In October of 1881, a brief notice appeared in the New York Tribune announcing that architect Richard Morris Hunt had accepted a commission of unusual scale on Fifth Avenue. The building it described would stretch 137 ft along the street, its carved limestone facade rising in tears of corbelled cornises and rusticated stone. Each block…
May 1947, a frail old man steps out of a car on a lonely California hilltop. This is the dark story of America’s wildest party palace, Hurst Castle. For almost 30 years, this place was the craziest playground for the rich and famous. Movie stars, politicians, millionaires, all drinking by the pool, dancing under…
Lucille Ball named the 10 stars with secret addictions old Hollywood desperately covered up. Lucille Ball was not just the most famous woman in television history. She was the most powerful. While other actresses waited for studios to hand them roles, Lucy ran her own studio. Desilu Productions, the company she built with her husband…
In Catch Me If You Can, released by DreamWorks in 2002, Leonardo DiCaprio plays teenage Frank Abagnail Jr. as a [music] prodigy gliding through international airports in a crisp Panama pilot’s uniform, surrounded by admiring flight attendants, cashing forged checks in luxury hotels across five continents. The film shows him impersonating doctors in Georgia hospitals,…
They’ve touched our hearts. They’ve made us smile and became dear friends who we will always remain hopelessly devoted to. At 71, John Travolta often sits alone in his quiet Florida home, where the walls still carry the scent of his late wife, and the eyes of the children he has lost still look…
The tragedy of Alexander Carter’s life when he married Merl Oberon. The woman in the doorway. Merl Oberon made her grandmother serve tea to Hollywood celebrities as a maid. Not a metaphor, literally. At dinner parties attended by Lawrence Olivier and David Nan, the woman who raised her, who crossed an ocean for her,…
Hail Mary, full of grace. >> >> Blessed art thou amongst women. That’s the sound of Michael Corleone killing his own brother. Not an enemy, not a rival, his brother. The same kid who taught him to fish, the only one who supported him when he enlisted in the Marines, shot in the back…
He showed up the first Saturday in June with a backpack that looked too light for a whole summer, a duffel that looked too heavy for a kid insisting he was “fine,” and black leather gloves that didn’t belong on any fifteen-year-old in warm weather. “Nate,” I said, pulling him into a quick hug before…
The room smelled like antiseptic and something bitter, like coffee left too long on a burner. Machines hummed softly around me, tracking every fragile rhythm my body could still manage. I was exhausted, barely able to lift my head, still recovering from surgery that had drained more from me than I understood at the time….
“How Dare You Say NO To My MOTHER!” my husband screamed, smashing a plate over my head because I refused to sign my apartment into her name—or pay his mom $1,200 a month. By sunrise, I’d pulled every bank record, every deed, every receipt. At 7:12 a.m., I rang THEIR doorbell, handed my husband an…
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