For almost half a century, celebrated ventriloquist and entertainer Shari Lewis delighted generations of children and adults with the help of her trusted sock puppet sidekick Lamb Chop. For decades, the beloved pair were synonymous with children's television, educating and entrancing their young audience with their symbiotic personalities and their proclivity for song, dance, and the joy of silliness. But as iconic as their television personas were, relatively little inside knowledge has been revealed about Lewis herself and the life-changing moments that led her to the entertainment industry and perhaps, most importantly, to Lamb Chop. Renowned for her skills as a performer, Lewis was an equally skilled businesswoman. Operating in an era when women were largely left out of the conversation, she was one of the few women to run her own television production company. Whether it was singing, dancing, conducting, writing, drawing, or ventriloquism-a skill in which she was virtually unmatched face=Calibri>- Lewis spent the entirety of her 65 years in pursuit of performative perfection. Constantly innovating and adapting to the needs of her audience and the market, Lewis extended the longevity of her career decade after decade. Her contributions, and that of Lamb Chop, and the rest of her puppet pals forever changed the history of children's television. Now, two decades after Lewis and Lamb Chop last graced television with their presence, Lewis' daughter Mallory and author Nat Segaloff have set the record straight about the iconic pair in Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team that Changed Children's Television. In this seminal biography, the pair pull the veritable wool from the eyes of audiences who adored the legendary entertainer to examine the joys, sorrows, triumphs, and sheer hard work that gave Lewis and Lamb Chop their enduring star power.

Breaking the Code reveals the efforts of director-producer Otto Preminger to bring his aesthetic vision to the screen even if it meant challenging the Production Code, a system of self-censorship that shaped the movies during the four decades it was in force. Along the way, Preminger sent shock waves through Hollywood and a network of exhibitors, publishers, and religious leaders who had personal, and even financial, stakes in the repression of artistic freedom. The process of telling this story began in 2003 when Arnie Reisman and Nat Segaloff thought it might be interesting to write a play about Preminger's efforts to get a Code seal for his 1954 romantic comedy The Moon is Blue, based on F. Hugh Herbert's 1951 play. In those days, no film could be shown that did not receive authorization from the Production Code Administration, and his film was deemed too "adult" for even adults to see. Preminger was met with opposition from administrator, Joseph Breen, who was prepared to go to war to save the rest of the country from its sensibilities. Along with their play Code Blue, which dramatizes the clash between these two evenly matched but wildly disparate titans, Breaking the Code chronicles the battle between Otto Preminger and the Code. Between 1953 and 1962, he fought the censorship of The Moon Is Blue, The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, and Advise and Consent. The details of each skirmish vary, but they cover the same issues: art versus commerce, freedom of speech versus censorship, and money versus principle. Times may have changed, but these battles continue. Breaking the Code is an attempt to go back and see how the walls can be made to crumble.

Critic-producer Nat Segaloff was granted access to private papers, production records, never-before-published interviews, and specialized archives in reconstructing the colorful, touching, and sometimes scandalous stories behind the making of the last films of some of Hollywood's top directors. Winningly readable and yet meticulously researched, its substantial entries range from Robert Aldrich and Robert Altman to Peter Yates and Fred Zinnemann, and John Ford and Howard Hawks to Otto Preminger and Richard Brooks. Certain to attract controversy because of whom it ignores as well as whom it includes, Final Cuts presents fifty widely varied chronicles of success and failure, inspiration and ennui, elation and heartache, and every other emotion enjoyed or endured by the greatest filmmakers that Hollywood ever knew. About the Author Nat Segaloff always wanted to write and produce, but it took him several careers before he learned how to get paid for it. He was a journalist for The Boston Herald covering the motion picture business, but has also variously been a studio publicist (Fox, UA, Columbia), college teacher (Boston University, Boston College), on-air TV talent (Group W), entertainment critic (CBS radio) and author (nine books including Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin and, as co-author, Love Stories: Hollywood's Most Romantic Movies). He has contributed career monographs on screenwriters Stirling Silliphant, Walon Green, Paul Mazursky and John Milius to the University of California Press's acclaimed Backstory series, and his writing has appeared in such varied periodicals as Film Comment, Written By, International Documentary, Animation Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Time Out (US), MacWorld, and American Movie Classics Magazine. He was also senior reviewer for AudiobookCafe.com. His The Everything(r) Etiquette Book and The Everything Trivia Book and The Everything(r) Tall Tales, Legends and Outrageous Lies Book are in multiple printings for Adams Media Corp. As a TV writer-producer, Segaloff helped perfect the format and create episodes for A&E's flagship "Biography" series. His distinctive productions include John Belushi: Funny You Should Ask; Shari Lewis & Lamb Chop; Larry King: Talk of Fame; Darryl F. Zanuck: Twentieth Century-Filmmaker and Stan Lee: The ComiX-MAN He has written and co-produced the Rock 'n' Roll Moments music documentaries for The Learning Channel/Malcolm Leo Productions, and has written and/or produced programming for New World, Disney, Turner and USA Networks. He is co-creator/co-producer of Judgment Day with Grosso-Jacobson Communications Corp. for HBO. His extraterrestrial endeavors include the cheeky sequel to the Orson Welles "Invasion From Mars" radio hoax, When Welles Collide, which featured a "Star Trek"(r) cast. It was produced by L.A. Theatre Works and has become a Halloween tradition on National Public Radio. In 1996 he formed the multi-media production company Alien Voices(r) with actors Leonard Nimoy and actor John de Lancie and produced five best-selling, fully dramatized audio plays for Simon & Schuster: The Time Machine, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Lost World, The Invisible Man and The First Men in the Moon, all of which feature "Star Trek"(r) casts. Additionally, his teleplay for The First Men in the Moon was the first-ever TV/Internet simulcast and was presented live by The Sci-Fi Channel. He has also written narrative concerts for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, celebrity events, is a script consultant, and was a contributing writer to Moving Pictures