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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Individual actors & performers
Written at the height of her fame but not published until over a
decade after her death, this autobiography of actress and sex
symbol Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) poignantly recounts her childhood
as an unwanted orphan, her early adolescence, her rise in the film
industry from bit player to celebrity, and her marriage to Joe
DiMaggio. In this intimate account of a very public life, she tells
of her first (non-consensual) sexual experience, her romance with
the Yankee Clipper, and her prescient vision of herself as "the
kind of girl they found dead in the hall bedroom with an empty
bottle of sleeping pills in her hand." The Marilyn in these pages
is a revelation: a gifted, intelligent, vulnerable woman who was
far more complex than the unwitting sex siren she portrayed on
screen. Lavishly illustrated with photos of Marilyn, this special
book celebrates the life and career of an American icon -from the
unique perspective of the icon herself."
This day-by-day account of the legend's life-the first of its
kind-succeeds in the daunting task of tracking Judy's myriad
professional pursuits, the personal crises she triumphed over, and
her many accomplishments. Lavishly illustrated with eighty rare
photos, this volume contains new information to enthrall even the
most knowledgeable Garland fan. For those just encountering Judy,
this book provides the perfect introduction, an engrossing
narrative bursting with information: her performance dates, concert
set lists, and recording session schedules; the evolving critical
reception to her work; the many celebrities that came into contact
with and adored Judy, from the Beatles to Elvis to Sinatra; her
filming itineraries and guest appearances; excerpts from rare
interviews and press conferences; and much more. Here is Judy
Garland as never viewed before, in a way that allows readers to see
her whole life on a daily basis and come to their own conclusion
about what her life was really about. They will encounter a
survivor, parent, friend, and one of the greatest entertainers the
world has ever known, who overcame one obstacle after another in
order to devote forty-five of her forty-seven years to delighting
her fans. From her debut performance as a Gumm Sister at age two to
her final day, Judy Garland is the definitive chronicle of this
remarkable icon.
'A wickedly entertaining new memoir' Daily Mail According to the
Daily Mail Ian Ogilvy was 'the undisputed star of 1970s TV as the
dashing Simon Templar in Return Of The Saint'. The show turned him
into a household name, causing him to be touted as the next James
Bond. From a liberal upbringing in post-war Britain, boarding
school escapades and life at RADA, Ogilvy enjoyed an acting career
spanning more than fifty years, including TV show Upstairs,
Downstairs and films Witchfinder General, No Sex Please: We're
British and Death Becomes Her. His story plays host to a
spectacular all-star cast including Boris Karloff, Hayley Mills,
Penelope Keith, Derek Nimmo, Timothy Dalton, Derek Jacobi and Meryl
Streep, and Ogilvy gives a vivid account from behind the scenes of
the Golden Age of television and film. Once a Saint is an amusing
and unvarnished story: a tremendously endearing tale from a working
actor. His story is modest and endlessly charming, told in such a
way that opens a reader's heart to him.
Alison Oddey's interviews with prominent performing women span
generations, cultures, perspectives, practice and the best part of
the twentieth-century, telling various stories collectively.
Stand-ups, 'classic' actresses, film and television personalities,
experimental and 'alternative' practitioners discuss why they want
to perform, what motivates them, and how their personal history has
contributed to their desire to perform.
Oddey's critical introductory and concluding chapters analyze both
historical and cultural contexts and explore themes arising from
the interviews. These include sense of identity, acting as playing
(recapturing and revisiting childhood), displacement of roots,
performing, motherhood and 'being', performing comedy, differences
between theatre, film and television performance, attitudes towards
and relationships with audiences, and working with directors. The
prominent subtext of motherhood reveals a consciousness of split
subjectives with and beyond performance. This new edition of the
book includes three new interviews with actresses, and is useful
primary resource material for undergraduate students on performance
studies courses.
Spanning 1979-1987, The Fry Chronicles charts Stephen Fry's arrival
at Cambridge up to his thirtieth birthday. 'Heartbreaking, a
delight, a lovely, comfy book' The Times 'Perfect prose and
excruciating honesty. A grand reminiscence of college and theatre
and comedyland in the 1980s, with tone-perfect anecdotes and
genuine readerly excitement. What Fry does, essentially, is tell us
who he really is. Above all else, a thoughtful book. And namedroppy
too, and funny, and marbled with melancholy' Observer 'Arguably the
greatest living Englishman' Independent on Sunday 'Extremely
enjoyable' Sunday Times 'Fry's linguistic facility remains one of
the Wildean wonders of the new media age. The patron saint of
British intelligence' Daily Telegraph Welcome to Stephen Fry's The
Fry Chronicles, one of the boldest, bravest, most revealing and
heartfelt accounts of a man's formative years that you will ever
have the exquisite pleasure of reading. Stephen Fry's film, stage,
radio and television credits are so numerous and wide-ranging that
there is not space here to do them justice. It is enough to say
that he has written, produced, directed, acted in or presented
productions as varied as Wilde, the TV series Blackadder and Jeeves
and Wooster, the sketch show A Bit of Fry & Laurie, the panel
game QI, the radio series Fry's English Delight and documentaries
on subjects as varied as manic depression, disappearing animals and
the United States of America. He's also the bestselling author of
four novels - The Stars' Tennis Balls, Making History, The
Hippopotamus and The Liar - as well as a volume of autobiography,
Moab is My Washpot, and sundry works of non-fiction.
