Download or read book Money Murder and Dominick Dunne written by Robert Hofler and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominick Dunne seemed to live his entire adult life in the public eye, but in this biography Robert Hofler reveals a conflicted, enigmatic man who reinvented himself again and again. As a television and film producer in the 1950s-1970s, hobnobbing with Humphrey Bogart and Natalie Wood, he found success and crushing failure in a pitiless Hollywood. As a Vanity Fair journalist covering the lives of the rich and powerful, he mesmerized readers with his detailed coverage of spectacular murder cases-O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, Michael Skakel, Phil Spector, and Claus von B low. He had his own television show, Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justic. His five best-selling novels, including The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, People Like Us, and An Inconvenient Woman, were inspired by real lives and scandals. The brother of John Gregory Dunne and brother-in-law of Joan Didion, he was a friend and confidante of many literary luminaries. Dunne also had the ear of some of the world's most famous women, among them Princess Diana, Nancy Reagan, Liz Smith, Barbara Walters, and Elizabeth Taylor. Dunne admitted to inventing himself, and it was that public persona he wrote about in his own memoir, The Way We Lived Then. Left out of that account, but brought to light here, were his intense rivalry with his brother John Gregory, the gay affairs and relationships he had throughout his marriage and beyond, and his fights with editors at Vanity Fair. Robert Hofler also reveals the painful rift in the family after the murder of Dominick's daughter, Dominique-compounded by his coverage of her killer's trial, which launched his career as a reporter.

Download or read book Too Much Money written by Dominick Dunne and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-09-28 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. When he falls for a fake story and implicates a powerful congressman in some rather nasty business on a radio program, Gus becomes embroiled in a slander suit. The stress makes it difficult for him to focus on his next novel, which is based on the suspicious death of billionaire Konstantin Zacharias. The convicted murderer is behind bars, but Gus is not convinced that justice was served. There are too many unanswered questions, and Konstantin’s hot-tempered widow will do anything to conceal the truth. Featuring favorite characters and the affluent world Dunne first introduced in People Like Us, Too Much Money is a mischievous, compulsively readable tale by the most brilliant society chronicler of our time—the man who knew all the secrets and wasn’t afraid to share them.

Download or read book People Like Us written by Dominick Dunne and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-04-11 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before they had Too Much Money, the inhabitants of Dominick Dunne’s glitzy, gossipy New York Times bestselling novels were People Like Us. The way journalist Gus Bailey tells it, old money is always preferred, but occasionally new money sneaks in–even where it is most unwelcome. After moving from Cincinnati, Elias and Ruby Renthal strike it even richer in New York, turning their millions into billions. It would be impolite for high society to refuse them now. Not to mention disadvantageous. As long as the market is strong, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about–except for those nasty secrets from the past. Scandal, anyone?

Download or read book Another City Not My Own written by Dominick Dunne and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-02-08 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the Trial of the Century as only Dominick Dunne can write it. Told from the point of view of one of Dunne's most familiar fictional characters-Gus Bailey-Another City, Not My Own tells how Gus, the movers and shakers of Los Angeles, and the city itself are drawn into the vortex of the O.J. Simpson trial. We have met Gus Bailey in previous novels by Dominick Dunne. He is a writer and journalist, father of a murdered child, and chronicler of justice-served or denied-as it relates to the rich and famous. Now back in Los Angeles, a city that once adored him and later shunned him, Gus is caught up in what soon becomes a national obsession. Using real names and places, Dunne interweaves the story of the trial with the personal trials Gus endures as he faces his own mortality. By day, Gus is at the courthouse, the confidant of the Goldman and Simpson families, the lawyers, the journalists, the hangers-on, even the judge; at night he is the honored guest at the most dazzling gatherings in town as everyone-from Kirk Douglas to Heidi Fleiss, from Elizabeth Taylor to Nancy Reagan-delights in the latest news from the corridors of the courthouse. Another City, Not My Own does what no other book on this sensational case has been able to do because of Dominick Dunne's unique ability to probe the sensibilities of participants and observers. This book illuminates the meaning of guilt and innocence in America today. A vivid, revealing achievement, Another City, Not My Own is Dominick Dunne at his best.

Download or read book An Inconvenient Woman written by Dominick Dunne and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-02-22 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Good unclean fun . . . [a] convoluted, scandal-greased, exposed-backsides-of-the-rich-and-famous story . . . told in a confiding, breathless undertone.”—Entertainment Weekly Jules Mendelson is wealthy. Astronomically so. He and his wife lead the kind of charity-giving, art-filled, high-society life for which each has been carefully groomed. Until Jules falls in love with Flo March, a beautiful actress/waitress. What Flo discovers about the superrich is not a pretty sight. And in the end, she wants no more than what she was promised. But when Flo begins to share the true story of her life among the Mendelsons, not everyone is in a listening mood. And some cold shoulders have very sharp edges. . . .

