William J. Mann

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Washington

Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood





New York Times Bestseller * Edgar Award winner for Best Fact Crime

The Day of the Locust meets The Devil in the White City and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true tale of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the creation of the modern film industry.

By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime, and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence. Yet Hollywood's glittering ascendency was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies--including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.

In a fiendishly involving narrative, bestselling Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic Taylor and the diverse cast that surrounded him--including three beautiful, ambitious actresses; a grasping stage mother; a devoted valet; and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet. And overseeing this entire landscape of intrigue was Adolph Zukor, the brilliant and ruthless founder of Paramount, locked in a struggle for control of the industry and desperate to conceal the truth about the crime. Along the way, Mann brings to life Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties: a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls, drug dealers, religious zealots, newly-minted legends and starlets already past their prime--a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate.

A true story recreated with the suspense of a novel, Tinseltown is the work of a storyteller at the peak of his powers--and the solution to a crime that has stumped detectives and historians for nearly a century.

Tinseltown

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New York Times Bestseller

Edgar Award winner for Best Fact Crime

The Day of the Locust meets The Devil in the White City and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in this juicy, untold Hollywood story: an addictive true tale of ambition, scandal, intrigue, murder, and the creation of the modern film industry.

By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime, and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence. Yet Hollywood's glittering ascendency was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies--including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.

In a fiendishly involving narrative, bestselling Hollywood chronicler William J. Mann draws on a rich host of sources, including recently released FBI files, to unpack the story of the enigmatic Taylor and the diverse cast that surrounded him--including three beautiful, ambitious actresses; a grasping stage mother; a devoted valet; and a gang of two-bit thugs, any of whom might have fired the fatal bullet. And overseeing this entire landscape of intrigue was Adolph Zukor, the brilliant and ruthless founder of Paramount, locked in a struggle for control of the industry and desperate to conceal the truth about the crime. Along the way, Mann brings to life Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties: a sparkling yet schizophrenic town filled with party girls, drug dealers, religious zealots, newly-minted legends and starlets already past their prime--a dangerous place where the powerful could still run afoul of the desperate.

A true story recreated with the suspense of a novel, Tinseltown is the work of a storyteller at the peak of his powers--and the solution to a crime that has stumped detectives and historians for nearly a century.

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

North Carolina

The Story of Marlon Brando

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 in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront—that are without parallel. Brando was heralded as the American Hamlet—the Yank who surpassed British stage royalty Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson as the standard of greatness in the mid-twentieth century. Brando’s impact on American culture matches his professional significance; he both challenged and codified our ideas of masculinity and sexuality. Brando was also one of the first stars to use his fame as a platform to address social, political, and moral issues, courageously calling out America’s deeply rooted racism. William Mann’s brilliant biography of the Hollywood legend illuminates this culture icon for a new age. Mann astutely argues that Brando was not only a great actor but also a cultural soothsayer, a Cassandra warning us about the challenges to come. Brando’s admonitions against the monetization of nearly every aspect of the culture were prescient. His public protests against racial segregation and discrimination at the height of the Civil Rights movement—getting himself arrested at least once—were criticized as being needlessly provocative. Yet those actions of fifty years ago have become a model many actors follow today. Psychologically astute and masterfully researched, based on new and revelatory material, The Contender explores the star and the man in full, including the childhood traumas that reverberated through his professional and personal life. It is a dazzling biography of our nation’s greatest actor that is sure to become an instant classic. The Contender includes sixteen pages of photographs.

The Contender

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Virginia

Becoming Barbra Streisand

Traces the formative years of the actress and singer, discussing such topics as her relationship with her mother, her marriage to Elliott Gould, and the making of "Funny Girl" against a backdrop of the birth of off-off-Broadway.

Hello, Gorgeous

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

The Men from the Boys

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Jeff O'Brien - bright, good-looking, and inching dangerously past thirty - finds himself in a frenzy when his lover announces that there is no passion left between them. Desperate not to end up alone he hits the dance floor and roadside rest stops seeking out both the sordid and the sublime until he meets Edouardo - a vision of gorgeousness who seems to hold the answers he seeks. All one might ask for in gay fiction...laugh lines that are funny and sex scenes that are hot...an impressive debut.' - Kirkus Review'

Wisconsin

Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood

Pulls back the curtain on an unseen Elizabeth Taylor, revealing a genius at big-time stardom and a heroine whose rebellion changed Hollywood.

How to Be a Movie Star

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The author of the New York Times Notable Book Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn pulls back the curtain on an unseen Elizabeth Taylor, revealing a genius at big-time stardom and a heroine whose rebellion changed Hollywood.

The Woman Who Was Hepburn

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 she never seemed less than authentic. But how well did we know her, really? Was there a woman behind the image who was more human, more driven, and ultimately more triumphant because ofher vulnerability? William J. Mann - a cultural historian and journalist, a sympathetic admirer but no mere fan - has fashioned an intimate, often revisionist, and truly unique close-up that challenges much of what  we think we know about the Great Kate. Previous biographies - mostly products of friends and fans - have recycled the stories she hid behind, taking Hollywood myths at face value. Mann goes deeper, delivering new details from friends and family who have not been previously interviewed and drawingon materials only available since Hepburn's death. With affection, intelligence, and a voluminous knowledge of Hollywood history, Mann shows us how a woman originally considered too special and controversial for fame learned the fine arts of movie stardom and transformed herself into an icon as durable and all-American as the Statue of Liberty.

