddie Gray UK Raymond Griffith USA Deryck Guyler UK Brian Hall UK Lloyd Hamilton USA Arthur Haynes UK Richard Hearne UK Dickie Henderson UK Gerard Hoffnung Germany (died UK) Shemp Howard USA Nat Jackley UK Rex Jameson UK Spike Jones USA John Junkin UK Dave King UK Roy Kinnear UK Dennis Kirkland UK Patsy Knox USA Debbie Linden UK Hugh Lloyd UK Malcolm McFee UK Moore Marriott UK Graham Moffatt UK Ray Martine UK Zeppo Marx USA Glenn Melvyn UK Eric Merriman UK Christopher Mitchell UK Albert Modley UK Robert Moreton UK Gladys Morgan UK Lily Morris UK Richard Murdoch UK Tom E. Murray USA David Nixon UK Larry Noble UK Ole Olsen USA Chic Johnson USA Ken Platt UK Sandy Powell UK Vince Powell UK Hovis Presley UK Cardew Robinson UK Joe E. Ross USA Patsy Rowlands UK Derek Roy UK Derek Royle UK Leslie Sarony UK Larry Semon USA Ronald Shiner UK Johnnie Silver USA Dennis Spicer UK Larry Stephens UK Jake Thackray UK Thelma Todd USA Jack Train UK Karl Valentin Germany Liesl Karlstadt Germany Norman Vaughan UK Tom Walls UK Ralph Lynn UK Elsie and Doris Waters UK Rita Webb UK John Wells UK George and Kenneth Western UK Gordon Wharmby UK Bert Wheeler USA Robert Woolsey USA Albert Whelan Australia (died UK) Robb Wilton UK Mike and Bernie Winters UK Georgie Wood UK Dolly Harmer UK Harry Worth UK Mario Zampi Italy (died UK)
Download or read book Real James Dean written by Peter Winkler and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades following his death, many of those who knew James Dean best––actors, directors, friends, lovers (both men and women), photographers, and Hollywood columnists––shared stories of their first-person experiences with him in interviews and in the articles and autobiographies they wrote. Their recollections of Dean became lost in fragile back issues of movie magazines and newspapers and in out-of-print books that are extremely hard to find. Until now. The Real James Dean is the first book of its kind: a rich collection spanning six decades of writing in which many of the people whose lives were touched by Dean recall their indelible experiences with him in their own words. Here are the memorable personal accounts of Dean from his high school and college drama teachers; the girl he almost married; costars like Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood, Jim Backus, and Raymond Massey; directors Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray, and George Stevens; entertainer Eartha Kitt; gossip queen Hedda Hopper; the passenger who accompanied Dean on his final, fatal road trip; and a host of his other friends and colleagues.
Download or read book Living Dead Girl written by Tod Goldberg and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist: This novel of psychological suspense is “full of seductive prose [and] sharply focused characters” (Library Journal). Paul Luden has been haunted by a memory he can’t recall. Whatever happened to his marriage, to his two-year-old daughter, is too traumatic to remember, so his subconscious has chosen to block out key details. But when he receives a phone call from the small lake town where they’d once lived, telling him that no one had seen or heard from his wife in ten days, he knows what he has to do. He and his nineteen-year-old girlfriend drive from LA to Washington State, where he’s forced to confront his past. And as he pieces together his buried memories, Paul unravels mentally, falls into self-destructive trances—and ultimately discovers the truth about his wife. From the New York Times–bestselling coauthor of The House of Secrets, this is “both a page-turner and a complex study of human relationships . . . Fans of psychological thrillers will find a lot to like here” (Booklist).
Download or read book Inside the Dream Palace written by Sherill Tippins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chelsea Hotel, since its founding by a visionary French architect in 1884, has been an icon of American invention: a cultural dynamo and haven for the counterculture, all in one astonishing building. Sherill Tippins, author of the acclaimed February House,delivers a masterful and endlessly entertaining history of the Chelsea and of the successive generations of artists who have cohabited and created there, among them Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Sam Shepard, Sid Vicious, and Dee Dee Ramone. Now as legendary as the artists it has housed and the countless creative collaborations it has sparked, the Chelsea has always stood as a mystery as well: why and how did this hotel become the largest and longest-lived artists' community in the known world? Inside the Dream Palaceis the intimate and definitive story.
Download or read book Hank and Jim written by Scott Eyman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] remarkably absorbing, supremely entertaining joint biography” (The New York Times) from bestselling author Scott Eyman about the remarkable friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart, two Hollywood legends who maintained a close relationship that endured all of life’s twists and turns. Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood for forty years, but they became friends when they were unknown. They roomed together as stage actors in New York, and when they began making films in Hollywood, they were roommates again. Between them they made such classic films as The Grapes of Wrath, Mister Roberts, Twelve Angry Men, and On Golden Pond; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, and Rear Window. They got along famously, with a shared interest in elaborate practical jokes and model airplanes, among other things. But their friendship also endured despite their differences: Fonda was a liberal Democrat, Stewart a conservative Republican. Fonda was a ladies’ man who was married five times; Stewart remained married to the same woman for forty-five years. Both men volunteered during World War II and were decorated for their service. When Stewart returned home, still unmarried, he once again moved in with Fonda, his wife, and his two children, Jane and Peter, who knew him as Uncle Jimmy. For his “breezy, entertaining” (Publishers Weekly) Hank and Jim, biographer and film historian Scott Eyman spoke with Fonda’s widow and children as well as three of Stewart’s children, plus actors and directors who had worked with the men—in addition to doing extensive archival research to get the full details of their time together. This is not just another Hollywood story, but “a fascinating…richly documented biography” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) of an extraordinary friendship that lasted through war, marriages, children, careers, and everything else.
Download or read book First King of Hollywood written by Tracey Goessel and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete, definitive biography of Hollywood's first superstar Douglas Fairbanks was the greatest leading man of his generation—the first and the best of the swashbucklers. He made some of the greatest films of the silent era, including The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro. With Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and his wife, film star Mary Pickford, he founded United Artists. Pickford and Fairbanks ruled Hollywood as its first king and queen for a decade. Now a cache of newly discovered love letters from Fairbanks to Pickford form the centerpiece of the first truly definitive biography of Hollywood's first king, the original Robin Hood, the true Zorro, the man who did his own stunts, built his own studio, and formed a company that allowed artists to distribute their own wealth outside the studio system. Fairbanks was fun, witty, engaging, creative, athletic, and a force to be reckoned with. He shaped our idea of the Hollywood hero, and it has never been the same since. His story, like his movies, is full of passion, bravado, and romance.
Download or read book Death 24x a Second written by Laura Mulvey and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2006-03 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating exploration of the role new media technologies play in our experience of film.
