Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Entertainment & Celebrities

Revlon's C.E.O., financier Ronald O. Perelman is one of the richest men in America. Watched by the financial community with interest, Perelman has built a personal business empire worth an estimated $6 billion over the past 15 years. Linked to society's most dazzling beauties, Perelman owns palatial estates in Palm Beach, East Hampton, Manhattan, Sun Valley and Bel Air, as well as an impressive art collection, a fleet of automobiles and two G-4 jets.

The attraction of opera is in its scale, in the fact that it is larger than real life in actions and emotions, more magnificent in sound and in sight. And in the world of opera, no figure in our time loomed larger than the late Luciano Pavarotti. Especially in his triumphant collaborations with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, he captured the imagination of an audience breadth and depth is remarkable even in the grand context of classical opera.

When Dave Barry goes mano a mano with the Information Superhighway, it's guaranteed to be a rip-roaring adventure. This self-proclaimed computer geek and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist starts with the motto, "Never read the instructions," and slides from there into the world of hardware, software, Windows 95, and the critical issue of RAM ("the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM").

Before she became a teenager, Elizabeth Taylor was already a star, appearing in such films as Lassie Come Home and National Velvet. One of the few child actors to transition to a successful film career as an adult, Taylor starred in such classics as Father of the Bride, A Place in the Sun, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In addition to receiving two Academy Awards, Taylor led a tumultuous personal life that kept her in the headlines for decades.

Here is the definitive autobiography of one of the most famous personalities in television history - an intimate, revealing, and riveting memoir that will show a Larry King the world has never known, up close and personal. For a half-century, the world's most influential figures have been telling their story to Larry King. Now the man in suspenders shares his inspiring story, from his humble roots in Depression-era Brooklyn to the heights of celebrity as host of CNN's Larry King Live.

In December 1917, Vaslav Nijinsky, the most famous male dancer in the Western world, moved into a Swiss villa with his wife and three-year-old daughter and began to go mad. A prodigy from his youth in Russia, Nijinsky came to international fame as a principal dancer in Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. When psychosis struck, he began to imagine himself as married to God. Although he lived another 30 years, he never regained his sanity. This diary is Nijinsky's confession and his prophecy, the only sustained, on-the-spot account we have by a major artist of entering psychosis.

Dublin-born actor Gabriel Byrne shares his life in this frank and absorbing collection of memories and episodes. He leads you from his youth through his career on stage and screen and his current work as a producer and actor. His unique narrative style, a blend of colloquial dialogue with evocative descriptions, provides an intimate account of the man - and the writer - behind the actor's many faces.

Their love was both passionate and full of hope, yet ultimately hopeless. This is the true story of the love between a man and a woman — a romance doomed from the start — besieged by media and public opinion on the world stage. The woman was Diana, the Princess of Wales; the man was Captain James Hewitt. Their love affair lasted for nearly five years and is a story of support, encouragement, and love — but alas, one that didn' t result in a fairy tale ending.

Sit right back and take a nostalgic, first-hand look into the world of Gilligan's Island— everything you ever wanted to know about the show from the Professor himself, Russell Johnson. Directly from the ship's log, Johnson takes you to the day when Sherwood Schwartz shipwrecked seven strangers on a tiny desert isle—and America hasn't been the same since.

Famously neurotic comedian Richard Lewis finds himself on a gurney in the ER at the age of 44, hallucinating from excess cocaine use and his body poisoned by acute alcoholism. The same dysfunctions that had been the basis for his successful stage persona and inspired his best material had, it seemed, turned on him. In this very funny, deeply honest, and inspiring book, Lewis explores how he got there, how he finally got on the road to recovery, and how he copes with being Richard Lewis sober on a daily basis.

J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) was a shrewd industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942, ultimately becoming a dominant player in the oil industry. In The Great Getty, Robert Lenzner presents an in-depth biography of the savviest entrepreneur of the 20th century and the world's richest private citizen at the time of his death—worth $6 billion, the equivalent of more than $27 billion in today' s money.

No one else produced as many television programs as Aaron Spelling. And very few enjoyed such career longevity, with more than forty years in the business— from Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater in 1959 until his last hit shows, 7th Heaven and Charmed, aired in 2006.

In 1895, teenager Schmuel Goldfisz left the Warsaw ghetto to become Samuel Goldwyn, one of the most acclaimed producers in Hollywood history. Among Goldwyn' s films are such classics as The Pride of the Yankees, Wuthering Heights, and The Bishop' s Wife— all famous for conveying the "Goldwyn Touch." In this detailed biography, acclaimed author A. Scott Berg recounts the fascinating life of one of the most colorful personalities of Hollywood' s Golden Age.

This is actor Walter Koenig's story— from growing up as the neurotic child of Russian immigrants in 1940s Manhattan through his rise to fame on Star Trek as Pavel Chekov, Russian navigator of the U.S.S. Enterprise. With wry wit, striking candor, and a true gift for storytelling, Koenig takes us on a sometimes bumpy but often hilarious trip through his galaxy.

In a 45-year career as a personal manager, Hollywood agent, producer, and studio head, Bernie Brillstein learned how to survive and prosper in Hollywood. And in Where Did I Go Right?, Brillstein's street-smart, funny, and thoroughly human account of his life in show business, he shares those secrets. With his trademark wit and candor, Bernie recounts with pride how he built his impressive stable of clients, discusses his feud with Mike Ovitz, and reveals how he felt after passing on the leadership of his company to his partner, Brad Grey.

Without bothering to get approval from the President, the State Department, or even the FTC, Dave Barry's publishers sent him to Tokyo. You'd think they would have known better. Now the word is Barry has set back our diplomatic relations with the whole Pacific Rim by a couple of decades. Japanese culture, dining, sport, and industry all come under Barry's relentless scrutiny.

Sex scandals have rocked Hollywood since the industry began, but Once More With Feeling: You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again, Again is a brand new collection of stories that this town will never recover from - again.

"If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a quitter," Russell Baker's mother always said. Baker certainly never quit - in fact, this fantastic journalist's Pulitzer Prize-winning column appears twice a week in The New York Times. This book, his second autobiographical volume, describes the rewarding stages of his career and his encounters with John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, and other major figures. All the wit, perceptiveness, and poignant humor that has graced his column for many years comes through in this engaging memoir.

Political provocateur Bill Maher tells it like it is in a useful and hilarious guide for the many Americans who want to do more here at home to help the war effort, but are at a loss as to what. Thirty-three dynamic posters and several classics from our government's archive—accompanied by text from one of our leading pundits and cutting-edge comedians—make this the perfect book for this time in our nation's history, the zeitgeist of post-9/11 America. This is the book that will help Americans make the connections between what we do and how it can help our troops and ourselves.

For years, Margaret Maldonado Jackson was a celebrant of the good life, living with her Prince Charming - Jermaine - at the Jackson family estate in Encino, California. A former teenage runaway who had barely survived life in the fast lane, she had felt fortunate to be welcomed into the Jackson clan. So why, in 1993, was she running for her life with her children? What had happened to this young woman to make her feel so threatened and so alone?