Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Entertainment & Celebrities

Victorian scandals don't come much more intimate and revealing than a wife seeking an annulment from her famous husband because their marriage has not been consummated. When Effie Ruskin sought escape from her desperately unhappy life with art critic John Ruskin, she shattered the Victorian illusion of the perfect marriage.

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he described it as a “comic weekly.” And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founder’s description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists of the modern era. This anthology gathers together, for the first time, the funniest work of more than seventy New Yorker contributors.

During the 1970s and '80s the music business was dominated by a few major labels and artists such as Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand and James Taylor. They were all under contract to CBS Records, making it the most successful label of the era. And, as the company's president, Walter Yetnikoff was the ruling monarch. He was also the most flamboyant, volatile, and controversial personality to emerge from an industry and era defined by sex, drugs, and debauchery.

This smart and witty collection of opinions, observations, and anecdotes covers a broad range of personal topics. Kathie Lee Gifford's stories are often funny, sometimes heartfelt, and always compelling - think Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck meets Carol Burnett.

No subject is off-limits: talking to her kids about sex, being married to Frank Gifford, embarrassing professional gaffes, run-ins with celebrities (of which there are many), the harsh and funny realities of aging.

Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in Washington, D.C. A poor, Yiddish-speaking newcomer navigating a racially segregated and antisemitic America, young Jolson dreamed of becoming a star, and he did. Through Jolson, Bernstein simultaneously breaks open the history and legacy of the cultural sensation The Jazz Singer. Not only was The Jazz Singer the first feature-length film with synchronized music and dialogue, but it was also taboo smashing in its content.

Find out what really goes on in the world of hospitality with this hilarious book full of funny and absurd stories, anecdotes told in dialogue, factoids, and hoax pop quizzes by two veteran concierges who paid their way while working at a combined 50 hotels in and around Times Square.

Rosie Perez first caught our attention with her fierce dance in the title sequence of Do the Right Thing and has since defined herself as a funny and talented actress who broke boundaries for Latinas in the film industry. What most people would be surprised to learn is that the woman with the big, effervescent personality has a secret straight out of a Dickens novel. At the age of three, Rosie’s life was turned upside down when her mentally ill mother tore her away from the only family she knew and placed her in a Catholic children’s home in New York’s Westchester County.

A Place in My Heart is a many-splendored thing. It is a listicle. It is a celebration of the power of storytelling. It is also an account of a life lived in the Bollywood trenches. National Award-winning author, journalist and film critic Anupama Chopra writes about fifty films, artistes and events that have left an indelible impression on her and shaped her twenty-five-year-long career. Shah Rukh Khan is here. So are Super Deluxe and the Cannes Film Festival.

Usha Uthup, India's undisputed icon of pop music, has enthralled an entire generation of listeners with her unforgettable voice and continues to do so. Completing fifty years as a professional singer in 2020 was just another milestone in her fabled career. In this vivid biography, which was originally written in Hindi, Vikas Kumar Jha captures the entire arc of Uthup's career in music.

Manchmal nimmt einen das Leben aus der Kurve, um einen vor Schlimmeren zu bewahren: bewegende Lektionen für ein gelingendes Leben von einem der größten deutschen Schauspieler Äußerlich vielbeschäftigt und erfolgreich, steht Francis Fulton-Smith nach zwei gescheiterten Beziehungen vor den Scherben seiner Lebensplanung. Alles scheint sich gegen ihn verschworen zu haben, nichts scheint mehr Sinn zu machen. Er fühlt sich einsam, verloren und entwurzelt.

Written in a frank, fun, no-holds-barred, and incisive first-person narrative, Tusshar reveals interesting childhood anecdotes, the process of raising a child as a single man in India, how the search for the perfect soulmate doesn't stop after having a child, and finally how his son, Laksshya, changed his life forever.

Sometimes, a little nudge from the universe pushes one to find his raison d'etre in life. If actor Sonu Sood had given in to the celebrity syndrome of sitting in his ivory tower and expressing his generosity by remote control, he would have never come face to face with the trauma of India's migrant labourers or understood that a food packet was a woefully inadequate substitute for a ride back home.

An intimate peek into the life of the soldier-turned-lyricist Anand Bakshi, from his formative years in undivided Punjab to eventually moving to Bombay and landing his first film Bhala Aadmi in 1958. Along the way, he lost his mother, his place of birth, and his home and wealth, but his zeal to stand up and walk after every stumble and his desire to become a film artist never abated. He eventually rose to become one of the most revered and sought-after lyricists in Hindi cinema, writing nearly 3300 songs in about 630 films over the next five decades.

Wanda Jackson's debut single, "You Can't Have My Love," reached the Top 10 while she was still a 16-year-old high school student. She hit the road after graduation, playing package shows with Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley, who gave Wanda his ring and asked her to be "his girl."

Nur wenige deutschsprachige Künstler blicken auf eine solche Karriere zurück: Seit fast 50 Jahren steht Roland Kaiser auf der Bühne, Hits wie "Santa Maria", "Joana", "Dich zu lieben" oder "Warum hast du nicht nein gesagt" machten ihn bekannt, er verkaufte mehr als 90 Millionen Tonträger, wurde mit Preisen geehrt und trat so häufig in der ZDF-Hitparade auf wie niemand sonst: 67 Mal. Die Konzerte seiner jährlichen Kaisermania in Dresden sind in wenigen Minuten ausverkauft.

Exactly 50 years ago, in 1955, the release of Pather Panchali heralded the arrival of a master in the world of cinema. Over the next 40 years, Satyajit Ray came to be regarded as one of the world’s finest filmmakers ever. Today, more than a decade after his death, he continues to be India’s most respected name in international film circles. Apart from his achievements as a director, Ray was also a prolific writer of novels, short stories, and essays on cinema. Speaking of Films brings together some of Ray’s most memorable writings on film and filmmaking.

At age seventeen, Toni Bentley was chosen by Balanchine, then in his final years, to join the New York City Ballet. From both backstage and onstage, she carries us through the serendipitous history and physical intricacies and demands of Serenade: its dazzling opening, with seventeen women in a double-diamond pattern; its radical, even jazzy, use of the highly refined language that is ballet; its place in the choreographer’s own dramatic story of his immigration to the United States from Soviet Russia.

In the 1970s, Rajesh Khanna achieved the kind of fame that no film star had ever experienced before or has since. But then he saw it all vanish. They say superstardom destroyed him. But was it something else buried deep in his past? In this riveting biography, award-winning journalist Yasser Usman examines Rajesh Khanna's dramatic, colorful life in its entirety, from little-known facts about his childhood to the lowdown on his relationships and rivalries, from his ambitious hopes to his deep-seated insecurities.

Shehnaz was a beautiful, erudite woman from the royal family of Bhopal who was almost cast to play Anarkali in K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam. Her daughter Sophia Naz tells her story as she heard it from her.

Mirza Mohammad Asadullah Khan Ghalib began writing poetry in Persian at the age of nine and the pre-eminent poet of the time, Mir, predicted a great future for the precocious genius when he was shown his verse. But success and material rewards did not come to Ghalib easily, for the times were against him, and he did not suffer fools gladly even if they occupied positions of importance.