On December 31, 1939, nationwide radio audiences listened as 17-year-old Josephine Owaissa Cottle, a Texas schoolgirl, won Gateway to Hollywood's new talent competition.
Britain's peacekeeping role in Southeast Asia after World War II was clear enough but the purpose of the Commonwealth in the region later became shadowy.
Composer, conductor and operatic polymath Daron Hagen has written five symphonies, a dozen concertos, 13 operas, reams of chamber music and more than 350 art songs.
Jan Berry, leader of the music duo Jan & Dean from the late 1950s to mid-1960s, was an intense character who experienced more in his first 25 years than many do in a lifetime.
As a first lieutenant in Bravo Company of the Third Battalion, 187th Infantry, Frank Boccia led a platoon in two intense battles in the Vietnamese mountains in April and May 1969: Dong Ngai and the grinding, 11-day battle of Dong Ap Bia--the Mountain of the Crouching Beast, in Vietnamese, or Hamburger Hill as it is popularly known.
Within one of the most complex musical categories yet to surface, Cal Tjader quietly pioneered the genre as a jazz vibraphonist, composer, arranger and bandleader from the 1950s through the 1980s.
In a career that spanned 57 years, Dan Mason (1853-1929) went from performing German dialect routines in variety halls to appearing in Broadway musicals to playing character roles in silent films.
In 1968, Theodore Hammett entered a war he believed was wrong, pressured by his father's threat to disown him if he withdrew from a Marine Corps officer candidate program.
Before unmanned combat drones, there was the Grumman OV-1C Mohawk, a twin-engine turboprop fixed-wing reconnaissance aircraft loaded with state-of-the-art target detection systems.
Anita Page (1910-2008) first captured attention near the end of the silent film era in such classics as While the City Sleeps (1928) with Lon Chaney, The Flying Fleet (1929) with Ramon Novarro, and her own favorite, Our Dancing Daughters (1928) with Joan Crawford.
Exploring the early westerns of John Wayne--from his first starring role in the The Big Trail (1930) to his breakthrough as the Ringo Kid in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939)--the authors trace his transformation from Marion Mitchell Morrison, movie studio prop man, into John Wayne, a carefully crafted film persona of his own invention that made him world famous.
During the first half of 1969, Bravo Troop, 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 25th Infantry Division operated northwest of Saigon in the vicinity of Go Dau Ha, fighting in 15 actions on the Cambodian border, in the Boi Loi Woods, the Hobo Woods and Michelin Rubber Plantation and on the outskirts of Tay Ninh City.
The Star Shiner poses the question: Can a young man from a small rural Kentucky town--fleeing a domineering mother and an abusive, alcoholic father--find recognition and happiness in New York city, working with the high-powered fashion and cosmetic industries, and with some of the world's most famous people--without losing his values and his soul?
Adopted as a child from the Masonic Home for Children at Oxford, Tommy Malboeuf grew up in Troutman, North Carolina before enlisting in the Navy in the early 1950s.
Arriving in Hollywood in 1950 to launch her American film career, Jean Simmons (1929-2010) had already appeared in 18 British films and was best known for her portrayal of Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.
Ushering in a new era of confessional music that spoke openly about experiences of trauma, depression, and self-loathing, Nine Inch Nails seminal album, The Downward Spiral, changed popular music foreverbringing transgressive themes of heresy, S&M, and body horror to the masses and taking music technology to its limits.
Living Like Audrey is a captivating and insightful look at an iconic woman who was an inspiration to many and whose style, personality, and uniqueness inspires generation after generation.