Download or read book The Two Mrs Grenvilles written by Dominick Dunne and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Murder most swank . . . required reading.”—Vanity Fair When Navy ensign Billy Grenville, heir to a vast New York fortune, sees showgirl Ann Arden on the dance floor, it is love at first sight. And much to the horror of Alice Grenville—the indomitable family matriarch—he marries her. Ann wants desperately to be accepted by high society and become the well-bred woman of her fantasies. But a gunshot one rainy night propels Ann into a notorious spotlight—as the two Mrs. Grenvilles enter into a conspiracy of silence that will bind them together for as long as they live. . . . “This is a candy box of a book. . . . Composed of just the right measure of sex, glamour, [and] passion.”—Cosmopolitan

Download or read book The Murder of Dominique Dunne written by Erica Thomas and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominque Dunne appeared in several films and television series from 1979 to 1982, but was best known for portraying the oldest daughter in the 1982 horror film Poltergeist. She seemed destined for stardom until tragedy struck on October 30th, 1982. Dominique was strangled by her ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, in the driveway of her West Hollywood home and went into a coma. She never regained consciousness and died five days later. This is her story.

Download or read book Justice written by Dominick Dunne and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-02-25 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominick Dunne's mesmerizing tales of justice denied and justice affirmed. For more than two decades, Vanity Fair published Dominick Dunne’s brilliant, revelatory chronicles of the most famous crimes, trials, and punishments of our time. Whether writing of Claus von Bülow’s romp through two trials; the Los Angeles media frenzy surrounding O.J. Simpson; the death by fire of multibillionaire banker Edmond Safra; or the Greenwich, Connecticut, murder of Martha Moxley and the indictment—decades later—of Michael Skakel, Dominick Dunne tells it honestly and tells it from his unique perspective. His search for the truth is relentless.

Download or read book A Season in Purgatory written by Dominick Dunne and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-02-22 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER They were the family with everything. Money. Influence. Glamour. Power. The power to halt a police investigation in its tracks. The power to spin a story, concoct a lie, and believe it was the truth. The power to murder without guilt, without shame, and without ever paying the price. They were the Bradleys, America's royalty. But an outsider refuses to play his part. And now, the day of reckoning has arrived. Praise for A Season in Purgatory “Highly entertaining.”—Entertainment Weekly “Stunning.”—Liz Smith “Compelling.”—New York Daily News “Mesmerizing.”—The New York Times “Potent characterization and deftly crafted plotting.”—Publishers Weekly

Download or read book The Mansions of Limbo written by Dominick Dunne and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2012-02-22 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Dominick Dunne, who chronicles the escapades, excesses, and eccentricities of high society for Vanity Fair, offers fifteen provocative portraits of some of the most luminous figures of the decade . . . profiles of the movie legend who remains the only divorced wife of a U.S. president; the pretty singing star who fell in love with a notorious mobster; the brilliant photographer who took Dunne's picture weeks before succumbing to AIDS . . . sketches that detail the lavish wedding-that-never-was between an heiress and a counterfeit prince; the incarceration of a high-flying financier; and the brutal slaying of a film mogul and his sife, allegedly by their own two sons. Filled with pathos and wit and the twenty-four-carat insight of a society insider, The Mansions of Limbo offers a peek into a rarified world there nothing is ever enough.

Download or read book Savage Grace written by Natalie Robins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 927 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Friday, 17th November 1972, a shocking crime rocked London. Wealthy American socialite Barbara Baekeland had been stabbed to death in her Chelsea apartment. The man arrested for the murder: her own son. A spellbinding tale of money and madness, incest and matricide, SAVAGE GRACE is the saga of Brooks and Barbara Baekeland - heirs to the Bakelite plastics fortune - and their handsome, gentle son, Tony. Alternately neglected and smothered by his parents, he was finally driven to destroy the whole family in a violent chain of events.Unfolding against a glamorous international background, SAVAGE GRACE tells the doomed Baekelands' story through remarkably candid interviews, private letters and diaries, as well as confidential hospital and prison records. A true-crime classic, it exposes the harrowing truth behind the envied lives of the rich.

