Дональд Спото – лучшие книги

Необыкновенная женщина, дочь английского банкира и голландской баронессы, фотомодель, манекенщица, танцовщица, ставшая впоследствии одной из величайших фигур мирового кино, Одри Хепберн прожила яркую и насыщенную жизнь. Имя актрисы стало синонимом успеха, стиля и элегантности. Она получила "Оскара" от Американской киноакадемии и еще четырежды номинировалась на эту престижную награду. Одри хотела стать второй Анной Павловой, а стала Принцессой Голливуда. Ее партнерами по фильмам были знаменитые актеры Грегори Пек, Гэри Купер, Шон Коннери, Фред Астер, Хамфри Богарт, Питер О'Тул. На протяжении всей жизни Одри Хепберн была музой знаменитого…

Мэрилин Монро и сейчас является признанным секс-символом, ничуть не утратившим своей магической привлекательности и продолжающим оставаться объектом всеобщего поклонения. Экранный эталон глупенькой голливудской красотки, благодаря которой вошли в моду анекдоты про блондинок, - в то же время блестящая актриса, интеллектом и мастерством которой восхищались работавшие с ней режиссеры. Капризная стерва, разбивавшая сердца самых знаменитых мужчин Америки, - и создательница кинокомпании "Мэрилин Монро Продакшнз", на собственные деньги собиравшаяся экранизировать роман Достоевского "Братья Карамазовы"... Жизнь и ранняя смерть блистательной ММ…

Судьба американской актрисы шведского происхождения Ингрид Бергман была наполнена таким же драматизмом, что и сыгранные ею роли в фильмах `Интермеццо`, `Касаблан6ка`, `Колокола святой Марии` и `Осенняя соната`. В свое время она заслужила репутациюсамой красивой, и в тоже время самой аморальной женщины в Голливуде. Причиной этого явилась ее любовная связь с режиссером Роберто Росселини, ставшая в 1950 году скандальной новостью номер один в газетах США и Западной Европы. Книга известного биографа Дональда Спото представляет собой увлекательное повествование о жизни Ингрид Бергман в Швеции, Германии и Голливуде, где она успешно играла на…

Based on more than 150 interviews, this in-depth biography casts new light on every aspect of Marilyn Monroe's thirty-six years: her mysterious childhood and adolescence; her complex marriages; her personal and professional relationships; and the truth about her death.

Joan Crawford was one of the most incandescent film stars of all time, yet she was also one of the most misunderstood. In this brilliantly researched, thoughtful, and intimate biography, bestselling author Donald Spoto goes beyond the popular caricature?the abusive, unstable mother portrayed in her adopted daughter Christina Crawford's memoir, Mommie Dearest?to give us a three-dimensional portrait of a very human woman, her dazzling career, and her extraordinarily dramatic life and times. Based on new archival information and exclusive interviews, and written with Spoto's keen eye for detail, Possessed offers a fascinating portrait of a courageous, highly sexed, and ambitious woman whose strength and drive made her a forerunner in the fledgling film business. From her hardscrabble childhood in Texas to her early days as a dancer in post-World War I New York to her rise to stardom, Spoto traces Crawford's fifty years of memorable performances in classics like Rain, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Sudden Fear, which are as startling and vivid today as when they were filmed. In Possessed, Spoto goes behind the myths to examine the rise and fall of the studio system; Crawford's four marriages; her passionate thirty year, on-and-off-again affair with Clark Gable; her friendships and rivalries with other stars; her powerful desire to become a mother; the truth behind the scathing stories in her daughter Christina's memoir; and her final years as a widow battling cancer. Spoto explores Crawford's achievements as an actress, her work with Hollywood's great directors (Frank Borzage, George Cukor, Otto Preminger) and actors (Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, John Barrymore), and later, her role as a highly effective executive on the board of directors of Pepsi-Cola. Illuminating and entertaining, Possessed is the definitive biography of this remarkable woman and true legend of film.

