Showing posts with label celebrities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label celebrities. Show all posts
May 21, 2018
Nov 1, 2014
Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography
Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography - Harris, Neil PatrickSummary: The Emmy Award-winning star of How I Met Your Mother shares his experiences as a child star, Broadway performer and father in an over-the-top, humorous account creatively designed in the style of the popular interactive adventure series.
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Feb 1, 2014
Ava Gardner: The secret conversations - Peter Evans
Summary: A self-portrait of the late film legend's golden-era Hollywood life traces her impoverished childhood in North Carolina through the heights of her career, sharing details of her relationships with such figures as Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and George C. Scott.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In 1988, only two years before her death, legendary actress Ava Gardner, then living in semiseclusion in London and running low on money, asked the late Evans to ghostwrite her autobiography: "I either write the book or sell the jewels, and I'm kinda sentimental about the jewels." Gardner didn't want to do a sugarcoated memoir, preferring to tell it straight, the real story of the marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, the multiple affairs (with Howard Hughes, among many others), the hardscrabble childhood in North Carolina tobacco country. But as the two met and Gardner began speaking of her life, it became clear to Evans that the actress was more reticent about telling it straight than she pretended to be. The conversations were uninhibited, to be sure, but Gardner balked at the finished chapters ("I sound too fucking vulgar"), leading ultimately to the project being abandoned. Shortly before his own death in 2012, Evans wrote this memoir of a memoir-in-progress, transcribing Gardner's recollections and providing connective passages setting the scenes. What emerges doesn't cover the sweep of the movie icon's remarkable life as fully as Lee Server's Ava Gardner (2006), but it does capture Gardner's indelible voice—vulgar, yes, but humanly so as well as unfailingly witty and movingly melancholic. Finally, 25 years after the fact, we have at least a facsimile of the unbuttoned version Gardner claimed she wanted to tell. Movie buffs will be as transfixed by the actress' own words as they have always been by her drop-dead beauty on the screen. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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Dec 2, 2013
Learning to live out loud - Piper Laurie
Learning to live out loud - Laurie, Piper
Summary: The noted actress recounts her early shyness and anxieties, her years as a contract actress at Universal, her break with the studio system, her subsequent career in film, the theater, and television, and her personal life.
PW Annex Reviews
This riveting autobiography by the nearly 80-year-old Laurie tells of her experiences from childhood through her contract years at Universal, as well as the ups and downs of her independent film, television, and stage career. Known for her roles in The Hustler and Carrie, Laurie's empathy for others makes this book far more than a star's attempt to hype an image. Family members and entertainment personalities are fully drawn and treated with honesty and respect. She recalls Ronald Reagan, her first lover, as a 40-year-old actor not yet on a path to fame. A USO tour in Korea during the war was a huge eye-opener for the 19-year-old actress, who had always experienced difficulty in speaking out and laughing; in fact, she had to be taught to laugh. Her early angst persisted for some time, as she recalls when she and actor Roddy McDowall were cast in the play, Handful of Fire: "We were thrilled. No matter how much success you have, the having to prove yourself never ends." Later in life, Laurie conquered an addiction to amphetamines, and enthusiastically embraced the eccentricities of the cult TV series Twin Peaks. (Nov.)
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Apr 1, 2013
The Richard Burton diaries - Richard Burton
The Richard Burton diaries - Burton, Richard
Summary: The personal diaries of the renowned actor and glamorous celebrity describe his life from 1939 to 1983 and his struggles with his weight, drinking, and jealousy when other men looked at the love of his life, Elizabeth Taylor. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Nearly three decades after his sudden death, Burton is experiencing a pop-cultural rebirth. Most people remember the Welsh-born actor as the heavy-drinking fifth (and sixth!) husband of Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he made several films (most memorably the 1966 classic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the expensive 1963 fiasco Cleopatra) and whose combustible, extravagant, and scandal-ridden relationship with her will be dramatized later this month in the Lifetime television movie Liz & Dick. His personal musings about Taylor (plus scorn and praise for a plethora of his Tinseltown peers) are sure to be the most talked about here, but these diaries also provide a rounded portrait of a smart, witty, and doting husband and father. Burton squandered his once brilliant acting career, taking mediocre paycheck roles in later years, and battled enough demons to fill several lifetimes. For a true glimpse into the heart and mind of this wildly talented yet conflicted man—who garnered no less than seven Academy Award nominations, with no wins—this mammoth, unsanitized, and handsomely presented collection of Burton's innermost thoughts, along with the fascinating minutiae of a huge star's day-to-day existence, should restore his reputation as one of the most original Hollywood stars of all time. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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Nov 1, 2012
Who I am - Pete Townshend
Summary: The legendary lead guitarist and principal songwriter for The Who, one of the most influential rock-and-roll bands of all time, pens his own story.
