James Spada's Blog, page 12

A Great Year for Barbra Streisand fans!

2012 has been a banner year for those of us who have followed Barbra Streisand's career for more than five decades. How many fans get to see their favorite have a Top Ten album, a record-setting concert tour, and a movie expected  to be a big Christmas hit--and all at 70 years of age?

I became a Marilyn Monroe fan in 1960, and I never imagined that fifty years later she'd be as fresh in the public's mind as she was then--on the cover of Playboy this month for goodness's sake! No other movie star has ever had that kind of impact for so long.

I'm equally fortunate as a fan of Streisand's, whom I began to follow in 1965. As special, as extraordinary as she was, few could have predicted that half a century later she would be as vital a part of the culture as she was in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. None of her contemporaries has achieved the same level of success for so long.

On Barbra's first album, the composer Harold Arlen wrote these liner notes: "I advise you to keep watching Barbra Streisand's career. This young lady (a mere twenty) has a stunning future. She listening, keep watching. And please remember, I told you so."

Even Mr. Arlen would be surprised by just how stunning Barbra's future has been.

FOR ROBERT REDFORD, DOING A LOVE SCENE WITH BARBRA WAS HARD

Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford film a love scene in The Way We Were:

Barbra was nude from the waist up when she undressed, her back to the camera. The next shot would show her already in bed, and she wore a thin mesh bikini and brassiere under the sheets. With his character supposed to be nude as well, Redford was taking no chances. According to Moss Mabrey, the film's costume designer, "Redford put two jockstraps on for that scene. He's a very modest man. He was afraid of getting an erection."
      The bulky athletic supporters caused a problem, however, when their outline became visible through the sheets. "Finally," Redford said, "I took them off under the cover, slid them under the bed, did the scene, picked them up, and put them back on under the cover" before getting out of bed.
      The look of ecstasy on Barbra's face in the scene likely reflected reacting more than acting. Because by this time her feelings toward Redford were just as strong as Katie's for Hubbell.
 

BARBRA MEETS MAE WEST

One of my favorite anecdotes in Streisand: Her Life, 2012concerns the night that two of Hollywood's biggest stars met at a party. The story is told by the director Jerry Schatzberg, with whom Barbra was discussing the possibility of his directing Up the Sandbox late in 1971.
      "We were at this party," Schatzberg recalled,  "and Mae West was there. Barbra was all excited to see her and went over to talk to her. Everyone in our group was dying of curiosity about what these two Hollywood giants of their generations would say to each other. A few minutes later, Barbra came back, laughing. She said she had asked Mae what she felt the difference was between the Hollywood of Mae's heyday and today. Mae gave her own of those  looks and in her inimitable way said, 'Well, honey, the biggest difference is, today there are no stars!'"


 
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ELVIS KNEELS BEFORE BARBRA!

Hello friends! This is the first of a series of posts featuring anecdotes from Streisand: Her Life, 2012
In 1969 Elvis Presley was scheduled to follow Barbra at the International Hotel in Las Vegas--an engagement that would be a triumphant comeback [for him]--and he caught her next-to-last show. She introduced him to the audience, and afterward he went backstage to meet her. [Barbra's drummer] Don Lamond passed him in the hallway and was impressed by how good the thirty-four-year-old Presley, who had been out of the public eye for awhile, looked. "I think he was the handsomest guy I ever saw. This was before he got bloated and all that stuff. My wife said she couldn't believe how fantastic he looked. He went into Barbra's dressing room, and they got together."
   Years later Barbra's longtime lover, Jon Peters, revealed in an unpublished interview the extraordinary scene that followed, recounted to him by Barbra. She was alone, sitting at her dressing table. After Elvis closed the door behind him, he said simply, "Hi," and an awkward silence followed. Suddenly he reached over and picked up a bottle of red nail polish from the vanity table. Without a word. he fell to one knee, took Barbra's hand in his and began, slowly anf painstakingly, to apply the bright crimson varnish to Barbra's tapering fingernails.
   The intimacy of the gesture, the supplication of it, stunned Barbra, who stared in fascination as Elvis worked, and when he finished, she mumbled "Thank you." An associate of Presley's, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, revealed that the intimacy between Barbra and the King of Rock 'n' Roll didn't end there. "Elvis told me that he spent the night with Streisand in her suite."  If you'd like to read the rest of Barbra's fascinating story, you can download the book here: 
Here's the link to the book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Streisand-Her-Life-2012-ebook/dp/B00A8SDGL4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1353343329&sr=1-1&keywords=streisand+her+life [image error]

If you don't have a Kindle, click on the link below to download free software that will allow you to read the book on any device, including your PC or Mac:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771 [image error]

STREISAND: HER LIFE, 2012--NOW AN E-BOOK!

