Download or read book The Seductive Sapphic Exploits of Mercedes de Acosta Hollywood s Greatest Lover written by Darwin Porter and published by Blood Moon's Magnolia House. This book was released on 2020-10-25 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A self-defined "seductress of beautiful women" and the by-product of an immense fortune, lesbian activist Mercedes de Acosta (born in 1892) was descended from Spain's Dukes of Alba and a beneficiary of the best education and best social skills that her parents' Gilded Age fortune could buy. From her perch within the aristocracy of the Belle Époque, and continuing as an arts-industry "swinger" until her death in 1968, she became notorious for seducing-and describing to socialites on both sides of the Atlantic-at least a dozen women who fast-evolved into the most widely publicized and romantically "unattainable" celebrities in the world. During her heyday-the sexually permissive "Pre-Code" free-for-all of the Silent Screen and Hollywood's early talkies-her lovers included the self-enchanted silent screen mogul, Nazimova; the "live fast and die young" tragedienne Jeanne Eagels; the blue-blooded aristocrat of the Jazz Age Broadway stage, Katharine Cornell; the most famous film goddess of the 30s and early 40s (Greta Garbo); and at least a dozen others. Within the deeply entrenched, phobically closeted lesbian circles of America's mid-century, Mercedes become quirkily famous as "Hollywood's Greatest Lover." One of her paramours, the German-born bisexual Marlene Dietrich, put Mercedes' promiscuous indiscretions into context: "During Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-1933), in Paris, London, Berlin, and in the dives and cabarets of Hollywood and New York, promiscuity was rampant and without any particular preference for any specific gender." In 1960, Mercedes published a "watered down" memoir (Here Lies the Heart) that instantly became notorious. In it, she "outed" many of her same-sex partners. A few years later-aging, crippled, blind in one eye, and desperately in need of money, she sold, for publication, some of the love letters addressed to her decades ago from, among others, Greta Garbo. And near the end of her life, within his home (historic Magnolia House on Staten Island), she was frank, unvarnished, and unapologetic during extensive interviews with film historian Darwin Porter, the co-author of this book. Suspecting that one day he might pass on some of the secrets she revealed, she cautioned him, "Don't be vulgar, dear, and promise me that you won't publish anything while my friends are still alive." Porter honored her request by waiting until 2020 to release this astonishing insight into the underground lesbian contexts of the stage, screen, and publishing scenes of the first half of "The American Century." No other book has ever interconnected so many dots. No one, until now, has ever had the courage.
Download or read book Damn Shame written by David Pevsner and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A funny, daring, bawdy and incredibly honest memoir from the anti-ageist, anti-body shaming, pro-sex advocate and erotic provocateur. Over the course of his 40-year career in show business, David Pevsner has done it all. He’s acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in independent films and on numerous TV network shows including Grey’s Anatomy, Modern Family and Criminal Minds. As he continues his career in entertainment, Pevsner has also dedicated himself to exploring his deepest sexual fantasies. In his late 30s he became a mature male escort and over the last several years has attracted a large international fan base through his blog of erotic photographs celebrating nudity and sexuality. Damn Shame is David Pevsner’s incredible story and is a passionate and poignant look at one man’s journey from a thin, shy boy ashamed of his body and sexuality to a defiant, fearless everyman exploring his erotic desires, everything from leather and S&M to nude/erotic/hardcore modelling. Along the way, he fights back against society’s demonization of gay sex, body shaming and ageism while pursuing his own very personal definition of success and seeking love, validation and self-esteem. Damn Shame gives a loud and powerful voice to a generation of mature men who have been conditioned to believe from society (and especially younger members of the gay community) that they are sexually irrelevant, old and undesirable. Pevsner’s life story goes in directions that many couldn’t imagine, but the lessons learned through his experiences will resonate with readers of every age.
Download or read book New York Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1990-05-21 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.
Download or read book Outrageous Misfits written by Brian Bradley and published by Dundurn Press. This book was released on 2020-10-24 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lights! Camera! Outrageous! Superstar female impersonator Craig Russell and the birth of drag on the international stage. Craig Russell was an internationally admired entertainer and actor, known for his outrageous impersonations of some of Hollywood's greatest female celebrities: Mae West, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Carol Channing, and Judy Garland, to name a few. Lori Russell Eadie, a shy theatre lover, was Craig's No. 1 fan and, eventually, his wife. Together they were fun, fabulous, and eschewed convention. But behind the curtains, Craig and Lori's lives were troubled by their mental health, drug addiction, sexual assault, and abuse. Through nearly one hundred interviews and extensive research, Outrageous Misfits reveals the life and legacy of one of the world's most popular female impersonators and his biggest fan.
