Harold Robbins was an American author of popular novels. One of the best-selling writers of all time, he wrote over 25 best-sellers, selling over 750 million copies in 32 languages.
Tony Curtis was an American actor with a career that spanned six decades, achieving the height of his popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in more than 100 films, in roles covering a wide range of genres. In his later years, Curtis made numerous television appearances.
Edwin Jack Fisher was an American singer and actor. He was one of the most popular artists during the 1950s, selling millions of records and hosting his own TV show, The Eddie Fisher Show. Actress Elizabeth Taylor was best friends with Fisher's first wife, actress Debbie Reynolds. After Taylor's third husband, Mike Todd, was killed in a plane crash, Fisher divorced Reynolds and he and Taylor married that same year. The scandalous affair that Fisher and Taylor had been having while each was already married was widely reported and brought unfavorable publicity to both Fisher and Taylor. Approximately five years later, he and Taylor divorced and he later married Connie Stevens. Fisher is the father of Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher, whose mother is Reynolds, and the father of Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher, whose mother is Stevens.
The Chosen is a novel written by Chaim Potok. It was first published in 1967. It follows the narrator, Reuven Malter, and his friend Daniel Saunders, as they grow up in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1940s. A sequel featuring Reuven's young adult years, The Promise, was published in 1969.
Budd Schulberg was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his novels What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) and The Harder They Fall (1947), as well as his screenplays for On the Waterfront (1954) and A Face in the Crowd (1957), receiving an Academy Award for the former.
Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary, known as Joyce Cary, was an Anglo-Irish novelist and colonial official. His most notable novels include Mister Johnson and The Horse's Mouth.
King Creole is a 1958 American musical drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and based on the 1952 novel A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins. Produced by Hal B. Wallis, the film stars Elvis Presley, Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Dolores Hart, Dean Jagger, and Vic Morrow, and follows a nineteen-year-old (Presley) who gets mixed up with crooks and involved with two women.
Chester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works, some of which have been filmed, include If He Hollers Let Him Go, published in 1945, and the Harlem Detective series of novels for which he is best known, set in the 1950s and early 1960s and featuring two black policemen called Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. In 1958, Himes won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Susan Cabot was an American film, stage, and television actress. She rose to prominence for her roles in a variety of Western films, including Tomahawk (1951), The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), and Gunsmoke (1953).
The Little Friend is the second novel by the American author Donna Tartt. The novel was initially published by Alfred A. Knopf on October 22, 2002, a decade after her first novel, The Secret History.
John Daniel Edward "Jack" Torrance is the villain protagonist in Stephen King's horror novel The Shining (1977). He was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the novel's 1980 film adaptation, by Steven Weber in the 1997 miniseries, by Brian Mulligan in the 2016 opera and by Henry Thomas in the 2019 film adaptation of Doctor Sleep. The American Film Institute rated the character the 25th-greatest film villain of all time. In 2008, Jack Torrance was selected by Empire magazine as one of the 100 greatest movie characters. Premiere magazine also ranked Torrance on their list of their 100 greatest movie characters of all time.
Vardis Alvero Fisher was an American writer from Idaho who wrote popular historical novels of the Old West. After studying at the University of Utah and the University of Chicago, Fisher taught English at the University of Utah and then at the Washington Square College of New York University until 1931. He worked with the Federal Writers' Project to write the Works Project Administration The Idaho Guide, which was published in 1937. In 1939, Fisher wrote Children of God, a historical novel concerning the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The novel won the Harper Prize. In 1940, Fisher relocated to Hagerman, Idaho, and spent the next twenty years writing the 12-volume Testament of Man (1943–1960) series of novels, depicting the history of humans from cavemen to civilization. Fisher's novel Mountain Man (1965) was adapted in the film Jeremiah Johnson (1972).
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a 1999 fantasy novel by American writer Gregory Maguire, retelling the tale of Cinderella through the eyes of one of her "ugly stepsisters." In 2002, the book was adapted into a TV movie of the same name directed by Gavin Millar.
The Book Thief is a historical fiction novel by the Australian author Markus Zusak, set in Nazi Germany during World War II. Published in 2005, The Book Thief became an international bestseller and was translated into 63 languages and sold 17 million copies. It was adapted into the 2013 feature film, The Book Thief.
"The Mexican" is a 1911 short story by American author Jack London.
Random Acts of Heroic Love (2007) is a semi-autobiographical debut novel by the author and actor Danny Scheinmann. It follows the parallel stories of two unconsciously connected men in two different time eras motivated by the memory of love: Moritz Daniecki, a young Austro-Hungarian soldier captured by the Russians during the First World War and sent to a POW camp in Siberia, who decides to escape in 1917 and walk thousands of miles for the sake of his childhood sweetheart Lotte; and Leo Deakin, who loses his beloved girlfriend Eleni in a bus crash in Ecuador in 1992, and in his despair embarks on his own journey of discovery and self-reconciliation.
Pressure Point is a 1962 American psychological drama film directed and co-written by Hubert Cornfield. It stars Sidney Poitier and Bobby Darin, about a prison psychiatrist treating an American Nazi sympathizer during World War II.
The Chosen is a 1981 American drama film directed by Jeremy Kagan, based on the best-selling book of the same name by Chaim Potok, published in 1967. It stars Robby Benson, Barry Miller, Maximilian Schell and Rod Steiger. At the 1981 Montréal World Film Festival, the film won Grand Prix of the Americas, and Steiger won best actor. Analysis Film Releasing Corp and 20th Century Fox released it in the US in April 1982.
Don't Look Behind You is a 1989 young adult thriller novel by Lois Duncan. It won a number of regional awards and was adapted into a television film in 1999.
Doctor Sleep is a 2019 American supernatural horror film written, directed, and edited by Mike Flanagan. It is an adaptation of the 2013 novel of the same name by Stephen King and sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining. The film stars Ewan McGregor as Dan Torrance, a man with psychic abilities and a drinking problem, who struggles with childhood trauma caused by the horrors at the Overlook Hotel. Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, and Cliff Curtis have supporting roles as new characters: Abra Stone and Billy Freeman team up with Dan to take down Rose the Hat and her gang of followers.
