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A self-defined "seductress of beautiful women" and the by-product of an immense fortune, lesbian activist Mercedes de Acosta (born in 1892) was descended from Spain''s Dukes of Alba and a beneficiary of the best education and best social skills that her parents'' Gilded Age fortune could buy. From her perch within the aristocracy of the Belle ├ëpoque, and continuing as an arts-industry "swinger" until her death in 1968, she  became notorious for seducing-and describing to socialites on both sides of the Atlantic-at least a dozen women who fast-evolved into the most widely publicized and romantically "unattainable" celebrities in the world. During her heyday-the sexually permissive "Pre-Code" free-for-all of the Silent Screen and Hollywood''s early talkies-her lovers included the self-enchanted silent screen mogul, Nazimova; the "live fast and die young" tragedienne Jeanne Eagels; the blue-blooded aristocrat of the Jazz Age Broadway stage, Katharine Cornell; the most famous film goddess of the 30s and early 40s (Greta Garbo); and at least a dozen others. Within the deeply entrenched, phobically closeted lesbian circles of America''s mid-century, Mercedes become quirkily famous as "Hollywood''s Greatest Lover."         One of her paramours, the German-born bisexual Marlene Dietrich, put Mercedes'' promiscuous indiscretions into context: "During Germany''s Weimar Republic (1919-1933), in Paris, London, Berlin, and in the dives and cabarets of Hollywood and New York,  promiscuity was rampant and without any particular preference for any specific gender."     In 1960, Mercedes published a "watered down" memoir (Here Lies the Heart) that instantly became notorious. In it, she "outed" many of her same-sex partners. A few years later-aging, crippled, blind in one eye, and desperately in need of money, she sold, for publication, some of the love letters addressed to her decades ago from, among others, Greta Garbo. And near the end of her life, within his home (historic Magnolia House on Staten Island), she was frank, unvarnished, and unapologetic during extensive interviews with film historian Darwin Porter, the co-author of this book.      Suspecting that one day he might pass on some of the secrets she revealed, she cautioned him, "Don''t be vulgar, dear, and promise me that you won''t publish anything while my friends are still alive."     Porter honored her request by waiting until 2020 to release this astonishing insight into the underground lesbian contexts of the stage, screen, and publishing scenes of the first half of "The American Century."   No other book has ever interconnected so many dots. No one, until now, has ever had the courage.  

For millions of fans, Judy Garland will forever remain a relentlessly cheerful adolescent (Dorothy) skipping along a yellow brick road toward the other side of the rainbow. Liza followed her down that hallucinogenic path, searching for the childhood, the security, and the love that eluded her. Ferociously loyal but fiercely competitive, they live, laugh, and weep again in the tear-soaked pages of this remarkable biography from the entertainment industry's most prolific archivists, Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince.

