Hollywood's Hard-Luck Ladies

Hollywood's Hard-Luck Ladies PDF Author: Laura Wagner
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147667843X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
In the era of Hollywood now considered its Golden Age, there was no shortage of hard-luck stories--movie stars succumbed to mental illness, addiction, accidents, suicide, early death and more. This book profiles 23 actresses who achieved a measure of success before fate dealt them losing hands--in full public view. Overviews of their lives and careers provide a wealth of previously unpublished information and set the record straight on long-standing inaccuracies. Actresses covered include Lynne Baggett, Suzan Ball, Helen Burgess, Susan Cabot, Mary Castle, Mae Clarke, Dorothy Comingore, Patricia Dane, Dorothy Dell, Sidney Fox, Charlotte Henry, Rita Johnson, Mayo Methot, Marjie Millar, Mary Nolan, Susan Peters, Lyda Roberti, Peggy Shannon, Rosa Stradner, Judy Tyler, Karen Verne, Helen Walker and Constance Worth.

Hollywood's Hard-Luck Ladies

Hollywood's Hard-Luck Ladies PDF Author: Laura Wagner
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147667843X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the era of Hollywood now considered its Golden Age, there was no shortage of hard-luck stories--movie stars succumbed to mental illness, addiction, accidents, suicide, early death and more. This book profiles 23 actresses who achieved a measure of success before fate dealt them losing hands--in full public view. Overviews of their lives and careers provide a wealth of previously unpublished information and set the record straight on long-standing inaccuracies. Actresses covered include Lynne Baggett, Suzan Ball, Helen Burgess, Susan Cabot, Mary Castle, Mae Clarke, Dorothy Comingore, Patricia Dane, Dorothy Dell, Sidney Fox, Charlotte Henry, Rita Johnson, Mayo Methot, Marjie Millar, Mary Nolan, Susan Peters, Lyda Roberti, Peggy Shannon, Rosa Stradner, Judy Tyler, Karen Verne, Helen Walker and Constance Worth.

Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels (hardback)

Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels (hardback) PDF Author: Michael G. Ankerich
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781629337326
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
A history of Lucille Ricksen, Eve Southern, Alberta Vaughn and more great ladies.

Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels

Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels PDF Author: Michael G. Ankerich
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781593936051
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"We were like dragonflies. We seemed to be suspended effortlessly in the air, but in reality, our wings were beating very, very fast." - Mae Murray "It is worse than folly for persons to imagine that this business is an easy road to money, to contentment, or to that strange quality called happiness." - Bebe Daniels "A girl should realize that a career on the screen demands everything, promising nothing." - Helen Ferguson In Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels, author Michael G. Ankerich examines the lives, careers, and disappointments of 15 silent film actresses, who, despite the odds against them and warnings to stay in their hometowns, came to Hollywood to make names for themselves in the movies. On the screen, these young hopefuls became Agnes Ayres, Olive Borden, Grace Darmond, Elinor Fair, Juanita Hansen, Wanda Hawley, Natalie Joyce, Barbara La Marr, Martha Mansfield, Mae Murray, Mary Nolan, Marie Prevost, Lucille Ricksen, Eve Southern, and Alberta Vaughn. Dangerous Curves follows the precarious routes these young ladies took in their quest for fame and uncovers how some of the top actresses of the silent screen were used, abused, and discarded. Many, unable to let go of the spotlight after it had singed their very souls, came to a stop on that dead-end street, referred to by actress Anna Q. Nilsson as, Hollywood's Heartbreak Lane. Pieced together using contemporary interviews the actresses gave, conversations with friends, relatives, and co-workers, and exhaustive research through scrapbooks, archives, and public records, Dangerous Curves offers an honest, yet compassionate, look at some of the brightest luminaries of the silent screen. The book is illustrated with over 150 photographs.

Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels

Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels PDF Author: Michael G. Ankerich
Publisher: BearManor Media
ISBN: 9781629330556
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
"We were like dragonflies. We seemed to be suspended effortlessly in the air, but in reality, our wings were beating very, very fast." - Mae Murray "It is worse than folly for persons to imagine that this business is an easy road to money, to contentment, or to that strange quality called happiness." - Bebe Daniels "A girl should realize that a career on the screen demands everything, promising nothing." - Helen Ferguson In Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels, author Michael G. Ankerich examines the lives, careers, and disappointments of 15 silent film actresses, who, despite the odds against them and warnings to stay in their hometowns, came to Hollywood to make names for themselves in the movies. On the screen, these young hopefuls became Agnes Ayres, Olive Borden, Grace Darmond, Elinor Fair, Juanita Hansen, Wanda Hawley, Natalie Joyce, Barbara La Marr, Martha Mansfield, Mae Murray, Mary Nolan, Marie Prevost, Lucille Ricksen, Eve Southern, and Alberta Vaughn. Dangerous Curves follows the precarious routes these young ladies took in their quest for fame and uncovers how some of the top actresses of the silent screen were used, abused, and discarded. Many, unable to let go of the spotlight after it had singed their very souls, came to a stop on that dead-end street, referred to by actress Anna Q. Nilsson as, Hollywood's Heartbreak Lane. Pieced together using contemporary interviews the actresses gave, conversations with friends, relatives, and co-workers, and exhaustive research through scrapbooks, archives, and public records, Dangerous Curves offers an honest, yet compassionate, look at some of the brightest luminaries of the silent screen. The book is illustrated with over 150 photographs.