Kate

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New Jersey

The Surprising True Story of Hollywood's Greatest Love Affair

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 York City; Bacall's rise as a model and actress. He paints a vivid portrait of their courtship and twelve-year marriage: the fights, the reconciliations, the children, the affairs, Bogie's illness and Bacall's steadfastness until his death. He offers a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of Bacall's life after Bogie, exploring her relationships with Frank Sinatra and Jason Robards, who would become her second husband, and the identity crisis she faced. Surpassing previous biographies, Mann digs deep into the celebrities' personal lives and considers their relationship from surprising angles. Bacall was just nineteen when she started dating the thrice-married forty-five-year-old Bogart. How might that age gap have influenced their relationship? In addition to what she gained, what might Bacall have lost by marrying a Hollywood superstar more than twice her age? How did Bogart, a man of average looks, become one of the greatest movie stars of all time? Throughout, Mann explains the unparalleled successes of their individual careers as well as the extraordinary love between them and the legend that has endured. Filled with entertaining details and thoughtful insights based on newly available records and correspondence, and illustrated with 30-40 photographs, Bogie & Becall offers a fresh look at this famous couple, their remarkable relationship, and their legacy.

Bogie and Bacall

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

South Carolina

In this witty and provocative follow-up to Mann's acclaimed best-seller, The Men From the Boys, Jeff O'Brien - still in search of love and sex - navigates the circuit scene from Provincetown to San Francisco, from Montreal to Palm Springs, in the company of friends, tricks, old loves, and irresistible strangers... Deserves to stand alongside the best of Armistead Maupin and Felice Picano' - Christopher Rice, The Lambda Book Report'

Where the Boys Are

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Michael Thomas Ford

Sean Wolfe

Erotic Tales of the Vampire

A dark collection centering around the immortal dead features erotic vampire tales, including William J. Mann's "His Hunger," Michael Thomas Ford's "Sting," and Sean Wolfe's "Bradon's Bite."

Masters of Midnight

William Mann

Behind the heady beach days and party nights of summer, Jeff, Lloyd and Henry will face their futures alone and together, closing the door on some chapters of their lives while opening others to new love and hope. Mann tackles the big questions of contemporary gay life - delivering a beautiful, thoughtful book about love, sex, commitment, friendships and fantasy; about lives engineered and the joyful surprises that happen when they are least expected.

Men Who Love Men

Chris Kenry

Andy Schell

Ben Tyler

Summer romance gets a new twist in this sexy quartet of novellas, as four of the most talented and popular gay authors writing today come together to celebrate fun in the sun. These award-winning and best-selling authors of 'Can't Buy Me Love', 'Tricks of the Trade', 'My Best Man' and 'The Biograph Girl' here show why summer is the season for shedding clothes, schedules - and inhibitions.

Summer Share

The Ruthless Rise of America's Greatest Political Family

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, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking group portrait of this legendary family. Mann argues that the Roosevelts' rise to power and prestige was actually driven by a series of intense personal contest that at times devolved into blood sport. His compelling and eye-opening masterwork is the story of a family at war with itself, of social Darwinism at its most ruthless--in which the strong devoured the weak and repudiated the inconvenient.

Mann focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt, who, he argues, experienced this brutality firsthand, witnessing her Uncle Theodore cruelly destroy her father, Elliott--his brother and bitter rival--for political expediency. Mann presents a fascinating alternate picture of Eleanor, contending that this "worshipful niece" in fact bore a grudge against TR for the rest of her life, and dares to tell the truth about her intimate relationships without obfuscations, explanations, or labels.

Mann also brings into focus Eleanor's cousins, TR's children, whose stories propelled the family rivalry but have never before been fully chronicled, as well as her illegitimate half-brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, who inherited his family's ambition and skill without their name and privilege. Growing up in poverty just miles from his wealthy relatives, Elliott Mann embodied the American Dream, rising to middle-class prosperity and enjoying one of the very few happy, long-term marriages in the Roosevelt saga. For the first time, The Wars of the Roosevelts also includes the stories of Elliott's daughter and grandchildren, and never-before-seen photographs from their archives.

Deeply psychological and finely rendered, illustrated with sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs, The Wars of the Roosevelts illuminates not only the enviable strengths but also the profound shame of this remarkable and influential family.

The Wars of the Roosevelts

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By 1910, Florence Lawrence was the legendary, enigmatic Biograph Girl, the world's first movie star. In this historical novel, William J. Mann traces her life story from her vaudeville childhood through her life and career to her old age.

The Biograph Girl

Jon Jeffrey

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Pennsylvania

Four of Kensington's best-selling gay authors celebrate the holidays in style, with tales of Christmas love in this sexy quartet of novellas following the success of Summer Share.

All I Want for Christmas

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Maryland

How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969

Mann looks at the influence of gay actors, directors, and set and costume designers on the development of the motion pictures.

Browse by categories

William J. Mann

Tinseltown

William J. Mann

The Contender

William J. Mann

Hello, Gorgeous

William J. Mann

The Men from the Boys

William J. Mann

How to Be a Movie Star

William J. Mann

Kate

William J. Mann

Bogie and Bacall

William J. Mann

Where the Boys Are

Michael Thomas Ford

Masters of Midnight

William J. Mann

Men Who Love Men

Chris Kenry

Summer Share

William J. Mann

The Wars of the Roosevelts

William J. Mann

The Biograph Girl

Jon Jeffrey

All I Want for Christmas

William J. Mann

Behind the Sceen