Putting on the Ritz

Putting on the Ritz
Author: Joe Keenan
Publisher: Arrow
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-02-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781784757083

Following the hilarious debacle of Blue Heaven, librettist Philip Cavanaugh has again allowed himself to be drawn into a fiendish money-making plan by his friend and ex-lover Gilbert Selwyn. Gilbert has fallen in with Tommy Parker, a veritable Adonis and a magazine editor employed by media magnate Boyd Larkin. Philip's brief is to spy on Larkin's greatest adversary Peter Champion. To this end Philip enters the Champion entourage - a clan so poisonous they make the Borgias look Amish - with his songwriting partner Claire. Together they are to turn Champion's talentless wife Ilsa (a woman so rich she 'ovulates Fabergé eggs') into a chanteuse. As Philip and Gilbert out-spy each other in vying for Tommy's admiration, plot follows counter-plot in a novel whose comic complications, devastating repartee and cast of high-hat lowlifes is nothing short of dazzling and unforgettable.

Puttin' On the Ritz

Puttin' On the Ritz
Author: Peter Levinson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2015-07-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250091497

Fred Astaire defined elegance on the dance floor. With white tie, tails and a succession of elegant partners - Ginger Rogers, Cyd Charisse, Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, Judy Garland and others - he created an indelible image of the Anglo bon vivant. His origins, though, were far more humble: Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Fred Astaire came from Midwestern stock that partially had its origin in the late nineteenth century Jewish communities of Austria. At first, he played second fiddle in vaudeville to his sister, Adele; however, once he learned how to tap and bought his first Brooks Brothers suit, the game changed. How did he transform himself from a small town Nebraska boy into the most sophisticated man ever to dance across a dance floor? In this comprehensive new book about the life and artistry of Fred Astaire, Peter Levinson looks carefully at the entirety of Astaire's career from vaudeville to Broadway to Hollywood to television. He explores Astaire's relationships with his vivacious dance partners, his friendship with songwriters like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and his relationship with choreographers like Hermes Pan to discover how Astaire, in effect, created his elegant persona. Astaire put his mark on the Hollywood musical, starting his career at RKO and then moving to MGM. From his long list of films, certain classics like "Swing Time", "Top Hat", "Royal Wedding" and "The Bandwagon" revolutionized the presentation of dance on film; but, he also revolutionized the television variety special with the Emmy-Award-Winning "An Evening With Fred Astaire". For 'Puttin' on the Ritz", veteran Hollywood insider, Peter Levinson interviewed over two hundred people who worked closely with Astaire such as Debbie Reynolds, Dick Van Dyke, Artie Shaw, Bobby Short, Oscar Peterson, Mel Ferrer, Betty Garrett, Joel Grey, Arlene Dahl, Michael Kidd, Betty Comden, Onna White, Margaret Whiting, Andy Williams, and others like Quincy Jones, John Travolta, and John Williams, to provide an intimate window on to his professional as well as his personal life. His new biography of Astaire is a celebration of the great era of sophistication on Broadway and in Hollywood as seen through the life of a man who learned how to put on the Ritz and become America's premiere song-and-dance-man: Fred Astaire.

Putting on the Ritz

Putting on the Ritz
Author: Joe Keenan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 1992-11-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0140149899

The witty duo from Blue Heaven invade the entourage of a tasteless real estate/media magnate, attempt to turn his talentless wife into a chanteuse, and vie for the affections of a suave magazine editor, in this deftly delicious comedy of bad manners, financial skullduggery, and romantic infighting.

The Last Night at the Ritz

The Last Night at the Ritz
Author: Elizabeth Savage
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1973
Genre: Domestic fiction
ISBN: 9780316771443

The lives and friendship of two women. Time states: "They both were young during World War II when college boys sang 'You can easily tell she's not my mother, 'cause my mother's 49.' This is a novel about then and now mostly in Boston, about women with character and brains and what happens to them, about marriage, about the wear and tear of living, about the manners and aspirations of a generation that endured to see its values -- not well defended but well believed in -- derided across the generation gap. The genre is women's fiction, and the book lapses occasionally into jargon and sentimentality. But in a very short compass, with extraordinary deftness, humor and a rueful shrewdness edging toward wisdom, it rises above genre to something not unlike small genius. "Nowadays, everyone knows a little something about the mind," thinks the lady, "though it doesn't seem to have helped as much as one could wish." --Time 11/19/1973.

Blue Heaven

Blue Heaven
Author: Willard Wyman
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2011-11-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 080618292X

The year is 1902. A young stock-handler named Fenton Pardee has just survived the train wreck that almost destroyed William F. Cody’s Wild West show. Surveying the train’s smoldering ruins—and what is left of Cody’s company of stunt-riders, trick-shooters, and stage actors—Fenton realizes that turning the West into a circus to thrill the world is no longer thrilling for him. Salvaging a saddle horse and three pack mules, he heads back into the West, seeking the reality of the Montana Rockies. Blue Heaven marks the return of Fenton Pardee, veteran guide and packer, who figured so memorably in High Country, Willard Wyman’s highly acclaimed first novel. Now Wyman moves back in time, filling in the story of the legendary packer. As he begins his westward journey, Fenton is not nearly as sure of where he is going as of what he wants to leave. Crossing the National Divide, he follows Indian trails and game trails, learning the lay of the land as he moves into a wilderness that comforts him as it draws him ever deeper into it. Stumbling into the camp of Tommy Yellowtail, a Flathead Indian as determined to remain in these mountains as Fenton is to embrace them, he finally finds his way. Together the two men discover that showing people what they want to preserve has its own way of keeping it alive. The tale of Fenton and Tommy—and of the women they love, one of whom is tragically taken from them—cuts through the romance of the West to offer an earthier reality, even as twentieth-century expansion and a looming world war threaten to take it all away.

