That ongoing, barely under control drama known as Marlon Brando--Hollywood's Ultimate Bad Boy, Megastar, and Sexual Outlaw--with a special focus on his early rise to fame and his social and sexual associations with the A-list legends of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Brando Unzipped is the definitive gossip guide to the late, great actor's life --New York Daily News. Lurid, raunchy, perceptive, and certainly worth reading, it's one of the best show-biz biographies of the year. --London's Sunday Times. Brando Unzipped received an Honorable Mention from Foreword Magazine in its Book of the Year competition, and it won a Silver Ippy award for Best Biography from the Independent Publisher's Association.
Punctilious to a fault, Sidney Lumet favored intense rehearsal, which enabled him to bring in most of his films under budget and under schedule. An energized director who captured the heart of New York like no other, he created a vast canon of work that stands as a testament to his passionate concern for justice and his great empathy for the hundreds of people with whom he collaborated during a career that spanned more than five decades. This is the first full-scale biography of a man who is generally regarded as one of the most affable directors of his time. Using the oral testimonies of those who worked with him both behind and in front of the camera, this book explores Lumet's personality and working methods.
Over the last eighty years, Marlon Brando has become such an object of fascination, buried under so many accreted layers of mythos and half-truth, that it is all but impossible to see the man behind the icon. As we approach the centennial of this undisputed American legend, Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel isa revelatory biography that tells its story the same way the man himself approached a role: from the inside. Author, journalist, and pop culture authority Burt Kearns digs deep into the unexplored aspects of Brando’s career, interests, and singular personality, revealing how his roles on stage and screen, combined with his wild and restless personal life, helped to transform popular culture and society writ large. His influence was both broad and deep. Brando’s intense approach to acting technique was emulated by his contemporaries as well as generations of actors who followed, from Nicholson and DeNiro to DiCaprio and Gosling. But his legacy extends far beyond acting. His image in The Wild One helped to catalyze a youth revolution, setting the stage for rock ‘n’ roll culture in a way that directly inspired Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Andy Warhol, and punk rock culture. Brando was also frank about his affairs with both sexes; a leader of the sexual revolution and a hero of gay culture, he defied stereotypes and redefined sexual boundaries in his life and the roles he played. But of all his passions, activism was even more important to Brando than acting: he was an early supporter of Israel, civil rights, the American Indian movement, Black Power, gay rights, and environmentalism. Startlingly intimate and powerfully told, Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel shows how the greatest actor of the twentieth century helped lead the world into the twenty-first.
Stefan Kanfer, acclaimed biographer of Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx, now gives us the definitive life of Marlon Brando, seamlessly intertwining the man and the work to give us a stunning and illuminating appraisal. Beginning with Brando’s turbulent childhood, Kanfer follows him to New York where he made his star-making Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire at age twenty-three. Brando then decamped for Hollywood, and Kanfer looks at each of Brando’s films over the years—from The Men in 1950 to The Score in 2001—offering deft and insightful analysis of his sometimes brilliant, sometimes baffling performances. And, finally, Kanfer brings into focus Brando’s self-destructiveness, ambivalence toward his craft, and the tragedies that shadowed his last years.
Feast of Excess is an engaging and accessible portrait of "The New Sensibility," as it was named by Susan Sontag in 1965. The New Sensibility sought to push culture in extreme directions: either towards stark minimalism or gaudy maximalism. Through vignette profiles of prominent figures-John Cage, Patricia Highsmith, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Anne Sexton, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, Erica Jong, and Thomas Pynchon, to name a few-George Cotkin presents their bold, headline-grabbing performances and places them within the historical moment.
Celebrities is a paperback updating the 1,200-page Who's Who in Hell (2000). The premise is that "Hell" is a theological invention, that is does not physically exist. If it did, theists would put into Hell all who are listed; e.g., Woody Allen; Marlon Brando; George Clooney; Marlene Dietrich; Jodie Foster, Katharine Hepburn, Christopher Reeve. As Mark Twain observed, "Heaven for climate; Hell for company."
Explores how a younger and more sensitive form of masculinity emerged in the United States after World War II. In the decades that followed World War II, Americans searched for and often founds signs of a new masculinity that was younger, sensitive, and sexually ambivalent. Male Beauty examines the theater, film, and magazines of the time in order to illuminate how each one put forward a version of male gendering that deliberately contrasted, and often clashed with, previous constructs. This new postwar masculinity was in large part a product of the war itself. The need to include those males who fought the war as menmany of whom were far younger than what traditional male gender definitions would accept as manlyextended the range of what could and should be thought of as masculine. Kenneth Krauss adds to this analysis one of the first in-depth examinations of how males who were sexually attracted to other males discovered this emerging concept of manliness via physique magazines.
Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco, the legendary Hollywood screen siren, Grace Kelly is an American icon whose beauty is unrivalled, and whose oft-imitated aristocratic style and cool elegance has never been eclipsed. Wendy Leigh- after three years' research - has gained unprecedented access to over one hundred sources who have never talked about Grace before, including nine of her until now undisclosed romances - among them an English aristocrat, an American tennis player, and a Hollywood legend - and also including her priest friend, Father Peter Jacobs, and Bernard Combemal, the former head of the S.B.M, the consortium that runs Monaco. Wendy Leigh provides revealing new details about Grace's life, including her premarital romantic swan song which took place during her voyage to Monaco, the hitherto untold story of her troubling relationship with bridesmaid, Carolyn Reybold and the moving story of Grace's lifelong relationship with actor, David Niven. Wendy Leigh paints a compelling portrait of Grace, the ambitious young actress, Grace, the dutiful princess who transformed the principality of Monaco into a jet-set haven, Grace, the kind-hearted philanthropist, Grace, the loving mother, and Grace, the patriotic American. Wendy Leigh's book has not been written for those readers who wish to view Grace as a saint, but for those who - like Leigh herself - believes that she was a strong and wonderful woman.
This reference helps readers navigate the perilous odyssey those of an LGBTQ orientation had to face in an age less enlightened than our own, when an attraction to members of the same gender could lead to horrendous abuse. Just as American society has changed dramatically from decade to decade, so has queer cinema. Taking us from a time when LGBTQ characters were often represented as either caricatures or figures of farce, this lively yet authoritative reference explores the sea change ushered in by such stars as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s and '40s, androgynous figures such as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Marlon Brando in the '50s, and closeted gay men such as Rock Hudson and Liberace, whose double lives were exposed by the scourge of AIDS. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on stars, directors, films, themes, and other topics related to queer cinema in America, including films and persons from outside the U.S. who nonetheless figured prominently in America popular culture. Entries cite works for further reading, sidebars provide snippets of interesting trivia, a timeline highlights key events, and a selected, general, end-of-work bibliography cites the most important major works on the topic.
