Prick Up Your Ears is a watershed biography; it paved the way for Orton's revival and ensured his rightful place in the English repertoire.

Prick Up Your Ears: Biography of Joe Orton

Lahr, John.

Biographies & Memoirs

Penguin

1987 reprint. Spine creased, page edges tanned. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.

Prick up your ears: the biography of Joe Orton

Penguin??Books

The Autograph Hound

Literature & Fiction

Alfred.A. Knopf

Arthur Miller: American Witness (Jewish Lives)

A great theater critic brings twentieth-century playwright Arthur Miller’s dramatic story to life with bold and revealing new insights\n“Lahr’s cogent analyses are revelatory. . . . He does not reduce the work to the life, but shows how it explains the life from which it emerges.”—Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal\n“New Yorker critic Lahr shines in this searching account of the life of playwright Arthur Miller. . . . It’s a great introduction to a giant of American letters.”—Publishers Weekly\nDistinguished theater critic John Lahr brings unique perspective to the life of Arthur Miller (1915–2005), the playwright who almost single-handedly propelled twentieth-century American theater to a new level of cultural sophistication. Organized around the fault lines of Miller’s life—his family, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, Elia Kazan and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Marilyn Monroe, Vietnam, and the rise and fall of Miller’s role as a public intellectual—this book demonstrates the synergy between Arthur Miller’s psychology and his plays.\nConcentrating largely on Miller’s most prolific decades of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, Lahr probes Miller’s early playwriting failures; his work writing radio plays during World War II after being rejected for military service; his only novel, Focus; and his succession of award-winning and canonical plays that include All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible, providing an original interpretation of Miller’s work and his personality.

Humor & Entertainment

Yale University Press

Notes On A Cowardly Lion

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Ballantine Books

Notes on a Cowardly Lion

A look at the work of Barry Humphries journeys backstage with him to watch the clown transform himself into Dame Edna Everage--the weird and wonderful housewife-superstar whose comedy act reigns supreme in England.

Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization: Backstage With Barry Humphries

Arts & Literature

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

"I am a symmetrical man, almost to a fault," Frank Sinatra once said. It is a peculiar statement, because Sinatra is precisely asymmetrical. How to reconcile the enchanting crooner and the explosive bully? What to make of the smooth tones of his voice and the rough edges of his persona? To find the true correspondence between the public and the private Sinatra, the artist and the man, is no easy task. John Lahr, drama critic for The New Yorker and one of the finest writers on the performing arts working today, has done just this in Sinatra: The Artist and the Man Lahr traces the trajectory of the "solitary latchkey kid" from Hoboken, New Jersey, into the stratosphere of fame. Sinatra kept company with presidents and mobsters; he kept up the front of a happy family life for as long as he could and then took up with the most desired women in the world--Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, Anita Ekberg, Marilyn Monroe, and many, many more. He led a life of manic gregariousness, yet spoke to the romance and loneliness of the "wee small hours of the morning." He desperately needed to exist within the gaze of the audience but at the same time would express aloofness toward his fans, saying he was happiest "when I'm onstage all by myself with an orchestra and nobody to bug me." Sinatra: The Artist and the Man also examines the miracle of Sinatra's return--much of what is marvelous about Sinatra today is that we know who he is at all, so far did he fall in the late forties. Sinatra came back with a vengeance as Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity, a heartfelt and brilliantly comic performance that won him an Academy Award. At the same time, he reclaimed control of the recording studio and, with the help of an ingenious arranger named Nelson Riddle, perfected the swinging sound of his mature years. Sinatra then proceeded to build a media empire that has been the standard by which all other stars have measured their success. The artist and the man: Sinatra epitomized control and he raged uncontrollably, destroying friendships, love affairs, and a plate-glass window or two; he won fans around the world across three generations, created an unparalleled body of recorded work, and almost single-handedly invented the postwar American swagger and "the image," Lahr writes, "of perfect individualism." Sinatra's life and art happen to be extremely well documented in photographs--from Weegee's hilarious pictures of bobby-soxer hysteria at New York's Paramount Theatre to William Read Woodfield's definitive and rare "Chairman of the Board" images. Sinatra: The Artist and the Man collects one hundred of the best photographs ever taken of Sinatra (some never before published)--representing his film work, the special intensity of his recording sessions, and the many swinging nights of this complex and fascinating man.

Sinatra:: The Artist and the Man

Random House]

Prick Up Your EarsL The Biography of Joe Orton

Avon Discus Books

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