Autobiographies & Biographies
A list of all biographies I'd read, half-read, and plan to read (provided I already have them). I won't be including any books that I'd gladly read but don't have yet: these are numerous.
The ones I haven't started reading yet are all at the bottom of the list.
I have (or had) most of these books, though a few I'd read off a PDF file, which is definitely not my preferred reading method for anything. I also listened to a handful of audio-books, which is always great provided the "celeb" reads it themselves. But the majority of the books here I read from a physical copy.
The "honesty" rating is used only for autobiographies, and it tends to be somewhat tricky. Let me clarify: there are two types of "honesties", the celeb's honesty when writing about other people and the celeb's honesty when writing about themselves. Two very different things. So while an actor/musician/scientist might be very eager to tell-all about others he/she may not be nearly as honest about themselves. Or reversely, they might wanna be totally open about themselves but be wary of lawsuits if they say too much about others. But I anyway usually clarify this whenever there is a discrepancy between the two...
Naturally, how honest a celeb is can be sometimes very difficult to assess, so how I decide to rate their honesty could be very easily flawed in a number of cases. In some cases before reading the book I had a lot of pre-knowledge about that person hence could often tell when someone was hiding something, twisting facts or outright lying, but sometimes I had very little or just basic knowledge hence could not easily gauge to what extent the account is truthful or not. Reading autobiographies requires a certain amount of experience, knowledge about the field in question (cinema/the metal scene/whatever), the ability to detect bullshit, and the ability to read between the lines - which may or may not be made easier by the writer.
Why bios are my preferred type of reading material, and has been for some years already, I can't fully explain. I used to read more fiction, nearly always sci-fi, but you can't get me anywhere near a proper novel anymore, not even at gun point: I'm just not interested in that made-up stuff anymore.
Admittedly, some autobiographies are considered just that: works of fiction. I am well aware of this fact... Most celebs are going to lie a lot, hide a lot, plus of course many are simply delusional hence serve you BS because they honestly believe in it. I try to avoid autobiographies by these types of celebs anyway, just as I avoid reading biographies scribbled up by total sycophants paid to write dishonest, adulatory nonsense.
But you can't be too picky. There is probably no such thing as a totally truthful, honest autobio just as it's rare to come across a bio written by a person who was under no obligations or pressures to portray the person in a certain way, either positively or negatively. Writers of bios are not rarely gossip-columnists who make up shit, or even more commonly hired slaves instructed to write a squeaky-clean account that deifies the person. I am not too picky but I try to stay away from these two categories of "biographers".
To be honest, I am not much of a book-reader anyway, never have been. I doubt I'd read more than 200 books, if I count the completed ones only. I generally prefer essays, articles, encyclopedia entries and the like. Or I merely read only sections (in non-fiction books) that interest me and skip the rest, so there are many half-read or somewhat-read books that I'd gone through, plus some abandoned fictional ones, like for example "Dune 6" which I couldn't complete despite getting half-way through: it just bored me too much, so much weaker than the first 5 parts. That may actually have been my last attempt at reading sci-fi; I'm not sure anymore...
Perhaps the main reason I'm not a huge fan of fiction (anymore) is mostly because the majority of writers have some kind of a political agenda that they feel they must so very self-righteously rub into our noses at every single opportunity. This doesn't just apply to recent authors i.e. that whole dimwit army of modern writers who are all up the Establishment's ass, obsequiously parroting the Left's agenda, never questioning anything - yet expecting the readers to question everything, and by "everything" I naturally mean "conservative" viewpoints. I don't like being patronized, brainwashed (good luck with that! I'm immune to all forms of it), being preached to. I just want a good story, yet I so often find all these "subliminal" (i.e. bleedin'-obvious) political messages all over works of fiction, and that makes me lose interest in the story with lightning speed. It is actually possible to write a story devoid of political posturing, and perhaps some day it will return to literature, but until then I believe I'll just stick to non-fiction...
The advantages of biographies over fiction are multi-fold:
1. They're about real people, real life, no made-up shit. Real situations and real lives are generally crazier, funnier and more original than the stuff one invents for a novel. "You can't make that shit up" is a very true phrase, and whoever reads a lot of bios cannot disagree with it.
2. Bios of older generations can give you interesting insight into how people lived in past eras. I never skip the "early childhood and adolescence" sections because very often these are the most interesting.
3. In cinema-related bios I occasionally come across movies that I like, or at least have seen. Reading about the anecdotes and various problems related to the making of those films can be fun. Ditto music-related bios: you can find entertaining stuff about the recording of certain albums.
4. Biographies can serve as good myth-busters. Behind-the-scenes stories give you a far more realistic take on people and events than the bullshit you read in "headline news".
5. There's plenty of gossip, and I enjoy gossip. For all the hipsters out there who pretend not to care about it, lemme just tell you that David Bowie gossiped a lot too and loved gossip whenever he could get it. I have fairly little interest in the day-to-day kind of gossip, but some of the celeb stuff is obviously hard to resist.
6. Biographies are generally not pretentious, they are easy-reading fluff, so it's a good way to read something non-hostile i.e. relaxing - yet without the content being too dumb. This, obviously, largely depends on the biography and the subject matter though...
There are probably other reasons I omitted.
The books are listed in no particular order, except the first few which are all the ones I'd read or re-read recently.
The ones I haven't started reading yet are all at the bottom of the list.
I have (or had) most of these books, though a few I'd read off a PDF file, which is definitely not my preferred reading method for anything. I also listened to a handful of audio-books, which is always great provided the "celeb" reads it themselves. But the majority of the books here I read from a physical copy.
The "honesty" rating is used only for autobiographies, and it tends to be somewhat tricky. Let me clarify: there are two types of "honesties", the celeb's honesty when writing about other people and the celeb's honesty when writing about themselves. Two very different things. So while an actor/musician/scientist might be very eager to tell-all about others he/she may not be nearly as honest about themselves. Or reversely, they might wanna be totally open about themselves but be wary of lawsuits if they say too much about others. But I anyway usually clarify this whenever there is a discrepancy between the two...
Naturally, how honest a celeb is can be sometimes very difficult to assess, so how I decide to rate their honesty could be very easily flawed in a number of cases. In some cases before reading the book I had a lot of pre-knowledge about that person hence could often tell when someone was hiding something, twisting facts or outright lying, but sometimes I had very little or just basic knowledge hence could not easily gauge to what extent the account is truthful or not. Reading autobiographies requires a certain amount of experience, knowledge about the field in question (cinema/the metal scene/whatever), the ability to detect bullshit, and the ability to read between the lines - which may or may not be made easier by the writer.
Why bios are my preferred type of reading material, and has been for some years already, I can't fully explain. I used to read more fiction, nearly always sci-fi, but you can't get me anywhere near a proper novel anymore, not even at gun point: I'm just not interested in that made-up stuff anymore.
Admittedly, some autobiographies are considered just that: works of fiction. I am well aware of this fact... Most celebs are going to lie a lot, hide a lot, plus of course many are simply delusional hence serve you BS because they honestly believe in it. I try to avoid autobiographies by these types of celebs anyway, just as I avoid reading biographies scribbled up by total sycophants paid to write dishonest, adulatory nonsense.
But you can't be too picky. There is probably no such thing as a totally truthful, honest autobio just as it's rare to come across a bio written by a person who was under no obligations or pressures to portray the person in a certain way, either positively or negatively. Writers of bios are not rarely gossip-columnists who make up shit, or even more commonly hired slaves instructed to write a squeaky-clean account that deifies the person. I am not too picky but I try to stay away from these two categories of "biographers".
To be honest, I am not much of a book-reader anyway, never have been. I doubt I'd read more than 200 books, if I count the completed ones only. I generally prefer essays, articles, encyclopedia entries and the like. Or I merely read only sections (in non-fiction books) that interest me and skip the rest, so there are many half-read or somewhat-read books that I'd gone through, plus some abandoned fictional ones, like for example "Dune 6" which I couldn't complete despite getting half-way through: it just bored me too much, so much weaker than the first 5 parts. That may actually have been my last attempt at reading sci-fi; I'm not sure anymore...
Perhaps the main reason I'm not a huge fan of fiction (anymore) is mostly because the majority of writers have some kind of a political agenda that they feel they must so very self-righteously rub into our noses at every single opportunity. This doesn't just apply to recent authors i.e. that whole dimwit army of modern writers who are all up the Establishment's ass, obsequiously parroting the Left's agenda, never questioning anything - yet expecting the readers to question everything, and by "everything" I naturally mean "conservative" viewpoints. I don't like being patronized, brainwashed (good luck with that! I'm immune to all forms of it), being preached to. I just want a good story, yet I so often find all these "subliminal" (i.e. bleedin'-obvious) political messages all over works of fiction, and that makes me lose interest in the story with lightning speed. It is actually possible to write a story devoid of political posturing, and perhaps some day it will return to literature, but until then I believe I'll just stick to non-fiction...
The advantages of biographies over fiction are multi-fold:
1. They're about real people, real life, no made-up shit. Real situations and real lives are generally crazier, funnier and more original than the stuff one invents for a novel. "You can't make that shit up" is a very true phrase, and whoever reads a lot of bios cannot disagree with it.
2. Bios of older generations can give you interesting insight into how people lived in past eras. I never skip the "early childhood and adolescence" sections because very often these are the most interesting.
3. In cinema-related bios I occasionally come across movies that I like, or at least have seen. Reading about the anecdotes and various problems related to the making of those films can be fun. Ditto music-related bios: you can find entertaining stuff about the recording of certain albums.
4. Biographies can serve as good myth-busters. Behind-the-scenes stories give you a far more realistic take on people and events than the bullshit you read in "headline news".
5. There's plenty of gossip, and I enjoy gossip. For all the hipsters out there who pretend not to care about it, lemme just tell you that David Bowie gossiped a lot too and loved gossip whenever he could get it. I have fairly little interest in the day-to-day kind of gossip, but some of the celeb stuff is obviously hard to resist.
6. Biographies are generally not pretentious, they are easy-reading fluff, so it's a good way to read something non-hostile i.e. relaxing - yet without the content being too dumb. This, obviously, largely depends on the biography and the subject matter though...
There are probably other reasons I omitted.
The books are listed in no particular order, except the first few which are all the ones I'd read or re-read recently.
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- Actor
- Composer
- Writer
Bruce Dickinson was born on 7 August 1958 in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England, UK. He is an actor and composer, known for A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989), Into the Blue (2005) and Bride of Chucky (1998). He has been married to Leana Dolci since 2023. He was previously married to Paddy Bowden and Erica Jane Barnett.Title: What Does This Button Do?
Type: autobiography
Honesty:
Rating:
Only just started this one...
The first 30-40 pages aren't particularly interesting. Lemmy's, Ozzy's and Iommi's early periods are far more interesting - or more interestingly told - than Bruce's. The problem with Bruce's writing is that he tries to be too literate, too clever, because he is an author as well - aside from being a vocalist, a pilot and all the rest. His humour is somewhat strained, forced, and he tends to focus on completely irrelevant details - so far at least.
I expect the book will get much more interesting once he joins Samson...
And it does. It's much more interesting from then on. There's still some lesser stuff, such as his fencing, which doesn't interest either me nor 95% of his fans, but there you go, he felt he needed to include it too. Like in Lemmy's book, he felt the need to include some political stuff: some stuff I completely agree with it, some I totally disagree with. The usual.
Once he gets to the Maiden period there are more anecdotes, but I can't help the impression that he stays on each album's period too briefly. There is a vast array of things to say, and while I realize that only a segment of that can fit into a bio, he should have written more, and he definitely should have written more about band-related stuff than his fencing. Every proper autobiography should be at least 500-700 pages. Unfortunately, most are half that.
Still reading...- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Lemmy was born on 24 December 1945 in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, UK. He was an actor and composer, known for Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Airheads (1994) and Smokin' Aces (2006). He died on 28 December 2015 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Title: White Line Fever
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium-high
Rating: 9/10
I was a bit underwhelmed when I read this about 15 years ago. I expected more humour and intelligence, but perhaps Lemmy wasn't adept at putting things down on paper the way he was in saying them in interviews, in which he was (much) more interesting.
Some years later I bought the book at a sale, so I might re-read it.
One of the few things I recall is that his blood was so polluted by drugs and alcohol that he couldn't receive clean blood from anyone. I'm not a medical expert so I have no idea how true this can be, but I know he meant it.
