
Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg
The Whole Equation
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Stephen Bowlby
-
By:
-
Kenneth Turan
About this listen
One was a tough junkman's son, the other a cosseted mama's boy, but they dreamed the same mighty dream: that the right movies could make a profit and change both the culture and individual lives. Sharing a religion and an evangelical zeal for film, Louis B. Mayer (1884-1957) and Irving Thalberg (1899-1936) were unlikely partners in one of the most significant collaborations in movie history. Over the course of their decade-long relationship, as key players at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and major players in Hollywood, they joined forces in redefining and mastering the template for the film industry.
Mayer, older by more than a dozen years, was the business-minded face of the studio, while Thalberg worked closely with the creative corps, especially writers; together they rarely set a foot wrong. And while Mayer initially viewed Thalberg as the son he never had, the two would go from passionate friends to near enemies before Thalberg's shocking death at the age of thirty-seven.
In the first joint biography of the two men in fifty years, film critic Kenneth Turan traces their fraught relationship while examining the complicated history of Jewish identity in Hollywood.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Meltdown
- Greed, Scandal, and the Collapse of Credit Suisse
- By: Duncan Mavin
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Credit Suisse was a 166-year-old bastion of global banking. But a veneer of high-class service disguised a darker, much dirtier reality. From its sterile Zurich headquarters, Credit Suisse banked dictators and drug dealers, hid stolen Nazi gold, and helped corrupt bankers fleece the firm's own clients of billions of dollars. Its top executives oversaw a global operation that laundered money for autocrats; they hired spies to track one another through the cobbled streets of the Swiss financial capital; and they helped clients hide their money from the world's tax authorities.
By: Duncan Mavin
-
It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time
- The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote
- By: Bruce Vilanch
- Narrated by: Bruce Vilanch
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bruce Vilanch is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and top-heavy variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever put on television—legendarily bad productions. It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is a lifetime reflection of what Vilanch has experienced, learned, forgotten, dismissed, and embraced in decades of working in show business
-
-
For show biz lovers
- By Sarasota on 03-07-25
By: Bruce Vilanch
-
Woody Allen
- A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham
- By: Patrick McGilligan
- Narrated by: Seth Lews
- Length: 34 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Across nearly nine eventful decades, Woody Allen’s life has been full of surprises. Writing jokes got him a gig as the youngest writer of Sid Caesar’s television dream team. As a rising comic, he boxed a kangaroo on TV. He made a blank-check deal with a major studio for terms unmatched in Hollywood apart from early titans like Chaplin and Welles. All before Annie Hall. Yet despite once being one of the most consequential American cultural figures, Allen is now persona non grata.
-
-
Final Impressions (after First Impressions)
- By Buretto on 02-08-25
-
Martin Van Buren
- America's First Politician
- By: James M. Bradley
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 26 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This new biography of Van Buren—the first full-scale portrait in four decades—charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.
-
-
Excellent
- By Joseph T. Hobson on 05-19-25
By: James M. Bradley
-
Adventures in the Screen Trade
- By: William Goldman
- Narrated by: Kiff VandenHeuvel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one knows the writer's Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman. Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the best-selling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and more.
-
-
Classic in the field stands up
- By Jenny Jenkins on 01-01-24
By: William Goldman
-
When the Going Was Good
- An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines
- By: Graydon Carter, James Fox - contributor
- Narrated by: Graydon Carter
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated.
-
-
A lucky man
- By Dassha1 on 03-30-25
By: Graydon Carter, and others
-
Meltdown
- Greed, Scandal, and the Collapse of Credit Suisse
- By: Duncan Mavin
- Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Credit Suisse was a 166-year-old bastion of global banking. But a veneer of high-class service disguised a darker, much dirtier reality. From its sterile Zurich headquarters, Credit Suisse banked dictators and drug dealers, hid stolen Nazi gold, and helped corrupt bankers fleece the firm's own clients of billions of dollars. Its top executives oversaw a global operation that laundered money for autocrats; they hired spies to track one another through the cobbled streets of the Swiss financial capital; and they helped clients hide their money from the world's tax authorities.
