Hank Garrett was raised in a multi-cultural neighborhood. In the 1950s where poverty was a way of life, Survival was the goal and violence was the means. By age 12, Hank was carrying a .25 caliber handgun. He would either end up dead or in prison. But a serendipitous meeting with Sammy Davis Jr. changed the trajectory of Hank's life, and Hank stepped into the worlds of comedy, acting, martial arts, and wrestling. Lying about his age, at 17, Hank balanced a career as a pro wrestler with doing comedy acts at various clubs, all while still attending high school. By age 19 he had landed a role in a successful television series. With success also came challenges, however. Hank experienced love, loss, injury, and discrimination. Opportunities were lost or stolen from him. But Hank persevered. The fight inside the man, which could have proved disastrous, became his greatest asset. Up from the Streets is a true story of survival, redemption, and hope. His book, "From Harlem Hoodlum to Hollywood Heavyweight," will make you happy, sad and will make you laugh all the way through as he tells us all the stories of his life, the famous people he worked with and all he had to go through to make it from the streets of Harlem to his hard-earned stardom. He was going to survive the street life of Harlem where he learned to become a professional wrestler along with reaching the top as a martial arts expert inducted into the Hall of Fame in both sports. Hank was also an accomplished comedian and moved on to acting where he landed the part of officer Nicholson in the highly acclaimed Car 54 Where Are You. His story will surprise and entertain you as you read of all his accomplishments, his successes, the surprises in his life and the sometimes sad stories, told in his book, From Harlem Hoodlum to Hollywood Heavyweight. One thing guaranteed is that Hanks book will entertain and surprise you reading about all he accomplished in his life written with his unique style of comedy and truth. His book will leave you smiling at Hanks take on life....so far.

Hank Garrett was raised in a multi-cultural neighborhood. In the 1950s where poverty was a way of life, Survival was the goal and violence was the means. By age 12, Hank was carrying a handgun. He would either end up dead or in prison. But a meeting with Sammy Davis Jr. changed Hank's life and Hank stepped into the worlds of comedy, acting, martial arts, and wrestling. Lying about his age, at 17, Hank balanced a career as a pro wrestler with doing comedy acts, all while still attending high school. By age 19 he had landed a role in a successful television series. With success also came challenges, however. Hank experienced love, loss, injury, and discrimination. Opportunities were lost or stolen from him. But Hank persevered. The fight inside the man, could have proved disastrous, but became his greatest asset. Up from the Streets is a true story of survival, redemption, and hope. His book, "From Harlem Hoodlum to Hollywood Heavyweight," will make you happy, sad and will make you laugh all the way through as he tells us all the stories of his life, the famous people he worked with and all he had to go through to make it from the streets of Harlem to his hard-earned stardom. He was going to survive the street life of Harlem where he learned to become a professional wrestler along with reaching the top as a martial arts expert inducted into the Hall of Fame in both sports. Hank was also an accomplished comedian and moved on to acting where he landed the part of officer Nicholson in the highly acclaimed Car 54 Where Are You. His story will surprise and entertain you as you read of all his accomplishments, his successes, the surprises in his life and the sometimes sad stories, told in his book. One thing guaranteed is that Hank's book will entertain and surprise you reading about all he accomplished in his life written with his unique style of comedy and truth. His book will leave you smiling at Hanks take on life....so far.

"In Hollywood myths, veteran film critic Joe Williams dissects the film industry's biggest myths and rumors, from the dawn of the silver screen to the twenty-first century. Myths discussed pertain to superstars, power couples, groundbreaking films, and the industry itself"--Provided by publisher.

In the 1930s, Shirley Temple was heralded as “America’s sweetheart,” and she remains the icon of wholesome American girlhood, but Temple’s films strike many modern viewers as perverse. Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood examines her early career in the context of the history of girlhood and considers how Temple’s star image emerged out of the Victorian cult of the child. Beginning her career in “Baby Burlesks,” short films where she played vamps and harlots, her biggest hits were marketed as romances between Temple and her adult male costars. Kristen Hatch helps modern audiences make sense of the erotic undercurrents that seem to run through these movies. Placing Temple’s films in their historical context and reading them alongside earlier representations of girlhood in Victorian theater and silent film, Hatch shows how Shirley Temple emerged at the very moment that long standing beliefs about childhood innocence and sexuality were starting to change. Where we might now see a wholesome child in danger of adult corruption, earlier audiences saw Temple’s films as demonstrations of the purifying power of childhood innocence. Hatch examines the cultural history of the time to view Temple’s performances in terms of sexuality, but in relation to changing views about gender, class, and race. Filled with new archival research, Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood enables us to appreciate the “simpler times” of Temple’s stardom in all its thorny complexity.