EDIT:
After having re-read it, very recently, I am surprised that I didn't catch on to how entertaining the book is. There is very little wasted space on irrelevancies, it's all very much to the point. Perhaps I was much dumber 15-20 years ago (which my changing/improving movie taste somewhat supports too), dunno. The fact that Lemmy's use of language is "crude" is an advantage, not a minus. He isn't focused on giving you a better impression of himself intellectually than he really is, he just wants to be blunt, to the point and honest - which is how autobios should be.
Sure, Lemmy isn't the best "writer", and one can tell that a lack of education hampers his "raconteuring" abilities, but he makes it up with numerous interesting and amusing anecdotes/stories, his honesty, directness and the fact that his life covers practically all the eras in rock and metal - which is very important too.
The book doesn't give you the Lemmy from interviews, which is where his wit shines through much more clearly, but it does go into sufficient detail. Not a great amount of detail mind you, because it's barely 300 pages. That's a pity. I would have much preferred a 500-page volume: more details, even more anecdotes.
I don't always agree with him. For example his brief "description" of the Balkans seemed rather ignorant - especially in the light of the fact that he was allegedly such a WW2 buff. (Seems the buffery was more about the Nazi imagery than the actual historic events around WW2 Europe.) There are some real gaffs when he tries to touch on history and politics, such as his claim that "Europe stood by and watched Hitler for 20 years without doing anything", when that simply isn't true: Hitler came to power in 1933, so where he got those 20 years I have no clue. Or "Hitler killed a quarter of the world's population": the hell is that all about? 50 million is a staggering number of dead, but out of several billion Earth inhabitants at the time, that's hardly a quarter. Or that stupid age-old argument: "why are they trying to bust me for drugs, when they should be chasing serial-killers instead". Well, they do BOTH of those things, one does not exclude the other. I've always hated that very childish argument/comparison that "so-so should be spending on feeding kids rather than on weapons": BOTH can and should be done. It's not as if every government has a choice between two things, I mean duh.
Another example when he is outrageously wrong is when he declares Kelly from Girlschool one of the best guitarists in the history of rock! That was borderline embarrassing.
In fact he often mentions feminists (negatively and mockingly, to his credit), but one gets the impression that he is actually quite insulted by the accusations leveled at him by various feminist radicals, so it's as if he was trying to "defend" himself i.e. to over-compensate by telling us how much he helped girl bands such as Girlschool, and how he respects women as musicians. There was no need for that: he should have mocked feminism without having to defend his lifestyle choices.
On the other hand, I totally agreed with his comparison between the Beatles and the Stones. Or his anger over being screwed by "American immigration - while they let millions of illegal immigrants get papers just like that". I am not sure if he realized just how right-wing that statement was/is, but it's right on the money - as most right-wing views are. "Communism and Nazism are religions" was also refreshing to read in a bio: a fact that is lost on 99% of the world's population.
Not to mention his spot-on assessment about the stupidity of the looters during the 1992 L.A. riots. Unlike Bowie, who praised the looters, Lemmy had a far more objective and realistic appraisal of what really transpired. Of course, the big difference between Bowie and Lemmy is that Lemmy is usually honest whereas Bowie is generally rather dishonest and a virtue-signaler like all poseurs. But more on that in the review of his biography.
One of the more surprising revelations is that Phil and Eddie were far crazier than Lemmy. He was literally the "normal one" in the initial line-up, comparatively speaking.
I described the book's honesty as "medium-high". Why not "high"? After all, he has a reputation for being a straight up, honest kind of guy, a reputation that I believe might be accurate. Nevertheless, because I noticed a few details conveniently missing I gave a slightly lower honesty rating. Whether it was deliberate omission or not I 'm not sure.
Examples. When Philthy got fired the 2nd time around in 1993, Lemmy named Phil's lack of motivation and bad drumming (in terms of keeping the pace) as the reasons, yet Philthy insists that the reason he was fired was that he shtooped "Lemmy's missus". Lemmy never addressed this claim in his book, despite being fully aware of it. (Coz if I know abut it then surely Lemmy did too.) Secondly, he stated that Pete Gill got fired because he was constantly running late and kept the band waiting. This may be true, and probably is, but... Hawkwind's Dave had stated that Lemmy was constantly being late on the tour, kept the band waiting, and pissed everybody off with that. Yet Lemmy never addresses this is in the book. It's somewhat hypocritical, right?
This is why I can't rate the book "high" in terms of honesty, because he seems to have omitted certain things that may not reflect too well on him. (Which is perfectly natural, normal: who wouldn't omit some embarrassing or vile stuff about themselves, right?) Also, the 4th and last Motorhead gig I went to (around 1993) he had stopped after only 3-4 songs, as far as I recall without a clear explanation, which puts his professionalism in question. He did bitch about something after 1-2 songs, probably about the sound, but I couldn't understand him, hence I doubt anyone in the crowd understood him either. Admittedly, there is a paragraph later on in the book that might be used as an explanation as to why he cut some concerts short, which could be used as a viable excuse - or not. I do believe though that a hedonist as extreme as Lemmy must have hid far more skeletons than he let on, which is why I am not convinced that he deserves the "high honesty" upgrading.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born Richard Henry Sellers to a well-off acting family in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the son of Agnes Doreen "Peg" (Marks) and William "Bill" Sellers. His parents worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. His father was Protestant and his mother was Jewish (of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi background). His parents' first child had died at birth, so Sellers was spoiled during his early years. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force and served during World War II. After the war he met Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, who would become his future workmates.
After the war, he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music (he played the drums) and impressions. Then, all of a sudden, he burst into prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on the BBC radio program "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), and then making his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its fullest. In 1962, Sellers was cast in the role of Clare Quilty in the Stanley Kubrick version of the film Lolita (1962) in which his performance as a mentally unbalanced TV writer with multiple personalities landed him another part in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) in which he played three roles which showed off his comic talent in play-acting in three different accents; British, American, and German.
The year 1964 represented a peak in his career with four films in release, all of them well-received by critics and the public alike: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), for which he was Oscar nominated, The Pink Panther (1963), in which he played his signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau for the first time, its almost accidental sequel, A Shot in the Dark (1964), and The World of Henry Orient (1964). Sellers was on top of the world, but on the evening of April 5, 1964, he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack after inhaling several amyl nitrites (also called 'poppers'; an aphrodisiac-halogen combination) while engaged in a sexual act with his second wife Britt Ekland. He had been working on Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). In a move Wilder later regretted, he replaced Sellers with Ray Walston rather than hold up production. By October 1964, Sellers made a full recovery and was working again.
The mid-1960s were noted for the popularity of all things British, from the Beatles music (who were presented with their Grammy for Best New Artist by Sellers) to the James Bond films, and the world turned to Sellers for comedy. What's New Pussycat (1965) was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity was making Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. He turned down an offer from United Artists for the title role in Inspector Clouseau (1968), but was angry when the production went ahead with Alan Arkin in his place. His difficult reputation and increasingly erratic behavior, combined with several less successful films, took a toll on his standing. By 1970, he had fallen out of favor. He spent the early years of the new decade appearing in such lackluster B films as Where Does It Hurt? (1972) and turning up more frequently on television as a guest on The Dean Martin Show (1965) and a Glen Campbell TV special.
In 1974, Inspector Clouseau came to Sellers rescue when Sir Lew Grade expressed an interest in a TV series based on the character. Clouseau's creator, writer-director Blake Edwards, whose career had also seen better days, convinced Grade to bankroll a feature film instead, and The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) was a major hit release during the summer of Jaws (1975) and restored both men to prominence. Sellers would play Clouseau in two more successful sequels, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and Sellers would use his newly rediscovered clout to realize his dream of playing Chauncey Gardiner in a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There". Sellers had read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years for the film to reach the screen. Being There (1979) earned Sellers his second Oscar nomination, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
Sellers struggled with depression and mental insecurities throughout his life. An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behavior on and off the set and stage became more erratic and compulsive, and he continued to frequently clash with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his continuing alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. He never fully recovered from his 1964 heart attack because he refused to take traditional heart medication and instead consulted with 'psychic healers'. As a result, his heart condition continued to slowly deteriorate over the next 16 years. On March 20, 1977, Sellers barely survived another major heart attack and had a pacemaker surgically implanted to regulate his heartbeat which caused him further mental and physical discomfort. However, he refused to slow down his work schedule or consider heart surgery which might have extended his life by several years.
On July 25, 1980, Sellers was scheduled to have a reunion dinner in London with his Goon Show partners, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. However, at around 12 noon on July 22, Sellers collapsed from a massive heart attack in his Dorchester Hotel room and fell into a coma. He died in a London hospital just after midnight on July 24, 1980 at age 54. He was survived by his fourth wife, Lynne Frederick, and three children: Michael, Sarah and Victoria. At the time of his death, he was scheduled to undergo an angiography in Los Angeles on July 30 to see if he was eligible for heart surgery.
His last movie, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop. Director Blake Edwards' attempt at reviving the Pink Panther series after Sellers' death resulted in two panned 1980s comedies, the first of which, Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), deals with Inspector Clouseau's disappearance and was made from material cut from previous Pink Panther films and includes interviews with the original casts playing their original characters.Title: Peter Sellers: The Mask Behind the Mask
Type: biography
Author: Peter Evans
Rating: 10/10
Evans knew Sellers personally, plus this book had Sellers's approval i.e. it had been planned many years before its release, and it would appear he knew the subject matter fairly well, which probably explains why this bio is such fun.
It also helps that it was written after his death so the accounts could be much more frank.
Many crazy anecdotes of a guy who was a weird combination of eccentricity, naivety, selfishness, generosity, stupidity, pathological superstition and childishness. He comes off more unlikable than likable, but this never impedes the fun of reading all the nonsense that he created.
I'd read it twice, one of the very best books on the list.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
David Bowie was one of the most influential and prolific writers and performers of popular music, but he was much more than that; he was also an accomplished actor, a mime and an intellectual, as well as an art lover whose appreciation and knowledge of it had led to him amassing one of the biggest collections of 20th century art.
Born David Jones, he changed his name to Bowie in the 1960s, to avoid confusion with the then well-known Davy Jones (lead singer of The Monkees). The 1960s were not a happy period for Bowie, who remained a struggling artist, awaiting his breakthrough. He dabbled in many different styles of music (without commercial success), and other art forms such as acting, mime, painting, and play-writing. He finally achieved his commercial breakthrough in 1969 with the song "Space Oddity", which was released at the time of the moon landing. Despite the fact that the literal meaning of the lyrics relates to an astronaut who is lost in space, this song was used by the BBC in their coverage of the moon landing, and this helped it become such a success. The album, which followed "Space Oddity", and the two, which followed (one of which included the song "The Man Who Sold The World", covered by Lulu and Nirvana) failed to produce another hit single, and Bowie's career appeared to be in decline.
However, he made the first of many successful "comebacks" in 1972 with "Ziggy Stardust", a concept album about a space-age rock star. This album was followed by others in a similar vein, rock albums built around a central character and concerned with futuristic themes of Armageddon, gender dysfunction/confusion, as well as more contemporary themes such as the destructiveness of success and fame, and the dangers inherent in star worship. In the mid-1970s, Bowie was a heavy cocaine abuser and sometime heroin user.
In 1975, he changed tack. Musically, he released "Young Americans", a soul (or plastic soul as he later referred to it) album. This produced his first number one hit in the US, "Fame". He also appeared in his first major film, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). With a permanently-dilated pupil and skeletal frame, he certainly looked the part of an alien. The following year, he released "Station to Station," containing some of the material he had written for the soundtrack to this film (which was not used). As his drug problem heightened, his behavior became more erratic. Reports of his insanity started to appear, and he continued to waste away physically. He fled back to Europe, finally settling in Berlin, where he changed musical direction again and recorded three of the most influential albums of all time, an electronic trilogy with Brian Eno "Low, Heroes and Lodger". Towards the end of the 1970s, he finally kicked his drug habit, and recorded the album many of his fans consider his best, the Japanese-influenced "Scary Monsters". Around this time, he appeared in the title role of the Broadway drama The Elephant Man, and to considerable acclaim.
