Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Entertainment & Performing Arts

In Lost Sound, Jeff Porter examines the vital interplay between acoustic techniques and modernist practices in the growth of radio. Concentrating on the 1930s through the 1970s, but also speaking to the rising popularity of today's narrative broadcasts such as This American Life, Radiolab, Serial, and The Organist, Porter's close readings of key radio programs show how writers adapted literary techniques to an acoustic medium with great effect.

Why does our popular culture seem so consistently hostile to the values that Americans hold dear? Why does the entertainment industry attack religion, glorify brutality, undermine the family, and deride patriotism? In this explosive book, one of the nation’s best known film critics examines how Hollywood has broken faith with its public, creating movies, television, and popular music that exacerbate every serious social problem we face, from teenage pregnancies to violence in the streets.

For the centennial of his birth, the defining wunderkind of modern entertainment gets his due in a groundbreaking new biography of his early years - from his first forays in theater and radio to the inspiration and making of Citizen Kane. No American artist or entertainer has enjoyed a more dramatic rise than Orson Welles. In this magisterial biography, Patrick McGilligan brings young Orson into focus as never before.

Conventional wisdom holds that John F. Kennedy was the first celebrity president, in no small part because of his innate television savvy. But as Kathryn Brownell shows, Kennedy capitalized on a tradition and style rooted in California politics and the Hollywood studio system. Since the 1920s, politicians and professional showmen have developed relationships and built organizations institutionalizing Hollywood styles, structures, and personalities in the American political process.

Kelly Corrigan talks with Lysa Williams of Blackstone Audio about her new book, The Middle Place.

Until now, Hollywood's political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the nightmare of the Red Scare and how it victimized political innocents. But Ronald and Allis Radosh tell for the first time the “backstory” behind this myth. They show how the Soviet Comintern targeted the film capital in the late 1920s, taking us inside the cells and discussion groups that Communist Party members formed, the guilds and unions they tried to take over, and the studios they aimed to influence.

To many people, the Marx Brothers always seemed cartoonish. Small wonder that film animators plucked their personas from their first appearances in The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930) and caricatured them in countless animated appearances in theatrical cartoons. Their animated likenesses have since been wisecracking in television cartoons, direct-to-video movies, fan films, commercials, flip books, avatars, emoji, a slot machine, and two TV pilots so rare they were once thought not to exist.

Drawing on his own life and career and the rich lore of The Lion King, Alton Fitzgerald White, Broadway's longest-running "King", delivers his message of service - taking responsibility for and deriving happiness from commonplace achievements - as a philosophy that anyone can get through each day with satisfaction, pride, and a sense of accomplishment.

Meg and her mom Sandra are heading to Detroit to do a little cross-border shopping and take in a Tigers game. But Sandra's passport has expired, and they are turned back. An odd encounter on the Windsor waterfront leads them into a wild night of time travel, rum smuggling, a near drowning, hijackers, customs officials thirsty for bribes, and a chance encounter with controversial baseball legend Ty Cobb.

Kate Chopin is a widely considered the forerunner to the feminist authors of the twentieth century. Focusing on themes of race and gender, her short stories largely center on life in rural Louisiana. In "The Story of an Hour," Louise Mallard has just learned that her husband is dead - believed to have died during a train accident. Her family fears that the news will kill Louise, who suffers from a weak heart.

This invaluable primer will introduce the uninitiated to the mysteries of opera and help more experienced fans to expand their understanding and deepen their appreciation of the art form.

The fascinating life of storyteller and humorist Mark Twain is revealed in this one-man performance based on Twain's writings. The early years of Samuel Clemens, the Mississippi River experiences, and his move to the silver mining area of Nevada are portrayed by exuberant actor McAvoy Layne; some of the most famous tales, from "The Blue Jay Yarn" to "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" are woven into the history of this most colorful author.

When El Matador opened in 1958, Bennett Cerf called it "the most attractive room in America". Part saloon, part salon, Barnaby Conrad's nightclub was nestled in the heart of San Francisco's cabaret and nightlife district. On any given night, one might find Noel Coward, Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, or Tyrone Power in the club or might hear Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Eva Gabor, George Shearing, or André Previn take over the piano.

When you are passionately, purely in love, nothing else matters - not even life itself. Shakespeare’s consummate tragedy of young lovers swept into a catastrophic vortex of misunderstandings, secrets, and fate is set in 1840s Alta California, a vibrant and conflicted time in our history. Romeo and Juliet, the son and daughter of two landed families locked in an old feud, are irresistibly drawn to each other. Defying the hatred and distrust surrounding them, they dare to believe they can - and must - be together.

When The Flip Wilson Show debuted in 1970, Black faces were still rare on television, Black hosts nonexistent. So how did Clerow “Flip” Wilson go from Jersey City grade-school dropout to national celebrity, heralded on the cover of Time as “TV’s first black superstar”? Flip is a candid, entertaining biography of a consummate comedian who changed the face of American popular culture.

A sunny day, a quaint antique store, browsing through the artifacts of the past. To some, these are the ingredients for a pleasantly spent afternoon. To Frank, it is the beginning of a journey that will tear his world inside out. Is his amusing and puzzling journey down memory lane an actual journey, or is it a careening descent into madness?

Doty Meets Coyote is an audio tapestry of traditional and original Native American stories from the American West told by master storyteller Thomas Doty. It is Thomas Doty's work as a storyteller not only to perpetuate the Old Time myths with integrity but to add new stories to the collective basket of folklore, just as tellers before him have done for centuries. Storytelling is an ancient tradition as well as a living art.

Helen Hayes, acclaimed "First Lady of the American Theatre", has been on stage, screen, and television for more than fifty years. In that time she moved among the world's most famous and talented: actors, film stars, writers, businessmen. She speaks with wit, wisdom, and candor on topics both public and private.

The national debate over popular music's effect on character is both furious and confused. Conservatives complain primarily about lyrics, appealing to public decency and safety. Liberals, swift to the defense of any self-expression, simultaneously celebrate rock's liberating ethos and deny its cultural influence.

Blackstone Audio is proud to present the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Measure for Measure, Shakespeare’s compelling tragicomedy that explores restraint—and lack thereof. The duke’s authoritarian deputy, Angelo, is hell-bent on stamping out moral decay. He reactivates outdated draconian laws and aims his arrogant crosshairs at a young man whose fiancée is pregnant, sentencing him to death. Angelo is sternly incorruptible—until he meets Isabela....