Called the most beautiful woman in movie history, Gene Tierney starred in such 1940s classics as Laura, Leave Her to Heaven and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Her on-screen presence and ability to transform into a variety of characters made her a film legend. Her personal life was a whirlwind of romance (she married a count, was engaged to a prince, and was courted by a future president) and tragedy (her first daughter was born with severe retardation and Tierney herself struggled with mental illness). After years of treatment, including electroshock therapy that erased portions of her life from her memory, she triumphantly returned in one of the biggest comebacks in Hollywood history. This first complete biography since the actress's death includes a foreword by her daughter, Christina Cassini, an extensive filmography, and many rare photographs.
Hollywood’s Gene Tierney, the lasting impact of her wartime and postwar films, and her continuing legacy. Gene Tierney may be one of the most recognizable faces of studio-era Hollywood: she starred in numerous classics, including Leave Her to Heaven, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,and Laura,with the latter featuring her most iconic role. While Tierney was considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, she personified "ordinariness" both on- and off-screen. Tierney portrayed roles such as a pinup type, a wartime worker, a wife, a mother, and, finally, a psychiatric patient—the last of which may have hit close to home for her, as she would soon leave Hollywood to pursue treatment for mental illness and later attempted suicide in the 1950s. After her release from psychiatric clinics, Tierney sought a comeback as one of the first stars whose treatment for mental illness became public knowledge. In this book, Will Scheibel not only examines her promotion, publicity, and reception as a star but also offers an alternative history of the United States wartime efforts demonstrated through the arc of Tierney's career as a star working on the home front. Scheibel's analysis aims to showcase that Tierney was more than just "the most beautiful woman in movie history," as stated by the head of production at Twentieth Century Fox in the 1940s and 1950s. He does this through an examination of her making, unmaking, and remaking at Twentieth Century Fox, rediscovering what she means as a movie legend both in past and up to the present. Film studies scholars, film students, and those interested in Hollywood history and the legacy of Gene Tierney will be delighted by this read.
From the moment of their births, John and Caroline Kennedy occupied a central position in what is generally regarded as the most famous family in the United States, if not the world. Even as young children growing up in the White House, their most subtle gestures and actions made headlines.... Yet until now they have not been the subject of a dual biography. In that sense, this volume represents a first. In American Legacy, #1 New York Times bestselling author C. David Heymann draws upon a voluminous archive of personal interviews to present a telling portrait of John and Caroline Kennedy. A longtime biographer of various members of the Kennedy clan, including Jackie and Robert Kennedy, Heymann covers John's and Caroline's childhood in the White House, the dark aftermath of their father's assassination, their uneasy adolescence, and the many challenges they faced as adults, all under the glaring eye of the media. He reveals John's and Caroline's loving but at times trying relationship with their larger-than-life mother, as well as Jackie's own emotional struggles, romantic relationships, and financial concerns following JFK's death. Other revelations brought to light for the first time in American Legacy include the assassination attempt made on Jackie just before she gave birth to John; JFK Jr.'s romantic escapades prior to marrying Carolyn Bessette and accounts of the predominantly happy marriage they shared despite criticisms from questionable sources; the shocking report of the autopsy performed on John following the tragic plane crash that killed him, Carolyn, and her sister Lauren; Caroline's rise to become one of the wealthiest women in America and her life now as the sole keeper of her family's magnificently complex legacy. Utterly compelling and full of new and fascinating details, American Legacy overturns much of what we thought we knew about two of the most talked-about members of the Kennedy family.
Collection of the five hundred films that have been selected, to date, for preservation by the National Film Preservation Board, and are thereby listed in the National Film Registry.
Shortlisted for the 2020 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian * The Telegraph * The Times "One of America's most courageous young journalists" and the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Brain on Fire investigates the shocking mystery behind the dramatic experiment that revolutionized modern medicine (NPR). Doctors have struggled for centuries to define insanity--how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people--sane, healthy, well-adjusted members of society--went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But, as Cahalan's explosive new research shows in this real-life detective story, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors?
