Every time I sing a song, I'm actually making love on stage. Call me 'The Boudoir Singer,' or so claimed Frank Sinatra. The crooner's career spanned more than half a century, earning him millions of fans. His boudoir conquests involved some of the most stunning women of the 20th-century. But exactly, who was this mercurial, enigmatic man? Darwin Porter, America's leading chronicler of Golden Age Hollywood, turns over more than a few boulders in Sinatra's...

A self-defined "seductress of beautiful women" and the by-product of an immense fortune, lesbian activist Mercedes de Acosta (born in 1892) was descended from Spain's Dukes of Alba and a beneficiary of the best education and best social skills that her parents' Gilded Age fortune could buy. From her perch within the aristocracy of the Belle Époque, and continuing as an arts-industry "swinger" until her death in 1968, she became notorious for seducing-and...

Kirk Douglas was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, his father a collector and seller of rags. After service in the Navy during World War II, he moved to Hollywood, oozing masculinity and charm. Conquering Tinseltown and bedding its leading ladies, he became the personification of the American dream, moving from obscurity and (literally) rags to riches and major-league fame. En route to his status as a myth and legend, his performances reflected...

That ongoing, barely under control drama known as Marlon Brando-Hollywood's Ultimate Bad Boy, Megastar, and Sexual Outlaw-with a special focus on his early rise to fame and his social and sexual associations with the A-list legends of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Brando Unzipped is the definitive gossip guide to the late, great actor's life.

The truth about Steve McQueen is spectacularly different from the legend projected by his screen persona and Hollywood's media machine. Lurid aspects of McQueen's early life include a gothic horror of a childhood and stints as both a porno performer and pay for play hustler to both men and women. Also revealed are sinister implications associated with his mysterious death. Years of research on the film industry's coolest player bring McQueen and his...

In the 1970s and '80s, Burt Reynolds represented a new breed of movie star: Macho, rebellious, and charming, and with a "loud and proud" footprint in country-western, rural America, he was a good old Southern boy who made hearts throb and audiences laugh. A former football hero, he was a guy you might have shared some jokes with in a redneck bar. For five years, both in terms of earnings and popularity, he was the number one box office star in the...

The tempestuous, scandalous love affair of the 20th century's Romeo and Juliet was second in fame and notoriety only to that of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and by many accounts, even more corrupt. Even though the spotlight shone on this famous pair throughout most of their tabloid-fueled careers, much of what went on behind the velvet curtain remained hidden from view until the publication of this ground-breaking biography. For the first time,...

Throughout his forty-five-year career, Henry Fond, a stable, reassuring archetype of the American male, never gave a bad performance, immortalizing himself in such films as “Young Mr. Lincoln”, “The Grapes of Wrath’, and ‘Mister Roberts”. The torments of his introverted private life vied with his on-screen dilemmas. Personal dramas included five wives (two of whom committed suicide) and involvements in many of the seminal events (including...

Before she died, Elizabeth Taylor claimed that previous biographers had revealed "only half of my story, but I can't tell the other half because I'd get sued." In response to that challenge, Blood Moon presents history's most comprehensive compilation of the unpublished, until now, secrets of Dame Elizabeth. With photos, this meaty and startling book offers a juicy feast of until, now untold tales about the 20th-century's most deadline-generating...

This is the first post-mortem, unauthorized insight into Merv Griffin, a failed singer and unsuccessful actor who unexpectedly rewrote the rules of America's broadcasting industry. He became the richest man in TV, befriended everyone in media who mattered, bought a casino, and maintained a secret life as America's most famously closeted homosexual. From a controversial writer whose previous work has virtually re-defined the art of the celebrity biography,...