Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra

Stadiem, William

JACOBS, GEORGE

It Books

"Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra, by former valet-aide George Jacobs with an oh-so-able assist by William Stadiem, has at least five quotable and shocking remarks about the famous on every page. The fifteen years Jacobs toiled for Frank produces a classic of its genre -- a gold-star gossip-lover's dream.... 
"The rest is showbiz history as it was, and only Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, and Betty Bacall are spared. Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Juliet Prowse, Noel Coward, Cole Porter, Mia Farrow, Elvis Presley, Swifty Lazar, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis Jr., Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Jimmy van Heusen, Edie Goetz, Peter Lawford, and all of the Kennedys come in for heaping portions of 'deep dish,' served hot. Sordid, trashy, funny, and so rat-a-tat with its smart inside info and hip instant analysis that some of it seems too good to be true....

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Breaking nearly eight decades of silence, Essie Mae Washington–Williams comes forward with a story of unique historical magnitude and incredible human drama. Her father, the late Strom Thurmond, was once the nation's leading voice for racial segregation (one of his signature political achievements was his 24–hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, done in the name of saving the South from "mongrelization"). Her mother, however, was a black teenager named Carrie Butler who worked as a maid on the Thurmond family's South Carolina plantation. 
 Set against the explosively changing times of the civil rights movement, this poignant memoir recalls how she struggled with the discrepancy between the father she knew–one who was financially generous, supportive of her education, even affectionate–and the Old Southern politician, railing against greater racial equality, who refused to acknowledge her publicly. From her richly told narrative, as well as the letters she and Thurmond wrote to each other over the years, emerges a nuanced, fascinating portrait of a father who counseled his daughter about her dreams and goals, and supported her in reaching them–but who was unwilling to break with the values of his Dixiecrat constituents.
 With elegance, dignity, and candor, Washington–Williams gives us a chapter of American history as it has never been written before–told in a voice that will be heard and cherished by future generations.

Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond

Literature & Fiction

Washington-Williams, Essie Mae

Dramas & Plays

Harper-perennial

Mr S - the Last Word of Frank Sinatra

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Sidgwick and Jackson

As wild and sexy and over the top as the decade it brings to life, author, William Stadiem, tells the inside story of Hollywood producers in the 80s.
From hits like Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun and Batman to flops like Heaven's Gate, Howard the Duck and Leonard Part 6, Hollywood was never more excessive than it was in the 1980s. In this, the Moneywood era, the purse strings were not controlled by reasonably consenting adults but by pop culture cowboys who couldn't balance their own checkbooks. What they could do was sweet talk the talent, seduce the starlets, snowball the Japanese and slither out of Dodge when the low grosses trickled in. Their out of control lifestyles and know-nothing, raging narcissistic personalities make the original brutal studio heads like Sam Goldwyn and Jack Warner seem like Oxford dons. Yet, for all their flops, these Scoundrels of Spago turned Hollywood into a Big Business that was catnip to Wall Street. They were The Producers, and they were way beyond anything Mel Brooks could dream up.
The Moneywood cast of characters includes: 
-Simpson and Bruckheimer; Guber and Peters; Eisner/Katzenberg/Ovitz: An unusual fresh take on the usual subjects. 
-Ray Stark, the wizard of Holmby Hills, the most powerful producer of the 80s. 
-Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna, the Rambo boys, who went from making wigs to making blockbusters.
-Menahem Golan-Yoram Globus, the Israeli schlockmeisters who proved that every star had a price.
-David Begelman, the embezzler, gambler and sex addict who was rewarded for his sins by getting to run both Columbia and MGM.
-Roland Betts, the aristocratic Silver Screen Partners founder and former Yale frat-mate of George W. Bush who was a master at playing the Reagan White House card.
-Giancarlo Parretti, the Italian cannery worker who bought MGM, with a little help from his (Sicilian) friends.
-David Puttnam The high-toned English advertising whiz who was supposed to raise the Hollywood bar, but ended up barred from Hollywood.
Moneywood is the ultimate expose of the real hit men of Hollywood's go-go decade.