I’m thrilled to let you know that I have updated my 1995 biography Streisand: Her Life, and it is now available as an eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes and Kobo.          I am very proud of this book. I worked hard to make it the most complete, detailed, accurate and fair version of Barbra’s life ever written. I spoke to over 200 people while writing the book, including Barbra’s family, friends, coworkers and colleagues from her Aunt Molly (her father Emanuel’s only living sibling at the time), to high school classmates, acting school classmates, roommates, costars, producers, and many others.          The Streisand story is truly an extraordinary one, a near fairy tale of what a young girl with determination can achieve against powerful obstacles. As she struggled for success, Barbra was rebuffed by her mother, agents, and casting directors who felt she wasn’t pretty enough to be successful as an actress or as a singer. Not only did she prove them all wrong, but she did so in stunning fashion. By the time she was 23, she was gracing the cover of Vogue, and a few years later had established herself not only as a hugely successful singer but a movie star as well, playing romantic leads and becoming the top female box-office star of the 1970s.          Along the way there were more obstacles, rebuffs, a few devastating reviews. But she never let any of that stop her. After reading Streisand: Her Life, 2012, you will never again think a Big Dream is impossible.

MARILYN MONROE vs. GRACE KELLY?

It's hard to believe now, but in the early 1950s Marilyn and Grace were considered rivals. A movie magazine asked its readers to compare "Heat" (Marilyn) to "Ice" (Grace). Grace was sometimes called "The pious man's Marilyn." There were some similarities between them. Both were blonde and beautiful, and both their careers took off at the beginning of the decade.

But there were stark differences as well. Marilyn grew up poor in a series of foster homes and an orphanage in Los Angeles. Grace was the privileged daughter of one of the richest men in Philadelphia. Grace went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Marilyn was largely self-taught and coached. Marilyn's screen image was highly sexualized, but in her private life she rarely even dated until she met Joe DiMaggio in 1952. Grace's screen image was as an ice queen, but privately she had affairs with nearly all her leading men, most of them much older and very married.

Grace won respect and an Academy Award. Marilyn was never even nominated for one.

Grace left acting to marry Prince Rainier in 1956, and it was that year that Marilyn finally got her respect as an actress with her great performance in Bus Stop.
    
Both of them died unexpectedly, and too young. Marilyn became the avatar of Hollywood; many consider her the greatest movie star in history.

In death, Grace has not approached Marilyn as an icon. A strong example occurred just in the last few months. The fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn's death was covered by every major media outlet as though it were a news event.

To my surprise, the thirtieth anniversary of Grace's death in September went virtually unremarked upon. Perhaps there had been so much attention paid to Marilyn that wary editors shied away from similar coverage of Grace's anniversary and legacy.

Perhaps Grace's fiftieth anniversary will be covered as widely as Marilyn's. But it's pretty clear who won the Marilyn vs. Grace contest.

My book Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess is now an e-book. Her life story is rich and fascinating. I urge you to download a copy from Amazon!

SEPTEMBER 14--THE 30th ANNIVERSARY OF GRACE KELLY'S SHOCKING DEATH

It's hard to believe that so much time has passed since Princess Grace's untimely death after an auto accident in Monaco. A car in which she and Princess Stephanie were riding careened off a twisting mountainside road and landed upside down next to a farmer's vegetable patch on September 13, 1982.

Like so many high-profile deaths, Grace's has it share of mysterious aspects. A driver in a truck behind Grace's Rover 3500 noticed the car swerving, and honked his horn. The swerving stopped, as though someone had been dozing off and was brought alert by the blast of the horn. But then the driver watched in horror as the car went straight off the cliff, with no attempt to steer clear of the edge, or even to brake.

What happened inside that car? Stephanie has never, in three decades, given a full account. All she told her father was that "Mommy panicked--she lost control." That explanation raised more questions than it answered. Grace had clearly regained control of the car when it stopped swerving, but then did nothing to stop it going off the cliff.

