Sal Mineo is probably most well-known for his unforgettable, Academy Award–nominated turn opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and his tragic murder at the age of thirty-seven. Finally, in this riveting new biography filled with exclusive, candid interviews with both Mineo’s closest female and male lovers and never-before-published photographs, Michael Gregg Michaud tells the full story of this remarkable young actor’s life, charting his meteoric rise to fame and turbulent career and private life. One of the hottest stars of the 1950s, Mineo grew up as the son of Sicilian immigrants in a humble Bronx flat. But by age eleven, he appeared on Broadway in Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo, and then as Prince Chulalongkorn in the original Broadway production of The King and I starring Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence. This sultry-eyed, dark-haired male ingénue of sorts appeared on the cover of every major magazine, thousands of star-struck fans attended his premieres, and millions bought his records, which included several top-ten hits. His life offstage was just as exhilarating: full of sports cars, motor boats, famous friends, and some of the most beautiful young actresses in Hollywood. But it was fourteen-year-old Jill Haworth, his costar in Exodus—the film that delivered one of the greatest acting roles of his life and earned him another Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe win—with whom he fell in love and moved to the West Coast. But by the 1960s, a series of professional missteps and an increasingly tumultuous private life reversed his fortunes. By the late sixties and early seventies, grappling with the repercussions of publicly admitting his homosexuality and struggling to reinvent himself from an aging teen idol, Mineo turned toward increasingly self-destructive behavior. Yet his creative impulses never foundered. He began directing and producing controversial off-Broadway plays that explored social and sexual taboos. He also found personal happiness in a relationship with male actor Courtney Burr. Tragically, on the cusp of turning a new page in his life, Mineo’s life was cut short in a botched robbery. Revealing a charming, mischievous, creative, and often scandalous side of Mineo few have known before now, Sal Mineo is an intimate, moving biography of a distinctive Hollywood star.

Sal Mineo: A Biography

Michaud, Michael Gregg

Humor & Entertainment

Crown

Crown/Archetype

THE WORLD OF MIRTH is a novella in verse about a young boy's first visit to a traveling carnival.

The world of mirth

MGM Press

The land of open hands

Moribundo

Diane McBain is an American film and television actress who was born in Ohio, and raised in Glendale, California. She reached her peak of popularity as a Warner Bros. contract star during the late 1950s and early 1960s. She is perhaps best known for starring in the 1960-62 hit ABC-TV series, Surfside Six, and appearing opposite Elvis Presley in Spinout. Her more than 25 feature films include Ice Palace, Parrish, Claudelle Inglish, Black Gold, The Caretakers, Mary Mary, A Distant Trumpet, and such cult classics as Maryjane, Thunder Alley, I Sailed to Tahiti With An All Girl Crew, and The Mini-Skirt Mob. She has guest-starred in dozens of television dramas, and numerous situation comedies, including such classics as Maverick, The Wild, Wild West, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. One of her most memorable television guest roles was on the original Batman series, playing “Pinky Pinkston.” Miss McBain’s personal and professional travels have taken her to Europe, South America and Asia. She supports many charitable causes, and is an outspoken advocate for victims of sexual assault. She received the “Special Service Award” from the USO for her trips to Vietnam to visit American troops in 1966 and 1967. Michael Gregg Michaud is the author of Sal Mineo, A Biography (Harmony Books/Three Rivers Press), which was nominated for a Lambda Book Award in 2011. The acclaimed book was a pick of the month in Los Angeles Times Magazine and for Turner Classic Movies. Sal Mineo, A Biography was adapted for the screen by James Franco. Michaud appears in the Biography Channel/Smart Entertainment production of the documentary Crime Special: Hollywood’s Most Notorious Crimes (2012), and the feature documentary Steven Arnold’s Heavenly Bodies (2015) about avant-garde filmmaker and photographer. Steven Arnold. Michaud supports numerous charitable causes, including The Roar Foundation, which supports the Shambala Preserve for endangered, exotic big cats, and the Linda Blair Worldheart Foundation, which rescues dogs and cats. Michaud is a respected researcher and writer of Hollywood history.