The next few years saw something of a drop-off in his musical output as his acting career flourished, culminating in his acclaimed performance in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983). In 1983, he released "Let's Dance," an album which proved an unexpected massive commercial success, and produced his second #1 hit single in the United States. According to producer Nile Rodgers, the album was made in just 17 days and was "the easiest album" he'd ever made in his life. The tour which followed, "Serious Moonlight", was his most successful ever. Faced with this success on a massive scale, Bowie apparently attempted to "repeat the formula" in the next two albums, with less success (and to critical scorn). Finally, in the late 1980s, he turned his back on commercial success and his solo career, forming the hard rock band, Tin Machine, who had a deliberate limited appeal. By now, his acting career was in decline. After the comparative failure of Labyrinth (1986), the movie industry appears to have decided that Bowie was not a sufficient name to be a lead actor in a major movie, and since that date, most of his roles have been cameos or glorified cameos. Tin Machine toured extensively and released two albums, with little critical or commercial success.
In 1992, Bowie again changed direction and re-launched his solo career with "Black Tie White Noise", a wedding album inspired by his recent marriage to Iman. He released three albums to considerable critical acclaim and reasonable commercial success. In 1995, he renewed his working relationship with Brian Eno to record "Outside." After an initial hostile reaction from the critics, this album has now taken its place with his classic albums. In 2003, Bowie released an album entitled 'Reality.' The Reality Tour began in November 2003 and, after great commercial success, was extended into July 2004. In June 2004, Bowie suffered a heart attack and the tour did not finish its scheduled run.
After recovering, Bowie gave what turned out to be his final live performance in a three-song set with Alicia Keys at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York in November 2006. He also returned to acting. He played Tesla in The Prestige (2006) and had a small cameo in the comedy David Bowie (2006) for fan Ricky Gervais. In 2007, he did a cartoon voice in SpongeBob SquarePants (1999) playing Lord Royal Highness. He had a brief cameo in the movie ''Bandslam'' released in 2009; after a ten year hiatus from recording, he released a new album called 'The Next Day', featuring a homage cover to his earlier work ''Heroes''. The music video of ''Stars are Out Tonight'' premiered on 25 February 2013. It consists of other songs like ''Where Are We Now?", "Valentine's Day", "Love is Lost", "The Next Day", etc.
In 2014, Bowie won British Male Solo Artist at the 2014 Brit Awards, 30 years since last winning it, and became the oldest ever Brit winner. Bowie wrote and recorded the opening title song to the television miniseries The Last Panthers (2015), which aired in November 2015. The theme used for The Last Panthers (2015) was also the title track for his January 2016 release, ''Blackstar" (released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday) was met with critical acclaim. Following Bowie's death two days later, on 10 January 2016, producer Tony Visconti revealed Bowie had planned the album to be his swan song, and a "parting gift" for his fans before his death. An EP, No Plan, was released on 8 January 2017, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday. The day following his death, online viewing of Bowie's music skyrocketed, breaking the record for Vevo's most viewed artist in a single day.
On 15 January, "Blackstar" debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart; nineteen of his albums were in the UK Top 100 Albums Chart, and thirteen singles were in the UK Top 100 Singles Chart. The song also debuted at #1 on album charts around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the US Billboard 200. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, Bowie won all five nominated awards: Best Rock Performance; Best Alternative Music Album; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Recording Package; and Best Rock Song. The wins marked Bowie's first ever in musical categories. David Bowie influenced the course of popular music several times and had an effect on several generations of musicians.Title: David Bowie: A Life
Type: biography
Author: Dylan Jones
Rating: 8/10
A very good bio, and it's good for the exact same reason that Ed Wood's bio is: the entire book consists of quotes/statements/interviews from dozens of people who knew or had met the person.
This is by far the best way to write a biography; instead of writing an adulatory rant about how (allegedly) great and wonderful someone is, it is much better to let those speak who knew the person, good or bad, truthful or lying. They may contradict each other, but that is an advantage not a flaw. The added advantage is that the tone of the book constantly varies, depending on who is "talking". The reader can then decide whose accounts the truth may be closer to.
Not everybody has the same opinion of Bowie, which is great because this way - ironically - the reader has the chance to make a much better picture of him. The book does give you great insight, despite the fact that some people don't remember things well, or are exaggerating, or lying, or withholding information. But when you COMPILE all of their statements - and we're talking very many people here (mostly friends/journalists/musicians/wives/exes) - on a huge pile of thinly printed 550 pages, much of the truth filters out. It's a comprehensive bio, one of the book's main strengths. Coz there's nothing worse than a 200-page bio: that's basically a pamphlet or an extended Wikipedia account.
Having read the book and seen countless interviews, I have a very good sense of this person. So what was he like? Narcissistic, egotistical, vain, extremely fame-obsessed (while still unknown), extremely decadent (drug addiction and orgies included, gay sex to further his career, plus sex with minors too, and I don't mean 16 year-olds), drawn towards perversion and degeneracy, somewhat manipulative, but also very polite, friendly, witty, mostly non-aggressive, professional, very ambitious. In other words, he had his flaws and advantages, like a lot of people.
Politically, he was completely dishonest. Always the virtue-signaler, he'd say whatever the Establishment expected from him, very rarely what was true, he always played it safe (except the time he was so so high on drugs during his pseudo-Nazi phase, which is when he talked rubbish, just non-PC rubbish). Or perhaps he was too thick and/or out of touch with reality to understand what was going on?
For example, it is fascinating to compare Bowie's and Lemmy's takes on the 1992 L.A. riots: Bowie, the typical champagne socialist, praises the looters whereas Lemmy calls them idiots who deserve to go to jail. Because Bowie is PC and Lemmy tends to say it how it is - or at least how he honestly believes things are. Bowie has no problem bullshitting and lying: I've caught him say blatant lies on several occasions - and that's just the stuff where I was able to catch him lie, who knows how often he lied and we don't know about it. Examples? In a 90s or 00s interview he lied that he never found out what Warhol thought of his song which Bowie dedicated to him, despite the fact that Warhol mocked the song in front of everybody present.
As a result, this book is a LOT closer to the truth than Bowie's autobiography would have been like. Another example, in a 1999 interview he said he stemmed from the working-class which is rubbish. He had access to show-biz while still a child, met some well-known musicians, and had a privileged suburban middle-class upbringing. Throughout his career Bowie presented different versions of himself, depending on whom he talked to and in which context. Like an actor, or perhaps even somewhat like a conman. So he wasn't always "genuine" though some people here make excuses for this, claiming that he had "many different sides to him". But from what I understood, he would "play-act" often, assume a "persona" and more-or-less change all the time, according to his whims or aims. Some accounts speak of him switching these personalities on and off like a robot, from one "character" to another i.e. himself. He did most of the faking/posing during his Spiders phase, but he did it to a lesser extent in all of his eras.
Angie Bowie, his 1st wife, comes off the worst from everybody, aside from Lou Reed, who is well-known as a bit of a you-know-what, a very unfriendly and miserable personality. (Not to mention zero talent.) Almost nobody had anything positive to say about her, except that she worked hard and was devoted to Bowie's career. She was the one that introduced orgies into David's life: the woman was a sexual pervert of the highest order, judging at least from all the people who spoke here.
There are numerous anecdotes, some very interesting, such as his awkward and unpleasant meetings with Zappa and McCartney, or his friendships with Lennon and Jagger. Or how he once stormed off the stage in anger, smashing his guitar and stopping the gig entirely, just because one of the musicians dared to tread on the main stage - instead of remaining hidden from the audience as the rest of the band were instructed to. (It was in fact a misunderstanding, the guitarist believing that Bowie waved to him to join him on stage.) He had the diva side to him too, but it seems this wasn't nearly as bad as with most other rock stars.
Politically-correct to a fault, which definitely makes him somewhat annoying and unlikable. Always beware of celebs who take the "safe political route".
Many hipster journalists describe him, so things get cringy at times, especially when they give their 5 cents' worth about his music. But hey, hipsters will be hipsters and they do enjoy embarrassing themselves, they can't not be cringy and foolish. Naturally, a lot of people with REALLY bad taste in music talk here, which may or may not be an issue with some readers.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
The tall, handsome and muscular Scottish actor Sean Connery is best known as the original actor to portray James Bond in the hugely successful movie franchise, starring in seven films between 1962 and 1983. Some believed that such a career-defining role might leave him unable to escape it, but he proved the doubters wrong, becoming one of the most notable film actors of his generation, with a host of great movies to his name. This arguably culminated in his greatest acclaim in 1988, when Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an Irish cop in The Untouchables (1987), stealing the thunder from the movie's principal star Kevin Costner. Connery was polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine, and in 1999, at age 69, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man of the Century."
Thomas "Sean" Connery was born on August 25, 1930 in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh. His mother, Euphemia Maclean, was a cleaning lady, and his father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and truck driver. He also had a, Neil Connery, a plasterer in Edinburgh, who was eight years younger. Before going into acting, Sean had many different jobs, such as a milkman, lorry driver, a laborer, artist's model for the Edinburgh College of Art, coffin polisher and bodybuilder. He also joined the Royal Navy, but was later discharged because of medical problems. At the age of 23, he had a choice between becoming a professional soccer player or an actor, and even though he showed much promise in the sport, he chose acting and said it was one of his more intelligent decisions.
No Road Back (1957) was Sean's first major movie role, and it was followed by several made-for-TV movies such as Anna Christie (1957), Macbeth (1961) and Anna Karenina (1961) as well as guest appearances on TV series, and also films such as Hell Drivers (1957), Another Time, Another Place (1958), Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and The Frightened City (1961). In 1962 he appeared in The Longest Day (1962) with a host of other stars.
His big breakthrough came in 1962 when he landed the role of secret agent James Bond in Dr. No (1962). He played James Bond in six more films: From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983).
After and during the success of the Bond films, he maintained a successful career as an actor and has appeared in films, including Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Time Bandits (1981), Highlander (1986), The Name of the Rose (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Rising Sun (1993), The Rock (1996), Finding Forrester (2000) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003).
Sean married actress Diane Cilento in 1962 and they had Sean's only child, Jason Connery, born on January 11, 1963. The couple announced their separation in February 1971 and filed for divorce 2½ years later. Sean then dated Jill St. John, Lana Wood, Magda Konopka and Carole Mallory. In 1975 he married Micheline Roquebrune and they stayed married, despite Sean's well-documented love affair with Lynsey de Paul in the late '80s. Sean had three stepchildren through his marriage to Micheline, who was one year his senior. He is also a grandfather. His son, Jason and Jason's ex-wife, actress Mia Sara had a son, Dashiell Connery, in 1997.
Sean Connery died at the age of 90 on October 31, 2020, in Nassau, the Bahamas, where he resided for many years.Title: Sean Connery
Type: biography
Author: John Parker
Rating: 7/10
Read it 15-20 years ago, didn't like it that much. But after having re-read it very recently, I realize it's better than a lot of the bios out there. Straightforward without waxing poetry - though that kind of pretentious twaddle is far more of an affliction for rock bios than Hollywood accounts. I'd have much more preferred an autobiography, obviously, but this works too.
Connery, as many other A-list celebs, does appear in other people's autobiographies, so that's where one can get some interesting additional insight and info.
Another example, Sinatra. I never read a book about him, but he'd been mentioned in so many other bios that I got a chance to find out quite a bit despite not picking up an actual Sinatra book. Ditto Bogart and Gable.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. His parents, Bryna (Sanglel) and Herschel Danielovitch, were Jewish immigrants from Chavusy, Mahilyow Voblast (now in Belarus). Although growing up in a poor ghetto, Douglas was a fine student and a keen athlete and wrestled competitively during his time at St. Lawrence University. Professional wrestling helped pay for his studies as did working on the side as a waiter and a bellboy. However, he soon identified an acting scholarship as a way out of his meager existence, and was sufficiently talented to gain entry into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in "Spring Again" before his career was interrupted by World War II. He joining the United States Navy in 1941, and then after the end of hostilities in 1945, returned to the theater and some radio work. On the insistence of ex-classmate Lauren Bacall, movie producer Hal B. Wallis screen-tested Douglas and cast him in the lead role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). His performance received rave reviews and further work quickly followed, including an appearance in the low-key drama I Walk Alone (1947), the first time he worked alongside fellow future screen legend Burt Lancaster. Such was the strong chemistry between the two that they appeared in seven films together, including the dynamic western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), the John Frankenheimer political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) and their final pairing in the gangster comedy Tough Guys (1986). Douglas once said about his good friend: "I've finally gotten away from Burt Lancaster. My luck has changed for the better. I've got nice-looking girls in my films now."