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher were the greatest mother-daughter act in show business.Born in a shanty in El Paso, Texas, Debbie, a Texas tomboy, endured a life of poverty¿jackrabbit every night for dinner¿until she moved to California.Blossoming into a young beauty, she won the title of Miss Burbank, which led to a movie contract. Stardom came relatively quickly when she was cast as the minty fresh ingénue in Singin' in the Rain (1952), hailed as the greatest Hollywood musical of all time. Frank Sinatra stole her virginity, but she married pop singer Eddie Fisher for the ¿official deflowering¿ (her words). ¿Debbie and Eddie,¿ the darling of fan magazines, reigned as ¿America's Sweethearts.¿The fairytale ended when his best friend, producer Mike Todd, died in a plane crash. Fisher rushed to the side of his widow, the violet-eyed screen vamp, Elizabeth Taylor. He descended from Maggie the Cat's Hot Tin Roof into her boudoir. His divorce from Debbie and his subsequent marriage to her best friend provided fodder for the scandal magazines until the day Elizabeth provoked another scandal, divorcing him to marry Richard Burton. Through storm and rain, Debbie battled on, hitting a high point when she starred as Tammy in 1957, cast as the granddaughter of a Louisiana moonshiner, spouting pithy wisdom. ¿I'll be singing my hit song on stage for the rest of my years.¿Her most memorable role was in 1964, when she was cast in the rags-to riches saga of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. (She even survived the sinking of the Titanic.) The role brought her an Oscar nomination. Each of her three marriages was a disaster, the second one to a millionaire shoe manufacturing mogul who bankrupted both of them. Impoverished after the divorce, she ended up sleeping in her car. Debbie mingled with the élite of Hollywood in the dying days of its Golden Age. Luminaries included Clark Gable (¿if I were only twenty years younger¿.); Judy Garland (who propositioned her); Lana Turner; Bette Davis (¿she was my daughter¿); Katharine Hepburn; Spencer Tracy; Lucille Ball; and Glenn Ford, who fell in love with her. Mass murderer Charles Manson sent her love letters; Liberace wanted her to enter into a ¿lavender marriage¿ with him, and James Dean ¿forced himself onto me¿ when she was up for the role of his girlfriend in Rebel Without a Cause.¿I turned down Warren Beatty,¿ Debbie claimed, ¿and didn't even go for the handsome Gary Cooper, although he told me women called him `The Montana Mule.' Bob Hope, a compulsive womanizer, also had to look elsewhere.¿A rebellious daughter, Carrie grew up to endure a life of living hell¿pill popping, drug abuse, chronic anxiety, failed love affairs, bipolar disorder, and electroshock therapy. Carrie sometimes protested: ¿I don't want to be the daughter of Debbie Reynolds. I battled demons that set my brain on fire.¿International celebrity came in 1977, when she played Princess Leia in Star Wars as an elaborately coiffed intergalactic princess, spearheading ¿The Force,¿ and strong enough to oppose the villainy of Darth Vader. She became the fantasy of teenage boys and sci-fi freaks.A love affair with the married Harrison Ford faded into a marriage to singer Paul Simon as they crossed a Bridge Over Troubled Waters. A final marriage to a Hollywood agent ended when he decided he needed not a wife, but a husband for himself. The princess turned writer in a series of autobiographical books praised for their lacerating insights into human frailty and awash with bubble and bounce, sprinkled with bons mots, an adroit verbal acrobat with words. The New York Times defined her as ¿one of the rare inhabitants of La-La Land who can actually write.¿In Carrie's writings, Debbie often didn't come out too well, depicted as a ¿casually narcissistic gorgon ill-suited for the real world.¿ As her star dimmed, cooled, and faded, mother took to the bottle.Until the end, Debbie was resilient, a singing, dancing, sensation of massive talent, a button-nosed, boop-boopie-doo girl for six decades. She never lost her ¿Debbie-ness,¿ strutting her stuff, emoting like a storm¿everything sprinkled with the stardust of yesterday. What was her secret of perpetual youth? Carrie knew: ¿She drank bat's blood for breakfast and smeared bug brains on her skin.¿Reconciled after years of separation, Carrie and Debbie came together at the end, not able to live apart. They couldn't even die without each other. Their fans like to think they're doing fine today in some galaxy far, far away.