By: Duncan Mavin
-
It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time
- The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote
- By: Bruce Vilanch
- Narrated by: Bruce Vilanch
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bruce Vilanch is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and top-heavy variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever put on television—legendarily bad productions. It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is a lifetime reflection of what Vilanch has experienced, learned, forgotten, dismissed, and embraced in decades of working in show business
-
-
For show biz lovers
- By Sarasota on 03-07-25
By: Bruce Vilanch
-
Woody Allen
- A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham
- By: Patrick McGilligan
- Narrated by: Seth Lews
- Length: 34 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Across nearly nine eventful decades, Woody Allen’s life has been full of surprises. Writing jokes got him a gig as the youngest writer of Sid Caesar’s television dream team. As a rising comic, he boxed a kangaroo on TV. He made a blank-check deal with a major studio for terms unmatched in Hollywood apart from early titans like Chaplin and Welles. All before Annie Hall. Yet despite once being one of the most consequential American cultural figures, Allen is now persona non grata.
-
-
Final Impressions (after First Impressions)
- By Buretto on 02-08-25
-
Martin Van Buren
- America's First Politician
- By: James M. Bradley
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 26 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This new biography of Van Buren—the first full-scale portrait in four decades—charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.
-
-
Excellent
- By Joseph T. Hobson on 05-19-25
By: James M. Bradley
-
Adventures in the Screen Trade
- By: William Goldman
- Narrated by: Kiff VandenHeuvel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one knows the writer's Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman. Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the best-selling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and more.
-
-
Classic in the field stands up
- By Jenny Jenkins on 01-01-24
By: William Goldman
-
When the Going Was Good
- An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines
- By: Graydon Carter, James Fox - contributor
- Narrated by: Graydon Carter
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated.
-
-
A lucky man
- By Dassha1 on 03-30-25
By: Graydon Carter, and others
-
Not to Be Missed
- Fifty-Four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film
- By: Kenneth Turan
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Turan discovered film as a child left undisturbed to watch Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, a daily showcase for older Hollywood features. It was then that he developed a love of cinema that never left him and honed his eye for the most acute details and the grandest of scenes. Not to Be Missed blends cultural criticism, historical anecdotes, and inside-Hollywood controversy. Turan's selection of favorites ranges across all genres.
-
-
Truly NOT TO BE MISSED!
- By Listens-a-lot on 10-20-15
By: Kenneth Turan
-
Beverly Hills Confidential
- A Century of Stars, Scandals and Murders
- By: Barbara Schroeder, Clark Fogg
- Narrated by: Rich Miller
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acid-throwing brides, axe-murdering maids, mysterious deaths at Greystone mansion, and the real story of what happened the night a superstar publicist was gunned down on Sunset Boulevard; just a few of the many stories in this "Rip-roaring" story featuring the first 100 years of grand times and grand crimes in the world's glamour capital of Beverly Hills.
By: Barbara Schroeder, and others
-
Like a Rolling Stone
- A Memoir
- By: Jann S. Wenner
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris, Jann S. Wenner
- Length: 17 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rolling Stone founder, co-editor, and publisher Jann Wenner's deeply personal memoir vividly describes and brings you inside the music, the politics, and the lifestyle of a generation, an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond. The age of rock and roll in an era of consequence, what will be considered one of the great watersheds in modern history. Wenner writes with the clarity of a journalist and an essayist. He takes us into the life and work of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bono, and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few.
-
-
Name-dropping on steroids
- By Tim on 09-19-22
By: Jann S. Wenner
-
Dark City (Revised and Expanded Edition)
- The Lost World of Film Noir
- By: Eddie Muller
- Narrated by: Eddie Muller, Erin Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dark City expands with new chapters and a fresh collection of restored photos that illustrate the mythic landscape of the imagination. It's a place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life.
-
-
Good overview, summary of the genre
- By Buretto on 03-31-22
By: Eddie Muller
-
The Golden Hour
- A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood
- By: Matthew Specktor
- Narrated by: Matthew Specktor
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now, with The Golden Hour, Specktor blends memoir, cultural criticism, and narrative history to tell the story of the modern motion picture industry—illuminating the conflict between art and business that has played out over the last seventy-five years in Hollywood. Braiding his own story with that of his father, mother (a talented screenwriter whose career was cut short), and figures ranging from Jack Nicholson to CAA’s Michael Ovitz, Specktor reveals how Hollywood became a laboratory for the eternal struggle between art, labor, and capital.
