Remember when TV was just three channels and the biggest celebrities in Cleveland were an outrageous movie host named Ghoulardi, a gentle elf named Barnaby, and a tough-as-nails newswoman named Dorothy Fuldheim? These pioneering entertainers invented television programming before our very eyes while we watched from our living rooms. Revisit the early days of local TV in these fun and fact-filled stories featuring . . . Paige Palmer, the fitness host who smoked four packs a day . . ....

The performance art of burlesque, once a faded form, has made a comeback in the twenty-first century, and it has shimmied back to life with a vengeance in Cleveland. Thanks to fans and entrepreneurs, neo-burlesque has taken the stage—and it’s more inclusive, less seedy, and emphatically fun.Rust Belt Burlesque traces the history of burlesque in Cleveland from the mid-1800s to the present day, while also telling the story of Bella Sin, a Mexican immigrant who largely drove ...

If you think you’re funny, buy this book!Whether you dream of becoming a star . . .A better public speaker . . .A more effective communicator . . .A funnier, happier human being . . .You can learn to leave ‘em laughing!David Letterman learned to do it. Jay Leno learned to do it. Roseanne Barr learned to do it. So can you!Now successful sta...

By the director of the hit documentary Behind the Burly Q comes the first ever oral history of American Burlesque--as told by the performers who lived it, often speaking out here for the first time. By telling the intimate and surprising stories from its golden age through the women (and men!) who lived it, Behind the Burly Q reveals the true story of burlesque, even as it experiences a new renaissance.Burlesque was one of America's most popular forms of live entertainment in the f...

A book as effervescent and alive as the city itself.My First New York features candid accounts of coming to New York by more than fifty of the most remarkable people who have called the city home. Here are true stories of long nights out and wild nights in, of first dates and lost loves, of memorable meals and miserable jobs, of slow walks up Broadway and fast subway rides downtown.The contributors—a mix of actors, artists, comedians, entrepreneurs, musicians, poli...

You think I’m overdressed? This is my slip!No, I’m going to tell you the truth about what I’m wearing.I used to work as a lampshade in a whorehouse.I couldn’t get one of the good jobs.From housewife to humorist, Phyllis Diller made millions laugh for over five decades with her groundbreaking comedy. Boasting unique material, a raucous laugh, wild hair, the ...

One of Parade's Top Ten Rock n' Roll ReadsAs a road manager and filmmaker, he helped run the Janis Joplin show—and record it for posterity. Now he reveals the never-before-told story of his years with the young woman from Port Arthur who would become the first female rock and roll superstar—and depart the stage too soon.In 1967, as the new sound of rock and roll was taking over popular music, John Byrne Cooke was at the center of it all. A...

One of art's purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker has met this challenge more successfully and more originally than any other modern American journal. It has indelibly shaped the genre known as the Profile. Starting with light-fantastic evocations of glamorous and idiosyncratic figures of the twenties and thirties, such as Henry Luce and Isadora Duncan, and continuing to the present, with complex pictures of such contemporaries as Mik...

Hank Williams (1923–53) was an American singer-songwriter and musician regarded as the most important country music artist of all time, creator of an unforgettable sound and persona that helped to define the genre from its infancy and beyond. Though unable to read or notate music to any substantive degree, Williams recorded 11 number one hits between 1948 and 1953, which carried him to music’s mainstream and left an enduring legacy. In So Lonesome, Richard A. Peterson captures the...

A rollicking, colorfully illustrated history of burlesque as seen through the eyes of its first lady, Ann Corio.

“Lauterbach’s tribute . . . is welcome and overdue.” —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post“A well-researched valentine to a lost world of seedy con men, promoters and club owners, the power brokers and hustlers who made the ‘circuitry spark.’ ”—Eddie Dean, Wall Street Journal“Lauterbach spins the tale with enormous vitality and it’s terribly fun to read. He masterfully explains the complex logistics of the entertainment industry, and studs the book with fasci...

A PROVOCATIVE AND INSIGHTFUL PORTRAIT OF THE BEAUTIFUL, FREE-SPIRITED, AND SURPRISINGLY INDEPENDENT WOMEN OF THE ICONIC PLAYBOY CLUBSThe 1960s were a time of change in America, an era when safely guarded innocence gave way to explosive social revolution. For Kathryn Leigh Scott, or Bunny Kay as she was known in the New York City Playboy Club, and the more than 250 former Bunnies she interviewed for this book, donning satin ears and a fuzzy cottontail was an act of liberation—a chan...