This is the definitive life story of Alfred Hitchcock, the enigmatic and intensely private director of Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds, and more than forty other films. While setting forth every stage of Hitchcock’s long life and brilliant career, Donald Spoto also explores the roots of the director’s obsessions with blondes, food, murder, and idealized love—and he traces the incomparable, bizarre genius from Hitchcock’s English childhood through the golden years of his career in America as one of the greatest directors in the history of filmmaking.

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he author of "Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman" disentangles the complicated life of Marlene Dietrich, from her performances in Germany's cabarets to starring roles in "Blue Angel, The Devil Is a Woman" and "Blond Venus".

She was America's sweetheart; the embodiment of grace, elegance, style, charm, and-as the world discovered in late 1963-bravery. And though much has been written about the most famous woman of the 20th century, no biography has revealed the true Jackie; none has successfully separated the truth from the lies, or portrayed the Queen of Camelot in all her complexity-until now. With access to Jackie's own writings, the archives of the John F. Kennedy Library, and those who knew her best, bestselling celebrity biographer Donald Spoto illuminates Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and the sixty-five years of her life with candor, compassion and compelling detail. Readers will discover:

* The early years: a privileged but lonely childhood that shaped Jackie's resilience and poise, working as a photojournalist for the Washington Times-Herald, and meeting a handsome congressman named Kennedy
* Life as the first lady: dealing with Jack's infidelity, adjusting to life in the spotlight, and her influence on the policies of the Kennedy Administration
* Mrs. Onassis: life after Jack, marrying the Greek tycoon, her accomplished career as a book editor, her final days, and much more

Revealing and richly informative account of the dramatic life of one of the century's most famous screen actresses, Ingrid Bergman (1915-82), a controversial woman whose affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini led to her being banned from the USA for seven years. Ingrid Bergman was the daughter of a Swedish father and German mother, who spent part of the 1930s in the German film industry. Her success in the Swedish film 'Intermezzo' (1936), where she played a concert pianist, led to her arrival in Hollywood in 1939, where she starred in 'Casablanca', three of Hitchcock's films ('Notorious', 'Spellbound' and 'Under Capricorn'), 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' (with Spencer Tracy), 'Gaslight', 'The Bells of St Mary's', 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', etc. Her roles, like her life, alternated between the saintly and the saucy, the innocent and the dissolute. At first America fell in love with her: she was uncommonly fresh, recognisably human, and (it seemed) a happily domesticated wife and mother. However, as Spoto shows, nothing was ever tame about Ingrid; her love affairs were intense, and her relationship with Rossellini scandalised America. Ingrid Bergman's work and life comprise a romantic drama that rivals the biographies of Isadora Duncan, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Jacqueline Kennedy. In forty-nine feature films, nine plays and countless public appearances, she enchanted millions over a period of five decades.

This is the first complete, critical biography of Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), one of America's finest playwrights and the author of (among many important works) "The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, "and "The Night of the Iguana." Award-winning biographer Donald Spoto gives us not only a full and accurate account of Williams's life, he also reveals the intimate connections between the playwright's personal dramas and his remarkably autobiographical art. From his birth into a genteel Southern family, through his success, celebrity, and wealth, to his drug addictions, promiscuity, and creative struggles, Tennessee Williams lived a life as gripping as his plays. "The Kindness of Strangers, " based on Williams's own papers, his mother's diaries, and interviews with scores of friends, lovers, and professional associates, is, in the author's words, a portrait of "a man more disturbing, more dramatic, richer and more wonderful than any character he created."

Acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto strips away the legends from the life of Francis of Assisi to reveal the true story of a man who has too often been obscured by pious iconography. Drawing on unprecedented access to unexplored archives, plus Francis's own letters, Spoto places Francis within the context of the multifaceted ecclesiastical, political, and social forces of medieval Italy, casting new light on Francis and showing how his emphasis on charity as the heart of the Gospel's message helped him pioneer a new social movement. This nuanced portrait reveals the multifaceted character of a man who can genuinely be said to have changed the course of history.