Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Arts & Entertainment

Debuting at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1991, Catskills of Broadway was a critically acclaimed show that played to sold-out houses for more than a year, followed by a national tour. This audio recording captures the hilarity provided by comedians Dick Capri, Louise Duart, Mal Z. Lawrence, and Freddie Roman.

In the days when Hollywood films were cranked out the way Detroit turned out automobiles, one man clung to the belief that a motion picture was like a painting created and signed by a single artist.

Join Rick Reynolds as he guides you through the foibles, fumbles and pratfalls of his own life beginning with his bizarre childhood. From the drowning of his father at a family picnic, to a bank-robbing stepfather, to his mother's 3 marriages and innumerable affairs, Reynolds portrays a striking picture of the lengths people will go for love and the human connection.

Discover the many sides of Pablo Picasso - a brilliant painter and sculptor, a sexual sadist, a loyal Communist, a seducer, a father, and, ultimately, a tragic figure. Audio portraits of him and other creative geniuses are collected in Lives of the Artists.

Harry Cohn was the cofounder and president of Columbia Pictures, which he ran from the 1930s through the 1950s. Cohn—who abhorred personal publicity—left no writings, made no speeches, and rarely submitted to interviews. Despite this, acclaimed biographer Bob Thomas brilliantly illuminates the life of the powerful but elusive studio head in King Cohn: The Life and Times of Hollywood Mogul Harry Cohn. Thomas details the studio head's rise from a New York City song-plugger to a Poverty Row impresario, highlighting his reign as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

Known as “Hitler's Filmmaker,” Leni Riefenstahl directed two of the most innovative and effective propaganda documentaries ever made, Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), which glorified the Third Reich. In this definitive biography, Steven Bach illuminates the truths and lies regarding the self-proclaimed apolitical artist's involvement with Hitler and other Nazi leaders who financed and advanced her career. Probing the borders that divide art and beauty from truth and humanity, Bach untangles the past and gives an objective but unsparing appraisal.

Exhibiting an abiding faith in himself and an ability to think outside the traditional parameters of ethics, religion, rituals, and social mores, rock legend and Kiss founding member Simmons offers his no-holds-barred life philosophy. In this revealing and funny guide, Simmons recounts his rise from an immigrant boy who did not speak English until his teens and paid for college buying and selling old comic books, to his music, recording, acting, and publishing successes. Not only does Gene outline how he achieved both money and happiness, he tells listeners how they can, too!

This laugh-out-loud memoir takes listeners backstage and inside the writers’ room of one of America’s best-loved shows. With more than 17 million viewers and more than 70 Emmy nominations—including two wins for best comedy—Everybody Loves Raymond reigned supreme in television comedy for almost a decade.

Terrify your friends and the neighborhood trick-or-treaters with these terrifying screams, horrifying moans, and bloodcurdling shrieks all backed by the sounds of an eerie organ during a thunderous storm and narrated by the chilling voice of a demonic monster.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. The result is an outrageously stimulating exchange of ideas - the ultimate talk show moderated appropriately by the man who created The Tonight Show.

Historical personalities appearing on this volume II are President Ulysses S. Grant, Queen Marie Antoinette, Sir Thomas More, and Karl Marx.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. The result is an outrageously stimulating exchange of ideas - the ultimate talk show moderated appropriately by the man who created The Tonight Show. Historical personalities appearing on this volume VII are St. Augustine of Hippo, Empress Theodora, Thomas Jefferson, and Lord Bertrand Russell.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. The result is an outrageously stimulating exchange of ideas - the ultimate talk show moderated appropriately by the man who created The Tonight Show. Historical personalities appearing on this Volume I are President Theordore Roosevelt, Queen Cleopatra, Father Thomas Aquina, and Thomas Paine.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. The result is an outrageously stimulating exchange of ideas - the ultimate talk show moderated by the man who created The Tonight Show. Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. The result is an outrageously stimulating exchange of ideas - the ultimate talk show moderated by the man who created The Tonight Show. Historical personalities appearing on this Volume III are Charles Darwin, Emily Dickinson, Galileo Galilei, and Attila the Hun.

Nine-time Emmy Award winner and icon of American comedy, Carl Reiner, performs a sweet, wry, and whimsical collection of 25 multi-dimensional short stories - some true and others merely tales. Together they represent the poignant, nostalgic, and laugh-out loud funny genius of this comedic superstar.

From the comic mind of the one and only Jonathan Winters comes this side-splitting collection of the comedian's most off-the-wall antics and impressions. Grandma Frickert, Chester Honeyhugger, and other comic characters all make appearances on this best-of compilation.

Narrating his riveting memoir, beloved actor Dick Van Patten reflects on his prolific career, vibrant life, and the people who shaped both. From growing up during the Great Depression when poverty and racially biased ideologies dominated America, to witnessing the advent of television and its subsequent influence on culture, Dick Van Patten's life is a rich record of change and progress in America and Hollywood.

Most of us have no concept of what goes into creating a show, getting it on the air, and keeping it on. Perhaps we assume that the people in charge simply decide what amuses them at the moment, make those shows, stick them on, and wait to see if the public responds. Or maybe they just throw darts at a board? The truth, as with most things, is more complicated. In "Hello," Lied the Agent, Ian Gurvitz has produced a corrosively funny insider's look at what being a television writer is really all about.

Aaron Spelling is one of the most successful showmen of all time. No one else has produced as many television programs nor enjoyed such career longevity-35 years and still counting since Spelling's first production: Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater. Never told before, Aaron Spelling is the life story from the Prime-Time King himself—personal, revealing, and filled with stories on such Hollywood greats as Michelle Pfeiffer, Heather Locklear, Sharon Stone, and Nick Nolte.

Dave Barry didn't know what he was letting himself in for when he invited his Legion of Alert Readers to submit their nominees in the Bad Song Survey. "Song badness," he soon learned, "is an issue that Americans care deeply about."Now John Ritter and Arte Johnson present for you the songs that Americans love to hate. There is Gary Puckett and the Union Gap Band's "Young Girl" ("Young girl, get out of my mind, my love for you is way out of line..."), which is not to be confused with "Woman", and "This Girl Is a Woman Now"....

The attraction of opera is in its scale, in the fact that it is larger than real life in actions and emotions, more magnificent in sound and in sight. And in the world of opera, no figure in our time loomed larger than the late Luciano Pavarotti. Especially in his triumphant collaborations with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, he captured the imagination of an audience breadth and depth is remarkable even in the grand context of classical opera.