After appearing in "I Walk Alone," Douglas scored his first Oscar nomination playing the untrustworthy and opportunistic boxer Midge Kelly in the gripping Champion (1949). The quality of his work continued to garner the attention of critics and he was again nominated for Oscars for his role as a film producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and as tortured painter Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), both directed by Vincente Minnelli. In 1955, Douglas launched his own production company, Bryna Productions, the company behind two pivotal film roles in his career. The first was as French army officer Col. Dax in director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant anti-war epic Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas reunited with Kubrick for yet another epic, the magnificent Spartacus (1960). The film also marked a key turning point in the life of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. At Douglas' insistence, Trumbo was given on-screen credit for his contributions, which began the dissolution of the infamous blacklisting policies begun almost a decade previously that had destroyed so many careers and lives.
Douglas remained busy throughout the 1960s, starring in many films. He played a rebellious modern-day cowboy in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), acted alongside John Wayne in the World War II story In Harm's Way (1965), again with The Duke in a drama about the Israeli fight for independence, Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), and once more with Wayne in the tongue-in-cheek western The War Wagon (1967). Additionally in 1963, he starred in an onstage production of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but despite his keen interest, no Hollywood studio could be convinced to bring the story to the screen. However, the rights remained with the Douglas clan, and Kirk's talented son Michael Douglas finally filmed the tale in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson. Into the 1970s, Douglas wasn't as busy as previous years; however, he starred in some unusual vehicles, including alongside a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in the loopy western comedy The Villain (1979), then with Farrah Fawcett in the sci-fi thriller Saturn 3 (1980) and then he traveled to Australia for the horse opera/drama The Man from Snowy River (1982).
Unknown to many, Kirk has long been involved in humanitarian causes and has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the US State Department since 1963. His efforts were rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1981), and with the Jefferson Award (1983). Furthermore, the French honored him with the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. More recognition followed for his work with the American Cinema Award (1987), the German Golden Kamera Award (1987), The National Board of Reviews Career Achievement Award (1989), an honorary Academy Award (1995), Recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award (1999) and the UCLA Medal of Honor (2002). Despite a helicopter crash and a stroke suffered in the 1990s, he remained active and continued to appear in front of the camera. Until his passing on February 5 2020 at the age of 103, he and Olivia de Havilland were the last surviving major stars from the Golden Years of Hollywood.Title: The Ragman's Son
Type: autobiography
Honesty: so-so, probably low
Rating: 8/10
When it comes to honesty, there's the frankness with which one writes about others and the frankness about oneself. Douglas is incomparably more honest about others than himself. Reading this book you'd believe he was a normal, decent guy, but of course that's because he conveniently omitted to mention his notorious temper and his rampant egomania. Not to mention a few other rumours that are really bad...
Still, because he was so honest about others and because he didn't waste too much time on nonsense this is a pretty good read.
Originally, at least that's what he claims, he had written 5,000 pages worth of material.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command.
However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983), Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).
As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema.
Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Bianca Jagger, Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John. In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.Title: What's It All About
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium-high
Rating: 9/10
One of the best Hollywood autobiographies, for several reasons: his career spans very interesting film eras - 60s/70s/80s, he discusses a lot of films I'd seen before or that I know about, and because Caine is fairly down-to-Earth; it isn't just an act. From everything I know about him and from his interviews it is obvious he doesn't have a mean streak in him and doesn't suffer from a huge ego - for an actor, at least. It's all relative, of course: nearly every thespian has ego issues.
His Korean War stories are quite a read, as are his experiences while shooting a war movie with Cliff Robertson in the Philippines. That's just some of the stuff that I remember best, coz I read the book in the late 90s.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command.
However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983), Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).
As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema.
Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Bianca Jagger, Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John. In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.Title: The Elephant to Hollywood
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium-high
Rating: N/A
His 2nd autobiography, published almost 20 years after the first one.
I listened to an audio version several years ago, with Caine "narrating" himself, but haven't finished it yet because I started recognizing too many stories. From what I recall, he repeats a lot of the stuff from the first book, so I had less incentive to continue.
It's almost like an updated version of book 1, it appears. So I wouldn't know which one you should get, but definitely not both.
There is also a recent 3rd book he did, but I have no idea whether that's any good.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
William Shatner has notched up an impressive 70-plus years in front of the camera, displaying heady comedic talent and being instantly recognizable to several generations of cult television fans as the square-jawed Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise.
Shatner was born in Côte Saint-Luc, Montréal, Québec, Canada, to Anne (Garmaise) and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer. His father was a Jewish emigrant from Bukovina in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while his maternal grandparents were Lithuanian Jews. After graduating from university, he joined a local Summer theatre group as an assistant manager. He then performed with the National Repertory Theatre of Ottawa and at the Stratford, Ontario, Shakespeare Festival as an understudy working with such as Alec Guinness, James Mason, and Anthony Quayle. He came to the attention of New York critics and was soon playing important roles in major shows on live television.
Shatner spent many years honing his craft before debuting alongside Yul Brynner in The Brothers Karamazov (1958). He was kept busy during the 1960s in films such as Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Intruder (1962) and on television guest-starring in dozens of series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), The Defenders (1961), The Outer Limits (1963) and The Twilight Zone (1959). In 1966, Shatner boarded the USS Enterprise for three seasons of Star Trek (1966), co-starring alongside Leonard Nimoy, with the series eventually becoming a bona-fide cult classic with a worldwide legion of fans known variously as "Trekkies" or "Trekkers".
After "Star Trek" folded, Shatner spent the rest of the decade and the 1970s making the rounds, guest-starring on many prime-time television series, including Hawaii Five-O (1968), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and Ironside (1967). He has also appeared in several feature films, but they were mainly B-grade (or lower) fare, such as the embarrassingly bad Euro western White Comanche (1968) and the campy Kingdom of the Spiders (1977). However, the 1980s saw a major resurgence in Shatner's career with the renewed interest in the original Star Trek (1966) series culminating in a series of big-budget "Star Trek" feature films, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). In addition, he starred in the lightweight police series T.J. Hooker (1982) from 1982 to 1986, alongside spunky Heather Locklear, and surprised many fans with his droll comedic talents in Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) and Miss Congeniality (2000).
He has most recently been starring in the David E. Kelley television series The Practice (1997) and its spin-off Boston Legal (2004).
Outside of work, he jogs and follows other athletic pursuits. His interest in health and nutrition led to him becoming spokesman for the American Health Institute's 'Know Your Body' program to promote nutritional and physical health.Title: Star Trek Memories
Type: autobiography
Honesty: low
Rating: 9/10
Shatner is well-known for being one of the most hated and most obnoxious celebs, in terms of his off-screen behaviour which is borderline psycho. Then there's also the troublesome unclarified mysterious demise of one of his former wives, in his swimming pool. He is also hated/disliked among ALL the Star Trek cast, even Nimoy becoming his "enemy" after decades of tolerating his megalomania.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that Shatner reveals only 1% of his bad behaviour, the book is a great read - simply because I am a fan of TOS, and because it's full of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes politics.
Despite being such a ******* he does also have a good sense of humour.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
William Shatner has notched up an impressive 70-plus years in front of the camera, displaying heady comedic talent and being instantly recognizable to several generations of cult television fans as the square-jawed Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise.
Shatner was born in Côte Saint-Luc, Montréal, Québec, Canada, to Anne (Garmaise) and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer. His father was a Jewish emigrant from Bukovina in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while his maternal grandparents were Lithuanian Jews. After graduating from university, he joined a local Summer theatre group as an assistant manager. He then performed with the National Repertory Theatre of Ottawa and at the Stratford, Ontario, Shakespeare Festival as an understudy working with such as Alec Guinness, James Mason, and Anthony Quayle. He came to the attention of New York critics and was soon playing important roles in major shows on live television.
Shatner spent many years honing his craft before debuting alongside Yul Brynner in The Brothers Karamazov (1958). He was kept busy during the 1960s in films such as Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and The Intruder (1962) and on television guest-starring in dozens of series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), The Defenders (1961), The Outer Limits (1963) and The Twilight Zone (1959). In 1966, Shatner boarded the USS Enterprise for three seasons of Star Trek (1966), co-starring alongside Leonard Nimoy, with the series eventually becoming a bona-fide cult classic with a worldwide legion of fans known variously as "Trekkies" or "Trekkers".
After "Star Trek" folded, Shatner spent the rest of the decade and the 1970s making the rounds, guest-starring on many prime-time television series, including Hawaii Five-O (1968), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and Ironside (1967). He has also appeared in several feature films, but they were mainly B-grade (or lower) fare, such as the embarrassingly bad Euro western White Comanche (1968) and the campy Kingdom of the Spiders (1977). However, the 1980s saw a major resurgence in Shatner's career with the renewed interest in the original Star Trek (1966) series culminating in a series of big-budget "Star Trek" feature films, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). In addition, he starred in the lightweight police series T.J. Hooker (1982) from 1982 to 1986, alongside spunky Heather Locklear, and surprised many fans with his droll comedic talents in Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) and Miss Congeniality (2000).
He has most recently been starring in the David E. Kelley television series The Practice (1997) and its spin-off Boston Legal (2004).
Outside of work, he jogs and follows other athletic pursuits. His interest in health and nutrition led to him becoming spokesman for the American Health Institute's 'Know Your Body' program to promote nutritional and physical health.Title: Star Trek Movie Memories
Type: autobiography
Honesty: low
Rating: 7/10
I liked this one less, simply because the ST movies he did were overall much less fun than the TV series. Several of them are downright trash, including the one he directed.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Leonard Simon Nimoy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Dora (Spinner) and Max Nimoy, who owned a barbershop. His parents were Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. Raised in a tenement and acting in community theaters since age eight, Nimoy did not make his Hollywood debut until he was 20, with a bit part in Queen for a Day (1951) and another as a ballplayer in the perennial Rhubarb (1951). After two years in the United States Army, he was still getting small, often uncredited parts, like an Army telex operator in Them! (1954). His part as Narab, a Martian finally friendly to Earth, in the closing scene in the corny Republic serial Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952), somewhat foreshadowed the role which would make him a household name: Mr. Spock, the half-human/half-Vulcan science officer on Star Trek (1966) one of television's all-time most successful series. His performance won him three Emmy nominations and launched his career as a writer and director, notably of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), the story of a humpback whale rescue that proved the most successful of the Star Trek movies. Stage credits have included "Fiddler on the Roof", "Oliver", "Camelot" and "Equus". He has hosted the well-known television series In Search of... (1977) and Ancient Mysteries (1994), authored several volumes of poetry and guest-starred on two episodes of The Simpsons (1989). In the latter years of his career, he played Mustafa Mond in NBC's telling of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1998), voiced Sentinel Prime in the blockbuster Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and played Spock again in two new Star Trek films, Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013).
Leonard Nimoy died on February 27, 2015 in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 83.Title: I Am Spock
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium
Rating: 4/10
His 2nd autobiography, after "I Am Not Spock", which I haven't read.
Nowhere nearly as interesting or fun as Shatner's books, and that's because Nimoy was too serious, and perhaps took himself and his damn "thespianism" a little too seriously. Dry, lacking in humour, not recommended except for hopeless Trekkies who need to read everything about the cast.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
His mother was the French Lady Comynyplatt Henrietta de Gacher, his father was the British Lieutenant William Graham Niven, who died in the war when David was six years old. Niven was considered a difficult child to educate and had to change schools often until he finally went to Sandhurst Military Academy. He came to Malta as a soldier, left the army here and went to Canada, where he worked as a lumberjack, bridge builder, journalist and whiskey salesman. After detours via New York and Cuba, Niven settled in California in 1934, where he had his first roles as an extra. He appeared in smaller films until the Second World War and then had to go to war for the British army.
In between, he also starred in propaganda films. Niven fought on the British front at Dunkirk and was promoted to colonel in 1944. General Eisenhower decorated him with the medals of the American Legion of Merit. From his first marriage to Primula Rollo, whom he married in 1940, Niven had two sons, David and Jamie. After his wife died in an accident in 1946, he married the Swede Hjordis Tersmeden in 1948, and his daughters Kristine and Fiona came from this marriage. In 1952, Niven founded the television production "Four Star TV" with Charles Boyer and other colleagues and starred in the self-produced series "The David Niven Show" and "Rogues Against Crooks". He had already been successful as an actor for a long time.