Library Journal Reviews
Townshend has been working on this memoir for a decade—without the help of a ghostwriter. (It says something that this fact is emphasized.) Here he is as a child, raised by a mentally incapacitated grandmother as his parents led an early version of countercultural life; an adolescent, founding the forerunner of the Who with buddy Roger Daltrey; and a full-fledged rock star wrestling (as rock stars do) with drugs, sex, fame, fortune, and notoriety.
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Oct 1, 2012
Wallflower at the orgy - Nora Ephron
Summary: From her Academy Award—nominated screenplays to her bestselling fiction and essays, Nora Ephron is one of America’s most gifted, prolific, and versatile writers. In this classic collection of magazine articles, Ephron does what she does best: embrace American culture with love, cynicism, and unmatched wit. From tracking down the beginnings of the self-help movement to dressing down the fashion world’s most powerful publication to capturing a glimpse of a legendary movie in the making, these timeless pieces tap into our enduring obsessions with celebrity, food, romance, clothes, entertainment, and sex. Whether casting her ingenious eye on renowned director Mike Nichols, Cosmopolitan magazine founder Helen Gurley Brown—or herself, as she chronicles her own beauty makeover—Ephron deftly weaves her journalistic skill with the intimate style of an essayist and the incomparable talent of a great storyteller. - (Random House, Inc.)
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Sep 1, 2012
A cast of killers - Sidney Kirkpatrick
Summary: This account of the 1922 murder of film director William Desmond Taylor reveals the complete untold story--secretly solved by director King Vidor prior to his death in 1982--of one of the most famous crime mysteries in America - (Baker & Taylor)
Library Journal Reviews
In 1922, Hollywood film director William Desmond Taylor was murdered, and the crime was never officially solved. In 1967, the late director King Vidor decided to investigate the mystery in order to make a film about it. (No film resulted.) Kirkpatrick recounts the story of Vidor's sleuthing, which uncovered scandal, corruption, coverups, and, ultimately, Vidor believed, the identity of the killer. This is a well-researched book, breezily related, whose impact is lessened somewhat by digressions into Vidor's personal life. The combination of Hollywood and murder is likely to be popular. For most public libraries. Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.
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Hello goodbye hello - Craig Brown
Hello goodbye hello: a circle of 100 remarkable meetings - Craig Brown
Summary: A collection of whimsical true encounters between famous and infamous individuals describes the unlikely meetings of Marilyn Monroe with Frank Lloyd Wright, Michael Jackson with Nancy Reagan and more. 35,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)
Kirkus Reviews
A hilarious collection of strange-but-true tales of encounters between the rich and famous. BBC Radio Host, Daily Mail columnist and all-around English wit Brown (The Lost Diaries, 2010, etc.) delivers a fine and funny assortment of oddball celebrity meetings and matchups. Some are well-known, such as when a drug-addled Elvis Presley met Richard Nixon, or Marilyn Monroe snuggled up to visiting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. At least one is historically important: when Prince Felix Youssoupoff lured Grigori Rasputin to his death. Most, however, are delightfully inconsequential, whether it's Harpo Marx driving Sergei Rachmaninoff bonkers with his harp playing, Sarah Miles sharing tea with a thigh-squeezing nonagenarian named Bertrand Russell, or Leonard Cohen having a quickie with Janis Joplin (and getting a song out of it). Some encounters go off without a hitch, such as between mutual admirers Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain. Others slightly misfire; Groucho Marx tries to impress dinner companion T.S. Eliot by quoting The Waste Land, only to find the poet "was thoroughly familiar with his poems and didn't need me to recite them." At least they talked, which is barely more than can be said for James Joyce and Marcel Proust. There are also plenty of bad dates, whether it's Madonna snatching off Michael Jackson's glasses and sailing them across the room, Isadora Duncan tempting Auguste Rodin with her perfect young body, or Allen Ginsberg making an awkward pass at Francis Bacon. Brown is as smart as he is puckish, and there are plenty of laughs on this terrific trip through modern fame. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
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Jul 1, 2012
My happy days in Hollywood - Gary Marshall
Summary: A lighthearted account by the producer and director of such productions as "Laverne & Shirley" and "Pretty Woman" traces his Bronx childhood, role in shaping A-list celebrity careers, and personal philosophies about life and entertainment.