A “lively biography” of the director who choreographed Fred Astaire, Debbie Reynolds and more: “a real backstager” on the making of Hollywood musicals (Wall Street Journal). From the trolley scene in Meet Me in St. Louis to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's last dance on the silver screen to Judy Garland's tuxedo-clad performance of "Get Happy", Charles Walters staged the iconic musical sequences of Hollywood's golden age. The Academy Award-nominated director and choreographer showcased the talents of stars such as Gene Kelly, Doris Day, and Frank Sinatra—yet Walters's name often goes unrecognized today. In the first full-length biography of Walters, Brent Phillips chronicles the artist's career from his days as a Broadway performer to his successes at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Phillips takes readers behind the scenes of beloved musicals including Easter Parade, Lili, and High Society. He also examines the director's uncredited work on films like Gigi, and discusses his contributions to musical theater and American popular culture. This revealing book also considers Walters's personal life and explores how he navigated the industry as an openly gay man. Drawing on unpublished oral histories, correspondence, and new interviews, this biography offers an entertaining and important new look at an exciting era in Hollywood history.
DIVAncient treason threatens to ignite a new skirmish in the Cold War/divDIV It’s January, 1778, and William Davis is standing guard for the Continental Army at Valley Forge when he witnesses something sickening: an American selling intelligence to the British. The meeting goes wrong, three men die, and William flees the scene, leaving a swatch of his uniform behind. The next day he’s arrested, tried, and executed for treason as part of a monstrous cover-up to protect the identity of the officer who tried to sell out the American Revolution: General George Washington himself./divDIV /divDIVTwo centuries later, a descendent of Davis finds evidence of Washington’s betrayal. Before he can announce his findings, he’s murdered by KGB agents hoping to use the information to embarrass the United States. But the crucial document vanishes, and the only man who can secure it is Nat Underhill, a Harvard professor who truly must publish or perish./div
Ang Lee (b. 1954) has emerged as one of cinema's most versatile, critically acclaimed, and popular directors. Known for his ability to transcend cultural and stylistic boundaries, Lee has built a diverse oeuvre that includes films about culture clashes and globalization (Eat Drink Man Woman, 1994, and The Wedding Banquet, 1993), a period drama (Sense and Sensibility, 1995), a martial arts epic (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000), a comic book action movie (Hulk, 2003), and an American western (Brokeback Mountain, 2005). The Philosophy of Ang Lee draws from both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions to examine the director's works. The first section focuses on Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist themes in his Chinese-language films, and the second examines Western philosophies in his English-language films; but the volume ultimately explores how Lee negotiates all of these traditions, strategically selecting from each in order to creatively address key issues. With interest in this filmmaker and his work increasing around the release of his 3-D magical adventure The Life of Pi (2012), The Philosophy of Ang Lee serves as a timely investigation of the groundbreaking auteur and the many complex philosophical themes that he explores through the medium of motion pictures.
This book explores in depth the origins, development, and prospects of outlawry and of the relationship of outlaws to the social conditions of changing times. Throughout American history you will find larger-than-life brigands in every period and every region. Often, because we hunger for simple justice, we romanticize them to the point of being unable to separate fact from fiction. Frank Richard Prassel brings this home in a thorough and fascinating examination of the concept of outlawry from Robin Hood, Dick Turpin, and Blackbeard through Jean Lafitte, Pancho Villa, and Billy the Kid to more modern personalities such as John Dillinger, Claude Dallas, and D. B. Cooper. A separate chapter on molls, plus equal treatment in the histories of gangs, traces women's involvement in outlaw activities. Prassel covers the folklore as well as the facts, even including an appendix of ballads by and about outlaws. He makes clear how this motley group of bandits, pirates, highwaymen, desperadoes, rebels, hoodlums, renegades, gangsters, and fugitives—who stand tall in myth—wither in the light of truth, but flourish in the movies. As he tells the stories, there is little to confirm that Jesse and Frank James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Daltons, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Belle Starr, the Apache Kid, or any of the so-called good badmen, did anything that did not enrich or otherwise benefit themselves. But there is plenty of evidence, in the form of slain victims and ruined lives, to show how many ways they caused harm. The Great American Outlaw is as much an excellent survey on the phenomenon as it is a brilliant exposition of the larger than-life figures who created it. Above all, it is a tribute to that aspect of humanity that Americans admire most and that Prassel describes as a willingness "to fight, however hopelessly, against exhibitions of privilege."
