This is a new edition of a Darwin Porter classic from 2014, this is the most scandalous compilation of cash-soaked ambition, sexual indiscretion, and social embarrassment ever published about a former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, all of it played out against the glittering backdrop of America's unofficial Queen.
Set in the months that preceded the murder of megastar Marilyn Monroe. this investigative report challenges the myths and assumptions that have, for decades, been repeated repetitively and inconclusively within the canon of half-truths widely circulated about her career and death. In it, celebrity biographer Darwin Porter has compiled, with ......
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 ......
From the Silver Screens of Hollywood to the Lights of Broadway, Celebrity Secrets Exposed Within the Walls of This Old House
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 ......
How a Nude Centerfold Sex Symbol Seduced Hollywood
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 ......
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 vigour. His restless and ......
Celebrity & the Ironies of Fame: A Memoir About Travel Guides, Tabloid Exposes, and the Landmark Where They Were Produced
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 ......
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 ......
After Betty Grable, but before there was Marilyn, America's penchant for popcorn blondes focused on LANA, the movie star who had it all: Looks to die for, money to burn, the romantic adulation of the world, and lovers who included the world's most desirable men. This expose of "The Ultimate Movie Star," is loaded with information that members of ......
