During the course of a career that began in the late 1940s, Lenny Bruce challenged the sanctity of organized religion and other societal and political conventions he widened the boundaries of free speech. Critic Ralph Gleason said, So many taboos have been lifted and so many comics have rushed through the doors Lenny opened. He utterly changed the world of comedy."Although Bruce died when he was only forty, his influence on the worlds of comedy, jazz, and satire are incalculable. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People remains a brilliant existential account of his life and the forces that made him the most important and controversial entertainer in history.

Flint Dille wrote your childhood. From his work on 80s cartoon classics like Transformers, G.I. Joe, the Garbage Pail Kids, and Inhumanoids to the interactive novels he wrote with Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, Flint had a hand in many pockets of 80s popular culture. He's worked with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Frank Miller, Jack Kirby, and a raft of others as a writer, story editor, show runner, and/or producer of iconic entertainment in almost every medium. The Gamesmaster is Dille's memoir looking through his own unique story, his blend of pop culture, social history, and reportage about the groundbreaking 1980s, and the parts he and his colleagues, collaborators, employers, and friends played in making it a genuine Golden Age.

Clint Eastwood is one of the world's most popular action stars, who has matured into a fine American producer-director. Entertaining, illuminating and packed with information, up to and including "The Changeling", this is the first book to cover his full life in the movies, from his beginnings in 1950s B-movies and in TV's "Rawhide" to "Gran Torino" showing how as both actor and filmmaker Eastwood aims for the heart of the drama, whatever the story. Howard Hughes follows Eastwood's craft through over 50 movies. He looks at his launch into superstardom in Sergio Leone's 1960s spaghetti westerns. Back in America, he built on his success as western hero with such films as "High Plains Drifter" and "The Outlaw Josey Wales", winning an Oscar for "Unforgiven" in 1992. He blasted his way through the seventies and eighties as Inspector Harry Francis Callahan, the last hope for law enforcement in San Francisco. He also monkeyed around in two phenomenally popular films with Clyde the orang-utan, which brought tough-guy Eastwood to a whole new audience and made him the biggest box office star of his generation. "Aim for the Heart" also looks at Eastwood's more unusual roles, including "The Beguiled", "The Bridges of Madison County" and "Million Dollar Baby". Since 1970, he has enjoyed parallel success as director-producer of his own Malpaso Productions, with "Bird", "Mystic River" and "Letters from Iwo Jima", demonstrating formidable directing credentials. "Aim for the Heart" covers all Eastwood's movies of many genres in detail, and Eastwood's story is illustrated with film stills, glimpses behind the scenes, and rare poster advertising material. "Aim for the Heart" also includes the most comprehensive credits filmography has ever compiled on Eastwood's work, as star and director.

Winner of the Society for Theatre Research Book Prize 2020 Vivien Leigh was perhaps the most iconic actress of the twentieth century. As Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche Du Bois she took on some of the most pivotal roles in cinema history. Yet she was also a talented theatre actress with West End and Broadway plaudits to her name. In this ground-breaking new biography, Alan Strachan provides a completely new full-life portrait of Leigh, covering both her professional and personal life. Using previously unseen sources from her archive, recently acquired by the V&A, he sheds new light on her fractious relationship with Laurence Olivier, based on their letters and diaries, as well as on the bipolar disorder which so affected her later life and work. Revealing new aspects of her early life as well as providing glimpses behind-the-scenes of the filming of Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire, this book provides the essential and comprehensive life-story of one of the twentieth century's greatest actresses.

To describe women in film history as "invisible" may seem strange as throughout film history, women on the silver screen have given audiences their version of what it is to be a woman. And as film stars they have always been associated with the glamour of the film industry - the living embodiment of female attraction and pleasure. In Making the invisible visible, however, a group of researchers dissect the underrepresentation of women in areas of film culture often overlooked. Despite some significant differences - between countries, between eras, between kinds of job - production teams and film crews have almost always been men. Still today, many film professions are dominated by men. The authors explore women s scope for action in a variety of professional roles, based for example on discussions of LGBTQ+ identities in the film industry. The texts also present fresh perspectives on women actors and the nature of celebrity. Contributors: Elisabet Bjoerklund, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Dagmar Brunow, Associate Professor in Film Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, Head of the Film and Broadcasting Section at the National Library of Norway. Christopher Natzen, Research coordinator at the National Library of Sweden. Ingrid Ryberg, filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in Culture, Aesthetics and Media - University of Gothenburg. Tytti Soila, Professor Emeritus in Cinema Studies at Stockholm University.

Leonard Nimoy's portrayal of the ever-logical Vulcan, Mr. Spock, is one of the most recognizable, loved, and pervasive characterizations in popular culture. He had been closer to the phenomenon of Star Trek than anyone, having played the pivotal role of Spock in the original series, in six motion pictures, and in a special two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I AM SPOCK gives us Nimoy's unique perspective on the beginnings of the Star Trek phenomenon, on his relationship with his costars and particularly on the reaction of the pointed-eared alien that Nimoy knew best. Here, Nimoy shared the true story behind his perceived reticence to re-create the role and wrote frankly about how his portrayal defined an icon.