Mistress of the Ritz

Mistress of the Ritz
Author: Melanie Benjamin
Publisher: Dell
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2019-05-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 039918225X

A captivating novel based on the story of the extraordinary real-life American woman who secretly worked for the French Resistance during World War II—while playing hostess to the invading Germans at the iconic Hôtel Ritz in Paris—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue. “A compelling portrait of a marriage and a nation at war from within.”—Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network Nothing bad can happen at the Ritz; inside its gilded walls every woman looks beautiful, every man appears witty. Favored guests like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coco Chanel, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor walk through its famous doors to be welcomed and pampered by Blanche Auzello and her husband, Claude, the hotel’s director. The Auzellos are the mistress and master of the Ritz, allowing the glamour and glitz to take their minds off their troubled marriage, and off the secrets that they keep from their guests—and each other. Until June 1940, when the German army sweeps into Paris, setting up headquarters at the Ritz. Suddenly, with the likes of Hermann Goëring moving into suites once occupied by royalty, Blanche and Claude must navigate a terrifying new reality. One that entails even more secrets and lies. One that may destroy the tempestuous marriage between this beautiful, reckless American and her very proper Frenchman. For in order to survive—and strike a blow against their Nazi “guests”—Blanche and Claude must spin a web of deceit that ensnares everything and everyone they cherish. But one secret is shared between Blanche and Claude alone—the secret that, in the end, threatens to imperil both of their lives, and to bring down the legendary Ritz itself. Based on true events, Mistress of the Ritz is a taut tale of suspense wrapped up in a love story for the ages, the inspiring story of a woman and a man who discover the best in each other amid the turbulence of war. Praise for Mistress of the Ritz “No one writes of the complexities of women’s lives and loves like Melanie Benjamin. In Mistress of the Ritz, Benjamin brings wartime Paris brilliantly to life. . . . Intense, illuminating, and ultimately inspiring!”—Elizabeth Letts, New York Times bestselling author of Finding Dorothy

Respect

Respect
Author: David Ritz
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2014-10-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316196827

The definitive biography of the Queen of Soul from acclaimed music writer David Ritz, hailed by Rolling Stone as "a remarkably complex portrait of Aretha Franklin's music and her tumultuous life." Aretha Franklin began life as the golden daughter of a progressive and promiscuous Baptist preacher. Raised without her mother, she was a gospel prodigy who gave birth to two sons in her teens and left them and her native Detroit for New York, where she struggled to find her true voice. It was not until 1967, when a white Jewish producer insisted she return to her gospel-soul roots, that fame and fortune finally came via "Respect" and a rapidfire string of hits. She has evolved ever since, amidst personal tragedy, surprise Grammy performances, and career reinventions. Again and again, Aretha stubbornly finds a way to triumph over troubles, even as they continue to build. Her hold on the crown is tenacious, and in Respect, David Ritz gives us the definitive life of one of the greatest talents in all American culture. "Comprehensive and illuminating." --USA Today

Troubled Blood

Troubled Blood
Author: Robert Galbraith
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Total Pages: 969
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316498963

In the epic fifth installment in this “compulsively readable” (People) series, Galbraith’s “irresistible hero and heroine” (USA Today) take on the decades-old cold case of a missing doctor, one which may be their grisliest yet. Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough—who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike. As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . .

Ritz and Escoffier

Ritz and Escoffier
Author: Luke Barr
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0804186316

Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed Ritz and Escoffier. In a tale replete with scandal and opulence, Luke Barr, author of the New York Times bestselling Provence, 1970, transports readers to turn-of-the-century London and Paris to discover how celebrated hotelier César Ritz and famed chef Auguste Escoffier joined forces at the Savoy Hotel to spawn a scandalously modern luxury hotel and restaurant, signaling a new social order and the rise of the middle class. In early August 1889, César Ritz, a Swiss hotelier highly regarded for his exquisite taste, found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. He had come at the request of Richard D'Oyly Carte, the financier of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operas, who had modernized theater and was now looking to create the world's best hotel. D'Oyly Carte soon seduced Ritz to move to London with his team, along with Auguste Escoffier, the chef de cuisine known for his elevated, original dishes. The two created a hotel and restaurant like no one had ever experienced, in often mysterious and always extravagant ways, where British high society mingled with American Jews and women. Barr deftly re-creates the thrilling Belle Epoque era just before World War I, when British aristocracy was at its peak, women began dining out unaccompanied by men, and American nouveaux riche and gauche industrialists convened in London to show off their wealth. In their collaboration at the still celebrated Savoy Hotel, the pair welcomed loyal and sometimes salacious clients, such as Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt; Escoffier created the modern kitchen brigade and codified French cuisine in his seminal Le Guide culinaire, which remains in print today; and Ritz, whose name continues to grace the finest hotels, created the world's first luxury hotel. The pair also ruffled more than a few feathers. Fine dining and luxury travel would never be the same--or more intriguing.