Download or read book Party Animals written by Robert Hofler and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-08 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Allan Carr was Hollywoods premier party-thrower during the towns most hedonistic era the cocaine-addled, sexually indulgent 1970s. Hosting outrageous soirees with names like the Mick Jagger/Cycle Sluts Party and masterminding such lavishly themed opening nights as the Tommy/New York City subway premiere, it was Carr, an obese, caftan-wearing producer the ultimate outsider who first brought movie stars and rock stars, gays and straights, Old and New Hollywood together. From the stunning success of Grease and La Cage aux Folles to the spectacular failure of the Village Peoples Cant Stop the Music, as a producer Carrs was a rollercoaster of a career punctuated by major hits and phenomenal flops none more disastrous than the Academy Awards show he produced featuring a tone-deaf Rob Lowe serenading Snow White, a fiasco that made Carr an outcast, and is still widely considered to be the worst Oscars ever. Tracing Carrs excess-laden rise and tragic fall and sparing no one along the way Party Animals provides a sizzling, candid, behind-the-scenes look at Hollywoods most infamous period.

Download or read book The Man who Invented Rock Hudson written by Robert Hofler and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005.

Download or read book Fatal Charms and The Mansions of Limbo written by Dominick Dunne and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 1999-03-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominick Dunne has met them all--stars and slugs, criminals and victims, the innocent and the hideously guilty--and now his two provocative collections of Vanity Fair portraits are in one irresistible volume. From posh Park Avenue duplexes to the extravagant mansions of Beverly Hills, from tasteful London town houses to the wild excesses of million-dollar European retreats, here are the movers and shakers--and the people who pretend to be. Among colorful profiles and revealing glimpses of Elizabeth Taylor, Claus von Bülow, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Aaron Spelling, discover who dumped an heiress the night before the wedding to run off with the best man . . . what happens when the ex-husband of a movie legend becomes president . . . why a beautiful singer fell in with the mob . . . and, in Dunne's most personal story, how a lying murderer and a limelight-loving judge denied justice to his family after his daughter's life was brutally destroyed. Filled with pathos and wit, insight and sass, this candid, controversial volume gives you an extraordinary peek into the rarefied world of the rich, the royal, and the ruined. For Dunne is the man who knows all their secrets--and now those secrets are out.

Download or read book Monster written by John Gregory Dunne and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1998-03-17 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Hollywood, screenwriters are a curse to be borne, and beating up on them is an industry blood sport. But in this ferociously funny and accurate account of life on the Hollywood food chain, it's a screenwriter who gets the last murderous laugh. That may be because the writer is John Gregory Dunne, who has written screenplays, along with novels and non-fiction, for thirty years. In 1988 Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, were asked to write a screenplay about the dark and complicated life of the late TV anchorwoman Jessica Savitch. Eight years and twenty-seven drafts later, this script was made into the fairy tale "Up Close and Personal" starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. Detailing the meetings, rewrites, fights, firings, and distractions attendant to the making of a single picture, Monster illuminates the process with sagacity and raucous wit.

Download or read book Conviction written by Leonard Levitt and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On October 30, 1975, fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley headed home from Halloween Eve antics with her Greenwich, Connecticut, neighbors Tommy and Michael Skakel. She never made it. Her brutal murder with a golf club in her own backyard made national headlines. But for years no one was arrested, despite troubling clues pointing to the Skakels, a rich and powerful family related to the Kennedys. After the police department's first unsuccessful attempts to catch the killer, the case lay dormant, and the culprit remained free. Enter Leonard Levitt. In 1982, the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time newspapers asked investigative reporter Levitt to look into the murder and the undying rumors of a cover-up. Levitt soon uncovered groundbreaking information about how the police had bungled the investigation, and he learned that Tommy and Michael had lied about their activities on the night of the murder. But Levitt's articles about his findings -- and the haunting questions they raised -- almost never saw the light of day. For years, Levitt's superiors mysteriously refused to publish the stories. Convinced that the Moxley family deserved the peace and closure they had so long been denied, Levitt fought desperately to keep his discoveries alive. Finally, after Levitt's first article appeared, the case was reopened. Enter Frank Garr. As the newly appointed investigator on the Moxley case, the seasoned Greenwich detective doggedly pursued unexplored leads and became increasingly convinced that for over a decade, his colleagues had been pursuing the wrong suspects. At first mistrustful of one another, as reporters and detectives often are, Levitt and Garr became friends, encouraging each other in their quest for the truth as the obstacles against them piled up. In 2002, more than twenty-five years after Moxley's death, a shocked world watched as Michael Skakel was convicted of the murder, thanks largely to the evidence Garr alone had marshaled against him. Now, for the first time, Leonard Levitt tells the amazing true story of Garr's fight to solve the case and of how their friendship with each other, and with Martha Moxley's mother, Dorthy, sustained them over the years. A riveting, suspenseful drama that unfolds like a mystery novel, this incredible memoir also reveals how a police officer and a reporter refused to give up, and how they helped justice to prevail, against all odds.

Download or read book If I Did It written by O. J. Simpson and published by . This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2006, HarperCollins announced the publication of a book in which O.J. Simpson told how he hypothetically would have committed the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, a crime for which he was found not guilty. In response to public outrage, the book was never published. Here is the original manuscript of the book.