Donald Spoto – författare

MARILYN MONROE is the most celebrated and controversial female icon of the 20th century. At last, Donald Spoto has produced an acclaimed biography worthy of this extraordinary and unforgettable star.With access to more than 35,000 pages of formerly sealed documents and interviews with 150 people who have never spoken on record before, Spoto's definitive biography reveals the truth behind the myths and speculations surrounding Marilyn's life and death. He exposes the falsehoods and casts new light on every aspect of Marilyn Monroe's 36 years: her dramatic childhood; her marriages; her relationships with movie moguls; politicians, poets, artists and statesmen. But most astonishing of all, he presents the reality of her death - more horrifying than anything a Hollywood screenwriter could have devised.Moving, often shocking, always absorbing, Marilyn Monroe will stand as the ultimate and compulsively readable biography of the woman who continues to enthrall millions.'Not just sensational, but sensationally good' - Sunday Telegraph'At long last Marilyn Monroe has found her knight in shining armour...[her] true story has been revealed' - Daily Mirror'An impressive reminder of the tough, triumphalist Norma Jean...for once she has a biographer worthy of her' - JULIE BURCHILL, Sunday Times

Born in Brussels in 1929, Audrey Hepburn was the daughter of a British father and a Dutch Baroness. But when she was five, her father deserted the family. With the outbreak of war in 1939, her mother thought they would be safer in Holland than Holland Park, but although they survived the German Occupation, the experience left its physical and emotional scars.Back in England again, Audrey studied ballet with Marie Rambert. After a few West End musicals and minor film parts, she was spotted by the author, Colette, to star in a stage version of her novel, Gigi. And then Audrey's career took off. Her debut screen role was the Princess in the enchanting Roman Holiday. It won her an Oscar.She went on to bring her unique grace and high spirits to a number of highly acclaimed films - from Funny Face and The Nun's Story to My Fair Lady, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Robin and Marian.For a while it looked as though her personal life would follow the Hollywood dream. But her marriage to Mel Ferrer was not to last. She married and divorced a second time, and there were other passionate but short-lived affairs, some revealed for the first time in this book, but her relationships were never entirely successful. With all the insight, background knowledge and innate sympathy for his subject, qualities that have made his biographies of Hitchcock, Dietrich, Monroe and Bergman such international successes, Donald Spoto truly captures the spirit of an elusive, beautiful, talented and vulnerable woman.

This is the first complete, critical biography of Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), one of America's finest playwrights and the author of (among many important works) The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Night of the Iguana. award-winning biographer Donald Spoto gives us not only a full and accurate account of Williams's life, he also reveals the intimate connections between the playwright's personal dramas and his remarkably autobiographical art. From his birth into a genteel Southern family, through his success, celebrity, and wealth, to his drug addictions, promiscuity, and creative struggles, Tennessee Williams lived a life as gripping as his plays. The Kindness of Strangers, based on Williams's own papers, his mother's diaries, and interviews with scores of friends, lovers, and professional associates, is, in the author's words, a portrait of "a man more disturbing, more dramatic, richer and more wonderful than any character he created."

The actress Teresa Wright (1918–2005) lived a rich, complex, magnificent life against the backdrop of Golden Age Hollywood, Broadway and television. There was no indication, from her astonishingly difficult—indeed, horrifying—childhood, of the success that would follow, nor of the universal acclaim and admiration that accompanied her everywhere. Her two marriages—to the writers Niven Busch (The Postman Always Rings Twice; Duel in the Sun) and Robert Anderson (Tea and Sympathy; I Never Sang for My Father)—provide a good deal of the drama, warmth, poignancy and heartbreak of her life story. "I never wanted to be a star," she told the noted biographer Donald Spoto at dinner in 1978. "I wanted only to be an actress." She began acting on the stage in summer stock and repertory at the age of eighteen. When Thornton Wilder and Jed Harris saw her in an ingénue role, she was chosen to understudy the part of Emily in the original production of Our Town (1938), which she then played in touring productions. Samuel Goldwyn saw her first starring role on Broadway—in the historic production of Life with Father—and at once he offered her a long contract. She was the only actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for her first three pictures (The Little Foxes; The Pride of the Yankees; and Mrs. Miniver), and she won for the third film. Movie fans and scholars to this day admire her performance in the classics Shadow of a Doubt and The Best Years of Our Lives. The circumstances of her tenure at Goldwyn, and the drama of her breaking that contract, forever changed the treatment of stars. Wright's family and heirs appointed Spoto as her authorized biographer and offered him exclusive access to her letters and papers. Major supporting players in this story include Robert Anderson, Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, Karl Malden, Elia Kazan, Jean Simmons, Dorothy McGuire, Bette Davis, George Cukor, Marlon Brando, George C. Scott, the artist Al Hirschfeld, Stella Adler, and more.