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Tara Hanks

~ Author of 'The Mmm Girl' and 'Wicked Baby'

Tara Hanks

Tag Archives: Frank Sinatra

Marilyn in Hollywood: The ‘Confidential’ Years

24 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by marina72 in Books, Fiction, Film, History, Magazines, Marilyn Monroe

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Barney Ruditsky, Bobby kennedy, Celebrity, Clark Gable, Confidential, Dan Dailey, Dick Powell, Dorothy Dandridge, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Gossip, Hollywood Research Incorporated, Howard Rushmore, Jeanne Carmen, Jerry Giesler, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Schenck, Johnnie Ray, Marilyn Monroe, Milton Greene, Nicholas Ray, Robert F. Kennedy, Robert Harrison, Robert Mitchum, Robert Slatzer, Rory Calhoun, Samantha Barbas, Scandal, Sonny Tufts, Tabloid, Wrong Door Raid

Samantha Barbas is a professor of law at the University of Buffalo, specialising in the history of America’s mass media. Her previous publications include Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity (2001), and The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (2005.) In her latest book, Confidential Confidential: The Inside Story of Hollywood’s Notorious Scandal Magazine, she explores the lurid history and aftermath of a 1950s publishing phenomenon. Continue reading →

Ava Gardner: A Life in Movies

03 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by marina72 in Books, Film, Non-Fiction

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Anthony Uzarowski, Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Kendra Bean, MGM

Ava Gardner: the name conjures timeless elegance. She was a North Carolina sharecropper’s daughter whose beauty gave her the regal bearing of a goddess. Beyond the glamorous aura, she is most often recalled for her stormy personal life, and especially her marriage to Frank Sinatra. But this is only a partial vision of one of the greatest female stars of the 1940s and 50s. Even the most devout cinephiles often overlook her unique contribution to post-war American cinema. Continue reading →

Darkness Into Light: Ava Gardner and Marilyn

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by marina72 in Film, Marilyn Monroe

≈ 2 Comments

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Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Frank Sinatra, George Cukor, Howard Hughes, Jack Cardiff, Joe Mankiewicz, John F. Kennedy, John Huston, Joyce Carol Oates, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Rooney

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Milton Greene, 1953

A brunette and a blonde, born four years apart and raised in Depression era America: both found fame in post-war Hollywood, where their mythic beauty inspired directors, lovers and poets.  Continue reading →

Lioness: Hidden Treasures

28 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by marina72 in Amy Winehouse, Music

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Amy Winehouse, Curtis Mayfield, Daptone Records, Donny Hathaway, Duets, Frank Sinatra, James Bond, John Barry, Lioness, Lioness: Hidden Treasures, Mark Ronson, Nas, NME, Salaam Remi, Tony Bennett, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

Released in December 2011, four months after the death of Amy Winehouse, Lioness: Hidden Treasures – which takes its name from the singer’s independent record label – is not the third album that fans have longed for since the award-winning Back to Black (2006), but a collection of covers, demos and alternate versions spanning her meteoric career.  Continue reading →

Films Marilyn Wanted: ‘Guys and Dolls’

21 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by marina72 in Film, Marilyn Monroe

≈ 2 Comments

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Damon Runyon, Frank Sinatra, Guys and Dolls, Immortal Marilyn, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando

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This article is also published at Immortal Marilyn

Films Marilyn Wanted: Guys and Dolls

Born in Manhattan, Kansas in 1880 to a family of newspapermen, Damon Runyon found fame as a baseball columnist, and later for his humorous short stories chronicling the vibrant street life of New York. His eccentric characters – gamblers, hustlers and crooks – and unique style, mixing formal speech with slang – inspired a new literary idiom, the ‘Runyonesque’.

In 1950, four years after Runyon’s death, Guys and Dolls opened on Broadway. Based on two of Runyon’s short stories – ‘The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown’ and ‘Blood Pressure’ – the play was scripted by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling, with music by Frank Loesser. A box office hit, Guys and Dolls was selected as the winner of 1951’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama. However, due to Abe Burrows’ troubles with the House Un-American Activities Committee, the award was withdrawn.

Despite the controversy, producer Samuel Goldwyn acquired the film rights to Guys and Dolls.  The screenplay was written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who would also direct. Uncredited assistance came from another Hollywood scribe, Ben Hecht. Gene Kelly was an early front-runner for the lead role as charming gambler Sky Masterson, but MGM would not release him. Goldwyn sought out the screen’s hottest young actor, Marlon Brando, instead. Jean Simmons was cast as Brando’s unlikely love interest, prudish missionary Sarah Brown.

After securing America’s favourite crooner, Frank Sinatra, as hustler Nathan Detroit, Goldwyn set his sights on the world’s reigning sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe, for the part of Sinatra’s showgirl fiancée, Miss Adelaide. With so much talent involved, Guys and Dolls could hardly fail – or could it?  Continue reading →

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