Some even suggested that Grace's problems in her marriage and with her children had led her to commit suicide by auto. I found this highly unlikely. Others thought Stephanie may have been driving, a theory bolstered by the fact that she crawled out of the car from the driver's side.

One of my main goals as I wrote "Grace" was the find out the truth.

I went to Paris, and became the only journalist allowed by the French police to review the official reports on Grace's death and interview the police captain who conducted the investigation for the local gendarmerie. The reports answered many questions, and led me to a conclusion as to what truly happened.

All this and the rest of Grace's fascinating life is included in the new eBook version of my book "Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess," now available on Amazon Kindle for just $9.99.

 I hope you'll give it a read! http://www.amazon.com/Grace-Secret-Lives-Princess-ebook/dp/B0092IC0JK/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1347642043&sr=1-4&keywords=james+spada

Thanks to all!

GRACE: THE SECRET LIVES OF A PRINCESS NOW AN E-BOOK!

My Grace Kelly biography was my first New York Times bestseller, and it changed my life. I was now a serious biographer, not just a fan writing books on his favorites or a picture editor. Not to knock those efforts--I'm very proud of them--but Grace put me in a whole new category.

For a biographer, there's nothing so satisfying as to uncover something previously unknown about a subject that changes the public's perception of him or her. With Grace, I discovered that her public persona as "the girl in the white gloves" who was chaperoned on chaste dates by her sister (after she became a star!) was nothing but press agentry. The Grace I wrote about had a full and varied sex life, sleeping with fellow acting students, her acting coach, and four of her first six leading men (all of whom were much older and already married.)

I was actually a bit stunned by the reaction to the book. It was the talk of the town--articles appeared, I was interviewed on all three morning news programs (highly unusual for a book author!), and the book became a bestseller in twelve countries.

The reason for that was the utter surprise readers felt on learning that Grace was a normal, sexually active young woman in Hollywood. Many thought she was a virgin at 26 when she married Prince Ranier of Monaco--including the prince himself! Highly unlikely--but Grace's chaste public image was so meticulously cultivated that many through it a real likelihood.

My greatest satisfaction came not from discovering this information, but from learning why Grace behaved the way she did. Over the next weeks, I'll share some anecdotes with you that explain her youthful promiscuity.

August 5th--The Fiftieth Anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's Death

It's hard to believe that fifty years have passed since Marilyn Monroe died. In that time her image has become synonymous with Hollywood. No other movie star has remained so fresh in the media and the public's mind after half a century as has Marilyn. And like the Kennedy assassinations, there are enough questions, conflicting reports and controversy surrounding her death that all kinds of theories have arisen, including that she was murdered.
         There was unquestionably a cover-up of the facts surrounding Marilyn's death. Her telephone records disappeared the next day, witnesses gave widely divergent accounts of the events leading up to a shortly after the discovery of her body. But why? The prevailing theory is that all evidence of Marilyn's involvement with the Kennedy brothers (however intimate that was) had to be kept from the press and the public or the Kennedy presidency could be compromised.
          One of the reasons I wrote my book Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets was Peter's involvement with Marilyn, his part in introducing her to his brothers-in-laws Jack and Bobby, and his important role in covering up the truth about her demise.
           Vanity Fair excerpted the chapters in the book that dealt with Marilyn's death, and called then "the best account of Monroe's death yet."
            If you'd like to read that account (and all the other amazing stuff that made up Peter Lawford's life), please go to Amazon and pick up an e-book copy!

'Good News' for Peter

Peter Lawford's 1947 film "Good News" was aired on TCM recently. It may be his best, most charming performance. Although he's incongruously playing Tommy Marlowe, an American college football star, he carries it off with his charm and good looks. He even sings--well enough, but Frankie didn't have anything to worry about. Aside from the 'Varsity Drag' number, the film's most memorable sequence is 'The French Lesson,' in which meek student/librarian June Allyson tries to teach Tommy French so he can pass and play in the big game. It's a cute but absurd number--Tommy learns the language so quickly that he's responding to questions posed in French within two minutes, and doing so with a flawless accent. Of course, French was Peter's first language. Later, Peter sings the second verse of "The Best Things in Life Are Free" in perfect French. As Peter said at the time, "This is the most ridiculous part I've ever had or hope to have."