Booklist Reviews
Marshall has worn many hats in Hollywood over the course of his five decades in the business: writer, producer, director, actor. Born in the Bronx, he made his way to Hollywood in 1961 and got his start penning sitcoms for such television luminaries as Lucille Ball and Danny Thomas. The creation of the hit show Happy Days put Marshall on the map, and led to several spin-offs, including Laverne & Shirley, which starred his sister Penny. Marshall turned to the big screen next, and while his first few entries weren't commercially successful, subsequent outings like Nothing in Common, Beaches, and Pretty Woman made him a household name. Contrary to many working in the business, Marshall went out of his way to make each of his sets a happy place, playing pranks on various stars and even ensuring that Julia Roberts ate regular meals after she collapsed during the filming of Pretty Woman. Readers are bound to be as charmed by Marshall himself as they are by the behind-the-scenes anecdotes he shares about his hit television shows and movies. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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Along the way - Martin Sheen & Emilio Estevez
Summary A dual memoir of the film legend and his actor/director son shares fifty years of family history, covering their Northern Spanish heritage, careers, and individual spiritual lives. - (Baker & Taylor)
Kirkus Reviews
The patriarch and scion of one of America's best-known acting families take turns sharing the stories of their lives, careers and relationship. The 2010 film The Way, written and directed by Estevez and starring Sheen, tells the story of a man who completes the journey along the Camino de Santiago pilgrim's path begun by his son, who died en route. The movie provides the entry point for the authors--assisted by Edelman (The Possibility of Everything, 2009, etc.)--to relate their life stories, focusing on acting, faith, family and the filming of The Way. Sheen, born Ramon Estevez, the son of a Spanish immigrant father and Irish immigrant mother, grew up in a large Catholic family in Dayton, Ohio. Emilio Estevez was raised in Malibu, Calif., and on film and TV sets around the world as his father struggled to make a career as an actor and keep his family together. On the whole, the alternating voices work well, highlighting the similarities and differences in the father and son's paths to professional and personal success and noting the failures and obstacles on the way. Estevez's description of his experiences as a 14-year-old on the Philippines set of Apocalypse Now is particularly noteworthy, adding an extra dimension to the well-documented insanity of that film's creation. The drawback to a double memoir becomes evident after a while, however, as the stories of auditions and film sets, fascinating though they may be, lessen the impact of what is intended to be the main focus: the life lessons each man draws from their father-son relationship. Shedding light on the creation of a unique family and an American acting dynasty, this book is certain to become a Father's Day gift staple for West Wing and Repo Man fans alike. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
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Jan 1, 2012
Shockaholic - Carrie Fisher
Shockaholic - Fisher, Carrie
Summary: Presents a memoir about the actress' relationship with her father, singer Eddie Fisher, her electroconvulsive therapy, and her past encounters with such recently-deceased celebrities as Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Senator Edward Kennedy.
Booklist Reviews
Carrie Fisher has written another book about herself. "Really? Again?" you might say. Or, as Fisher puts it, "Here's something about me, and here's another thing about me I don't think I told you." But her hope, as she says in the introduction, is that, upon completion, readers will say, "By the last page, I had forgotten she was an over–the–Beverly Hills mediocre actress." And, it's true, you do forget that, because, really, Fisher is a writer, an observer, and a keen one at that. Her way with words, even though she claims electroshock treatments have made her forget many of them, is raw and raucous. On the minus side, she only seems to want to observe her own life, and having done that before, she offers a book on the slim side, as though it, like her, has been to Jenny Craig. That said, she doubled-dated with Ted Kennedy, was fast friends with Michael Jackson, and reached a rapprochement with father Eddie Fisher when she realized all she had to do was play parent to his child. "Mentally ill" she may call herself, but she's never boring. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Fisher has hit best-seller lists throughout her writing career, beginning with Postcards from the Edge (1987). The success of her recent one-woman show on Broadway will spark additional interest in this autobiographical follow-up. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Dec 1, 2011
Is everyone hanging out without me? - Mindy Kaling
Summary: The writer and actress best known as Kelly Kapoor on "The Office" shares observations on topics ranging from favorite male archetypes and her hatred of dieting to her relationship with her mother and the haphazard creative process in the "Office" writers' room.
Reviews
“She’s like Tina Fey’s cool little sister. Or perhaps… the next Nora Ephron.” —The New York Times
“The fashion opinions of Kelly Kapoor mixed with a Miss Manners-esque advice column.” —EW.com
“If you love Kelly and think the three minutes or so allotted her on episodes of The Office are too few, you can take home Mindy.” —The New Yorker
“Is anyone else kind of sold on the genius title alone?” —Nylon
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Dear Carey - Dyan Cannon
Summary: The actress/filmmaker tells the story of her turbulent marriage to Hollywood legend Cary Grant, capturing the glamour of Hollywood's greatest period of stardom and revealing the stories of love and betrayal hidden from public view.