The #1 New York Times Bestseller One-half of the celebrated Men in Blazers duo, longtime culture and soccer commentator Roger Bennett traces the origins of his love affair with America, and how he went from a depraved, pimply faced Jewish boy in 1980's Liverpool to become the quintessential Englishman in New York. A memoir for fans of Jon Ronson and Chuck Klosterman, but with Roger Bennett's signature pop culture flair and humor. Being a teenager isn't easy, no matter where in the world you live or how much it does or doesn't rain in your hometown. As an outsider-a private-schooled Jewish kid in working-class, heavily Catholic Liverpool-Roger Bennett wasn't winning any popu larity contests. But there was one idea, or ideal, that burned bright in Roger's heart. That was America- with its sunny skies, beautiful women, and cool kids with flipped collars who ate at McDonald's. When he embraced American popular culture, the dull gray world he lived in turned to neon teal-a color which had not even been invented in England yet. Intro duced first through the gateway drug of The Love Boat, then to Rolling Stone, the NFL, John Hughes movies, Run-DMC, and Tracy Chapman, Roger embraced everything that would capture the imagination of a teenager growing up Stateside. When he made a real, in-the-flesh American friend who invited him over for the summer, he got to visit the promised land. A month in Chicago, and a life-changing night spent in the company of the Chicago Bears, was the first hit of freedom, of independence, of the Roger Bennett he knew he could be. (Re)Born in the USA captures the universality of growing pains, growing up, and growing out of where you come from. Drenched in the culture of the late '80s and '90s from the UK and the USA, and the heartfelt, hilarious sense of humor that has made Roger Bennett so beloved by his listeners, here is both a truly unique coming-of-age story and the love letter to America that the country needs right now.

An Academy Award-winning actress and the internationally bestselling author of "Out on a Limb delivers her touching, warm and headline-making memoir. In "My Lucky Stars Shirley MacLaine talks candidly and personally about her four decades in Hollywood, especially about the men and women - her "lucky stars"- who touched and challenged her life.

The brilliant autobiography of one of the Caribbean's most multifaceted personalities records Edric Connor's early life from the idyllic setting of Peter Hill, Mayaro to his migration to Port of Spain and his departure to England where he was able to carve out successful careers as singer, stage and screen actor, radio broadcaster and film-maker. Born in 1913, Connor's sensibilities and his fascination with horizons were nurtured by the view from his Mayaro bedroom window which opened out towards the east and the Atlantic Ocean with its distant horizon. For Connor, the horizon represented a promise, not a boundary and he not only envisaged, but lived his life as a constant faring forward towards and beyond horizons. Connor's Trinidad years are best distinguished by his passionate advocacy of genuine and legitimate cultural form. Some of the most rewarding moments of his autobiography are Connor's joyful evocation of the communal solidarity which defined Trinidad rural life at the turn of the twentieth century. Those who, like George Lamming, knew him in his London period, remember Connor as a man of singular generosity who residence was home, embassy and all-purpose bureau to Caribbean students, politicians, aspirants to political office and artistes. The late 1950s represented the pinnacle of Connor's career as a stage actor when he appeared in the production of Shakespeare's Pericles at Stratford-upon-Avon, and it was during this period also that he completed Songs for Trinidad, a book of folksongs, and launched his own film company. Connor wrote his autobiography in late 1964 whilst convalescing from a heart attack. He died in 1968 at the relatively young age of 55. Connor's text has been reproduced in its original version excepts for minimal editing and the addition of some explanatory notes by Professor Bridget Brereton, who along with Professor Gordon Rohlehr also provide an enlightening introduction to the Connor life story within the social, cultural and historical context of early twentieth century Trinidad and Tobago. George Lamming's Foreword and intimate portraits of Connor's life, by his former wife Pearl Connor-Magotsi, in her essay My Life with Edric Conner, round off this complete portrait of the life, times and achievements of a Caribbean cultural icon.

Urbane. Brilliant. Brave. Funny. Famous. Handsome. Nigel Havers is the real-life charmer you might expect. In a career that has taken him from a schoolboy production of A Midsummer Night's Dream to the red carpet on Oscar Night with Chariots of Fire, via starring roles in the West End stage, classic television series like Don't Wait Up and a cameo in Little Britain, the Hollywood blockbusters that made him a household name are only the beginning. With characteristic modesty and a captivating eye for the absurd, he treats us to the highlights and lowlights of a life like no other; a life in which chilling reality (watching his father Michael - later the Attorney General - begin his prosecution of the Yorkshire Ripper) and beguiling fantasy (sleeping with 'Elizabeth Taylor') continuously and arrestingly collide.

Fifty years after the publication of Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd , which suggests that 'absurd' plays purport the meaninglessness of life, this book uses the works of five major playwrights of the 1950s to provide a timely reassessment of one of the most important theatre 'movements' of the 20th century.

The life-stories of a quartet of early Indian actors and poet-playwrights translated here. Their memoirs, replete with anecdote and humour, are as significant to the understanding of the nationalist era as the lives of political leaders or social reformers.

Two years ago Bernie Nolan was given the initial all-clear after a courageous battle with breast cancer. Over the moon, Bernie set about rebuilding her life and making plans for the future. Then in the summer of 2012, she was in her bedroom getting dressed when she found a lump just above her breast. Terrified, she immediately made a hospital appointment, where she was given the devastating news that the cancer had returned. It had spread to her brain, lungs, liver and bones and was incurable. Bernie's first thought was of her daughter. Erin had just turned thirteen and was approaching a time when young girls need their mums more than ever. In true Bernie spirit she vowed not to let the cancer stop her from being 'Mum'. Bernie always said that her family was her greatest achievement and she wanted to be the best wife and mother she could be in the time she had left. In this book Bernie shares her struggle to become a mother - the miscarriage she suffered and the heartbreaking stillbirth of her daughter Kate, and the joyous arrival of her beautiful daughter Erin. Bernie loved seeing this book published and was thrilled when it became a number 1 bestseller. It meant a great deal to her that so many people wanted to read her story. This is a memoir brimming with happy memories, and although Bernie tragically lost her battle on the 4th July 2013, she lives on in the hearts of the nation and in the pages of this book. Moving and wonderfully warm-hearted, this is a powerful story of a remarkable life and a mother's brave fight against a vicious disease.