Niven starred in the 1946 English production of Error in the Afterlife and then returned to Hollywood. He celebrated successes with "The Virgin on the Roof", "Bonjour Tristesse", "The Guns of Navarone", "55 Days in Peking", "The Pink Panther", "Lady L." and with "Casino Royale". In 1959 he reached the peak of his success when he was honored with the Oscar for Best Actor for Separated from Table and Bed. His most beautiful film role was that of "Phileas Fogg" in the Jules Verne film adaptation "Around the World in 80 Days". Niven later demonstrated his enormous skills in many other films. In the 1970s and 1980s he starred in "Vampira", "A Corpse for Dessert", "Death on the Nile", "The Lion Shows its Claws" and in "Grandpa Seldom Comes Alone".
In 1982 and 1983 he had his last two roles in "The Pink Panther is Hunted" and "The Curse of the Pink Panther". Niven retired and lived on the Cote d'Azur and in Switzerland.
David Niven died on July 29, 1983 in Switzerland as a result of the nervous disease ALS. He made part of his inheritance available to medical research.Title: The Moon's A Balloon
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium
Rating: 7/10
The first of two autobiographies by famous "raconteur" and actor-socialite Niven. He wrote these himself, no ghost writers.
I can't tell the books apart because I'd read them a while ago, but both were quite uneven. Some chapters are very interesting while others were so dull I had to skip one or two.
It all depends on the subject matter: his early adolescence and army years is very fun stuff, especially since he was (surprisingly) a delinquent, as are the chapters focused on specific actors (Bogart for example), while some of the topics are lame and average.
Being born in the early 20th century, we get here many interesting eras, including the 20s which doesn't often feature in bios. Being a British soldier during the 20s, he was able to relay some very interesting stories, some of them related to his long stay in Malta.
Niven comes across as a friendly person, which he anyway seems too have been by all other accounts, but this "niceness" and impeccable English politeness prevented him from being more honest - hence brutal - about other actors. Which is why, unfortunately, his books don't offer much juicy gossip, the really filthy stuff... And Hollywood was and still is, after all, primarily a place of decadence and filth.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
His mother was the French Lady Comynyplatt Henrietta de Gacher, his father was the British Lieutenant William Graham Niven, who died in the war when David was six years old. Niven was considered a difficult child to educate and had to change schools often until he finally went to Sandhurst Military Academy. He came to Malta as a soldier, left the army here and went to Canada, where he worked as a lumberjack, bridge builder, journalist and whiskey salesman. After detours via New York and Cuba, Niven settled in California in 1934, where he had his first roles as an extra. He appeared in smaller films until the Second World War and then had to go to war for the British army.
In between, he also starred in propaganda films. Niven fought on the British front at Dunkirk and was promoted to colonel in 1944. General Eisenhower decorated him with the medals of the American Legion of Merit. From his first marriage to Primula Rollo, whom he married in 1940, Niven had two sons, David and Jamie. After his wife died in an accident in 1946, he married the Swede Hjordis Tersmeden in 1948, and his daughters Kristine and Fiona came from this marriage. In 1952, Niven founded the television production "Four Star TV" with Charles Boyer and other colleagues and starred in the self-produced series "The David Niven Show" and "Rogues Against Crooks". He had already been successful as an actor for a long time.
Niven starred in the 1946 English production of Error in the Afterlife and then returned to Hollywood. He celebrated successes with "The Virgin on the Roof", "Bonjour Tristesse", "The Guns of Navarone", "55 Days in Peking", "The Pink Panther", "Lady L." and with "Casino Royale". In 1959 he reached the peak of his success when he was honored with the Oscar for Best Actor for Separated from Table and Bed. His most beautiful film role was that of "Phileas Fogg" in the Jules Verne film adaptation "Around the World in 80 Days". Niven later demonstrated his enormous skills in many other films. In the 1970s and 1980s he starred in "Vampira", "A Corpse for Dessert", "Death on the Nile", "The Lion Shows its Claws" and in "Grandpa Seldom Comes Alone".
In 1982 and 1983 he had his last two roles in "The Pink Panther is Hunted" and "The Curse of the Pink Panther". Niven retired and lived on the Cote d'Azur and in Switzerland.
David Niven died on July 29, 1983 in Switzerland as a result of the nervous disease ALS. He made part of his inheritance available to medical research.Title: Bring On the Empty Horses
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium
Rating: 7/10
Read the entry above.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Errol Flynn was born to parents Theodore Flynn, a respected biologist, and Marrelle Young, an adventurous young woman. Young Flynn was a rambunctious child who could be counted on to find trouble. Errol managed to have himself thrown out of every school in which he was enrolled. In his late teens he set out to find gold, but instead found a series of short lived odd jobs. Information is sketchy, however the positions of police constable, sanitation engineer, treasure hunter, sheep castrator, ship-master for hire, fisherman, and soldier seem to be among his more reputable career choices. Staying one jump ahead of the law and jealous husbands forced Flynn to England. He took up acting, a pastime he had previously stumbled into when asked to play (ironically) Fletcher Christian in a film called In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). Flynn's natural athletic talent and good looks attracted the attention of Warner Brothers and soon he was off to America. His luck held when he replaced Robert Donat in the title role of Captain Blood (1935). He quickly rocketed to stardom as the undisputed king of adventure films, a title inherited from Douglas Fairbanks, though which remains his to this day. Onscreen, he was the freedom loving rebel, a man of action who fought against injustice and won the hearts of damsels in the process. His off-screen passions; drinking, fighting, boating and sex, made his film escapades seem pale. His love life brought him considerable fame, three statutory rape trials, and a lasting memorial in the expression "In like Flynn". Serious roles eluded him, and as his lifestyle eroded his youthful good looks, his career declined. Troubles with lawsuits and the IRS plagued him at this time, eroding what little money he had saved. A few good roles did come his way late in life, however, these were usually that of aging alcoholic, almost mirror images of Flynn. Regardless of any perceived similarity; he was making a name as a serious actor before his death.Title: My Wicked Wicked Ways
Type: autobiography
Honesty: ??? (possibly quite low)
Rating: 9/10
Rumours had it that Flynn was one of the most notorious pathological liars in Hollywood, and that many of the fanciful recollections of his youth are completely fabricated. This belief existed before he released his book, which was just a year or two before his demise.
Admittedly, the pre-Hollywood section, which takes up a large bulk of the book, plays out like an adventure series. Hence it is a distinct possibility that he made up most of those things i.e. his many adventures across Australia and Asia.
However, I didn't know about this while I was reading it, so I wasn't second-guessing much of it. In fact, this book - whether it be autobiographical or a piece of fiction - is highly entertaining. Just pretend it's all for real and it's a proper romp. Or dismiss it as rubbish and ignore it. Up to you...
He openly reveals his strong communist leanings, which might in fact serve as the strongest proof that he indeed was a pathological liar. Only psychos and fools go for that ideology...
He talked about being room-mates with David Niven, but just like Niven in his two books Errol fails to mention that the reason they fell apart was that Flynn made a pass at him. Flynn was a bisexual, by all accounts... which he never addresses in the book.
Nor does he mention the anecdote when during a big party at his Hollywood estate he took out his genitals and placed them on a plate, to prank the guests with. I read that in another bio on this list, just not sure which one... But it's a safe bet it wasn't in Niven's book.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Spencer Tracy was the second son born on April 5, 1900, to truck salesman John Edward and Caroline Brown Tracy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While attending Marquette Academy, he and classmate Pat O'Brien quit school to enlist in the Navy at the start of World War I. Tracy was still at Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia at the end of the war. After playing the lead in the play "The Truth" at Ripon College he decided that acting might be his career.
Moving to New York, Tracy and O'Brien, who'd also settled on a career on the stage, roomed together while attending the Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1923 both got nonspeaking parts as robots in "R.U.R.", a dramatization of the groundbreaking science fiction novel by Czech author Karel Capek. Making very little money in stock, Tracy supported himself with jobs as bellhop, janitor and salesman until John Ford saw his critically acclaimed performance in the lead role in the play "The Last Mile" (later played on film by Clark Gable) and signed him for The William Fox Film Company's production of Up the River (1930). Despite appearing in sixteen films at that studio over the next five years, Tracy was never able to rise to full film star status there, in large part because the studio was unable to match his talents to suitable story material.
During that period the studio itself floundered, eventually merging with Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph Schenck and William Goetz's William 20th Century Pictures to become 20th Century-Fox). In 1935 Tracy signed with MGM under the aegis of Irving Thalberg and his career flourished. He became the first actor to win back-to-back Best Actor Oscars for Captains Courageous (1937) and, in a project he initially didn't want to star in, Boys Town (1938).
During Tracy's nearly forty-year film career, he was nominated for his performances in San Francisco (1936), Father of the Bride (1950), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Old Man and the Sea (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).
Tracy had a brief romantic relationship with Loretta Young in the mid-1930s, and a lifelong one with Katharine Hepburn beginning in 1942 after they were first paired in Woman of the Year by director George Stevens. Tracy's strong Roman Catholic beliefs precluded his divorcing wife Louise, though they mostly lived apart. Tracy suffered from severe alcoholism and diabetes (from the late 1940s), which led to his declining several tailor-made roles in films that would become big hits with other actors in those roles. Although his drinking problems were well known, he was considered peerless among his colleagues (Tracy had a well-deserved reputation for keeping co-stars on their toes for his oddly endearing scene-stealing tricks), and remained in demand as a senior statesman who nevertheless retained box office clout. Two weeks after completion of Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), during which he suffered from lung congestion, Spencer Tracy died of a heart attack.Title:
Type: biography
Author:
Rating: 7/10
Born in 1900, we get some good insight into the very early era of film-making and Tinseltown.
Despite reading it only a few years ago, I can't recall that much. Definitely worth a read, despite dealing with an actor I don't like that much.
I recall some stuff about his disabled daughter (deafness, I believe i.e. the same affliction as hipsters), his persistent alcoholism, his membership in Hollywood's "Irish gang", but I don't remember that there was that much about Katherine Hepburn, which is just as well because I dislike her both as a person and as an actress. Unlike her, Tracy made it into films from humble beginnings, whereas she is a typical elitist brat who stemmed from wealthy, industrialist, influential and powerful clans... Tinseltown loves those.
No mention (?) either of her lesbianism, so don't expect a super-honest account. Pity, because it's a mystery to me why they lived together for so many years (or hid their "affair"?) when she preferred women, or perhaps was entirely lesbian. This book should have tried to clarify that.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Peter Ustinov was a two-time Academy Award-winning film actor, director, writer, journalist and raconteur. He wrote and directed many acclaimed stage plays and led numerous international theatrical productions.
He was born Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinow on April 16, 1921 in Swiss Cottage, London, the son of Nadezhda Leontievna (née Benois) and Jona Freiherr von Ustinow. His father was of one-quarter Polish Jewish, one-half Russian, one-eighth Ethiopian, and one-eighth German descent, while his mother was of one-half Russian, one-quarter Italian, one-eighth French, and one-eighth German ancestry. Ustinov had ancestral connections to Russian nobility as well as to the Ethiopian Royal Family. His father, also known as "Klop Ustinov", was a pilot in the German Air Force during World War I. In 1919, Jona Freiherr von Ustinow joined his own mother and sister in St Petersburg, Russia, where he met his future wife, artist Nadia Benois, who worked for the Imperial Mariinsky Ballet and Opera House in St Petersburg.
In 1920, in a modest and discreet ceremony at a Russian-German church in St Petersburg, Ustinov's father married Nadia. In February 1921, when she was seven months pregnant with Peter, the couple emigrated from Russia in the aftermath of the Communist Revolution. Young Peter was brought up in a multilingual family. He was fluent in Russian, French, Italian and German, as well as English. He attended Westminster College (1934-37), took the drama and acting class under Michel St Denis at the London Theatre Studio (1937-39), and made his stage debut in 1938 at the Stage Theatre Club in Surrey. He wrote his first play at the age of 19. In 1939, he made his London stage debut in a revue sketch, then had regular performances with the Aylesbury Repertory Company. The following year, he made his film debut in Hullo, Fame! (1940).