By: Matthew Specktor
-
On Democracies and Death Cults
- Israel and the Future of Civilization
- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Douglas Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Douglas Murray, #1 international bestselling author and renowned cultural commentator, confronts arguably the most pressing question of our time: Why are Western supporters of Palestine unwittingly aligning with an evil empire? The campus left frames the violent hostilities as white colonialists committing genocide. Yet only a third of Israelis are Ashkenazi Jews of European ancestry. Murray argues that the conflict is not a simple tale of oppressor versus oppressed, but a clash between a thriving multi-racial democracy and a death cult bent on its destruction.
-
-
Powerful. Inspiring.
- By Randall Levine on 04-16-25
By: Douglas Murray
-
Yoko
- The Biography
- By: David Sheff
- Narrated by: Max Meyers
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Yoko’s life, independent of Lennon, was an amazing journey. Yoko spans from her birth to wealthy parents in pre-war Tokyo, her harrowing experience as a child during the war, her arrival in avant-garde art scene in London, Tokyo, and New York City. It delves into her groundbreaking art, music, feminism, and activism. We see how she coped under the most intense, relentless, and cynical microscope as she was falsely vilified for the most heinous cultural crime imaginable: breaking up the greatest rock-and-roll band in history.
-
-
Great Book, Horrible Narrator
- By Mg on 03-28-25
By: David Sheff
-
John & Paul
- A Love Story in Songs
- By: Ian Leslie
- Narrated by: Chris Addison
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Beatles shook the world to its core in the 1960’s and, to this day, new generations continue to fall in love with their songs and their story. At the heart of this phenomenon lies the dynamic between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Few other musical partnerships have been rooted in such a deep, intense and complicated personal relationship.
-
-
Stunned
- By BellevueMike on 04-16-25
By: Ian Leslie
-
The Friedkin Connection
- A Memoir
- By: William Friedkin
- Narrated by: William Friedkin
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Friedkin Connection takes listeners from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today. William Friedkin offers a candid look at a thrilling era of Hollywood cinema, when traditional storytelling gave way to the rebellious and alternative; when filmmakers like him captured the paranoia and fear of a nation undergoing a cultural nervous breakdown.
-
-
Thank you, William Friedkin
- By L. Robertson on 04-30-25
By: William Friedkin
-
Dylan Goes Electric!
- Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties
- By: Elijah Wald
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and roared into his new rock hit, "Like a Rolling Stone". The audience of committed folk purists and political activists who had hailed him as their acoustic prophet reacted with a mix of shock, booing, and scattered cheers. It was the shot heard round the world - Dylan's declaration of musical independence, the end of the folk revival, and the birth of rock as the voice of a generation - and one of the defining moments in 20th-century music.
-
-
Great book/Awful narration
- By DB on 01-04-25
By: Elijah Wald
-
Hanna-Barbera, the Recorded History
- From Modern Stone Age to Meddling Kids
- By: Greg Ehrbar, Leonard Maltin, Tim Matheson - foreword
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whether it's Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, or hundreds of others, the creations of the Hanna-Barbera studio continue to delight generations worldwide. The groundbreaking company employed thousands in the art and business of animation. Some of them were vintage-era veterans, others were up-and-coming talents, some of whom found blockbuster success at other studios. The power of the sounds that Hanna-Barbera crafted to accompany the compelling visuals was a key factor in its spectacular success.
By: Greg Ehrbar, and others
-
The Illegals
- Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West
- By: Shaun Walker
- Narrated by: Paul Thornley
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More than a century ago, the new Bolshevik government began sending Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to pose as foreign aristocrats, merchants, and students. Over time, this grew into the most ambitious espionage program in history. Many intelligence agencies use undercover operatives, but the KGB was the only one to go to such lengths, spending years training its spies in language and etiquette, and sending them abroad on missions that could last for decades. These spies were known as “illegals.”