'Coveney is the only writer who could get under Smith's skin,
capturing her steeliness and vulnerability' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
From her days as a star of West End comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's
path has led to international renown and numerous accolades
including two Academy Awards. Recently she has been as prominent on
our screens as ever, with high-profile roles as the formidable
Dowager Countess of Grantham in DOWNTON ABBEY, as Professor Minerva
McGonagall in the HARRY POTTER movie franchise and as the eccentric
Miss Shepherd in the film version of THE LADY IN THE VAN by Alan
Bennett. Paradoxically she remains an enigmatic figure, rarely
appearing in public and carefully guarding her considerable talent.
Drawing on personal archives, interviews and encounters with the
actress, as well as conversations with immediate family and dear
friends, Michael Coveney's biography is a captivating portrait of
the real Maggie Smith.
Grand Hotel. My One and Only. Nine. The Best Little Whorehouse in
Texas. A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine. The Will Rogers
Follies. For two decades, Tommy Tune was the maestro presiding over
a string of glittering Broadway musicals that took the tradition of
complete musical staging by a director-choreographer into a new era
defined by spectacle and technology. He was last in a grand lineage
led by Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion, Bob Fosse, and Michael
Bennett, but also provided a link to a new generation of
choreographers-turned-directors like Susan Stroman, Jerry Mitchell,
and Casey Nicholaw. Unlike his fellow director-choreographers, Tune
also maintained a successful performing career. His nine Tony
Awards (plus a tenth, for Lifetime Achievement) were earned across
four categories, not only for choreography and direction, but also
as both featured and lead actor in a musical, for Seesaw and My One
and Only-a distinction no one else can claim. Tune took the musical
forward by looking backward, bringing satiric energy and
contemporary style to a trove of show business antecedents-from
clog dancing to showgirl formations, from precision kick lines to
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers-style ballroom glides. He did the
same with his concert and cabaret performances, drawing on classics
from the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter and performing
them not as nostalgia but as vital, immediate statements of
personal philosophy. Everything is Choreography: The Musical
Theater of Tommy Tune is the first full scale book about the career
of this prodigious artist. It celebrates and examines with a
critical eye his major projects, and summons for readers a glorious
period of dance, performance, and theatrical imagination.
These are the kinds of stories we need right now. While the news is
filled with villains and villainy, we do see a few famous heroes
now again. But what about the everyday heroes? The people going out
of their way bring a little love into someone else's life? They
deserve a time in the spotlight to inspire us all. Life can be
tough--but it helps to know other people have come through hard
times with a smile on their face. In Make Your Own Sunshine, Janice
Dean shares inspiring stories that will lift your spirit and touch
your heart. Good people are all around us doing selfless deeds,
from a firefighter who bravely battled for his colleague's health
after 9/11 to a good Samaritan who secretly pays for the coffees of
everyone in line behind him. You can't help but smile reading about
the teacher who cut her hair to make her student feel better. And
you may shed a tear when you hear the story of the dad who never
missed writing a napkin note for his daughter, including stashing
extra notes in case he lost his batter with cancer. From a young
man who makes bow ties for dogs waiting to be adopted to an Uber
driver who brightened a new mom's day by helping her buy baby
clothes, the heroes in this story will warm your heart and stick in
your mind. Janice has made it her mission to uncover and document
these good stories to inspire us and gives us a much-needed boost
of optimism. All we have to do is open our minds and our hearts, to
look for the light on a cloudy day. Because as she reminds us, if
we don't make our own sunshine--who will?
A HISTORY OF THE MOST CONTROVERSAL MOTION PICTURE EVERY MADE A
hundred years have passed since the masterpiece of David Wark
Griffith, The Birth of a Nation, first appeared on the screens of
America, in the winter of 1915. It demonstrated that the cinema, no
less than literature and no less than the stage, could become a
topic of serious critical, esthetic, intellectual, political,
social, and technical discussion. In this way it brought the motion
picture into a position of commanding influence in the social life
of the American nation. The denunciation continues, and the storm
over the film serves as a barometer of the global conflict,
involving forces and issues set in motion by, but no means limited
to, race. From the beginning it touched off several emotionally and
politically explosive, interrelated, parallel
controversies-controversy over Griffith; controversy over the film;
controversy over the subject-matter and its treatment; controversy
over the controversy. As Griffith's official biographer Seymour
Sterns main purpose of his book was to assemble, as extensively as
possible, the rapidly vanishing record of what happened. You'll
find Stern's writing on the subject as controversial as the film
itself.
From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series: a fast-moving, musically
astute portrait of Irving Berlin, arguably the greatest composer of
American popular music "An extensively researched, entertaining,
and nuanced account that contextualizes Berlin's story and
achievements within the scope of Jewish immigrant New York and
modern American popular culture."-Library Journal Irving Berlin
(1888-1989) has been called-by George Gershwin, among others-the
greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song.
