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H.D

In this complete, unabridged edition of H.D.'s visionary memoir, The Gift, Jane Augustine makes available for the first time the text as H.D. wrote it and intended it to be read, including H.D.'s coda to the book, her "Notes," never before published in its entirety. Written in London during the blitz of World War II, The Gift re-creates the peaceful childhood of Hilda Doolittle in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where she was born in 1886. As an antidote to war's destructiveness, H.D. invokes the mystical Moravian heritage of her mother's family to convey an ideal world peace and salvation that would come through the spiritual power of women - a power that also endowed her with "the gift" of her own art. The Gift is key to intertextual studies of H.D.'s wartime oeuvre and to an understanding of the religious and gender concerns pervading her later work, especially the women-centered poems Trilogy and Helen in Egypt. Augustine's introduction and annotations, based on extensive research in Moravian archives, provide a biographical and historical context to make this the definitive edition of The Gift, essential to students and scholars of H.D., modernism, and feminist literature.

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Scotty Bowers with Lionel Friedberg

The wholesome image of America propagated by Hollywood in the 1940s, '50s and '60s is one of the most persistent in popular culture: loving wives, smiling children. But off the set, many of the actors who helped create this image were secretly leading very wild lives, and one man in particular was helping them: Scotty Bowers. At a time when sex outside of marriage was taboo, Scotty built up a reputation as the guy who could discreetly fix you up. Scotty slept with many stars himself, and connected others with his friends. Here, he tells his story for the first time. Scotty came to Hollywood after serving in the Marines in World War II, and began working at a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard. One day, he was approached and picked up by actor Walter Pidgeon, who whisked him off to a friend's villa for the first of many encounters with Hollywood's rich and famous. He developed long-term friendships with stars like Katharine Hepburn and Noel Coward, but he always kept it quiet--until he now provides a lost chapter in the history of the sexual revolution.--From publisher description.

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Suzanne Gargiulo

"Hans Conried was once described by the well-known Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as "a high strung, droll fellow, plagued by a multitude of talents." Conried was indeed a talented and versatile actor, but his versatility made it difficult for him to find his niche as an actor.". "Hans Conried gets the recognition he deserves in this work. Part One covers his birth in 1917 and his early years, the launch of his career as a radio actor, his move to motion pictures, his marriage, and his military service in World War II. Part Two deals with the decline of radio and his first television performances, and his involvement with such productions as The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, The Twonky, Peter Pan, Can-Can, and numerous others. Part Three details his work with Jack Paar (Conried became a semi-regular "television personality" on the early Tonight Show), his summer stock theater work, his various guest spots, and cartoon voice work. Part Four discusses Conried's final years through his death in 1982."--BOOK JACKET.

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John Gross

The author is the son of a Jewish doctor who practiced in the East End of London from the 1920s to World War II and beyond. His parents were the children of immigrants, steeped in Eastern European customs, yet outside the home he grew up in a very English world of comics and corner shops, sandbags and bomb sites, battered school desks and addictive, dusty movie houses.