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Lady Sings The Blues (book)
''Lady Sings the Blues'' (1956) is an autobiography by jazz singer Billie Holiday, which was co-authored by William Dufty. The book formed the basis of the 1972 film '' Lady Sings the Blues'' starring Diana Ross. Overview The life story of jazz singer Billie Holiday told in her own words. Holiday writes candidly of sexual abuse, confinement to institutions, heroin addiction, and the struggles of being African American before the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. According to an article in the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', Dufty's aim was "to let Holiday tell her story her way. Fact checking wasn't his concern." Since its publication, the book has been criticized for factual inaccuracies. In his introduction to the 2006 edition of ''Lady Sings the Blues'', music biographer David Ritz writes: "(Holiday's) voice, no matter how the Dufty/Holiday interviewing process went, is as real as rain." Despite some factual inaccuracies, according to Ritz, "in the mythopoetic sense, Holiday's ...
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Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice. She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out conce ...
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Richard Brody
Richard Brody (born 1958) is an American film critic who has written for ''The New Yorker'' since 1999. Education Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York, and attended Princeton University, receiving a B.A. in comparative literature in 1980. He first became interested in films after seeing Jean-Luc Godard's seminal French New Wave film '' Breathless'' during his freshman year at Princeton. In the early 1980s, after graduating from college, Brody briefly lived in Paris. He is the author of a biography of Godard. Career Before becoming a film critic, Brody worked on documentaries and made several independent films. In December 2014, he was made a Chevalier (Knight) in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions in popularizing French cinema in America. Favorite films Brody participated in the 2012 ''Sight & Sound'' critics' poll, where he listed his ten favorite films as follows: *'' Gertrud'' (Denmark, 1964) *''The Great Dictator'' (USA, 1940) *''Husbands'' (USA, 1970 ...
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Books About Singers
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a bo ...
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Show Business Memoirs
Show or The Show may refer to: Competition, event, or artistic production * Agricultural show, associated with agriculture and animal husbandry * Animal show, a judged event in the hobby of animal fancy ** Cat show ** Dog show ** Horse show ** Specialty show, a dog show which reviews a single breed *Show, an artistic production, such as: ** Concert ** Radio show ** Talk show ** Television show ** Theatre production * Trade fair or trade show Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''The Show'' (1922 film), starring Oliver Hardy * ''The Show'' (1927 film), directed by Tod Browning * ''The Show'' (1995 film), a hip hop documentary * ''The Show'' (2017 film), an American satirical drama * ''The Show'' (2020 film), a British mystery film Album * ''Show'' (The Cure album), 1993 * ''Show'' (The Jesus Lizard album), 1994 * ''The Show'' (album), a 2008 album by eMC Songs * "The Show" (Doug E. Fresh song) * "The Show" (Girls Aloud song) * "The Show" (Lenka song) * "The ...
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Doubleday (publisher) Books
Doubleday may refer to: * Doubleday (surname), including a list of people with the name Publishing imprints * Doubleday (publisher), imprint of Knopf Doubleday, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House * Doubleday Canada, imprint of Penguin Random House Canada * Image, formerly Doubleday Religion, imprint of Crown Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House Baseball * Doubleday Field, Cooperstown, New York, USA; baseball stadium * ''Doubleday Field'', United States Military Academy, West Point, New York State, USA; a region of the academy; see Johnson Stadium at Doubleday Field * Auburn ''Doubledays'', single-A baseball team, from Auburn, New York State, USA Other uses * SS ''Abner Doubleday'', Liberty ship built during World War II * ''Henry Doubleday Research Association'', UK organic growing charity See also * * * Doubleday myth The Doubleday myth is the claim that the sport of baseball was invented in 1839 by future American Civil War general Abner Dou ...
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Autobiographies Adapted Into Films
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical ''The Monthly Review'', when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that " utobiographyis a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and ...
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1956 Non-fiction Books
Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming, are killed for trespassing by the Huaorani people of Ecuador, shortly after making contact with them. * January 16 – Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser vows to reconquer Palestine (region), Palestine. * January 25–January 26, 26 – Finnish troops reoccupy Porkkala, after Soviet Union, Soviet troops vacate its military base. Civilians can return February 4. * January 26 – The 1956 Winter Olympics open in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. February * February 11 – British Espionage, spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean (spy), Donald Maclean resurface in the Soviet Union, after being missing for 5 years. * February 14–February 25, 25 – The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is held in Mosc ...
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Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited as the greatest film ever made. The ''Sight & Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * For 50 consecutive years, it stood at number 1 in the British Film Institute's ''Sight & Sound'' decennial poll of critics, and it topped the American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories and it won for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Mankiewicz and Welles. ''Citizen Kane'' is praised for Gregg Toland's cinematography, Robert Wise's editing, Bernard Herrmann's music, and its narrative structure, all of which have been considered innovative and precedent-setting. The quasi-biographi ...
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Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. While in his 20s, Welles directed high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project, including an adaptation of ''Macbeth'' with an entirely African-American cast and the political musical '' The Cradle Will Rock''. In 1937, he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941, including ''Caesar'' (1937), an adaptation of William Shakespeare's ''Julius Caesar''. In 1938, his radio anthology series ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel ''The War of the Worlds'', which caused s ...
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Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (January 31, 1902 – December 12, 1968) was an American actress. Primarily an actress of the stage, Bankhead also appeared in several prominent films including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's ''Lifeboat'' (1944). She also had a brief but successful career on radio and made appearances on television. In all, Bankhead amassed nearly 300 film, stage, television and radio roles during her career. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981. Bankhead was a member of the Bankhead and Brockman family, a prominent Alabama political family. Her grandfather and her uncle were U.S. senators, and her father was Speaker of the House of Representatives. Bankhead's support of liberal causes, including the budding civil rights movement, brought her into public conflict with her family and southern contemporaries, who championed white supremacy and racial segregation. She also supp ...
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Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton (1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was a British actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death. He played a wide range of classical and modern parts, making an impact in Shakespeare at the Old Vic. His film career took him to Broadway and then Hollywood, but he also collaborated with Alexander Korda on notable British films of the era, including ''The Private Life of Henry VIII'', for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the title character. He portrayed everything from monsters and misfits to kings. Among Laughton's biggest film hits were ''The Barretts of Wimpole Street'', ''Mutiny on the Bounty'', ''Ruggles of Red Gap'', ''Jamaica Inn'', ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'', ''The Big Clock'', and ''Witness for the Prosecution''. Daniel D ...
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The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric American culture, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of Short story, short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous Fact-checking, fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue. Overview and history ''The New Yorker'' was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a ''The New York Times, N ...
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