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 Époque, and continuing as an arts-industry "swinger" until her death in 1968, she became notorious for s...
Built in stages between 1830 and 1875, Magnolia House is a historic landmark on Staten Island, the least-visited Outer Borough of New York City. Set within a 10-minute walk from the (free) Staten Island ferry that accesses Manhattan, it's the headquarters of the widely distributed independent press, BLOOD MOON PRODUCTIONS, a feisty wordsmith noted for celebrity biographies that have been reviewed in THE DAILY MAIL, the New York DAILY NEWS, sho...
From 1951 through 1956, I Love Lucy was the most-watched show in television. Its launch was as rocky as the marriage of the real-life show-biz pros who crafted it. After their divorce in 1960, Lucille Ball appraised Desi Arnaz, her former husband: "He's like Jekyll and Hyde. He drinks and gambles, he's awash in broads and booze, and that gay actor, Cesar Romero, is his devoted slave. Love?" she asked. "I was always falling in love with the wro...
In the 1970s and `80s, Burt Reynolds represented a new breed of movie star: Charming and relentlessly macho, he was a good ol' Southern boy who made hearts throb and audiences laugh. He was Burt Reynolds, a football hero and a guy you might have shared some jokes with in a redneck bar. After an impressive but tormented career, rivers of negative publicity, a self-admitted history of bad choices, and a spectacular fall from Hollywood grace, he ...
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 entertainmen...
Media gurus Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince are the owners and innkeepers of a wise and venerable Grande Dame, Magnolia House. Built in the 1830s and enlarged during America's Civil War, it's a NYC landmark in which at least fifty titles within the world-famous Frommer Travel Guides, and all of the show biz biographies of America's feistiest pop-culture publisher, Blood Moon Productions, were conceived, researched, and written.This is the fi...
Of all the male stars of Golden Age Hollywood, Kirk Douglas became the final survivor, the last icon of a fabled era that the world will never see again. When he celebrated his birthday in 2016, a headline read¿LEGENDARY HOLLYWOOD HORNDOG TURNS 100.He was both a charismatic actor and a man of uncommon force and vigor. His restless and volcanic spirit is reflected both in his films and through his many sexual conquests. Douglas was the son of R...
Hugh Hefner, the Playboy of the Western World, was a visionary publisher, an empire-builder, an avatar of pleasure, and a pajama-clad pipe-smoker with a pre-coital grin. In 1953, he published his first edition of Playboy, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover and her nude calendar inside. He obtained the rights for $500 with money borrowed from his puritanical Nebraska-born mother. Rebelling against his strict upbringing, he lost his virginity at t...
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), ha...
Out, outrageous, provocative, and proud, this comprehensive anthology and library resource reviews 500 of the best of Hollywood's output of gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgendered, and queer questioning films, with a special emphasis on how gays changed the movies we know and love. Conceived as a working guide to what viewers should stock within their DVD queues, it reviews everything from blockbusters to indie sleepers, with about a dozen speci...
This is about the enduring love affair of Bill and Hillary, and their role as the world's most famous couple. It's based on revelations from witnesses to the dramas of a hard-nosed but nonetheless romantic team who might once again take over the Free World. Two students, meeting at Yale in 1970, united--based on their own brand of love--to launch "The Plan, " events from which have already incited both tragedy and triumph.
Blood Moon Productions, a feisty independent press known for its occasionally lurid exposés of celebrity secrets, proudly announces the release, in advance of the presidential elections, of a flamboyantly outspoken personal and political biography of DONALD¿TRUMP.
To millions of ardent fans, Donald Trump will restore the American Dream. To his enemies, he is the country's worst nightmare-a braggart, a fraud, a false prophet, and, to the mos...