THE MISSING YEARS FROM THE GREATEST CRIME SAGA OF ALL TIME Thirty-five years ago, Mario Puzo’s great American tale, The Godfather, was published, and popular culture was indelibly changed. Now, in The Godfather Returns, acclaimed novelist Mark Winegardner continues the story–the years not covered in Puzo’s bestselling book or in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic films. It is 1955. Michael Corleone has won a bloody victory in the war among New York’s crime families. Now he wants to consolidate his power, save his marriage, and take his family into legitimate businesses. To do so, he must confront his most dangerous adversary yet, Nick Geraci, a former boxer who worked his way through law school as a Corleone street enforcer, and who is every bit as deadly and cunning as Michael. Their personal cold war will run from 1955 to 1962, exerting immense influence on the lives of America’s most powerful criminals and their loved ones, including Tom Hagen, the Corleone Family’s lawyer and consigliere, who embarks on a political career in Nevada while trying to protect his brother; Francesca Corleone, daughter of Michael’s late brother Sonny, who is suddenly learning her family’s true history and faces a difficult choice; Don Louie Russo, head of the Chicago mob, who plays dumb but has wily ambitions for muscling in on the Corleones’ territory; Peter Clemenza, the stalwart Corleone underboss, who knows more Family secrets than almost anyone; Ambassador M. Corbett Shea, a former Prohibition-era bootlegger and business ally of the Corleones’, who wants to get his son elected to the presidency–and needs some help from his old friends; Johnny Fontane, the world’s greatest saloon singer, who ascends to new heights as a recording artist, cozying up to Washington’s power elite and maintaining a precarious relationship with notorious underworld figures; Kay Adams Corleone, who finally discovers the truth about her husband, Michael–and must decide what it means for their marriage and their children and Fredo Corleone, whose death has never been fully explained until now, and whose betrayal of the Family was part of a larger and more sinister chain of events. Sweeping from New York and Washington to Las Vegas and Cuba, The Godfather Returns is the spellbinding story of America’s criminal underworld at mid-century and its intersection with the political, legal, and entertainment empires. Mark Winegardner brings an original voice and vision to Mario Puzo’s mythic characters while creating several equally unforgettable characters of his own. The Godfather Returns stands on its own as a triumph–in a tale about what we love, yearn for, and sometimes have reason to fear . . . family.

"The most thorough investigation of the Black Sox scandal on record . . . A vividly, excitingly written book."--Chicago Tribune

An anthology of indescretion compiled from 60 years' exposure to America's entertainment industry, which makes the original Hollywood Babylon look tame, polite and restrained. In the first volume in a new series, Blood Moon apply the tabloid standards of today to the scandals of Hollywood's golden age, also including shocking rundowns of today's Hollywood scandals in the making. Includes chapters on Well Hung Hollywood, Victors and Losers in the Battle of the Bulge, Fan-Worship and Necrophilia, Murder, Marilyn, a Death in a Dinghy and more lurid revelations!

The book charts the evolving relationship between cinema and radio during the heyday of the two media and compares and contrasts their development in Britain and America

Forget what you think you know about the Mafia. After reading this book, even life-long mob aficionados will have a new perspective on organized crime. Informative, authoritative, and eye-opening, this is the first full-length book devoted exclusively to uncovering the hidden history of how the Mafia came to dominate organized crime in New York City during the 1930s through 1950s. Based on exhaustive research of archives and secret files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, author and attorney C. Alexander Hortis draws on the deepest collection of primary sources, many newly discovered, of any history of the modern mob. Shattering myths, Hortis reveals how Cosa Nostra actually obtained power at the inception. The author goes beyond conventional who-shot-who mob stories, providing answers to fresh questions such as: * Why did the Sicilian gangs come out on top of the criminal underworld? * Can economics explain how the Mafia families operated? * What was the Mafia's real role in the drug trade? * Why was Cosa Nostra involved in gay bars in New York since the 1930s? Drawing on an unprecedented array of primary sources, The Mob and the City is the most thorough and authentic history of the Mafia's rise to power in the early-to-mid twentieth century.

Introduction: Mediated America: Americana as Hollywoodiana / Jan Olsson, Kingsley Bolton -- Italian marionettes meet cinematic modernity / Jan Olsson -- "A red-blooded romance"; or Americanizing early multi-reel feature cinema: the case of The spoilers / Joel Frykholm -- Song of the sonic body: noise, the audience, and early American moving picture culture / Meredith C. Ward -- Constructing the global vernacular: American English and the media / Kingsley Bolton -- You only live once: repetitions of crime as desire in the films of Sylvia Sidney, 1930-1937 / Esther Sonnet -- Punks! Topicality and the 1950s gangster bio-pic cycle / Peter Stanfield -- Importing evil: the American gangster, Swedish cinema, and anti-American propaganda / Ann-Kristin Wallengren -- Sun Yu and the early Americanization of Chinese cinema / Corrado Neri -- If America were really China or how Christopher Columbus discovered Asia / Gregory Lee -- Civil rights on the screen / Michael Renov -- Goodbye rabbit ears: visualizing and mapping the U.S. Digital TV transition / Lisa Parks -- Archival transitions: some digital propositions / Pelle Snickars -- Are Americans human? / Evelyn Ch'ien -- Afterword: Rethinking the American century / William Uricchio.