From 1942-46, Ustinov served with the British Army's Royal Sussex Regiment. He was batman for David Niven, and the two became lifelong friends. Ustinov spent most of his service working with the Army Cinema Unit, where he was involved in making recruitment films, wrote plays and appeared in three films as an actor. At that time he co-wrote and acted in The Way Ahead (1944) (aka "The Immortal Battalion").
Ustinov had a stellar film career as actor, director, and writer. Among his numerous screen acting gems were his unparalleled, Academy Award-nominated interpretation of Nero in Quo Vadis (1951) and roles in Max Ophüls's masterpiece Lola Montès (1955), Barefoot in Athens (1966), The Comedians (1967), Robin Hood (1973) and Logan's Run (1976). He also wrote and directed such brilliant films as Billy Budd (1962), Lady L (1965) and Memed My Hawk (1984). He was awarded two Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, one for his role in Spartacus (1960) and one for his role in Topkapi (1964), and received two more Oscar nominations as an actor and writer. His career slowed down a bit in the 1970s, but made a comeback as Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile (1978) by director John Guillermin. In the 1980s, Ustinov recreated Poirot in several subsequent television movies and theatrical films, including Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment with Death (1988), while his cinema work in the 1990s also includes his superb performance as Professor Gus Nikolais in George Miller's excellent dramatic film, Lorenzo's Oil (1992), a character partially inspired by Hugo Wolfgang Moser, a research scientist who had been director of the Neurogenetics Research Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.
His expertise in dialectic and physical comedy made him a regular guest of talk show hosts and late-night comedians. His witty and multidimensional humor was legendary, and he later published a collection of his jokes and quotations summarizing his wide popularity as a raconteur. He was also an internationally acclaimed TV journalist. Ustinov covered over 100,000 miles and visited more than 30 Russian cities during the making of his well-received BBC television series Russia (1986).
In his autobiographies, "Dear Me" (1977) and "My Russia" (1996), Ustinov revealed his observations on his life, career, and his multicultural and multi-ethnic background. He wrote and directed numerous stage plays, successfully presenting them in several countries. His drama, "Photo Finish", was staged in New York, London and St. Petersburg, Russia, where Ustinov directed the acclaimed production, starring Elena Solovey and Petr Shelokhonov. Ustinov also served as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF and a president of WFM, a global citizens movement. Ustinov served as Rector of Dundee University for six years. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Royal Society of Arts in 1957 and was knighted in 1990.
From 1971 until his death in 2004, Ustinov's permanent residence was a château in Bursins, Vaud, Switzerland. He died of heart failure on March 28, 2004, in a clinic in Genolier, also in Vaud. His funeral service was held at Geneva's historic Cathedral of St. Pierre, and he was laid to rest in the village cemetery of Bursins. He was survived by three daughters (Tamara, Pavla, and Andrea) and one son (Igor). His epitaph may be gleaned from his comment, "I am an international citizen conceived in Russia, born in England, working in Hollywood, living in Switzerland, and touring the World".Title: Dear Me
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium
Rating: 7/10
The first half, which is about his numerous ancestors and his large family tree, is very interesting, as are the descriptions of his pre-Hollywood era.
Strangely enough, he fails to engage the reader in the stories of the many movies he'd made, and he fails to generate much interest in his co-stars and the directors he worked with, which automatically implies that he may have been hiding a lot of the "dirt" about the other cast hence not being honest enough... If you're going to protect your friends and colleagues this much then you may as well not even bother writing about them, or at least limit the book to only the non-movie stuff.
Perhaps I'm exaggerating, maybe there are some "dirty" details about his fellow thespians and I may have forgotten them, but I recall being a little bored in that 2nd half. I read it over a decade ago so I can't give you any fresh impressions.
What's the point of writing about Hollywood without including a lot of the juicy details about the buffoons and lunatics who work there. Nobody gives a damn about "the craft" or "the method", we want the filth!- Actress
- Writer
- Music Department
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry. Her life and death are still the subjects of much controversy and speculation.
She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl (Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, to American parents from Indiana and Missouri, and was a film-cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. Marilyn's biological father has been established through DNA testing as Charles Stanley Gifford, who had been born in Newport, Rhode Island, to a family with deep roots in the state. Because Gladys was mentally and financially unable to care for young Marilyn, Gladys placed her in the care of a foster family, The Bolenders. Although the Bolender family wanted to adopt Marilyn, Gladys was eventually able to stabilize her lifestyle and took Marilyn back in her care when Marilyn was 7 years old. However, shortly after regaining custody of Marilyn, Gladys had a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was committed to a state mental hospital. Gladys spent the rest of her life going in and out of hospitals and rarely had contact with young Marilyn. Once Marilyn became an adult and celebrated as a film star, she paid a woman by the name of Inez Melson to look in on the institutionalized Gladys and give detailed reports of her progress. Gladys outlived her daughter, dying in 1984.
Marilyn was then taken in by Gladys' best friend Grace Goddard, who, after a series of foster homes, placed Marilyn into the Los Angeles Orphan's Home in 1935. Marilyn was traumatized by her experience there despite the Orphan's Home being an adequate living facility. Grace Goddard eventually took Marilyn back to live with her in 1937 although this stay did not last long as Grace's husband began molesting Marilyn. Marilyn went to live with Grace's Aunt Ana after this incident, although due to Aunt Ana's advanced age she could not care properly for Marilyn. Marilyn once again for the third time had to return to live with the Goddards. The Goddards planned to relocated and according to law, could not take Marilyn with them. She only had two choices: return to the orphanage or get married. Marilyn was only 16 years old.
She decided to marry a neighborhood friend named James Dougherty; he went into the military, she modeled, they divorced in 1946. She owned 400 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA downtown. 20th Century Fox gave her a contract but let it lapse a year later. In 1948, Columbia gave her a six-month contract, turned her over to coach Natasha Lytess and featured her in the B movie Ladies of the Chorus (1948) in which she sang three numbers : "Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy", "Anyone Can Tell I Love You" and "The Ladies of the Chorus" with Adele Jergens (dubbed by Virginia Rees) and others. Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw her in a small part in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and put her in All About Eve (1950) , resulting in 20th Century re-signing her to a seven-year contract. Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) launched her as a sex symbol superstar.
When she went to a supper honoring her in the The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she arrived in a red chiffon gown borrowed from the studio (she had never owned a gown). That same year, she married and divorced baseball great Joe DiMaggio (their wedding night was spent in Paso Robles, California). After The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she wanted serious acting to replace the sexpot image and went to New York's Actors Studio. She worked with director Lee Strasberg and also underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Critics praised her transformation in Bus Stop (1956) and the press was stunned by her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller . True to form, she had no veil to match her beige wedding dress so she dyed one in coffee; he wore one of the two suits he owned. They went to England that fall where she made The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier , fighting with him and falling further prey to alcohol and pills. Two miscarriages and gynecological surgery followed. So had an affair with Yves Montand . Work on her last picture The Misfits (1961) , written for her by departing husband Miller, was interrupted by exhaustion. She was dropped from the unfinished Something's Got to Give (1962) due to chronic lateness and drug dependency.
On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe's day began with threatening phone calls. Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn's physician, came over the following day and quoted later in a document "Felt it was possible that Marilyn had felt rejected by some of the people she had been close to." Apart from being upset that her publicist slept too long, she seemed fine. Pat Newcombe, who had stayed the previous night at Marilyn's house, left in the early evening as did Greenson who had a dinner date. Marilyn was upset he couldn't stay, and around 7:30pm she telephoned him to say that her second husband's son had called her. Peter Lawford also called Marilyn, inviting her to dinner, but she declined. Lawford later said her speech was slurred. As the evening went on there were other phone calls, including one from Jose Belanos, who said he thought she sounded fine. According to the funeral directors, Marilyn died sometime between 9:30pm and 11:30pm. Her maid unable to raise her but seeing a light under her locked door, called the police shortly after midnight. She also phoned Ralph Greenson who, on arrival, could not break down the bedroom door. He eventually broke in through French windows and found Marilyn dead in bed. The coroner stated she had died from acute barbiturate poisoning, and it was a 'probable suicide' though many conspiracies would follow in the years after her death.Title: Norma Jean: The Story Of Marilyn Monroe
Type: biography
Author: Fred Lawrence Guiles
Rating: 8/10
This book had been hanging around for decades until I finally picked up to read it.
A fairly good bio that gives you good insight into what she was really like i.e. extremely confused, fame-obsessed, attention-seeking, quite crazy, very promiscuous (like the rest of them), insecure, self-centered, sometimes hysterical and diva-like, but also funny, sometimes pleasant and charismatic. She wasn't all bad by any means.
Her agent was the much-hated Harry Cohn, notorious for shtooping EVERY ACTRESS (or at least trying to), so it's a fair bet that she did the nasty with him too - which gives you an idea how desperate for glory she must have been.
The book only confirmed my opinion that she wasn't murdered. Whoever claims that she was has absolutely no clue about her. She'd already attempted suicide several times in the years prior, plus she'd been abusing pills and alcohol for years, which never ends well...
Her childhood was a total mess, plenty of chaos there, changing foster homes on a regular basis. There's also the mystery of the identity of her father, which is tackled. 3-4 members of her family on her mother's side had stints in the loony bin, schizophrenia being the main culprit. It is abundantly clear that she had serious mental issues which became much worse as she approached her demise, and which neatly explain her notorious inability (or unwillingness?) to remember her lines.
It is also clear that the Strasbergs had an overall negative influence on her, despite them acting as her "protectors". They were enablers rather than caretakers of this troubled nutcase. Especially Paula Strasberg comes off mostly negatively, and not just in this bio... She comes off even worse in Tony Curtis's book.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Roger Moore will perhaps always be remembered as the man who replaced Sean Connery in the James Bond series, arguably something he never lived down.
Roger George Moore was born on October 14, 1927 in Stockwell, London, England, the son of Lillian (Pope) and George Alfred Moore, a policeman. His mother was born in Calcutta, India, to a British family. Roger first wanted to be an artist, but got into films full time after becoming an extra in the late 1940s. He came to the United States in 1953. Suave, extremely handsome, and an excellent actor, he received a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His initial foray met with mixed success, with movies like Diane (1956) and Interrupted Melody (1955), as well as The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954).
Moore went into television in the 1950s on series such as Ivanhoe (1958) and The Alaskans (1959), but probably received the most recognition from Maverick (1957), as cousin Beau. He received his big breakthrough, at least internationally, as The Saint (1962). The series made him a superstar and he became very successful thereafter. Moore ended his run as the Saint, and was one of the premier stars of the world, but he was not catching on in America. In an attempt to change this, he agreed to star with Tony Curtis on ITC's The Persuaders! (1971), but although hugely popular in Europe, it did not catch on in the United States and was canceled. Just prior to making the series, he starred in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), which proved there was far more to Moore than the light-hearted roles he had previously accepted.
He was next offered and accepted the role of James Bond, and once audiences got used to the change of style from Connery's portrayal, they also accepted him. Live and Let Die (1973), his first Bond movie, grossed more outside of America than Diamonds Are Forever (1971); Connery's last outing as James Bond. He went on to star in another six Bond films, before bowing out after A View to a Kill (1985). He was age 57 at the time the film was made and was looking a little too old for Bond - it was possibly one film too many. In between times, there had been more success with appearances in films such as That Lucky Touch (1975), Shout at the Devil (1976), The Wild Geese (1978), Escape to Athena (1979) and North Sea Hijack (1980).
Despite his fame from the Bond films and many others, the United States never completely took to him until he starred in The Cannonball Run (1981) alongside Burt Reynolds, a success there. After relinquishing his role as Bond, his work load tended to diminish a little, though he did star in the American box office flop Feuer, Eis & Dynamit (1990), as well as the comedy Bullseye! (1990), with Michael Caine. He did the overlooked comedy Bed & Breakfast (1991), as well as the television movie The Man Who Wouldn't Die (1994), and then the major Jean-Claude Van Damme flop The Quest (1996). Moore then took second rate roles such as Spice World (1997), and the American television series The Dream Team (1999). Although his film work slowed down, he was still in the public eye, be it appearing on television chat shows or hosting documentaries.
Roger Moore was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire on December 31, 1998 in the New Years Honours for services to UNICEF, and was promoted to Knight Commander of the same order on June 14, 2003 in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to the charities UNICEF and Kiwanis International.