-
-
very intricate stories
- By AJ on 05-06-25
By: Shaun Walker
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Not to Be Missed
- Fifty-Four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film
- By: Kenneth Turan
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Turan discovered film as a child left undisturbed to watch Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, a daily showcase for older Hollywood features. It was then that he developed a love of cinema that never left him and honed his eye for the most acute details and the grandest of scenes. Not to Be Missed blends cultural criticism, historical anecdotes, and inside-Hollywood controversy. Turan's selection of favorites ranges across all genres.
-
-
Truly NOT TO BE MISSED!
- By Listens-a-lot on 10-20-15
By: Kenneth Turan
-
Shout!
- The Beatles in Their Generation
- By: Philip Norman
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 21 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philip Norman’s biography of the Beatles is the definitive work on the world's most influential band—a beautifully written account of their lives, their music, and their times. Now brought completely up to date, this epic tale charts the rise of four scruffy Liverpool lads from their wild, often comical early days to the astonishing heights of Beatlemania, from the chaos of Apple and the collapse of hippy idealism to the band's acrimonious split.
-
-
Highly critical and overly general
- By Patrick King on 04-04-25
By: Philip Norman
-
After Disney
- Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of America's Favorite Media Company
- By: Neil O'Brien
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walt Disney left behind big dreams when he died in 1966. Perhaps none was greater than the hope that his son-in-law, Ron Miller, would someday run his studio. Under Miller’s leadership, Disney expanded into new frontiers: global theme parks, computer animation, cable television, home video, and video games. Despite these innovations, Ron struggled to expand the Disney brand beyond its midcentury image of wholesome family entertainment, even as times and tastes evolved.
-
-
Fascinating history
- By Nikki on 05-05-25
By: Neil O'Brien
-
Woody Allen
- A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham
- By: Patrick McGilligan
- Narrated by: Seth Lews
- Length: 34 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Across nearly nine eventful decades, Woody Allen’s life has been full of surprises. Writing jokes got him a gig as the youngest writer of Sid Caesar’s television dream team. As a rising comic, he boxed a kangaroo on TV. He made a blank-check deal with a major studio for terms unmatched in Hollywood apart from early titans like Chaplin and Welles. All before Annie Hall. Yet despite once being one of the most consequential American cultural figures, Allen is now persona non grata.
-
-
Final Impressions (after First Impressions)
- By Buretto on 02-08-25
-
Tinseltown
- Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood
- By: William J. Mann
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
-
-
Everybody's a dreamer...
- By Steven on 01-08-15
By: William J. Mann
-
Leonardo da Vinci
- An Untraceable Life
- By: Stephen J. Campbell
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers.
-
-
Anti-Biography
- By Tbaley on 03-04-25
-
Not to Be Missed
- Fifty-Four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film
- By: Kenneth Turan
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Turan discovered film as a child left undisturbed to watch Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, a daily showcase for older Hollywood features. It was then that he developed a love of cinema that never left him and honed his eye for the most acute details and the grandest of scenes. Not to Be Missed blends cultural criticism, historical anecdotes, and inside-Hollywood controversy. Turan's selection of favorites ranges across all genres.
-
-
Truly NOT TO BE MISSED!
- By Listens-a-lot on 10-20-15
By: Kenneth Turan
-
Shout!
- The Beatles in Their Generation
- By: Philip Norman
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 21 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philip Norman’s biography of the Beatles is the definitive work on the world's most influential band—a beautifully written account of their lives, their music, and their times. Now brought completely up to date, this epic tale charts the rise of four scruffy Liverpool lads from their wild, often comical early days to the astonishing heights of Beatlemania, from the chaos of Apple and the collapse of hippy idealism to the band's acrimonious split.
-
-
Highly critical and overly general
- By Patrick King on 04-04-25
By: Philip Norman
-
After Disney
- Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of America's Favorite Media Company
- By: Neil O'Brien
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walt Disney left behind big dreams when he died in 1966. Perhaps none was greater than the hope that his son-in-law, Ron Miller, would someday run his studio. Under Miller’s leadership, Disney expanded into new frontiers: global theme parks, computer animation, cable television, home video, and video games. Despite these innovations, Ron struggled to expand the Disney brand beyond its midcentury image of wholesome family entertainment, even as times and tastes evolved.