Download or read book Tinker Belles and Evil Queens written by Sean P. Griffin and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-02-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to address the interaction between the Walt Disney Company and the gay community From its Magic Kingdom theme parks to its udderless cows, the Walt Disney Company has successfully maintained itself as the brand name of conservative American family values. But the Walt Disney Company has also had a long and complex relationship to the gay and lesbian community that is only now becoming visible. In Tinker Belles and Evil Queens, Sean Griffin traces the evolution of this interaction between the company and gay communities, from the 1930s use of Mickey Mouse as a code phrase for gay to the 1990s "Gay Nights" at the Magic Kingdom. Armed with first-person accounts from Disney audiences, Griffin demonstrates how Disney animation, live-action films, television series, theme parks, and merchandise provide varied motifs and characteristics that readily lend themselves to use by gay culture. But Griffin delves further to explore the role of gays and lesbians within the company, through an examination of the background of early studio personnel, an account of sexual activism within the firm, and the story of the company's own concrete efforts to give recognition to gay voices and desires. The first book to address the history of the gay community and Disney, Tinker Belles and Evil Queens broadly examines the ambiguous legacy of how modern consumerism and advertising have affected the ways lesbians and gay men have expressed their sexuality. Disney itself is shown as sensitive to gay and lesbian audiences, while exploiting those same audiences as a niche market with strong buying power. Finally, Griffin demonstrates how queer audiences have co-opted Disney products for themselves-and in turn how Disney's corporate strategies have influenced our very definitions of sexuality.
Download or read book Here Lies the Heart written by Mercedes De Acosta and published by . This book was released on 2016-08-19 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2016 Reprint of 1960 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Mercedes de Acosta (1893 - 1968) was an American poet, playwright, and novelist. She was professionally unsuccessful but is known for her many lesbian affairs with famous Broadway and Hollywood personalities and numerous friendships with prominent artists of the period. De Acosta was involved in numerous lesbian relationships with Broadway's and Hollywood's elite and she did not attempt to hide her sexuality; her uncloseted existence was very rare and daring in her generation. In 1916 she began an affair with actress Alla Nazimova and later with dancer Isadora Duncan. Shortly after marrying Abram Poole in 1920, de Acosta became involved in a five-year relationship with actress Eva Le Gallienne. Over the next decade she was involved with several famous actresses and dancers including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Ona Munson, and Russian ballerina Tamara Platonovna Karsavina. Additional unsubstantiated rumors include affairs with Pola Negri, Eleonora Duse, Katherine Cornell, and Alice B. Toklas. In 1960, when de Acosta was seriously ill with a brain tumor and in need of money, she published her memoir, "Here Lies the Heart." In it are recounted the off stage life and lifestyles of many of the iconic figures of Hollywood in from the 1920's to 1940's.
Download or read book All We Know written by Lisa Cohen and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the lives of New York intellectual Esther Murphy, celebrity ephemera collector Mercedes de Acosta, and British Vogue editor Madge Garland and their lifestyles, influence on fashion, and celebrity friendships.
Download or read book Female Masculinity written by Judith Halberstam and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masculinity without men. In Female Masculinity Judith Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two hundred years. Providing the first full-length study on this subject, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag king performances. Through detailed textual readings as well as empirical research, Halberstam uncovers a hidden history of female masculinities while arguing for a more nuanced understanding of gender categories that would incorporate rather than pathologize them. She rereads Anne Lister's diaries and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness as foundational assertions of female masculine identity. She considers the enigma of the stone butch and the politics surrounding butch/femme roles within lesbian communities. She also explores issues of transsexuality among "transgender dykes"--lesbians who pass as men--and female-to-male transsexuals who may find the label of "lesbian" a temporary refuge. Halberstam also tackles such topics as women and boxing, butches in Hollywood and independent cinema, and the phenomenon of male impersonators. Female Masculinity signals a new understanding of masculine behaviors and identities, and a new direction in interdisciplinary queer scholarship. Illustrated with nearly forty photographs, including portraits, film stills, and drag king performance shots, this book provides an extensive record of the wide range of female masculinities. And as Halberstam clearly demonstrates, female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders.
Download or read book Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies written by Finn Enke and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lambda Literary Award for Best Book in Transgender Nonfiction, 2013 If feminist studies and transgender studies are so intimately connected, why are they not more deeply integrated? Offering multidisciplinary models for this assimilation, the vibrant essays in Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies suggest timely and necessary changes for institutions of higher learning. Responding to the more visible presence of transgender persons as well as gender theories, the contributing essayists focus on how gender is practiced in academia, health care, social services, and even national border patrols. Working from the premise that transgender is both material and cultural, the contributors address such aspects of the university as administration, sports, curriculum, pedagogy, and the appropriate location for transgender studies. Combining feminist theory, transgender studies, and activism centered on social diversity and justice, these essays examine how institutions as lived contexts shape everyday life.
Download or read book The Sad and Tragic Ending of Lucille Ball Volume Two 1961 1989 of a Two Part Biography written by Darwin Porter and published by Blood Moon Productions, Limited. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite Lucille Ball's impact on the American Experience, thousands of her fans know very little of how she spent the last thirty years of her life. This, Volume Two of a two-part biography, tells everything.