"Berlin has no place in American music," legendary composer Jerome
Kern wrote; "he is American music." In a career that spanned an
astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some fifteen hundred tunes,
including "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "God Bless America," and
"White Christmas." From ragtime to the rock era, Berlin's work has
endured in the very fiber of American national identity. Exploring
the interplay of Berlin's life with the life of New York City,
noted biographer James Kaplan offers a visceral narrative of Berlin
as self-made man and witty, wily, tough Jewish immigrant. This
fast-paced, musically opinionated biography uncovers Berlin's
unique brilliance as a composer of music and lyrics. Masterfully
written and psychologically penetrating, Kaplan's book underscores
Berlin's continued relevance in American popular culture. About
Jewish Lives: Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of
interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of
Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of
Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics,
cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are
paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that
explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity
to the present. In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives
the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series
ever to receive this award. More praise for Jewish Lives:
"Excellent." - New York times "Exemplary." - Wall St. Journal
"Distinguished." - New Yorker "Superb." - The Guardian
It comes as a surprise to many that the elemental human impulse to
tell stories, far from being the exclusive realm of children's
bedtime, long-forgotten civilizations and remote cultures, is also
a burgeoning creative art form here, now, in twenty-first century,
post-industrial societies. Storytelling in the Moment is a
wide-ranging, multidisciplinary yet accessible exploration of
contemporary verbal storytelling in Britain and Ireland. Primary
research focuses attention on the working practices of today's
storytellers, the role of the listener/participant in a
storytelling event, the informal groups and established
organizations that sustain its development, the multifaceted roles
that storytelling now plays in our society and the complex network
interconnections that link its component parts. It also seeks to
reveal how an emergent, grassroots, socio-cultural movement can
become ubiquitous in society but pass largely unnoticed by a wider
public in an age of global mass-media. The sometimes unconventional
research methodologies, narrative forms and conversational style of
this study owes much to the author's extended careers as filmmaker
of music, arts, humanities and public service documentaries and as
screenmedia consultant to UK and worldwide governments and
international agencies.
From playing the school joker as a young boy to shake off the
trauma of his parents' divorce to becoming one of the world's most
bankable movie stars, Will Ferrell has always used comedy as a way
to bring happiness to others. He doesn't care if you laugh at him
or with him - if you're laughing at all, then he's done his job.
This comprehensive biography of Will Ferrell explores his early
days on famed US variety show Saturday Night Live, and also charts
Will's transition from quirky support character to being one of the
world's most bankable movie stars - thanks to films like Elf, The
Other Guys and, of course, a certain little-known anchorman from
San Diego. Read Will Ferrell: The Biography if you want to stay
classy!
At a growth rate of baby chick to full adult in less than two
months, chickens are one of the fastest growing food source known
to man. It seems that chickens were put on earth to supply the
world's population with eggs and meat. This book tells the story of
Albert Okura's belief that his destiny in life is to sell more
chickens than anyone else in the world. Although sounding
preposterous at first glance, it needs to be noted that Colonel
Sanders did not sell his first franchise until he was 60 years old.
Albert was born in 1951 and grew up with the fledgling fast food
industry. His first full time job was working at Burger King as a
hamburger cook. Recognizing that mental toughness as well as the
ability to train, develop, and motivate others was critical for
long term success, Albert gravitated to those who inspired him.
Lessons learned from life experiences helped him realize his
destiny. In 1984, at the age of 32, Albert opened a rotisserie
chicken restaurant with help from his uncle. Albert has become
Southern California's foremost expert on mass producing, tender and
moist rotisserie chickens. Juan Pollo is now poised to go into the
bigtime. This is their story.
At every stage of her career, Barbra Streisand's genius finds its
fullest measure in screen song, first in Emmy-winning TV specials,
then in Hollywood blockbusters from Funny Girl to Funny Lady. She
goes on, as emerging auteur, to direct her own "musical concepts"
in A Star Is Born-before reconceiving the big-screen musical
altogether in the writing as well as directing of her own starring
role in Yentl ("A Film with Music"). In this intensive reading of
the "actress-who-sings," Garrett Stewart notes the gender and
ethnic stereotypes that Streisand shattered as the first openly
Jewish superstar, while concentrating not just on the cultural
difference she made but on the internal differentials of her unholy
vocal gift-whose kinetic volatility shapes a kind of cinematic
terrain all its own. Down through her filmed return to the concert
stage, Stewart elicits the sinuous phonetic text of Streisand's
on-screen musical delivery in a keenly attentive mode of audition
that puts into fresh perspective the indelible aura of her stardom.
The first ever biography of British film star and stage actor Eric
Portman (1901-1969), who appeared in over 40 films and around 100
stage plays. This includes much original information about his
childhood, family, career and private life from people who knew
Eric, including nephews, cousins, friends, neighbours, colleagues,
acquaintances and fans. There are many never-seen-before
photographs and other illustrations, plus private family documents
and letters.
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