Roger Moore died of cancer on 23 May, 2017, in Switzerland. He was 89.Title: My Word Is My Bond
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium
Rating: 8/10
I read this several years ago, and while I can't recall that much, I know it was a fun read.
Son of a cop, planed to start an artistic career - and I mean a REAL artistic career - by drawing cartoons, or drawing FOR cartoons, or st of that nature, which was very surprising to read.
Predictably, not much (or any) filth here, so he had nothing bad to say about anybody, except for Jean-Claude van Damme, whom he more-or-less singles out as the most detestable actor he ever had to work with. No details though.
In the David Bowie bio (listed here) someone states that Moore regularly visited Bowie at his Switzerland estate where he allegedly bored the singer with his many Bond stories. Apparently, Bowie felt the need to rat on his friend to his acquaintances, hence how this story went out.- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Steve Martin was born on August 14, 1945 in Waco, Texas, USA as Stephen Glenn Martin to Mary Lee (née Stewart; 1913-2002) and Glenn Vernon Martin (1914-1997), a real estate salesman and aspiring actor. He was raised in Inglewood and Garden Grove in California. In 1960, he got a job at the Magic shop of Disney's Fantasyland, and while there he learned magic, juggling, and creating balloon animals. At Santa Ana College, he took classes in drama and English poetry. He also took part in comedies and other productions at the Bird Cage Theatre, and joined a comedy troupe at Knott's Berry Farm. He attended California State University as a philosophy major, but in 1967 transferred to UCLA as a theatre major.
His writing career began on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967), winning him an Emmy Award. Between 1967 and 1973, he also wrote for many other shows, including The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (1969) and The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour (1971). He also appeared on talk shows and comedy shows in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1972, he first appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), doing stand-up several times each year, and even guest hosting a few years later. In 1976, he served for the first time as guest-host on Saturday Night Live (1975). By 2016, he has guest-hosted 15 times, which is one less than Alec Baldwin's record, and also appeared 12 other times on SNL.
In 1977, he released his first comedy album, a platinum selling "Let's Get Small". He followed it with "A Wild and Crazy Guy" (1978), which sold more than a million copies. Both albums went on to win Grammys for Best Comedy Recording. This is when he performed in arenas in front of tens of thousands of people, and begun his movie career, which was always his goal. His first major role was in the short film, The Absent-Minded Waiter (1977), which he also wrote. His star value was established in The Jerk (1979), which was co-written by Martin, and directed by Carl Reiner. The film earned more than $100 million on a $4 million budget. He also starred in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983), and All of Me (1984), all directed by Reiner. To avoid being typecast as a comedian, he wanted do more dramatic roles, starring in Pennies from Heaven (1981), a film remake of Dennis Potter's 1978 series. Unfortunately, it was a financial failure.
He also starred in John Landis's Three Amigos! (1986), co-written by himself, opposite Martin Short and Chevy Chase. That year, he also appeared in the musical horror comedy, Little Shop of Horrors (1986) opposite Rick Moranis. Next year, he starred in Roxanne (1987), co-written by himself, and in John Hughes' Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), opposite John Candy. His other films include Parenthood (1989) and My Blue Heaven (1990), both opposite Moranis. In 1991, he wrote and starred in L.A. Story (1991), about a weatherman who searches meaning in his life and love in Los Angeles. It also starred his then-wife, Victoria Tennant. Same year, Father of the Bride (1991) was so successful that a 1995 sequel followed.
During the 1990s, he continued to play more dramatic roles, in Grand Canyon (1991), playing a traumatized movie producer, in Leap of Faith (1992), playing a fake faith healer, in A Simple Twist of Fate (1994), playing a betrayed man adopting a baby, and in David Mamet's thriller The Spanish Prisoner (1997). Other, more comedic roles include in HouseSitter (1992) and The Out-of-Towners (1999), opposite Goldie Hawn, in Nora Ephron's Mixed Nuts (1994), and in Bowfinger (1999), written by himself and co-starring Eddie Murphy. After Bowfinger, he starred in Bringing Down the House (2003) and Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), both earning more than $130 million. He wrote and starred in Shopgirl (2005), and appeared in the sequel of Cheaper by the Dozen. After them, he appeared in The Pink Panther (2006) and The Pink Panther 2 (2009), which he both co-wrote, as Inspector Clouseau.
He continues to do movies, more recently appearing in The Big Year (2011), Home (2015), and Love the Coopers (2015). Besides aforementioned, he has been an avid art collector since 1968, written plays, written for The New Yorker, written a well-received memoir (Born Standing Up), written a novel (An Object of Beauty; 2010), hosted the Academy Awards three times, released a Grammy award winning music album (The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo; 2009), and another album (Love Has Come For You; 2013) with Edie Brickell. Since 2007, he has been married to Anne Stringfield, with whom he has a daughter.Title: Born Standing Up
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium
Rating: 5/10
The big problem with this one is that he only discusses his upbringing and the stand-up era. There is nothing about the movies and (practically) nothing about Hollywood.
Steve seems to have grown way too self-important over the years, takes himself a little too seriously. He isn't necessarily pretentious and I wouldn't describe him as arrogant, but for a comedian he does seem to try to intellectualize certain things too much. Given what he is like, which I knew before reading this, I wasn't too surprised that the book turned out to be so dry, relatively speaking. There's some interesting stuff, but for an autobiography of a well-known successful actor this book is definitely sub-par.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, musicians, artists, etc.) but who end up using, scamming and exploiting other people for money as well as using their creative ability (either self-taught or professional training), leading to the production of dull, bland, mediocre, unimaginative, inferior, trite work in the forlorn hope of attaining commercial success. Had Edward D. Wood, Jr. been born a decade or two earlier, it's easy to imagine him working for some Poverty Row outfit in Gower Gulch, competing with the likes of no-talent and no-taste producers and directors--such as Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner and Dwain Esper--for the title of all-time hack. He would have fit in nicely working at Weiss Brothers-Artclass Pictures in the early 1930s in directing low budget Western-themed serials, or directing low budget film noir crime drama features at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) in the following decade from 1940 to 1946. Ed Wood is the probably the most well known of all the Hollywood hacks because he is imprisoned in his own time, and in the 1950s, Ed Wood simply had no competition. He was ignored throughout his spectacularly unsuccessful film making career and died a penniless alcoholic, only to be "rediscovered" when promoters in the early 1980s tagged him "The Worst Director of All Time" (mostly thanks to the Medveds' hilarious book, "Golden Turkey Awards") and he was given the singular honor of a full-length biopic by Tim Burton (Ed Wood (1994)). This post-mortem celebrity has made him infinitely more famous today than he ever was during his lifetime.
Wood was an exceedingly complex person. He was born on October 10, 1924, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 at the height of World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary marine, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater (a transgender, he claimed to have been wearing a bra and panties under his uniform while storming ashore during the bloody beachhead landing at Tarawa in November 1943). He was habitually optimistic, even in the face of the bleak realities that would later consume him. His personality bonded him with a small clique of outcasts who eked out life on the far edges of the Hollywood fringe.
After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, Wood attempted to break into the film industry, initially without success, but in 1952 he landed the chance to direct a film based on the real-life Christine Jorgensen sex-change story, then a hot topic. The result, Glen or Glenda (1953), gave a fascinating insight into Wood's own personality and shed light on his transgender identity (an almost unthinkable subject for an early 1950s mainstream feature). Although devoutly heterosexual, Wood was an enthusiastic cross-dresser, with a particular fondness for angora. On the debit side, though, the film revealed the almost complete lack of talent that would mar all his subsequent films, his tendency to resort to stock footage of lightning during dramatic moments, laughable set design and a near-incomprehensible performance by Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. The film deservedly flopped miserably but Wood, always upbeat, pressed ahead.
Wood's main problem was that he saw himself as a producer-writer-director, when in fact he was spectacularly incompetent in all three capacities. Friends who knew Wood have described him as an eccentric, oddball hack who was far more interested in the work required in cobbling a film project together than in ever learning the craft of film making itself or in any type of realism. In an alternate universe, Wood might have been a competent producer if he had better industry connections and an even remotely competent director. Wood, however, likened himself to his idol, Orson Welles, and became a triple threat: bad producer, poor screenwriter and God-awful director. All of his films exhibit illogical continuity, bizarre narratives and give the distinct impression that a director's job was simply to expose the least amount of film possible due to crushing budget constraints. His magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), features visible wires connected to pie-pan UFOs, actors knocking over cardboard "headstones", cars changing models and years during chase sequences, scenes exhibiting a disturbing lack of handgun safety and the ingenious use of shower curtains in airplane cockpits that have virtually no equipment are just a few of the trademarks of that Edward D. Wood Jr. production. When criticized for their innumerable flaws, Wood would cheerfully explain his interpretation of the suspension of disbelief. It's not so much that he made movies so badly without regard to realism--the amazing part is that he managed to get them made at all.
His previous film with Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (1955), was no better (unbelievably, it somehow managed to earn a small profit during its original release, undoubtedly more of a testament to how cheaply it was produced than its value as entertainment), and Wood only shot a few seconds of silent footage of Lugosi (doped and dazed, wandering around the front yard of his house) for "Plan 9" before the actor died in August 1956. What few reviews the film received were brutal. Typically undaunted, Wood soldiered on despite incoherent material and a microscopic budget, peopling it with his regular band of mostly inept actors. Given the level of dialog, budget and Wood's dismal directorial abilities, it's unlikely that better actors would have made much of a difference (lead actor Gregory Walcott made his debut in this film and went on to have a very respectable career as a character actor, but was always embarrassed by his participation in this film)--in fact, it's the film's semi-official status as arguably the Worst Film Ever Made that gives it its substantial cult following. The film, financed by a local Baptist congregation led by Wood's landlord, reaches a plateau of ineptitude that tends to leave viewers open-mouthed, wondering what is it they just saw. "Plan 9" became, whether Wood realized it or not, his singular enduring legacy. Ironically, the rights to the film were retained by the church and it is unlikely that Wood ever received a dime from it; his epic bombed upon release in 1959 and remained largely forgotten for years to come.
After this career "peak," Wood went into, relatively speaking, a decline. Always an "enthusiastic"--for lack of a better word--drinker, his alcohol addiction worsened in the 1960s due to his depression of not achieving the worldwide fame he had always sought. He began to draw away from film directing and focused most of his time on another profession: writing. Beginning in the early 1960s up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex paperback novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers. Thirty-two stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") are collected in 'Blood Splatters Quickly', published by OR Books in 2014. Novels include Black Lace Drag (1963) (reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968), The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade (1970), The Only House in Town (1970), Necromania (1971), The Undergraduate (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973) and Fugitive Girls (1974).
In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir 'Hollywood Rat Race', which was eventually published in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.
In the 1970s, Wood directed a number of undistinguished softcore and later hardcore adult porno films under various aliases, one of which is the name "Akdov Telmig" ("vodka gimlet" spelled backwards; it helps to imagine that you're a boozy dyslexic, as Ed Wood was). His final years were spent largely drunk in his apartment and occasionally being rolled stumbling out of a local liquor store. Three days before his death, Wood and his wife Kathy were evicted from their Hollywood apartment due to failure to pay the rent and moved into a friend's apartment shortly before his death on the afternoon of December 10, 1978, at age 54. He had a heart attack and died while drinking in bed.
Due to his recent resurgence in popularity, many of his equally interesting transgender - themed sex novels have been republished. The gravitational pull of Planet Angora remains quite strong.Title: Nightmare of Ecstasy: Ed Wood
Type: biography
Author: Rudolph Grey
Rating: 10/10
I have a German copy of this, and it's totally worn out coz I'd carried it around so many times. Just as I'd watched "Plan 9" numerous times.
So why is it so great?
Firstly, because the entire book consists only of quotes from numerous interviews of people who knew him (just like Bowie's book on this list) - instead of the usual BS analysis from some journalist who didn't even know the person, or only barely. These people all knew him i.e. almost no BS from critics or whomever.
Secondly, because his life was much more unique and crazy than that of most celebs, and that is saying a lot.