-
-
Fascinating history
- By Nikki on 05-05-25
By: Neil O'Brien
-
Woody Allen
- A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham
- By: Patrick McGilligan
- Narrated by: Seth Lews
- Length: 34 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Across nearly nine eventful decades, Woody Allen’s life has been full of surprises. Writing jokes got him a gig as the youngest writer of Sid Caesar’s television dream team. As a rising comic, he boxed a kangaroo on TV. He made a blank-check deal with a major studio for terms unmatched in Hollywood apart from early titans like Chaplin and Welles. All before Annie Hall. Yet despite once being one of the most consequential American cultural figures, Allen is now persona non grata.
-
-
Final Impressions (after First Impressions)
- By Buretto on 02-08-25
-
Tinseltown
- Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood
- By: William J. Mann
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
-
-
Everybody's a dreamer...
- By Steven on 01-08-15
By: William J. Mann
-
Leonardo da Vinci
- An Untraceable Life
- By: Stephen J. Campbell
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed next to nothing about his life in his extensive writings, yet countless pages have been written about him that assign him an identity: genius, entrepreneur, celebrity artist, outsider. Addressing the ethical stakes involved in studying past lives, Stephen J. Campbell shows how this invented Leonardo has invited speculation from figures ranging from art dealers and curators to scholars, scientists, and biographers.
-
-
Anti-Biography
- By Tbaley on 03-04-25
-
The Autobiography Collection
- Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, and More
- By: Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Theodore Roosevelt, and others
- Narrated by: Jim D Johnston, Gregory T Luzitano
- Length: 86 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Featuring a rich collection of personal memoirs, letters, notes, and reflections from some of America’s greatest figures, The Autobiography Collection brings together real historical documents for contemporary listeners in a stylish and accessible edition that brings history to life.
By: Benjamin Franklin, and others
-
Michael Curtiz
- A Life in Film
- By: Alan K. Rode
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 25 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Academy Award-winning director Michael Curtiz—whose best-known films include Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce, and White Christmas—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his 27-year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, Westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures.
-
-
Comprehensive
- By MikeEC on 04-28-22
By: Alan K. Rode
-
A Man on Fire
- The Worlds of Thomas Wentworth Higginson
- By: Douglas R. Egerton
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few Americans covered as much ground as Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Born in 1823 to a family descended from Boston's Puritan founders, he attended Harvard, like all the men in his family, and prepared for the settled life of a minister. Instead, he rejected both privilege and convention, and embraced radical causes, attaching himself to nearly every major reform movement of the day, from women's rights to abolitionism. More than merely a fellow traveler, Higginson was a proponent of direct action.
-
Daughter of Daring
- The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman
- By: Mallory O'Meara
- Narrated by: Mallory O'Meara
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Helen Gibson was a woman willing to do anything to give audiences a thrill. Advertised as "The Most Daring Actress in Pictures," Helen emerged in the early days of the twentieth-century silent film scene as a rodeo rider, background actor, stunt double, and eventually one of the era’s biggest action stars. Her exploits on motorcycles, train cars, and horseback were as dangerous as they were glamorous, featured in hundreds of films and serials—yet her legacy was quickly overshadowed by the increasingly hypermasculine and male-dominated evolution of cinema in the decades that would follow her.
By: Mallory O'Meara
-
Legends and Soles
- The Memoir of an American Original
- By: Sonny Vaccaro
- Narrated by: Armen Keteyian, Sonny Vaccaro, Ari Fliakos, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written in collaboration with six-time New York Times bestselling author Armen Keteyian, Legends and Soles provides context and truth to the sensational media stories and headlines. Filled with in-depth stories and photos illuminating some of Sonny’s most treasured career memories, Legends and Soles is the long-awaited memoir of a giant of American sports.
-
-
Riveting!