After Betty Grable, but before there was Marilyn, America's penchant for popcorn blondes focused on LANA, the "ultimate movie star." She had it all: Looks to die for, money to burn, the romantic adulation of the world, and lovers who included the world's most desirable men. In her 1937 film,They Won't Forget,a 16-year-old Lana, without wearing a brassière, walked down the street with her boobs bouncing. Censors protested, but when it was shown, America cheered and nicknamed her ¿The Sweater Girl.¿ From there, Lana competed with Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth as the pre-eminent pinup girl (¿so many men, so little time¿) of World War II. Horny GIs referred to her as ¿the Girl We'd Like to Find in Every Port.¿ From the start, her private life was marked with scandal: She aborted Mickey Rooney's baby; seduced a young John F. Kennedy; and fell for Frank Sinatra, who later caught her in bed with another love goddess, Ava Gardner. In the early 1940s, after a nationwide campaign promoting the sale of War Bonds, Carole Lombard frantically boarded a small plane headed back to Hollywood, suffering a fiery death when it crashed within 13 minutes of takeoff. The risk she took during that thunderstorm was motivated, it was said, by her obsession with rescuing her husband, Clark Gable, from the amorous clutches of Lana Turner. Tyrone Power¿tall, dark, photogenic, and famous¿eventually evolved into the greatest love of her life until the Aviator, Howard Hughes, arguably the most psychotic billionaire in the history of Hollywood, flew in to seduce both of them. Lana (aka¿The Ziegfeld Girl¿) didn't hearThe Postman Always Rings Twicebecause she was in bed with John Garfield. Later, in search of love, she spent aWeekend at the Waldorfbefore moving toGreen Dolphin Streetand later to the notoriousPeyton Place,she found it during an experiment with an Imitation of Life. Gable took her to aHonky Tonkand vowed, ¿Somewhere I'll Find You,¿ before theirHomecomingreunion. With Ray Milland, she foundA Life of Her Ownbefore dancing toThe Merry Widowwaltz with sexy Fernando Lamas. Many notoriously hot men¿many of them her filmmaking co-stars¿lay in her future: Richard Burton, Sean Connery, and Errol ¿in like Flynn.¿ Samson (Victor Mature) was said to be ¿Lana's Biggest Thrill.¿ Lana rescued Peter Lawford from Elizabeth Taylor; Ricky Ricardo from Lucy; and, when not singingamorewith Dean Martin, Kirk Douglas learned that she wasBad and Beautifulboth on and off the screen. "The bombshell" once said, ¿I wanted one husband and seven babies, but I got the reverse¿seven husbands and an only child!¿ She married Tarzan(Lex Barker) after his designation as ¿The Sexiest Man in the World,¿ but the union ended when she caught him seducing her teenaged daughter. Opinions about Lana were as varied as her changing looks. ¿She was amoral,¿ said MGM's CEO, Louis B. Mayer. Robert Taylor commented: ¿She was the type of woman a guy would risk five years in jail for rape.¿ Gloria Swanson sniffed, ¿She wasn't even an actress¿only a trollop.¿ And Ronald Reagan--a man who later became U.S. president--asked, ¿In what cathouse did she learn those tricks?¿ And then there was that embarrassing murder: Did Lana fatally stab her gangster lover, Johnny Stompanato, known for his links to the Mob? Or was the heinous act committed by her daughter, a traumatized teenager who, after time in reform school, officially outed herself as a lesbian? How did these whirlwinds of scandal affect the gal who had it all? According to Lana, ¿I'd like to think that in some small way, I've helped to preserve the glamour and beauty and mystery of the movie industry.¿Never before has there been, until now, a definitive, uncensored, and comprehensive biography of "the Ultimate Movie Star," LANA TURNER. Until now.