Not a dull moment on these pages, highly recommended. Especially for fans of his films, goes without saying...- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Stephen Philip Jones, was born on September 3rd, 1955 in West London. His real father, an amateur boxer, named Don Jarvis left Steve and his mother when he was just two years old. Sometime later his Step-father arrived on the scene, for a time, Steve lived in a house with his parents and grandparents, and at the age of 12 moved to a one-bedroomed basement flat with his mother and step-father, in Shepherds Bush. He didn't have a happy childhood and felt that his mother hated him. He didn't want to get a job and at the age of 16, his step-father threw him out of the family home, for that very reason. By this time, Jones already had a criminal record dating back to 1968 and had spent a year and a half in a reform school. This did little to thwart his criminal intentions. By the age of 18, he was not far off ending up in jail. Realising that music was his only way out of the life he hated, he started up a band. In 1972 Q.T. Jones and the Sex Pistols were formed, Just a few years later, with a line-up change, a switch to guitar from vocals for Jones and the name cut in half, Jones would be part of what were once one of the most notorious bands in the UK at that time. The break-up of the Pistols led to drug problems for Jones, most notably an addiction to Heroin, which would last until 1987, until Jones got himself clean and started work on his very first solo album. 1989 gave us a second and Jones continued his work within the music scene until 1996 when not only did he have the Neurotic Outsiders, but also the Sex Pistols re-united for a world tour. Steve has had the opportunity to showcase his acting skills, in four films, in recent years. He is also a football player for Hollywood UTD and continues to produce various bands.Title: Lonely Boy
Type: autobiography
Honesty: high
Rating: 9/10
Finished reading this a few weeks ago (early 2023).
As I'd expected, this is a no-holds-barred account, with the only self-censorship being in form of Steve occasionally refusing to name some names, either for fear of being sued or because he wants to avoid feuds and arguments with some people, as he explains. Pity, because some of these mystery people just beg to be revealed.
How honest is he?
Well, let's just say he admits to having had oral sex with men, on a few occasions, which is something I definitely didn't expect from this bio.
He also goes at length about his poverty, turbulent childhood, and especially about his very lengthy heroin addiction. He saw first-hand what heroin did to Sid, yet he started doing it too, AFTERWARD. So no, Steve isn't the brightest cookie on the planet, but then he'd be the first one to admit to this.
His descriptions of the other band members are to the point, very frank, hence interesting. He has both positive and negative things to say about Sid, Lydon, McLaren and Matlock, only positive about his "mate" Cook.
Also exposed is his pathological thievery. He stole from many people, including Pamela des Barres (on this list), Keith Richards, and Bowie. He was a bonafide small-time thief, and it's a wonder he never got a lengthy prison sentence. He was literally a criminal-in-the-making, with the Pistols only derailing him somewhat from that path, and briefly.
His music taste is weak, to say the least. He comments negatively on thrash metal, on The Exploited, on GBH and The Police, yet gave compliments to crap such as Velvet Underground, The New York Dolls, and some other rubbish bands from the 70s.- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Dave Mustaine was born on 13 September 1961 in La Mesa, California, USA. He is an actor and composer, known for Last Action Hero (1993), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997). He has been married to Pamela Anne Casselberry since 3 March 1991. They have two children.Title: A Heavy Metal Memoir
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium-high
Rating: 9/10
I listened to an audio-book version, very unfortunately narrated/read by some corny Mustaine impersonator. At first I was very reluctant to listen to it because the voice annoyed me so much, but eventually I got used to it (more-or-less) and I believe I heard the entire thing. Not sure... I may have omitted the last few chapters.
This was years ago so I can't comment much. Mustaine is open and outspoken, as was to be expected, and gives his version of the 80s, which has to be taken with a grain of salt, given that his accounts don't always match with those of various Metallica members (not counting Lars, whom nobody trusts at all anyway), and the fact that he was so often out of it on drugs and drunk that his recollections have to be questioned, by default.
Besides, there's the huge ego issue, which prevents Dave from being entirely honest (with himself and others) on occasion.- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Jay Leno began his career in night clubs, where he worked 300 nights a year before hitting it big in 1992 with his own late-night talk show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992). By that time he had appeared on television, acted in a few films (American Hot Wax (1978)) but hit paydirt with his late-night television appearances (he made a record number of visits to [error]); for several years, he served as Johnny Carson's permanent guest host on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962). A big, sweet guy with a very good comedy routine, he vied with David Letterman to inherit Carson's seat when Johnny retired in 1992. His victory was well-publicized, but empty, though he did gain a measure of revenge when his show beat Letterman's for the Emmy in 1995. Though he consistently lost in the ratings to Letterman except on special occasions, like Hugh Grant's first TV appearance after his encounter with Divine Brown, he surged ahead in 1996, as CBS plunged further into oblivion.Title: Leno
Type: autobiography
Honesty: ?
Rating: N/A
I read this in the 90s when someone borrowed it to me, so there is literally nothing I can recall. Except that it was a solid read, nothing spectacular.
Most of what I know about Jay now is what I read from "The War For Late Night", half of which I'd read very recently, but a book which I had to abandon because its author Bill Carter is such a liberal try-hard, who can't help himself from injecting biased political commentary whenever he can, despite the fact that American politics has zero to do with the Late Night wars and feuds. He writes for the New York Times, so it's really no wonder... The book was gifted to me, I would never have paid a dinari for it.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz, the eldest of three children of Helen (Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Curtis himself admits that while he had almost no formal education, he was a student of the "school of hard knocks" and learned from a young age that the only person who ever had his back was himself, so he learned how to take care of both himself and younger brother, Julius. Curtis grew up in poverty, as his father, Emanuel, who worked as a tailor, had the sole responsibility of providing for his entire family on his meager income. This led to constant bickering between Curtis's parents over money, and Curtis began to go to movies as a way of briefly escaping the constant worries of poverty and other family problems. The financial strain of raising two children on a meager income became so tough that in 1935, Curtis's parents decided that their children would have a better life under the care of the state and briefly had Tony and his brother admitted to an orphanage. During this lonely time, the only companion Curtis had was his brother, Julius, and the two became inseparable as they struggled to get used to this new way of life. Weeks later, Curtis's parents came back to reclaim custody of Tony and his brother, but by then Curtis had learned one of life's toughest lessons: the only person you can count on is yourself.
In 1938, shortly before Tony's Bar Mitzvah, tragedy struck when Tony lost the person most important to him when his brother, Julius, was hit by a truck and killed. After that tragedy, Curtis's parents became convinced that a formal education was the best way Tony could avoid the same never-knowing-where-your-next-meal-is-coming-from life that they had known. However, Tony rejected this because he felt that learning about literary classics and algebra wasn't going to advance him in life as much as some real hands-on life experience would. He was to find that real-life experience a few years later, when he enlisted in the navy in 1942. Tony spent over two years getting that life experience doing everything from working as a crewman on a submarine tender, the USS Proteus (AS-19), to honing his future craft as an actor performing as a sailor in a stage play at the Navy Signalman School in Illinois.
In 1945, Curtis was honorably discharged from the navy, and when he realized that the GI Bill would allow him to go to acting school without paying for it, he now saw that his lifelong pipe dream of being an actor might actually be achievable. Curtis auditioned for the New York Dramatic Workshop, and after being accepted on the strength of his audition piece (a scene from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in pantomime), Curtis enrolled in early 1947. He then began to pay his dues by appearing in a slew of stage productions, including "Twelfth Night" and "Golden Boy". He then connected with a small theatrical agent named Joyce Selznick, who was the niece of film producer David O. Selznick. After seeing his potential, Selznick arranged an interview for Curtis to see David O. Selznick at Universal Studios, where Curtis was offered a seven-year contract. After changing his name to what he saw as an elegant, mysterious moniker--"Tony Curtis" (named after the novel Anthony Adverse (1936) by Hervey Allen and a cousin of his named Janush Kertiz)--Curtis began making a name for himself by appearing in small, offbeat roles in small-budget productions. His first notable performance was a two-minute role in Criss Cross (1949), with Burt Lancaster, in which he makes Lancaster jealous by dancing with Yvonne De Carlo. This offbeat role resulted in Curtis's being typecast as a heavy for the next few years, such as playing a gang member in City Across the River (1949).
Curtis continued to build up a show reel by accepting any paying job, acting in a number of bit-part roles for the next few years. It wasn't until late 1949 that he finally got the chance to demonstrate his acting flair, when he was cast in an important role in an action western, Sierra (1950). On the strength of his performance in that movie, Curtis was finally cast in a big-budget movie, Winchester '73 (1950). While he appears in that movie only very briefly, it was a chance for him to act alongside a Hollywood legend, James Stewart.
As his career developed, Curtis wanted to act in movies that had social relevance, ones that would challenge audiences, so he began to appear in such movies as Spartacus (1960) and The Defiant Ones (1958). He was advised against appearing as the subordinate sidekick in Spartacus (1960), playing second fiddle to the equally famous Kirk Douglas. However, Curtis saw no problem with this because the two had recently acted together in dual leading roles in The Vikings (1958).Title: American Prince
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium-high
Rating: 10/10
I completed this one quite recently, and I knew it would be a great read before starting it.
Bernie's career covers practically all the most interesting film eras, predominantly the 50s and 60s, plus to a much lesser extent the 70s and 80s. He was mostly inactive film-wise during the 90s.
Very honest in terms of his numerous sexual exploits, though not in graphic detail. One could argue that this wasn't so much honesty as it was boasting, and one might be correct, because Schwarz was very eager to mention each actress he had an affair with, and by affair I mostly mean one-offs. I mean, these Hollywood actors and actresses are like animals in a zoo with the cages all open, it's a total free-for-all, like an endless orgy that often doesn't even involve courtship, but almost immediate sex, right there and then, literally like chimps. Obviously, he doesn't mention every woman he was with, because there were numerous starlets and non-show-biz women he had as well that weren't relevant enough to include.
For example, Natalie Wood, whom he had sex with spontaneously, without even exchanging a word. He also had a strange semi-friendship with Monroe, over a decade before they did "Some Like It Hot", when they were both unknowns, just starting out.
Of the 6 marriages he had he talks in relative detail about 5 of them, completely omitting his 4th or 5th wife. Probably for legal reasons.
Then again, he has another autobiography, in which he may have discussed certain things not mentioned in this one.
There are some very amusing anecdotes, for example the one about how he pranked Yul Brynner, who couldn't stand Curtis. There is also a longer description of Sinatra, who comes off as an egomaniac with a "positive" side to him, though I prefer to define him as just an egomaniac - with life-long contacts to the mob. Curtis does mention powerful mobster Sam Giancana and Frank's business dealings with him. And how a young and very naive Shirley MacLaine once pointed a toy pistol at Sam - then had a real gun pointed back at her. No wonder Shirley's a liberal... Who would point a gun at a mobster, as a joke?
Curtis's formative years are very interesting too. Born in poverty and depressing family conditions, he actually was thrilled to join the Navy in 1942, just so he could escape from home. At the age of 16 or 17. That tells you how much he hated his civilian life.
There's also a decade-long cocaine addiction he discusses at length. He fails to mention, however, that he sniffed coke with his daughter Janet, according to her. Apparently, the two didn't get along that well.
Curtis writes simply, unpretentiously, and gets down to business without unnecessary BS.- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
John Joseph Lydon, more popularly known by his former stage name, Johnny Rotten, is an English singer, songwriter and author. He is best known as the frontman of the British punk band Sex Pistols, one of the most influential acts in the history of popular music. The band originally lasted from 1975 to 1978, but had various revivals during the 1990s and 2000s. John is also the lead singer of the avant-garde post-punk band Public Image Ltd (PiL), which he founded and fronted from 1978 to 1993, and again since 2009.
Known for his no-nonsense way of talking, rebellious image and fashion style, Lydon was seen as a figurehead of the burgeoning punk movement in the 1970s, and, having been a prominent figure in British popular culture for over four decades, in 2002 he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.Title: No Irish No Blacks No Dogs
Type: autobiography
Honesty: medium high
Rating: 9/10
I am a real idiot for giving this book away. Because I'd love to re-read it. It's a very interesting take on the 70s, obviously with no punches pulled - as expected. I'd read it in the 90s so I can't say more than that, except that in Steve Jones's book, which I'd recently finished, he claims that Lydon falsely described an episode in which he, Steve, allegedly did the nasty in Glen's sandwich. The notorious Sandwich Incident.
Lydon had spent quite a while in a coma as a youngster, then another year bed-ridden, if I recall well. Unlike Bowie who flat-out lied about his "working-class roots", Lydon really was lower-class, hence made it against the odds, just like the rest of the band.