- By Anonymous User on 05-17-25
By: Sonny Vaccaro
-
Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli
- The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather
- By: Mark Seal
- Narrated by: Phil Thron
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The story of how The Godfather was made is as dramatic, operatic, and entertaining as the film itself. Over the years, many versions of various aspects of the movie’s fiery creation have been told - sometimes conflicting, but always compelling. Mark Seal sifts through the evidence, has extensive new conversations with director Francis Ford Coppola and several heretofore silent sources, and complements them with colorful interviews with key players including actors Al Pacino, James Caan, Talia Shire, and others.
-
-
A great book that draws from many, many sources
- By DARBY KERN on 04-11-22
By: Mark Seal
-
Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill
- The Complete Critical Companion to Better Call Saul
- By: Alan Sepinwall
- Narrated by: Brian P. Craig
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill: The Better Call Saul Critical Companion collects chief TV critic at Rolling Stone Alan Sepinwall's critical essays on every episode of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated series. Sepinwall covered Better Call Saul from start to finish, and conducted exhaustive interviews with creator Vince Gilligan and stars Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seahorn, reproduced here alongside new interviews with series cocreator Peter Gould.
By: Alan Sepinwall
-
The Fixer
- Moguls, Mobsters, Movie Stars, and Marilyn
- By: Josh Young, Manfred Westphal
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays, Manfred Westphal
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the height of Hollywood’s golden age, one man lorded over the city’s lurid underbelly of forbidden sin and celebrity scandal like no other: Fred Otash. An ex-Marine turned L.A.P.D. vice cop, Otash became the most sought-after private detective and fixer to the stars by specializing in the dark arts that would soon dominate the entertainment industry. The Fixer delves into the extraordinary life of Hollywood’s most infamous private detective and “fixer” to the stars, revealing newly discovered shocking revelations from his never-before-seen investigative files.
-
-
For Hollywood gossip lovers!
- By Janna Wong Healy on 06-01-24
By: Josh Young, and others
-
The Prosecutor
- One Man's Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice
- By: Jack Fairweather
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the Nuremberg trials in 1946, some of the greatest war criminals in history were sentenced to death, but hundreds of thousands of Nazi murderers and collaborators remained at large. The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the legacy of the Holocaust was in danger of being forgotten. In The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather brings to life the heroic story of Fritz Bauer who survived the Nazis as a gay Jewish man to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide.
-
-
Story
- By janine on 03-25-25
By: Jack Fairweather
-
Just Beyond the Light
- Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head
- By: D. Randall Blythe
- Narrated by: D. Randall Blythe
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his gripping, bestselling debut memoir Dark Days, Lamb of God vocalist D. Randall (Randy) Blythe unflinchingly wrote about some of the most harrowing episodes of his past. Now, in his highly anticipated follow-up Just Beyond the Light, Blythe shares how he works daily to maintain positivity in a world that feels like it is spinning out of control. In his own words, Just Beyond the Light is a "tight, concise roadmap of how I have attempted to maintain what I believe to be a proper perspective in life, even during difficult times."
-
-
There's Something for Everyone
- By andreas on 05-06-25
-
Spare Me
- By: Anthony Cumia, Johnny Russo - foreword
- Narrated by: Anthony Cumia
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You won't want to miss the explosive insights and unfiltered perspective in legendary broadcaster Anthony Cumia’s latest book. In his much-anticipated second book, Spare Me, radio personality and podcaster Anthony Cumia returns, unleashing a scorching and unapologetic commentary that spans the spectrum from politics to entertainment, while sparing no particular individual deserving of his legendary wrath.
-
-
great listen!
- By free thinker. on 02-19-25
By: Anthony Cumia, and others
-
Son of Southtown
- My Life Between Two Worlds
- By: Sonny Sandoval, Jon Foreman - foreword
- Narrated by: Sonny Sandoval
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born and raised on the streets of Southtown, two exits from the Mexico border, Sonny Sandoval was always going to go his own way. And as frontman of the platinum selling nu metal band P.O.D.—a group too Christian for the world and too secular for the church—he has broken every mold, defied every expectation, and reached into the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of people who wanted to belong to something but never felt like they fit in.
-
-
I could not stop listening!
- By Du Wayne Denton on 03-31-25
By: Sonny Sandoval, and others
Lives of two Hollywood Giants
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.