Credited with having opened the floodgates of screen permissiveness in 1959 with the landmark nudie The Immoral Mr. Teas, legendary independent softcore filmmaker Russ Meyer has continued throughout his 30-year career and 23+ films to expand the limits of screen freedom with such genre classics as Lorna (1964), Faster, Pussycat Kill Kill (1966), and Vixen (1969). Long recognized as an American auteur and honored by numerous international retrospectives of his work, Meyers story provides valuable insights into independent filmmaking, the history of the modern sexploitation genre, and cinema...

This work covers 840 intentional suicide cases initially reported in Daily Variety (the entertainment industry's trade journal), but also drawing attention from mainstream news media. These cases are taken from the ranks of vaudeville, film, theatre, dance, music, literature (writers with direct connections to film), and other allied fields in the entertainment industry from 1905 through 2000. Accidentally self-inflicted deaths are omitted, except for a few controversial cases. It includes the suicides of well-known personalities such as actress Peg Entwistle, who is the only person to ever...

From Jack Henry Abbott, who stabbed a waiter through the heart for not allowing him to use the toilet, to the ?Zodiac, ? an unknown California serial killer who may have murdered as many as 37 people, this reference work details 280 of the most famous murder cases of the twentieth century. Each entry contains, when applicable, birth and death dates, aliases, occupation, location of the murders, weapons used, number of victims, and the time period when the killings occurred. Films, plays, television shows, videos and audio programs based on or inspired by the case are then cited, followed by a...