William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President's Men (1976). His other known works include his thriller novel Marathon Man and his cult classic comedy/fantasy novel The Princess Bride, both of which he also adapted for the film versions.
Mary Louise Brooks, known professionally as Louise Brooks, was an American film actress and dancer during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as a Jazz Age icon and as a flapper sex symbol due to her bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career.
Jules Ralph Feiffer is an American cartoonist and author, who was considered the most widely read satirist in the country. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 as North-America's leading editorial cartoonist, and in 2004 he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame. He wrote the animated short Munro, which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1961. The Library of Congress has recognized his "remarkable legacy", from 1946 to the present, as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, adult and children's book author, illustrator, and art instructor.
Richard Thomas Condon was an American political novelist. Though his works were satire, they were generally transformed into thrillers or semi-thrillers in other media, such as cinema. All 26 books were written in distinctive Condon style, which combined a fast pace, outrage, and frequent humor while focusing almost obsessively on monetary greed and political corruption. Condon himself once said: "Every book I've ever written has been about abuse of power. I feel very strongly about that. I'd like people to know how deeply their politicians wrong them." Condon's books were occasionally bestsellers, and a number of his books were made into films; he is primarily remembered for his 1959 The Manchurian Candidate and, many years later, a series of four novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.
William Condon is an American director and screenwriter. Condon is known for writing and/or directing numerous successful and acclaimed films including Gods and Monsters, Chicago, Kinsey, Dreamgirls, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, and Beauty and the Beast. He has received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; Gods and Monsters and Chicago, winning for the former.
In Judeo-Christian folklore the angel Kushiel, meaning "Rigid One of God", punishes individuals in Hell.
The Agony and the Ecstasy is a 1965 American film directed by Carol Reed and starring Charlton Heston as Michelangelo and Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II. The film was partly based on Irving Stone's 1961 biographical novel The Agony and the Ecstasy. This film deals with the conflicts of Michelangelo and Pope Julius II during the 1508-1512 painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It also features a soundtrack co-written by prolific composers Alex North and Jerry Goldsmith.
The Dial Press was a publishing house founded in 1923 by Lincoln MacVeagh.
The Manchurian Candidate is a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy.
Frederick Major Paull Knott was an English playwright and screenwriter known for his complex crime-related plots. Although he was a reluctant writer and completed only a small number of plays in his career, two have become well-known: the London-based stage thriller Dial M for Murder, later filmed in Hollywood by Alfred Hitchcock, and the 1966 play Wait Until Dark, which was adapted to a Hollywood film directed by Terence Young. He also wrote the Broadway mystery Write Me a Murder.
Jerry Pinkney is an American illustrator and writer of children's books. Pinkney has illustrated over 100 books since 1964, including picture books, nonfiction titles and novels. Pinkney's works address diverse themes and are usually done in watercolors. He has received multiple awards for his illustrations and his contributions to the field of children's literature.
The Keener's Manual is an imaginary book created by the 20th-century American political novelist Richard Condon. From it Condon used quotations or epigraphs, generally in verse, to either illustrate the theme of his novels, or, in a large number of cases, as the source of the title, in particular six of his first seven books: The Oldest Confession, Some Angry Angel, A Talent for Loving, An Infinity of Mirrors, and Any God Will Do. Only his second, and most famous novel, The Manchurian Candidate, derived its title elsewhere. A number of his later books also reference it for epigraphs, without, however, using any of its verse as a source for titles.
Little Caesar is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film distributed by Warner Brothers, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Edward G. Robinson, Glenda Farrell, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The film tells the story of a hoodlum who ascends the ranks of organized crime until he reaches its upper echelons. The storyline was adapted from the novel of the same name by William R. Burnett. Little Caesar was Robinson's breakthrough role and immediately made him a major film star. The film is often listed as one of the first full-fledged gangster films and continues to be well received by critics.
Mile High was the eighth book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon, first published by Dial Press in 1969. Internationally famous at the time of its publication, primarily because of his 1959 Manchurian Candidate, Condon had begun to lose the respect of critics with the publication of his last few books and the one-time, so-called Condon Cult was mostly a thing of the past. Like his fifth book, An Infinity of Mirrors, Mile High is a consciously ambitious work, primarily concerned with the establishment of Prohibition in the United States, and Condon researched it thoroughly. The first two-thirds of the book, in fact, reads as much like a lively history of New York City gangsterism from the mid-18th century through 1930 as it does a novel.
Some Angry Angel: A Mid-Century Faerie Tale was Richard Condon's third novel and gave impetus to the growing, though relatively short-lived "Condon cult" of that era. Published in 1960, it is written with all the panache, stylistic tricks, and mannerisms that characterize Condon's works. It was not, however, one of his more typical political thrillers, such as its immediate predecessor, the far better-known The Manchurian Candidate. While Condon is remembered today for a number of more action-oriented books such as Candidate, Winter Kills, and the Prizzi series, Some Angry Angel is largely forgotten.
An Infinity of Mirrors was the fifth and most ambitious book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon. First published by Random House in 1964, it is set in France and Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, as seen through the eyes of a beautiful, rich Parisian Jew and her beloved husband, an old-fashioned Prussian army general. What unfolds is and an almost unrelievedly bleak depiction of the rise of the Nazis and the Third Reich.
Any God Will Do is the sixth book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon, first published by Random House in 1966. After the almost unmitigated grimness of his previous book, An Infinity of Mirrors, it was a return to his more usual light-heartedness as displayed in works such A Talent for Loving. Although its theme is madness, unusually for Condon it has little of the almost gratuitous scenes of violence and sudden deaths that punctuate most of his books. The only notable instance is that of a haughty French sommelier who shoots himself at an aristocratic dinner party when he discovers that an American guest is indeed correct in asserting a great white Burgundy can accompany young spring lamb.
And Then We Moved to Rossenarra: or, The Art of Emigrating is a memoir by the American political novelist Richard Condon, published by Dial Press in 1973. A native of New York City whose early career had mostly been that of a press agent for various Hollywood studios, Condon took up writing relatively late in life but then became both prolific and famous; today he is most remembered for his 1959 political thriller The Manchurian Candidate and for his four later novels about a family of New York gangsters named Prizzi.
Tinsel is a 1979 novel written by William Goldman. It was the third of a four-book deal he had with Delacorte Press after Marathon Man and Magic. He called it "my Hollywood novel."