Moneywood: Hollywood in Its Last Age of Excess

Business & Money

Industries

St.Martin's Press

In October 1958, Pan American World Airways began making regularly scheduled flights between New York and Paris, courtesy of its newly minted wonder jet, the Boeing 707. Almost overnight, the moneyed celebrities of the era made Europe their playground. At the same time, the dream of international travel came true for thousands of ordinary Americans who longed to emulate the “jet set” lifestyle. Bestselling author and Vanity Fair contributor William Stadiem brings that Jet Age dream to life again in the first-ever book about the glamorous decade when Americans took to the skies in massive numbers as never before, with the rich and famous elbowing their way to the front of the line. Dishy anecdotes and finely rendered character sketches re-create the world of luxurious airplanes, exclusive destinations, and beautiful, wealthy trendsetters who turned transatlantic travel into an inalienable right. It was the age of Camelot and “Come Fly with Me,” Grace Kelly at the Prince’s Palace in Monaco, and Mary Quant miniskirts on the streets of Swinging London. Men still wore hats, stewardesses showed plenty of leg, and the beach at Saint-Tropez was just a seven-hour flight away. Jet Set reads like a who’s who of the fabulous and well connected, from the swashbuckling “skycoons” who launched the jet fleet to the playboys, moguls, and financiers who kept it flying. Among the bold-face names on the passenger manifest: Juan Trippe, the Yale-educated WASP with the Spanish-sounding name who parlayed his fraternity contacts into a tiny airmail route that became the world’s largest airline, Pan Am; couturier to the stars Oleg Cassini, the Kennedy administration’s “Secretary of Style,” and his social climbing brother Igor, who became the most powerful gossip columnist in America—then lost it all in one of the juiciest scandals of the century; Temple Fielding, the high-rolling high priest of travel guides, and his budget-conscious rival Arthur Frommer; Conrad Hilton, the New Mexico cowboy who built the most powerful luxury hotel chain on earth; and Mary Wells Lawrence, the queen bee of Madison Avenue whose suggestive ads for Braniff and other airlines brought sex appeal to the skies. Like a superfueled episode of Mad Men, Jet Set evokes a time long gone but still vibrant in American memory. This is a rollicking, sexy romp through the ring-a-ding glory years of air travel, when escape was the ultimate aphrodisiac and the smiles were as wide as the aisles. Praise for Jet Set “Aeronautics history, high times from the 1950s and ’60s, incredibly versatile name-dropping (from Mrs. John Jacob Astor to Christine Keeler of the Profumo scandal) and Sinatra’s ‘Come Fly With Me’ as a kind of theme song [all] connected to the glamorous days of air travel.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “What a book William Stadium has written. . . . The Kennedys, the Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra, and early financiers like Eddie Gilbert are dealt with in depth. . . . I lived intimately through it all in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s and I am yet to find a mistake in author Stadiem’s amazing book. Order it now. All the players are here.”—Liz Smith, syndicated columnist “William Stadiem sexes up the glory days of aviation in Jet Set. Fly me!”—Vanity Fair “William Stadiem’s Jet Set takes you where no modern airliner can: to a time . . . when the means of travel was as exotic as the destination, and sometimes more so.”—Town &amp; Country

Jet Set: The People, the Planes, the Glamour, and the Romance in Aviation's Glory Years

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Ballantine Books

Robbed of her daughter and her career, Emily Stanton, a beautiful 1920s actress, seeks vindication--a quest that leads her through the illicit world of New York speakeasies and ultimately to a courtroom trial for murder

Lullaby and Good Night

Bugliosi, Vincent

Signet

United States

Dutton Adult

Dust jacket notes: "'I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality.' Thus spoke John Randolph of Roanoke, the great Southern politician who punctuated his remarks in Congress with a whip in his hand. Randolph and his fellow Southern aristocrats had no equals - in their fabled plantation life-style, in their epic love affairs, and in their passionate devotion to their homeland. With the skill of an engaging storyteller, William Stadiem, in A Class by Themselves, has produced a remarkable blend of historical facts and personal anecdotes. Writing in a rich, descriptive style, he captures the special ambience of the South and uses it as a framework within which to develop this ambitious work of social history that highlights the private lives of the most interesting and most infuential Southerners, truly a class by themselves. Spanning three centuries, including the present, A Class by Themselves contrasts the genteel, quasi-European old South in the decades preceding the Civil War with the rough-hewn, industrial New South of the postwar years, emphasizing the difficulties faced by the New South and the pretensions it affected as it tried to emulate the past glory of the original founding families. The lure of romance, the arrogance of success, the taint of scandal, and the pathos of decline are only some of the threads with which the author weaves the stories of these prominent dynasties. Mr. Stadiem creates a series of fascinating portraits of aristocratic personalities, including the Dukes and the Reynoldses, who rose from poverty to command two of the largest tobacco empires; William Byrd II of Westover; Irene Langhorne Gibson, wife of society artist Charles Dana Gibson and model for the 'Gibson Girl'; Senator Judah P. Benjamin; Sarah and Angelina Grimke; Lady Nancy Langhorne Astor; and Ward McAllister...."

A Class by Themselves: The Untold Story of the Great Southern Families

Crown, Publishers

Chronicles the decadent life of Egypt's King Farouk and charts his decline from the great political hope of the Middle East to a despised ruler overthrown in 1952

Too Rich: The High Life and Tragic Death of King Farouk

Carroll & Graf Pub.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stadiem, William. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stadiem, William