Reviews
“A revealing look at Cannon’s relationship with her first husband, who happened to be a Hollywood legend. (USA Today )
“Candid.” (Los Angeles Times )
“Dyan Cannon has written a complex and captivating memoir…an unqualified success.” (New York Journal of Books )
“Cannon writes of her time with one of Hollywood’s most glamorous and charming men and of her own life, pre- and post-Grant...with refreshing humor.. For those who enjoy memoirs of gutsy survivors.” (Library Journal )
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Nov 1, 2011
The house in France: a memoir - Gully Wells
Summary: "Set in Provence, London, and New York: a daughter's wonderfully evocative and witty memoir of her mother and stepfather--Dee Wells, the glamorous and rebellious American journalist, and A. J. Ayer, the celebrated and worldly Oxford philosopher--and the life they lived at the center of absolutely everything. Gully Wells takes us into the heart of London's liberated intellectual inner circle of the 1960s. Here are Alan Bennett, Isaiah Berlin, Iris Murdoch, Bertrand Russell, Jonathan Miller, Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Robert Kennedy, and later in New York Mayor Lindsay and Mike Tyson . . . her mother as a television commentator earning a reputation for her outspoken style and progressive views . . . her stepfather, an icon in the world of twentieth-century philosophy, proving himself as prodigious a womanizer as he was a thinker. And throughout, there is La Migoua, the house in France, on a hill between Toulon and Marseilles, where her parents and their friends came together and where Gully herself learned some of the long-lasting lessons of a life well-lived. A dazzling portrait of a woman who 'caught the spirit of the sixties' and one of the most important intellectual figures of the twentieth century, drawn from the vivid memory of the child who adored them both."-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Wells had the perfect childhood for her vocation as travel writer and features editor of Condé Nast Traveler and the good sense to enjoy it, even though her mother was as vexing as she was scintillating. Wells is a breathtakingly frank, nimbly hilarious, and sensuously precise memoirist and portraitist, capturing the chimerical energy of her famously sexy and outrageous Canadian American expat mother. Dee was a controversial journalist, critic, television personality, and novelist as well as a glamorous yet raucous partygoer and hostess. After divorcing her young daughter's diplomat father, Dee moved to 1960s London and corralled the renowned Oxford philosopher and notorious womanizer A. J. Ayer into marriage. "Clever and funny" celebrities, the couple lived carousel lives (assiduously observed by young Gully) in London and their funky old house in Provence, until their love affairs pulled them apart. Wells remembers intoxicating conversations and outrageous behavior in scenes worthy of Oscar Wilde, featuring the likes of Bertrand Russell, Iris Murdoch, and John and Robert Kennedy. She tells her own fascinating story, too, including her long-ago on-and-off romance with Martin Amis. Desire and ambition, creativity and fame, betrayal and love, all take on new dimensions in Wells' sparkling and spiky look back at protean and brilliant iconoclasts. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Oct 1, 2011
Stories I only tell my friends - Rob Lowe
Summary: The 1980s Brat Pack founder presents an account of his life in show business and politics, tracing his counter-culture youth in Malibu, his work on such productions as "The Outsiders" and "The West Wing" and his pursuits of family and sobriety.
Booklist Reviews
Lowe, in case you haven't been living on planet Earth for some time, is a significant TV and movie actor. Again, unless you've been out of the loop lately, his career was nearly scuttled when a sex tape featuring him with two young women surfaced. But the point of bringing that sad and not-really-anyone's-business incident up is to say that Lowe survived to thrive again, and his charming, honest, even affectionate memoir is the story of strong guts behind a strikingly handsome face. Lowe recalls his early life in Ohio, his move with his mother and brother (Chad, that is, also an actor) to California, and his early advent into movies and television. A stable family life was never his to enjoy until he began his own. He certainly does not downplay the wild parts of his life, but neither does he act entitled to the high points of his career. Readers will appreciate learning of his hard work and of his learning from his past mistakes. A book to recommend widely. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: First serial rights sold to Vanity Fair (May issue), author appearances, and national media and review attention will generate buzz. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Oct 1, 2010
Star Island - Carl Hiaasen
Summary: Ann DeLuisa, body double for drug-addled pop star Cherry Pye, is kidnapped by an obsessed paparazzo, and Cherry's entourage must rescue her while keeping her existence a secret from Cherry's public--and from Cherry herself. - (Baker & Taylor)
Staff Review:
Another hilarious story from Mr. Hiasson, this one involving a pop star and paparazzi, as usual set in his home Florida. Fun read!
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