Download or read book Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds written by Darwin Porter and published by Blood Moon's Babylon. This book was released on 2018-05 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Debbie Reynolds & Carrie Fisher were the greatest mother-daughter act in the history of show business. Each became a world-class symbol of the social and cinematic tastes that prevailed during their hey-days in Hollywood. Now, for the first time, fans of Princess Leia and Unsinkable Tammy can read about the combative but ferociously loyal relationship of the 'boop-boop-a-doop' girl with her intergalactic daughter, and the iron-willed strength each of them demonstrated during their battles to survive"--Back cover.
Download or read book Refried Elvis written by Eric Zolov and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-07-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book traces the history of rock 'n' roll in Mexico and the rise of the native countercultural movement La Onda (the wave). This story frames the most significant crisis of Mexico's postrevolution period: the student-led protests in 1968 and the government-orchestrated massacre that put an end to the movement".--BOOKJACKET.
Download or read book Garbo written by Robert Gottlieb and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice | One of Esquire's 125 best books about Hollywood Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her. “Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s minds, hearts, and dreams.” Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in sixteen short years, to infiltrate the world’s subconscious; the end of her film career, when she was thirty-six, only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in just twenty-four Hollywood movies, yet her impact on the world—and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed—was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe’s. She was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged nineteen, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world’s most famous actress. In Garbo, the acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world—her desperate, futile striving to be “left alone.” He takes us through the films themselves, from M-G-M’s early presentation of her as a “vamp”—her overwhelming beauty drawing men to their doom, a formula she loathed—to the artistic heights of Camille and Ninotchka (“Garbo Laughs!”), by way of Anna Christie (“Garbo Talks!”), Mata Hari, and Grand Hotel. He examines her passive withdrawal from the movies, and the endless attempts to draw her back. And he sketches the life she led as a very wealthy woman in New York—“a hermit about town”—and the life she led in Europe among the Rothschilds and men like Onassis and Churchill. Her relationships with her famous co-star John Gilbert, with Cecil Beaton, with Leopold Stokowski, with Erich Maria Remarque, with George Schlee—were they consummated? Was she bisexual? Was she sexual at all? The whole world wanted to know—and still wants to know. In addition to offering his rich account of her life, Gottlieb, in what he calls “A Garbo Reader,” brings together a remarkable assembly of glimpses of Garbo from other people’s memoirs and interviews, ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Tallulah Bankhead to Roland Barthes; from literature (she turns up everywhere—in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the letters of Marianne Moore and Alice B. Toklas); from countless songs and cartoons and articles of merchandise. Most extraordinary of all are the pictures—250 or so ravishing movie stills, formal portraits, and revealing snapshots—all reproduced here in superb duotone. She had no personal vanity, no interest in clothes and make-up, yet the story of Garbo is essentially the story of a face and the camera. Forty years after her career ended, she was still being tormented by unrelenting paparazzi wherever she went. Includes Black-and-White Photographs
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Sappho written by P. J. Finglass and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed up-to-date survey of the most important woman writer from Greco-Roman antiquity. Examines the nature and context of her poetic achievement, the transmission, loss and rediscovery of her poetry, and the reception of that poetry in cultures far removed from ancient Greece, including Latin America, India, China, and Japan.
Download or read book Gay Gotham written by Donald Albrecht and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovering the lost history of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender artists in New York City. Queer people have always flocked to New York seeking freedom, forging close-knit groups for support and inspiration. Gay Gotham brings to life the countercultural artistic communities that sprang up over the last hundred years, a creative class whose radical ideas would determine much of modern culture. More than 200 images—both works of art, such as paintings and photographs, as well as letters, snapshots, and ephemera—illuminate their personal bonds, scandal-provoking secrets at the time and many largely unknown to the public since. Starting with the bohemian era of the 1910s and 1920s, when the pansy craze drew voyeurs of all types to Greenwich Village and Harlem, the book winds through midcentury Broadway as well as Fire Island as it emerged as a hotbed, turns to the post-Stonewall, decade-long wild party that revolved around clubs like the Mineshaft and Studio 54, and continues all the way through the activist mobilization spurred by the AIDS crisis and the move toward acceptance at the century’s close. Throughout, readers encounter famous figures, from James Baldwin and Mae West to Leonard Bernstein, and discover lesser-known ones, such as Harmony Hammond, Greer Lankton, and Richard Bruce Nugent. Surprising relationships emerge: Andy Warhol and Mercedes de Acosta, Robert Mapplethorpe and Cecil Beaton, George Platt Lynes and Gertrude Stein. By peeling back the overlapping layers of this cultural network that thrived despite its illicitness, this groundbreaking publication reveals a whole new side of the history of New York and celebrates the power of artistic collaboration to transcend oppression.
Download or read book Women Culture and Politics in Latin America written by Emilie L. Bergmann and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This collection, because of its exceptional theoretical coherence and sophistication, is qualitatively superior to the most frequently consulted anthologies on Latin American women’s history and literature . . . [and] represents a new, more theoretically rigorous stage in the feminist debate on Latin American women.”—Elizabeth Garrels, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Download or read book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo written by Oscar Zeta Acosta and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1989-07-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo," a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge. Written with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this book is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic sixties, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic-American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.
