William J. Mann
Author
Description
William J. Mann is the author of ten books, including his most recent, Bogie and Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood's Greatest Love Affair. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Fact Crime for Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, and the Lambda Literary Award for Biography for Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines. He is also the author of The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando and Kate:...
Author
Description
The award-winning film biographer presents a deeply-textured, ambitious, and definitive portrait of the greatest movie actor of the twentieth century, the elusive Marlon Brando, bringing his extraordinarily complex life into view as never before. The most influential movie actor of his era, Marlon Brando changed the way other actors perceived their craft. His approach was natural, honest, and deeply personal, resulting in performances-most notably...
Author
Description
From the noted Hollywood biographer and author of The Contender comes this celebration of the great American love story-the romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart-capturing its complexity, contradictions, and challenges as never before.
In Bogie & Bacall, William Mann offers a deep and comprehensive look at Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and the unlikely love they shared. Mann details their early years-Bogart's effete upbringing in New...
Author
Description
The award-winning author presents a provocative, thoroughly modern revisionist biographical history of one of America's greatest and most influential families, the Roosevelts, exposing heretofore unknown family secrets and detailing complex family rivalries with his signature cinematic flair. Drawing on previously hidden historical documents and interviews with the long-silent, illegitimate, branch of the family. William J. Mann paints an elegant,...
Author
Pub. Date
2016.
Physical Desc
x, 609 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : genealogical table, illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm.
Description
Drawing on historical documents and interviews with the long-silent 'illegitimate' branch of the family, celebrity biographer William J. Mann paints a group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts' rise to power and prestige was driven by a series of intense personal contests that at times devolved into blood sport. Eleanor Roosevelt experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her...
Author
Pub. Date
[2014]
Physical Desc
xi, 463 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Description
Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, and the diverse cast that surrounded him before he was murdered in 1922-- including three beautiful, ambitious actresses, the ruthless founder of Paramount locked in a struggle for control of the film industry, a grasping...
Author
Pub. Date
2006
Physical Desc
xxviii, 621 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm.
Description
The first major Katharine Hepburn biography independent of her control reveals the smart, complicated, and sophisticated woman behind the image. Onscreen she played society girls, Spencer Tracy's sidekick, lionesses in winter. But the best character Katharine Hepburn ever created was Katharine Hepburn: a Connecticut Yankee, outspoken and elegant, she wore pants whatever the occasion and bristled at Hollywood glitter. So captivating was her image that...