Description
Book SynopsisThis amazing collection of choice anecdotes takes us right back to the Golden Age of New York City nightlife, when top restaurants like Toots Shor's, 21, and Sardi's, as well as glittering nightclubs like the Stork Club, Latin Quarter, and El Morocco, were the nightly gathering spots for great figures of that era: movie and Broadway stars, baseball players, champion boxers, comedians, diplomats, British royalty, prize-winning authors, and famous painters. From Charlie Chaplin to Winston Churchill, from Ethel Barrymore to Sophia Loren, from George Burns to Ernest Hemingway, from Joe DiMaggio to the Duke of Windsor: Leonard Lyons knew them all. For forty glorious years, from 1934 to 1974, he made the daily rounds of Gotham nightspots, collecting the exclusive scoops and revelations that were at the core of his famous newspaper column, The Lyons Den.
In this entertaining volume Jeffrey Lyons has assembled a considerable compilation of anecdotes from his father's best columns, and
Trade Review
"These stories are wonderful! I saw Leonard Lyons on a lot of nights out in Manhattan and if he told these stories, they're true!"--Kirk Douglas "Leonard Lyons genuinely admired the people he wrote about. And knowing this, they would open up to him and tell him the colorful stories that were his bread and butter, and that the readers loved." --Charles Osgood, from the Foreword "No one did more to promote New York's deserved reputation as a capital of glamour and culture...a century after his birth, the legacy of Leonard Lyons lives on. The names on the marquee may have changed, but the memory of Leonard Lyons remains a guiding light in New York City's cultural community." --New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg "For four decades 'The Lyons Den' was an institution and will be invaluable to historians seeking behind-the-scenes glimpses of that long era." --Clyde Haberman, formerly of the New York Post (1976 tribute)
Table of Contents
Foreword by Charles Osgood Introduction 'The Thirties Irving Berlin George Burns Sir Charlie Chaplin Ty Cobb Gary Cooper Noel Coward Albert Einstein J. Edgar Hoover Sinclair Lewis Groucho Marx and his brothers W. Somerset Maugham Pablo Picasso George Bernard Shaw The Duke & Duchess of Windsor 'The Forties Tallulah Bankhead David Ben-Gurion Thomas Hart Benton Ingrid Bergman Milton Berle Humphrey Bogart Charles Boyer Winston Churchill Joe DiMaggio John Garfield Sam Goldwyn Cary Grant Howard Hughes George S. Kaufman Danny Kaye Helen Keller Charles Laughton Gypsy Rose Lee Oscar Levant George S. Patton Edward G. Robinson Carl Sandburg John Steinbeck Harry S. Truman Orson Welles 'The Fifties Lauren Bacall Marlon Brando Yul Brynner Ralph Bunche Marc Chagall Salvador Dali Kirk Douglas Jackie Gleason Rex Harrison Ernest Hemingway Audrey Hepburn Sir Alfred Hitchcock Judy Holliday Grace Kelly Ethel Merman James A. Michener Marilyn Monroe Lord Laurence Olivier Otto Preminger Rocky Marciano William Saroyan Phil Silvers Frank Sinatra 'The Sixties Brendan Behan Richard Burton Truman Capote Dustin Hoffman Lyndon B. Johnson John F. Kennedy Sophia Loren Paul Newman Barbra Streisand Billy Wilder Shelley Winters Peter Ustinov The Next Generation Antonio Banderas Javier Bardem Cate Blanchett Michael Caine George Carlin George Clooney Penelope Cruz Dame Judi Dench Clint Eastwood Ralph Fiennes Dennis Hopper Samuel L. Jackson Sir Ben Kingsley Jay Leno William Shatner Epilogue Index