Famous Enough: A Hollywood Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

McBain, Diane

Arts & Literature

BearManor Media

Collected for the first time are some of the most revealing, amusing, and rare interviews covering Mae West's ten-year career in movies. West's celluloid image was explosive and trendsetting, but her outspoken and progressive thoughts about women and sexuality shocked and seduced the public. Her feminist riffs and screenplays made her a cultural icon for sexuality and social subversion. In the 1930s, she was not only considered scandalous, but positively dangerous. In a male dominated industry, she stood alone. "I don't mind telling you," she told a journalist, "I'm about as fed up on this pseudo-frigidity in women as a lot of men are. It all started a few hundred years ago with some religious fanatics who decided because the religious leaders had been supernaturally conceived, it naturally followed that any expression of sex through the human body must be sinful. Bosh!"

Mae West: Between the Covers (hardback)

Community & Culture

Much is known and written about the film and stage careers of Mae West. But she also worked sporadically on national radio and television during her seventy-five-year career in show business. MAE WEST: Broadcast Muse is the first comprehensive look at her television and radio appearances with Rudy Vallee, Perry Como, and, most famously, with Edger Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1937. Her portrayal of Eve, opposite Don Ameche’s Adam, in the infamous “Garden of Eden” skit, and her provocative sparring with Bergen’s wooden companion, Charlie McCarthy, earned the actress condemnation and a ban from national radio that lasted more than a decade. It also all but ended her motion picture career.
 In the 1950s, she ventured into television with a surprise appearance on the 30th Annual Academy Awards presentation singing a duet with Rock Hudson, guest starring appearances on The Dean Martin Show and The Red Skelton Show, and an interview on the CBS-TV program, Person to Person, which was considered so risqué, the network cancelled the pre-recorded broadcast twenty-four hours before the show was scheduled to air.
 In the 1960s, she guest-starred on the popular sitcom, Mr. Ed, considered several television specials and a cartoon series, and did a rare sit-down interview with Dick Cavett. MAE WEST: Broadcast Muse includes the fascinating behind the scene stories of her work on these shows, and many rare photographs from the sets. The book also includes several proposed radio and television scripts that were written for Mae West, but never made it on the air, including a proposed appearance with Frank Sinatra on the Armed Forces radio show, Mail Call, in 1944, and fascinating interviews with the actress expressing her thoughts on television, censorship, sex, and being one of the most famous sex symbols in Hollywood history. 
 “I never liked the idea of doing television because people could turn me off,” Mae West said to Joyce Haber in 1968.
 MAE WEST: Broadcast Muse explores with hilarious details all the famed actress’ radio and television ventures – those that made it on the air, and the many more that didn’t – and bring the actress back to life in a way her fans have never seen before.

Mae West: Broadcast Muse (hardback)

The book is a collection of "lost" interviews and magazine profiles of actress Marlene Dietrich, beginning in 1930 and ending in 1954. The collected interviews reveal the "real" woman behind the cinematic mythical figure of Marlene Dietrich. The articles/stories/interviews cover her early life on the stage in Germany, and her eventual movie stardom in Hollywood, her complicated, symbiotic relationship with her mentor and director Josef von Sternberg, her problems with Nazi Germany and United States immigration, and her complicated and intriguing love life. It also reveals her love/hate relationship with the press.

Marlene Dietrich: Between the Covers

This is a collection of "lost" interviews and magazine profiles of actress Marlene Dietrich, beginning in 1930 and ending in 1954. The collected interviews reveal the "real" woman behind the cinematic mythical figure of Marlene Dietrich. The articles/stories/interviews cover her early life on the stage in Germany, and her eventual movie stardom in Hollywood, her complicated, symbiotic relationship with her mentor and director Josef von Sternberg, her problems with Nazi Germany and United States immigration, and her complicated and intriguing love life. It also reveals her love/hate relationship with the press.

Marlene Dietrich: Between the Covers (hardback)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Michaud, Michael Gregg. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Michaud, Michael Gregg

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Michaud, Michael Gregg. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Sal Mineo: A Biography

Sal Mineo: A Biography

The world of mirth

The land of open hands

Moribundo

Famous Enough: A Hollywood Memoir

Mae West: Between the Covers (hardback)

Mae West: Broadcast Muse (hardback)

Marlene Dietrich: Between the Covers

Marlene Dietrich: Between the Covers (hardback)