Alexander Walker

SINCE this is the first major, disinterested book about Crawford to come out since the revelations of Mommie Dearest, you might expect it either to pile on still further scandal or to counter the whole thing with sweetness and light. In the event it does neither: Alexander Walker does cast a few pinches of salt in Christina Crawford's direction, but in the main accepts the truth of her picture and, in effect, seems to say "So what?" Quite rightly, because what he gives us here is a professional biography of someone who. whatever she may otherwise have been, was undoubtedly not only the ultimate star, but the ultimate pro. Recent revelations about her private life do not as some seem naivety to suppose, invalidate her work on screen, but only make us marvel at it. JRT

I thought I could escape the Beast … but he already devoured my heart. When the Beast took me and dragged me back to his cell, I thought my life was over. In the darkness, he watched me. Yearned for me. Tasted me. He loved my scars, called me a beauty … Made me irrevocably his. Until his owner finally let him out … And his final task was to destroy my father. The only thing that stood between them was me. Faced with an impossible choice, I run. But even the beauty can’t escape the claws of the Beast.

Rudolph Valentino - the virile, passionate, cruel and tender star of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and "The Sheik" - projected a magnetic sex appeal so great the even decades after his death his name remains synonymous with spectacular amorous success. Behind the stereotype, however, was a complex man whose private life contradicted his screen image. Impulsive and menacing on film, Valentino was actually attracted to strong-willed women who dominated him. Profusely illustrated with over eight-five photographs, many never before published, "Rudolph Valentino" vividly details the life of a man who parlayed good looks, good luck and real talent into a short but dazzling career.

This is a collection of true accounts of street life in Los Angeles. There are twenty different stories. This book is newly published.