On the campus of Yale University, in 1970, an "odd couple," Hillary Rodham and Bill ("Bubba") Clinton, came together at a Mark Rothko exhibit at the Yale Art Museum. Before the end of that rainy afternoon, they had formed an unbreakable bond forged while they rested on the seat of a Henry Moore sculpture. They were from completely different worlds¿he, a populist from a poverty-stricken background in Arkansas; she, a former "Goldwater Girl" and conservative Republican gradually moving into the liberal camp. As he sat beside her, holding her hand, she gazed into the eyes of this 210-pound, orange-bearded "Viking," tall and scruffy looking, with an Elvis drawl. He¿d later jokingly claim, "I identified with Elvis since both of us had hillbilly peckers."Freshly emerged from Wellesley College, with its "coven of lesbians," she was a budding feminist¿pimply faced, wearing no makeup but with Mr. Magoo eyeglasses, and walking around on chubby legs. He had all the pretty women he wanted. What he was looking for was a woman with a "sense of strength and self-possession¿all in all, that afternoon, I knew I¿d found my Evita."He confided to her that since the age of seven, he had only one abiding ambition¿and that was to be the President of the United States. He promised her, "If elected, I will pave the way for you to become the first woman president. You can follow after my administration." He held out the prospect of making her the most powerful woman on the planet. As she recalled, "I was giddy with emotion."It took a while, but he finally lured her to Arkansas, which she interpreted as "on the other side of the moon."Crossing the welcome mat at his Scully Street house, she came face to face with her future mother-in-law, Virginia Cassidy Blyth, Clinton, Dwire, Kelley. She stood in the kitchen in her stiletto heels evocative of a drag revue, wearing garish lipstick¿"the brighter the better"¿and a tight "Dinah Dors" sweater. As Virginia recalled, "It was an immovable object colliding with an irresistible force. I extended my hand to this Chicago carpetbagger with coke bottle glasses.""I¿m going to marry this gal," Bubba announced. "She¿s going to become the First Lady of Arkansas."In the days ahead, Hillary was introduced to other members of this "white trash family" known for its divorces, violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, adultery, and promiscuity. He told her, "I¿m a bastard. My father, William Jefferson Blythe, III, had not divorced his wife when he married mama. I took the last name of another husband, Roger Clinton."Before the end of the first day of her inaugural meeting with Hillary, Virginia warned her, "Put a lock on your lingerie. Otherwise, you¿ll find Bill dressing up in your finery after midnight."Their trail to the White House began in Arkansas, with Hillary helping direct her sex-crazed Bubba into the governor¿s seat. "With my back-up, he pursued his dream while I was also chasing a dream of my own. Women can dream harder than any man¿in fact, being what they are, I don¿t understand why women don¿t turn lesbian."Through the tides of the wars to come, both Hillary and Bill learned that love was a creature of many faces, with ever-changing rules and compromises on the road to their horizon. Often threatening divorce, she remained at his side, interpreting his affairs as minor annoyances. On their stormy seas, they sailed through triumph and tragedy, setbacks and comebacks, the good years and the bad ones, bimbo eruptions, serial infidelities, near bankruptcy with crippling legal bills, impeachment, the stockpiling of post-Presidential millions, and surviving vitriolic scorn that rivaled that of Dr. Goebbels against the Jews. They faced maddening failures and stunning achievements, their love and loyalty enduring through hurricane winds. She was at his side as the sex-crazed Arkansas Bubba became the notorious "Slick Willie," eventually morphing into "The 21st Century's Greatest Living Elder Statesman."Hillary herself began her own road to the White House (actually, she had already been there for eight years as First Lady), with stints as a Senator from New York, a failed presidential candidate, and a globe-trotting Secretary of State. She also became one of the country¿s leading Democratic visionaries, admired by millions. Of course, that provoked Apocalyptic attacks from her enemies, Senator Mitch McConnell, Senior Republican Senator from Kentucky, trumpeting, "If given power in 2016, she¿ll lead us to the Gates of Hell."One night on Marthäs Vineyard, Hillary had a candid talk with a former First Lady, Jackie Kennedy Onassis. "Bill is a charismatic politician, but also deeply flawed. He has such charm you can always forgive him.""I know of such men," Jackie said, no doubt recalling her own years with another charismatic president."You had Marilyn Monroe to compete with. I have a lesser light¿Sharon Stone. Bill was hopelessly gone when she crossed her legs in Basic Instinct.¿"***Hundreds of tantalizing anecdotes fill this book from a writing team already famous for its exposés of both the Kennedys and the Reagans.As Hillary stares into her uncertain future, she claims, "Before the arrival of the Grim Reaper, Bill and I will change history¿for the better, of course."So This Is That Thing Called Love is not a treatise about politics. It¿s a love story probing the boundaries of a relationship between two people who are committed to each other despite the vagaries of life, come what may. What a ride it¿s already been, with more "Second Coming Headlines" looming in the years ahead. There will definitely be a second act for this pair. As a critic who despises Hillary, but only in private, First Lady Michelle Obama said, "Hillary¿s story won¿t be over until the Fat Lady sings."

Presents the biography of Michael Jackson with a roster of literary reviews that outnumber and outclass any other MJ bio on the market.

Zsa Zsa, Eva, and Magda Gabor transferred their glittery dreams and gold-digging ambitions from the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Hollywood. This book demonstrates that wit, charm, ruthlessness, and beauty can indeed go a long way toward the realization of the American Dream.

Born to a vagabond bookie working the U.K's racetracks, the author became the notorious sailor in Her Majesty's Royal Navy, and then worked as a street vendor, a paparazzo, a newsman, and a steeplejack before drifting into the London theatre.