Built in stages between 1830 and 1875, Magnolia House is a historic landmark on Staten Island, the least-visited Outer Borough of New York City.
Set within a 10-minute walk from the (free) Staten Island ferry that accesses Manhattan, it’s the headquarters of the widely distributed independent press, BLOOD MOON PRODUCTIONS, a feisty wordsmith noted for celebrity biographies that have been reviewed in THE DAILY MAIL, the New York DAILY NEWS, show-biz news reports, and literary journals across the country.
Some visitors liken Magnolia House to a grande dame with a centuries-old knack for nourishing high-functioning eccentrics. Many of them have lived or been entertained here since New York’s State Senator Howard Bayne, a transplanted Southerner, moved in with his wife, the daughter of the Surgeon General of the Confederate States of America, in the aftermath of that bloodiest of wars on North American soil, the War Between the American States.
Since then, many dozens of celebrities—some of them notorious—have whispered their secrets and rehearsed their ambitions within its walls. They’ve included movie vamps from the silent screen, MIDNIGHT COWBOYS, dancers from the dance, BUTTERFLIES IN HEAT, a heavyweight boxing champ, writers from every hue, faded film goddesses, playwrights who crafted blockbusters for both Marilyn (Monroe) and Elizabeth (Taylor), ultra-avant-garde diarists, every known variety of prima donna and diva, including some from the world of opera, and a world-class Olympic athlete.
They’ve also included Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince, who spent decades here renovating it and producing a stream of FROMMER TRAVEL GUIDES and award-winning celebrity biographies.
This book illuminates Magnolia House’s contribution to the American Century, when dozens of individual movers and shakers—some of them sane and emotionally stable, others not—visited Magnolia House.
This book reveals what they did and what they revealed.
Inhoudsopgave
CONTENTS
Prologue: Literary Outlaws of the Postwar American Century—Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and Truman Capote
Ch 1: Tennessee Williams’ feuds with the Űber-divas of Hollywood: Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Crawford, and Miriam Hopkins.
Ch 2: Broadway Remembers Audrey Wood, the most Influential literary and show-biz agent in the history of the American Theater.
Ch 3: Joan Blondell—Portrait of a movie star and a Magnolia House “regular.”
Ch 4: MURDER AHOY with Bette Davis: Did she kill her second husband?
Ch 5: How Truman Capote’s avant-garde, all-black cast danced the Mambo all the way to Broadway.
Ch 6: Myra Breckinridge— America’s foremost literary transsexual.
Ch 7: Crazy October— On the road with Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Blondell, & Estelle Winwood.
Ch 8: Midnight Cowboy—Its link, through its author, to Magnolia House.
Ch 9: When Divas Clash— The real-life fight for Robert Taylor.
Ch 10: Rudolf Nureyev—From Russia with Love.
Ch 11: Rudolf Nureyev—Seducing his way through the Kennedy clan.
Ch 12: Nureyev’s Homage to Rudolph Valentino.
Ch 13: How the Opera Diva, Eleanor Steber dished the music world’s juiciest dirt, including how Adolf Hitler molested boys in Bayreuth.
Ch 14: Greta Keller—Hitler’s favorite cabaret singer— and her long-term residency at Magnolia House.
Ch 15: Edward Albee at Magnolia House— Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?.
Ch 16: Grace Kelly—Beauty, good manners, lucky breaks, & the triumph of myth over reality.
Ch 17: Hedy Lamarr—The bizarre story of the most beautiful woman in the world.
Ch 18: Jack Dempsey—His widely publicized romp with Mae West, and his links to Magnolia House.
Ch 19: Bombshells from Budapest—The Gabors and their formidable mother, Jolie
Postscript From the Edge: Media Buzz
Scribes & Messengers (Authors’ Bios)
Over de auteur
Formerly employed by the Paris Bureau of the New York Times and later, as co-author of many of The Frommer Guides, Prince is the president of Blood Moon Productions, a New York City-based publishing enterprise committed to salvaging and recording the oral histories of America’s entertainment industry. He’s also the award-winning innkeeper of a historic and ‘media-centric’ Air Bnb in New York City, Magnolia House Saint George.com.
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