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Between 1917 and 1941, Hollywood film studios, gossip columnists, and novelists featured an unprecedented number of homosexuals, cross-dressers, and adulterers in their depictions of the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle. During this era, actress Greta Garbo defined herself as the ultimate serial bachelorette, screenwriter Mercedes De Acosta wore mannish attire and began numerous lesbian relationships with Hollywood elite (including Greta Garbo herself), and countless homosexual designers brazenly picked up men in the hottest Hollywood nightclubs. These personalities, along with many others, played an important role in establishing Hollywood's image as a place of sexual abandon, enhancing the movie capital's mystique and selling Hollywood as a "must-see" destination.This significant contribution to gay, lesbian, and film studies demonstrates that the Hollywood studios and mass media used images of these sexually adventurous characters to promote the movie industry and appeal to the prurient interests of a more conservative audience. Each chapter examines the happenings in one segment of important Hollywood locales, ranging from the stars' private homes to the hippest restaurants and public nightclubs. Focusing on the media coverage of each location in nationally distributed newspapers and local publications, tabloids or fan magazines, this book reveals how such media images indelibly altered the world's fascination with old Hollywood.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one, scented with fish from his father's shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom, he would plan great voyages, using railway timetables to plot an exact imaginary route across Europe. So how did this fearful figure become the one of the most respected film directors of the twentieth century? As an adult, Hitch rigorously controlled the press' portrait of himself, drawing certain carefully selected childhood anecdotes into full focus and blurring all others out. In this quick-witted portrait, Ackroyd reveals something more: a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances, just as Hitch did in his own films. Grace Kelly, Carey Grant and James Stewart despair of his detached directing style, and, perhaps most famously of all, Tippi Hedren endures cuts and bruises from a real-life fearsome flock of birds. Alfred Hitchcock wrests the director's chair back from the master of control and discovers what lurks just out of sight, in the corner of the shot.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The child who never cried
• I'll do it
• Sound, please
• I was grey
• At home
• Fake it
• Oh dear
• I am typed
• Good evening
• Birds and beasts
• Back to basics.

"Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one, scented with fish from his father's shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom, he would plan great voyages, using railway timetables to plot an exact imaginary route across Europe. So how did this fearful figure become the one of the most respected film directors of the twentieth century? As an adult, Hitch rigorously controlled the press's portrait of him, drawing certain carefully selected childhood anecdotes into full focus and blurring all others out. In this quick-witted portrait, Ackroyd reveals something more: a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances, just as Hitch did in his own films: Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, and James Stewart despair of his detached directing style and, perhaps most famously of all, Tippi Hedren endures cuts and bruises from a real-life fearsome flock of birds. In [this book], Peter Ackroyd wrests the director's chair back from the master of control and discovers what lurks just out of sight, in the corner of the shot,"--Amazon.com.
Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition-- Hitchcock's childhood was an isolated one. As an adult, Hitch rigorously controlled the press's portrait of him, drawing certain carefully selected childhood anecdotes into full focus and blurring all others out. Ackroyd reveals a jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. The result is a gripping biography of one of the most respected directors of the twentieth century.

Me: Do you think you willed that plane to crash, Spike? Spike: Yes. Me: Are you claiming supernatural powers? Spike: No, I'm telling you what happened. On abandoning army life, John Antrobus arrived at Spike Milligan's office to discover a sign outside: 'Do not disturb, I'm already disturbed'. He soon found himself fighting on the Front Line of comedy with Arch Goon, Spike Milligan. In this extraordinary book he explores their mutual states of mind, of finance, of romance and of sanity. Surviving Spike Milligan is an hysterically funny evocation of those mad times with scenes you couldn't invent, a Picassoesque painting where the nose - or indeed, the Milligan - is not always where you would expect to find it!.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Bette Davis --Myrna Loy
• Paulette Goddard
• Alice Fay
• Ruby Keeler
• Ginger Rogers
• Aaron Copland
• Joan Blondell
• Ingrid Bergman
• Alec Guinness
• Peter Pears
• Charlotte Rampling
• Joan Fontaine
• Maggie Smith
• Louise Brooks
• James Merrill
• Barbara Stanwyck
• Olivia de Havilland
• Mia Farrow
• Linda Ronstadt
• Irwin Shaw
• Iris Murdoch
• Henry Fonda
• William Wyler
• Vincente Minnelli
• Laurence Olivier
• Julian Schnabel
• Ellsworth Kelly
• Jill St. John
• Allen Ginsberg
• Jack Nicholson
• Helmut Newton
• Jerry Brown.

This work comprises a collection of celebrity portraits, rendered both in ink drawings and in prose. Internationally known portraitist Don Bachardy made each drawing from life in the course of a few hours, sketching the actors, writers, artists, composers, directors and Hollywood elite he knew and lived among with his partner, Christopher Isherwood. Then, he made notes in his diaries on the experience of making each portrait. Made in the 1970s and 1980s, Bachardy's drawings and prose sketches capture many celebrities near the end of their careers (Ruby Keeler, Vincente Minelli, Laurence Oliver) and others at the height of their stardom (Jack Nicholson, Mia Farrow, Linda Ronstadt). Bette Davis offers to cook him lunch and haplessly overboils the beets, sits for three drawings and renders her judgement: "Yup, that's the old bag". Barbara Stanwyck threatens that she might scandalize him with her cussing. Aaron Copeland grouses, "Well, it makes me look benign". Ellsworth Kelly admits to being a fan of "The Road Warrior". Jerry Brown commissions an official portrait.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)