Sam Kashner
Before January 6, There Was Seven Days in May
J.F.K. was haunted by the book that outlined how a right-wing coup could happen in America. The movie still rivets audiences
Oscar Season
Mad, sad, and legendarily bad, Oscar Levant was the showbiz answer to Oscar Wilde. After being forgotten for decades, is Hollywood’s greatest wit ready for his comeback?
Hall of Mirrors
Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley—now showing in glorious black and white—is a throwback to Hollywood’s golden era, and a film for our times
Hall of Mirrors
Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley—now showing in glorious black and white—is a throwback to Hollywood’s golden age, and a film for our times
His Last Picture Show
My Year with Peter Bogdanovich
A Word from the Wiseguys
Twenty-two years after The Sopranos premiered, a new oral history revisits the gritty mobster universe the show created
The View from Here
Beloved by Kurt Vonnegut, Groucho Marx, and Sidney Namlerep, S. J. Perelman re-invented American humor
At Christmas, You Tell the Truth
The romantic-comedy king Richard Curtis reveals never-before-heard details about the making of the holiday classic Love Actually
Swans Along Fifth Avenue
A new book feeds our continuing fascination with Truman Capote—and the society beauties he loved and hated
Rumbled in the Jungle
The 1974 championship bout between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, in Zaire, forever changed the lives of both fighters—and the writers who covered it
Singer, Dancer, Marcher, Spy
Josephine Baker broke barriers onstage and off—from Jim Crow Miami to the royal court of Monaco
When the Little Tramp Returned to America
In 1972, 20 years after Charlie Chaplin was forced into exile, the man who helped invent Hollywood came to a garden party in Los Angeles. Everyone was there
Electrifying Guitar
How the 60s hit “Classical Gas” became the anthem of movies, television, and, most recently, The Queen’s Gambit
Groucho’s Dinner with T. S. Eliot
Comedy meets tragedy over roast beef in London
A Tale of Two Brothers
How Herman and Joe Mankiewicz won and lost the Hollywood dream
Black and White and Read All over the South
How a comic book about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rallied 1960s civil-rights fighters, including John Lewis
Sub Human
A horrific end awaits a promising young journalist when she goes to meet an eccentric inventor in the dark waters off the coast of Copenhagen
Photo by Bachrach
A Who’s Who of the 20th century wanted their portrait taken at one family-run studio
The Woman in the Window
The American photographer Ruth Orkin did her best work without ever leaving the house
Too Close for Comfort
In HBO’s The Plot Against America, from the Philip Roth novel, the present-day parallels are profoundly disturbing
Act Two
In 1963, Mike Nichols was a 31-year-old former comedian with no immediate prospects. Then he met Neil Simon. A new book recounts what happened next, in the words of the key players
There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame
Helen Mirren brings something special to every performance. But for HBO’s Catherine the Great, she also draws on her own White Russian roots
Candice Bergen, Star Reporter
A “very lucky” actor and the photojournalism career that got away
