The first definitive biography of tragicomic sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, one of the most colorful and eccentric movie stars of the 1950s-60s. The book examines both her life and her career, detailing her movie, TV and stage work, as well as her drive to become an old-fashioned movie star at the end of the big-studio era. Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It follows Jayne from her birth in 1933 through her early days as a starlet, her sudden fame as a Broadway star, and her too-brief years as 20th Century-Fox's threat to Marilyn Monroe. After three hit films, showing what a talented actress she was, Jayne found herself cut loose and floundering, in ever-cheaper and worse films. Jayne's private life will be examined as well: her expertise as a publicity magnet, her relationship with the press and her fans; her three marriages and many affairs, and her well-meaning but ill-equipped parenting skills. The rumors around her death will be addressed, via nearly 100 pages of police reports. Among the people interviewed for this book are her third husband, her lover shortly before Mariska Hargitay was born (the only interview he has ever given about Jayne), the man who published her 1963 memoirs, the inventor of the Jayne Mansfield Hot Water Bottle, and Loni Anderson, who portrayed Jayne in a 1980 TV-movie. Including 70 photos, The Girl Couldn't Help It will finally set straight many misconceptions about Jayne Mansfield, and will provide a fair and balanced, sympathetic but clear-eyed portrait of one of show business's most bizarre and endearing icons.

Before Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria, and Penelope Cruz, there was Lupe Velez—one of the first successful Latin-American Hollywood stars, who swept past the xenophobia of Old Hollywood to pave the way for future icons from around the world. Her career began in the silent era when her beauty was enough to make it onto the silver screen, but with the rise of talkies, Velez could no longer hope to hide her Mexican accent. Yet Velez proved to be a talented dramatic and comedic actress (and singer) and was much more versatile than such legends as Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Gloria Swanson. Velez starred in such films as Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934), and Hollywood Party (1934). In the 1940s, Velez's popularity peaked after appearing as Carmelita Fuentes in eight Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalize on Velez's well-documented fiery personality. Nicknamed "the Mexican Spitfire" by the media, Velez's personal life was as colorful as her screen persona. Fan magazines mythologized her mysterious childhood in Mexico, while mainstream publications obsessed over the drama of her romances with such figures as Gary Cooper, Erich Maria Remarque, and John Gilbert, along with her stormy marriage to Johnny Weissmuller. In 1944, a pregnant and unmarried Velez died of an intentional drug overdose. Her tumultuous life and the circumstances surrounding her early death have been the subject of speculation and controversy. In Strictly Dynamite: The Sensational Life of Lupe Velez, author Eve Golden uses extensive research to parse fact from fiction and offer a thorough, riveting, and comprehensive examination of the real woman underneath the gossip columns' caricature. Through astute analysis of the actress's iconic filmography and interviews, Golden illuminates the path Velez blazed through Hollywood. Her success was unexpected and extraordinary at a time when her distinctive accent was an obstacle, yet very few published books have focused entirely on Velez's life and career. Written with even-handedness, humor, and empathy, Golden has finally given the remarkable Mexican actress the uniquely nuanced portrait she deserves.

Theda Bara became an overnight superstar with her film debut in the scandalous 1915 hit A Fool There Was, and for the rest of that decade stayed at the top of the heap, along with Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin. Despite her fame and notoriety as the movies' first "sex symbol", no biography of the original Vamp has ever been written, even though Bara threatened to pen her own "because nobody ever wrote a true word about me". Finally, someone has. Bara had one of the most bizarre and colorful careers of the silent era, starring in Cleopatra, Salome, and scores of other hit films before vanishing mysteriously from the screen. Now, read for the first time how a nice Jewish girl from the Midwest became "Satan's Handmaiden", scandalized a nation, and abruptly fell from the heights.

This work contains 41 engaging essays on players of the silent screen, from superstars like Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow to fascinating figures like Clarine Seymour and Arthur Johnson. These stories range from the tragic (early deaths, drug problems, talkie-related career failures) to the triumphant (a surprising number of silent stars enjoyed long, happy lives). Many of these personalities have never before been covered in depth, and their careers highlight the entire silent era, from its beginnings in the 1890s to its demise in the late 1920s. These essays, earlier versions of which were published in Classic Images, have been completely reedited and rewritten, reflecting information later made available to the author.

" Anna Held (1870?-1918), a petite woman with an hourglass figure, was America's most popular musical comedy star during the two decades preceding World War I. In the colorful world of New York theater during La Belle ?poque, she epitomized everything that was glamorous, sophisticated, and suggestive about turn-of-the-century Broadway. Overcoming an impoverished life as an orphan to become a music-hall star in Paris, Held rocketed to fame in America. From 1896 to 1910, she starred in hit after hit and quickly replaced Lillian Russell as the darling of the theatrical world. The first wife of legendary producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Held was the brains and inspiration behind his Follies and shared his knack for publicity. Together, they brought the Paris scene to New York, complete with lavish costumes and sets and a chorus of stunningly beautiful women, dubbed ""The Anna Held Girls."" While Held was known for a champagne giggle as well as for her million-dollar bank account, there was a darker side to her life. She concealed her Jewish background and her daughter from a previous marriage. She suffered through her two husbands' gambling problems and Ziegfeld's blatant affairs with showgirls. With the outbreak of fighting in Europe, Held returned to France to support the war effort. She entertained troops and delivered medical supplies, and she was once briefly captured by the German army. Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway reveals one of the most remarkable women in the history of theatrical entertainment. With access to previously unseen family records and photographs, Eve Golden has uncovered the details of an extraordinary woman in the vibrant world of 1900s New York.

