The Lehman bio and the three books preceding it
Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success (2022)
Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success is the first biography of Ernest Lehman, one of the most successful screenwriters in film history. He created a remarkable string of iconic mid-Twentieth Century American films, including "Sabrina," "The King And I," "Somebody Up There Likes Me," "Sweet Smell of Success," "North By Northwest," "West Side Story," "The Sound of Music," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," Hitchcock's last film "Family Plot" and "Black Sunday" (but also the calamitous "Portnoy's Complaint").
This book takes readers into pre-production and onto the sound stages and locations for these films and highlights Lehman's role in their creation. Using extensive research and interviews with more than 100 of Lehman's colleagues, friends and family members, it also provides a thorough look at this wary, reticent and elusive screenwriter from Manhattan's Upper West Side and the Five Towns of Long Island and examines the questions raised by his life and art, such as the uneasy co-existence of art and commerce in Hollywood and the relative place of original and adapted screenplays in Hollywood's status hierarchy.
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Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food (2013)
More than Mom's apple pie, peanut butter is the all-American food. With its rich, roasted-peanut aroma and flavor, caramel hue, and gooey, consoling texture, peanut butter is an enduring favorite, found in the patries of at least 75 percent of American kitchens. Published by Columbia University Press in 2013, this is the first and only history of one of the U.S.'s most sacramental foods.
Other than the Ernest Lehman biography, this is the only one of my books still in print; you can order it
(Do not order it from Amazon! If you do, I will not be your online friend.)
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Female Brando: The Legend of Kim Stanley (2006)
During the 1950's and '60's, no actress dazzled Broadway like Kim Stanley. She was acclaimed th greatest stage actress of a generation that included Julie Harris, Geraldine page and Anne Bancroft. Arthur Penn called her the American Eleanor Duse. Elizabeth Taylor (in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof") and Marilyn Monroe (in "Bus Stop") copied her stage performances on film.
Men longed for her. Scandal shadowed her. And theatergoers couldn't get enough of this Method-inspired performer from the Actors Studio. Published in 2006 by Backstage Books/Watson-Guptill, this is the first and only biography of this stage legend.
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The Man in the Shadows: Fred Coe and the Golden Age of Television (1997)
Fred Coe, the greatest producer of New York's live television drama era during the 1950's, ran the show at "Philco-Goodyear Playhouse" and the Wally Cox sitcom "Mr. Peepers." He was a leading light of "Producers Showcase" and "Playhouse 90." A fiery, hard-drinking native of Alligator, Mississippi, with a crew cut and horn-rimmed glasses, Coe developed such classic shows as "Marty," "The Trip to Bountiful," "Days of Wine and Roses" and "A Young Lady of Property," among many others.
Although he discovered many actors and directors, he was best known as a patron saint of writers, giving their starts to Paddy Chayefsky, Horton Foote, Tad Mosel, JP Miller, David Shaw, David Swift and N. Richard Nash. He was also a successful Broadway producer and made several films as well, producing and directing "A Thousand Clowns." Published by Rutgers University Press in 1997, this book brings Coe out of the shadows to give the acclaim that has long been his due.
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