Books

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Russ Meyer-The Life and Films: A Biography and a Comprehensive, Illustrated and Annotated Filmography and Bibliography

Credited with having "opened the floodgates of screen permissiveness" in 1959 with the landmark "nudie" The Immoral Mr. Teas, legendary independent softcore filmmaker Russ Meyer has continued throughout his 30-year career and 23+ films to expand the limits of screen freedom with such genre classics as Lorna (1964), Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966), and Vixen (1969). Long recognized as an American auteur and honored by numerous international retrospectives of his work, Meyer's story provides valuable insights into independent filmmaking, the history of the modern sexploitation genre, and cinema censorship. Researched from underground, popular and film literature, this book also incorporates much of the material contained in Meyer's own vast archive, to give an in-depth study of the director dubbed "King Leer."

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Suicide in the Entertainment Industry: An Encyclopedia of 840 Twentieth Century Cases

This work covers 840 intentional suicide cases initially reported in Daily Variety (the entertainment industry's trade journal), but also drawing attention from mainstream news media. These cases are taken from the ranks of vaudeville, film, theatre, dance, music, literature (writers with direct connections to film), and other allied fields in the entertainment industry from 1905 through 2000. Accidentally self-inflicted deaths are omitted, except for a few controversial cases.

It includes the suicides of well-known personalities such as actress Peg Entwistle, who is the only person to ever commit suicide by jumping from the top of the Hollywood Sign, Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge, who are believed to have overdosed on drugs, and Richard Farnsworth and Brian Keith, who shot themselves to end the misery of terminal cancer. Also mentioned, but in less detail, are the suicides of unknown and lesser-known members of the entertainment industry. Arranged alphabetically, each entry covers the person’s personal and professional background, method of suicide, place of burial, and, in some instances, includes actual statements taken from the suicide note.

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Show Business Homicides: An Encyclopedia, 1908-2009

A companion volume to the author's Suicide in the Entertainment Industry: An Encyclopedia of 840 Twentieth Century Cases (2002), this reference work chronicles 298 cases of what can be broadly defined as "celebrity" homicides from the early twentieth century onward. Cases are drawn from the realms of film, theatre, music, dance and other entertainment fields. In each instance, the person was either the actual or suspected perpetrator or the victim of a murder.

Included are entries on such well-known personalities as film comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, actress Sharon Tate, music producer Phil Spector, rap artist Notorious B.I.G., and superstar Michael Jackson. Each entry covers the crime, its legal disposition, and the subject's personal and professional background, comprehensively documented with notes and a separate bibliography.

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Murder Cases of the Twentieth Century

From Library Journal:

"Frasier, a reference librarian at Indiana University, has created a near-perfect reference source on murder. From this century (up to 1992), he has taken 280 of the most famous serial killers (both convicted and accused) and presented them in a thorough yet nonlurid fashion. Profiled here are both American and foreign murderers, many from earlier years who may not be familiar to readers. Each entry, which includes birth and death dates, aliases, location of the murders, weapons used, and number of victims, is prefaced with a list of movies or plays, if any, about the case and followed by an annotated (and opinionated) bibliography, so that a reader can cut through the mass of knockoffs and newspaper rehashes to good books about the case. An appendix lists cases by classification (e.g., "parricide"); an author and title index provides entry to the bibliographies; and a general index includes the movie titles (e.g., a reader looking for the case featured in the movie Killing in a Small Town is led directly to that of Candace Montgomery). Useful, entertaining, extremely well written, and meticulously researched and formatted, this book is essential for all true-crime and general reference collections."

~Sally G. Waters, Stetson Law Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.