"Back in 2001, I put together Golden Images, a collection of silent movie star articles originally published in Classic Images and Films of the Golden Age. It's taken me nearly ten years-oh, I keep busy-but here is the sequel, Bride of Golden Images (if Abbott and Costello were in this book, yes, it would have been called Abbott and Costello Meet Golden Images). "As in the first book, these articles have all been seen in CI and FGA. But, also as in Golden Images, I have gone over them with a fine-toothed comb: rewriting, doing additional research, and handing it over to my fabulous editor, Richard Kukan, so that clunky phrasing and just plain bad writing can be fixed. "I loved writing for CI and FGA (I basically ran out of subjects, so only do an occasional piece for them now, such as a recent tribute to the late Anita Page). What other publication will happily print pieces on the Duncan Sisters? Judy Tyler? Jimmy Durante? The research and writing were fun for me, and I hope that comes through in these articles. It was an additional kick for me to be able to illustrate this book with photos from The Everett Collection, where I work as an archivist. Bride of Golden Images covers the talkie years, from the late 1920s through the 1960s. It's an eclectic collection of superstars, second bananas, character actors, and stage stars dipping their toes into the movies. Some of them immortal (Garbo, Dietrich, Crawford, Monroe). Some fondly remembered mostly by movie and pop-culture buffs (Carmen Miranda, Edward Everett Horton, Betty Grable, Inger Stevens, Constance Bennett). And then, those whose stories are known only to us few real fanatics: Lyda Roberti, the Hilton sisters, Helen Kane, Renate Muller, Phillips Holmes. If I can bring those people back to life for just a few moments, I will be, as Edith King Hall wrote in a 1900 children's book, 'the happiest little girl in all of Toyland.'"

Seventy deeply troubled teenagers spend weeks, months, even years on a locked psychiatric ward. They're not just failing in school, not just using drugs. They are out of control--violent or suicidal, in trouble with the law, unpredictable, and dangerous. Their futures are at risk.

Twenty years later, most of them still struggle. But astonishingly, a handful are thriving. They're off drugs and on the right side of the law. They've finished school and hold jobs that matter to them. They have close friends and are responsible, loving parents.

What happened? How did some kids stumble out of the woods while others remain lost? Could their strikingly different futures have been predicted back during their teenage struggles? The kids provide the answers in a series of interviews that began during their hospitalizations and ended years later. Even in the early days, the resilient kids had a grasp of how they contributed to their own troubles. They tried to make sense of their experience and they groped toward an understanding of other people's inner lives.

In their own impatient voices, "Out of the Woods" portrays edgy teenagers developing into thoughtful, responsible adults. Listening in on interviews through the years, narratives that are often poignant, sometimes dramatic, frequently funny, we hear the kids growing into more composed--yet always recognizable--versions of their tough and feisty selves.

Charming and classically handsome, John Gilbert (1897--1936) was among the world's most recognizable actors during the silent era. He was a wild, swashbuckling figure on screen and off, and accounts of his life have focused on his high-profile romances with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, his legendary conflicts with Louis B. Mayer, his four tumultuous marriages, and his swift decline after the introduction of talkies. A dramatic and interesting personality, Gilbert served as one of the primary inspirations for the character of George Valentin in the Academy Award--winning movie The Artist (2011). Many myths have developed around the larger-than-life star in the eighty years since his untimely death, but this definitive biography sets the record straight. Eve Golden separates fact from fiction in John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars, tracing the actor's life from his youth spent traveling with his mother in acting troupes to the peak of fame at MGM, where he starred opposite Mae Murray, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and other actresses in popular films such as The Merry Widow (1925), The Big Parade (1925), Flesh and the Devil (1926), and Love (1927). Golden debunks some of the most pernicious rumors about the actor, including the oft-repeated myth that he had a high-pitched, squeaky voice that ruined his career. Meticulous, comprehensive, and generously illustrated, this book provides a behind-the-scenes look at one of the silent era's greatest stars and the glamorous yet brutal world in which he lived.

" Comedic film actress Kay Kendall, born to a theatrical family in Northern England, came of age in London during the Blitz. After starring in Britain's biggest cinematic disaster, she found stardom in 1953 with her brilliant performance in the low-budget film, Genevieve. She scored success after success with her light comic style in movies such as Doctor in the House, The Reluctant Debutante, and the Gene Kelly musical Les Girls. Kendall's private life was even more colorful than the plots of her films as she embarked on a series of affairs with minor royalty, costars, directors, producers, and married men. In 1954 she fell in love with her married Constant Husband costar Rex Harrison and accompanied him to New York, where he was starring on Broadway in My Fair Lady. It was there that Kendall was diagnosed with myelocytic leukemia. Her life took a romantic and tragic turn as Harrison divorced his wife and married Kendall. He agreed with their doctor that she was never to know of her diagnosis, and for the next two years the couple lived a hectic, glamorous life together as Kendall's health failed. She died in London at the age of 32, shortly after completing the filming of Once More with Feeling , her husband by her side. The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall was written with the cooperation of Kendall's sister Kim and includes interviews with many of her costars, relatives and friends. A complete filmography and numerous rare photographs complete this first-ever biography of Britain's most glamorous comic star. Eve Golden is the author of several biographies of actresses, Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway, as well as a collection of essays on silent film stars.