Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Arts & Entertainment

Here are legendary director, producer, screenwriter, author, and actor Orson Welles' historic interpretations of excerpts from classic literature. Includes selections from Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince', H.G. Wells' "The Red Room", Saki's "Shredni Vashtar", Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer", Rudyard Kipling's "Riki-Tikii-Tavi", Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wakefield", Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart", and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde".

One night in 1995, author Douglas Adams kidnapped an audience and held them hostage for 70 minutes at London's Almeida Theatre. The audience members were subjected to Adams's dramatic solo performances of excerpts and scenes from his wildly funny, wildly popular books The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, the Universe and Everything. LEARN how to fly! HEAR about Arthur and the Irrational Sofa! GROAN at Marvin's escapade with the Frogstar Battle Robot! Just keep laughing and nobody will get hurt!

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award winning PBS-TV series Meeting of the Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history of conversation and conflict. In this, the sixth assemblage, the focus is on heroic figures from civil disobedience to the validity of the scientific method.

Join Rick Reynolds as he guides you through the foibles, fumbles and pratfalls of his own life beginning with his bizarre childhood. From the drowning of his father at a family picnic, to a bank-robbing stepfather, to his mother's 3 marriages and innumerable affairs, Reynolds portrays a striking picture of the lengths people will go for love and the human connection.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. Volume XII, the final gathering of brilliant ambassadors from the past, brings together three strong personalities whose profound disagreements make frequent bursts of dispute inevitable.

There are certain defining events that occur to people. The sort of things we tend to use as markers in the timetables of our lives. Birth and Deaths. Marriages and Divorces. Windfalls and Calamities. They become the things that other things happen before and after. These events scramble our sensibilities to leave us blinking at the landscape like we've never seen it before. I was exploded at about seven o'clock in the morning, May 27, 1975, down a long, dusty road outside of Medford, Oregon. It's taken this long for all the pieces to come back together again - and here they are.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. The result is an outrageously stimulating exchange of ideas - the ultimate talk show moderated appropriately by the man who created The Tonight Show. Historical personalities appearing on this volume I are President Theordore Roosevelt, Queen Cleopatra, Father Thomas Aquina, and Thomas Paine.

A legendary folk singer and activist, Woody Guthrie and his songs changed the world. Born in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, Guthrie traveled America by boxcar, thumb, and foot. Along the journey, he composed and sang songs that have become a national heritage. His songs, however, are but part of his legacy. This remarkable autobiography brings to life both his vibrant personality and a vision of America we cannot afford to let die. Funny, cynical, and earthy, Bound for Glory is the stirring account of Guthrie's life and a superb portrait of America's Depression years.

Narrating his riveting memoir, beloved actor Dick Van Patten reflects on his prolific career, vibrant life, and the people who shaped both. From growing up during the Great Depression when poverty and racially biased ideologies dominated America, to witnessing the advent of television and its subsequent influence on culture, Dick Van Patten's life is a rich record of change and progress in America and Hollywood.

Sex scandals have rocked Hollywood since the industry began, but Once More With Feeling: You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again, Again is a brand new collection of stories that this town will never recover from - again.

From the comic mind of the one and only Jonathan Winters comes this side-splitting collection of the comedian's most off-the-wall antics and impressions. Grandma Frickert, Chester Honeyhugger, and other comic characters all make appearances on this best-of compilation.

Leni Riefenstahl, "Hitler's filmmaker", remains one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. Susan Sontag, though one of her severest critics, said that Triumph of the Will and Olympia, Riefenstahl's most noted films, "may be the two greatest documentaries ever made". Others see her story as an object lesson about opportunism.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of the Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. Poetry, philosophy, politics and revolution form a lively mix of topics in this, the eighth gathering of influential intellects from several centuries.

One of Hollywood's biggest players for almost 50 years, Darryl F. Zanuck presided over Twentieth Century-Fox during its most glorious era. These were the studio's golden days, with stars like Marilyn Monroe and Henry Fonda, directors like John Ford and Elia Kazan, and blockbusters like All About Eve and The Grapes of Wrath.

Discover the many sides of Pablo Picasso - a brilliant painter and sculptor, a sexual sadist, a loyal Communist, a seducer, a father, and, ultimately, a tragic figure. Audio portraits of him and other creative geniuses are collected in Lives of the Artists.

Recorded live at the Friar's Club in New York City, this collection of stand-up routines features some of the greatest American comedians at the height of their comic skills. Presented by Joey Adams—and with introductions by television legends Milton Berle and Phyllis Diller—this recording captures performances by Norm Crosby, Freddie Roman, Soupy Sales, and Henny Youngman. In this nostalgic, hysterical collection, you'll laugh all the way through hundreds of hilarious jokes, gags, and putdowns.

Nine-time Emmy Award winner and icon of American comedy, Carl Reiner, performs a sweet, wry, and whimsical collection of 25 multi-dimensional short stories - some true and others merely tales. Together they represent the poignant, nostalgic, and laugh-out loud funny genius of this comedic superstar.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of the Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. For the 10th session of intellectual time-travel, Steve Allen summoned three strikingly different thinkers each certain to provoke outrage in the other.

Harry Cohn was the cofounder and president of Columbia Pictures, which he ran from the 1930s through the 1950s. Cohn—who abhorred personal publicity—left no writings, made no speeches, and rarely submitted to interviews. Despite this, acclaimed biographer Bob Thomas brilliantly illuminates the life of the powerful but elusive studio head in King Cohn: The Life and Times of Hollywood Mogul Harry Cohn. Thomas details the studio head's rise from a New York City song-plugger to a Poverty Row impresario, highlighting his reign as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

Conceived and developed by Steve Allen, the award-winning PBS-TV series Meeting of Minds brought together the most provocative figures of history for conversation and conflict. Historical personalities appearing on this Volume IV are Frederick Douglass; Empress Tz'u-hsi; Cesare Bonesana-Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio; and Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade.