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 ...

The hottest compendium of inter-generational scandal in the history of Hollywood. An overview of exhibitionism, sexuality, and sin as filtered through 85 years of Hollywood indiscretion. As they were unfolding, the events described within this book were known only within Hollywood's most decadent cliques. All of that has changed with the release of this book.From bisexual Elvis to cover-ups of murder, from the scandals of Hollywood's Golden Age to the Hollywood of Here and Now. It's all he...

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.

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 seducing-and describing to socialites o...

The enfants terribles of America at mid-20th Century challenged the sexual censors of their day while indulging in "bitchfests" for love, glory, and boyfriends. For the first time along comes a book that exposes their literary slugfests and offers an intimate look at their relationships with the glitterati-everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Jacqueline Kennedy and Marlon Brando. In this one-of-a-kind overview of literary show-biz during the peak of America's imperial power, celebrity biographe...

Zsa Zsa, Eva, and Magda Gabor transferred their glittery dreams and gold-digging ambitions from the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Hollywood. There, more effectively than any army, these Bombshells from Budapest broke hearts, amassed fortunes, lovers, and A-list husbands, and amused millions of voyeurs through the medium of television, movies, and the social registers. This book by America's most knowledgable celebrity-watcher demonstrates that wit, charm, ruthlessness, and bea...

Throughout his forty-five year career, Henry Fonda-a stable, reassuring archetype of the American male-never gave a bad performance, immortalizing himself in such films as Young Mr. Lincoln, The Grapes of Wrath, and Mister Roberts. The torments of his introverted private life vied with his on-screen dilemmas. Personal dramas included five wives (two of whom committed suicide) and involvements in many of the seminal events (including active service in the ...

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 the movie-going public never knew. Tragic, myth-shattering, and uncensored, it focuses on MISS LANA TURNER, the most scandalous (and self-enchant...

Long before two of its members became the most publicized leaders of the Free World, they were part of an amorous, "winner-take-all" love triangle that rocked Hollywood. Published after decades of research, this triple biography focuses on the one of the strangest three-sided love affairs in presidential history. Read about the bizarre entanglements of Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, and a failed, B-List starlet—Nancy Davis—who eventually evolved into one of the most controversial (and demandin...

This is Volume One of a three-part biography of Clark Gable. During his heyday, he was the King of Hollywood, a role model, a patriotic symbol, and one of the most talked-about actors of the 20th Century. The uncensored details of Clark Gable's real story might never have been known, lost to history with the passing of those who knew him personally. Fortunately, Darwin Porter, through Blood Moon Productions, opted to change all that. Here he is, Clark Gable, the King of Ho...

Compiled as a memorial for the 30th anniversary of his death, Rock Hudson Erotic Fire is based on dozens of face-to-face interviews with Rock Hudson's friends, co-conspirators, and enemies. Researched over a period of a half century by Hollywood insider Darwin Porter, it reveals the secretive actor's complete, never-before-told story within a context of scandal-soaked and historic ironies, many of which have never been fully explored—until now.

Every time I sing a song, I'm actually making love on stage. Call me 'The Boudoir Singer,' or so claimed Frank Sinatra. The crooner's career spanned more than half a century, earning him millions of fans. His boudoir conquests involved some of the most stunning women of the 20th century. But exactly who was this mercurial, enigmatic man? Darwin Porter, America's leading chronicler of Golden Age Hollywood, turns over more than a few boulders in Sinatra's secret garden, especially for those ...