Myrna Loy

Myrna Loy PDF Author: Emily W. Leider
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520949633
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
From the beginning, Myrna Loy’s screen image conjured mystery, a sense of something withheld. "Who is she?" was a question posed in the first fan magazine article published about her in 1925. This first ever biography of the wry and sophisticated actress best known for her role as Nora Charles, wife to dapper detective William Powell in The Thin Man, offers an unprecedented picture of her life and an extraordinary movie career that spanned six decades. Opening with Loy’s rough-and-tumble upbringing in Montana, the book takes us to Los Angeles in the 1920s, where Loy’s striking looks caught the eye of Valentino, through the silent and early sound era to her films of the thirties, when Loy became a top box office draw, and to her robust post–World War II career. Throughout, Emily W. Leider illuminates the actress’s friendships with luminaries such as Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Joan Crawford and her collaborations with the likes of John Barrymore, David O. Selznick, Sam Goldwyn, and William Wyler, among many others. This highly engaging biography offers a fascinating slice of studio era history and gives us the first full picture of a very private woman who has often been overlooked despite her tremendous star power.

Wallace Reid

Wallace Reid PDF Author: E.J. Fleming
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786477253
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
For a decade Wallace Reid was the most recognized face in Hollywood, the most universally beloved actor in silent film. Today all that is widely remembered of "Wally" Reid is that he died in a padded sanitarium cell, the victim of a fatal morphine addiction. Of all the actors who have enjoyed great fame only to vanish from the public eye, Reid perhaps fell the fastest and the hardest. This first full biography recounts Reid's complicated childhood, his disrupted family history and his rise to film stardom despite these restricting factors. It documents his myriad talents and accomplishments, most notably his gift for brilliant onscreen acting. The text explores in depth how the modern studio, however unconsciously, turned the popular star, a well-adjusted man with a loving family, into a drug-dependent mental patient within three years. His death rocked the foundations of Hollywood, and the huge new industry that he helped build nearly died with "Dashing Wally Reid."

Call Me Lucky

Call Me Lucky PDF Author: Mike Farris
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806185740
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
“Do you think you could teach Rock Hudson to talk like you do?” The question came from famed Hollywood director George Stevens, and an affirmative answer propelled Bob Hinkle into a fifty-year career in Hollywood as a speech coach, actor, producer, director, and friend to the stars. Along the way, Hinkle helped Rock Hudson, Dennis Hopper, Carroll Baker, and Mercedes McCambridge talk like Texans for the 1956 epic film Giant. He also helped create the character Jett Rink with James Dean, who became a best friend, and he consoled Elizabeth Taylor personally when Dean was killed in a tragic car accident before the film was released. A few years later, Paul Newman asked Hinkle to do for him what he’d done for James Dean. The result was Newman’s powerful portrayal of a Texas no-good in the Academy Award–winning film Hud (1963). Hinkle could—and did—stop by the LBJ Ranch to exchange pleasantries with the president of the United States. He did likewise with Elvis Presley at Graceland. Good friends with Robert Wagner, Hinkle even taught Wagner’s wife Natalie Wood how to throw a rope. He appeared in numerous television series, including Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Dragnet, and Walker, Texas Ranger. On a handshake, he worked as country music legend Marty Robbins’s manager, and he helped Evel Knievel rise to fame. From his birth in Brownfield, Texas, to a family so poor “they could only afford a tumbleweed as a pet,” Hinkle went on to gain acclaim in Hollywood. Through it all, he remained the salty, down-to-earth former rodeo cowboy from West Texas who could talk his way into—or out of—most any situation. More than forty photographs, including rare behind-the-scenes glimpses of the stars Hinkle met and befriended along the way, complement this rousing, never-dull memoir.

Evelyn Brent

Evelyn Brent PDF Author: Lynn Kear
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786454687
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Evelyn Brent's life and career were going quite well in 1928. She was happily living with writer Dorothy Herzog following her divorce from producer Bernard Fineman, and the tiny brunette had wowed fans and critics in the silent films The Underworld and The Last Command. She'd also been a sensation in Paramount's first dialogue film, Interference. But by the end of that year Brent was headed for a quick, downward spiral ending in bankruptcy and occasional work as an extra. What happened is a complicated story laced with bad luck, poor decisions, and treachery detailed in this first and only full-length biography.

Femme Noir

Femme Noir PDF Author: Karen Burroughs Hannsberry
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786491590
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 1298

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Book Description
Though often thought of as primarily a male vehicle, the film noir offered some of the most complex female roles of any movies of the 1940s and 1950s. Stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Tierney and Joan Crawford produced some of their finest performances in noir movies, while such lesser known actresses as Peggie Castle, Hope Emerson and Helen Walker made a lasting impression with their roles in the genre. These six women and 43 others who were most frequently featured in films noirs are profiled here, focusing primarily on their work in the genre and its impact on their careers. A filmography of all noir appearances is provided for each actress.

Leading Lady

Leading Lady PDF Author: Stephen Galloway
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1101904771
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
The definitive biography of movie executive and philanthropist Sherry Lansing traces her groundbreaking journey to become the first female head of a major motion picture studio, sharing behind-the-scenes tales from movie sets and Hollywood boardrooms. When Sherry Lansing became the first woman ever to be named president of a major studio, the news ricocheted around the world. That was just the beginning of an extraordinary run that saw her head two studios, make hundreds of films, produce classic pictures such as Fatal Attraction and rule for twenty-five years as the most powerful woman Hollywood has ever known. Award-winning writer Stephen Galloway takes us behind the scenes of Lansing's epic journey—inside the battles; up close with the stars; and into the heart of a creative world populated by the likes of Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg, Jane Fonda, Angelina Jolie and Tom Cruise. He shows us the velvet touch that masked the iron hand, and the roller-coaster drama behind such movies as Titanic, Forrest Gump, Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Above all, he takes us into the mind of Lansing, creating a revealing portrait of a dynamic, driven woman who overcame unimaginable odds, pushed boundaries and left Hollywood at the peak of her power to achieve the life she wanted.