“They threw me off the hay truck about noon.” The celebrated first line of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by JAMES M. CAIN...

For much of the 1940s, LENA HORNE (born 1917), Hollywood’s “sepia Cinderella,” was relegated to one or two set-piece numbers per film. Opulent, glamorous,...

AMIDST THE CYCLE of encomiums spurred by Michael Jackson’s death last week, his weirdness has been treated as an unfortunate epiphenomenon and distraction from...

"Ready for the revolution!"

My heart still skips a beat when I look at old Rolling Stone photos of GILDA RADNER (1946-89), an early childhood crush and, then...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, this week, to the following high-, low-, no-, and hilobrow heroes. Click here for more HiLo Hero birthdays. JUNE 28 My heart...

What was it about EMMA GOLDMAN (1867-1940) that made her, at the turn of the twentieth century, the most dangerous woman in America? Was...

From Abbott, the courtly assassin in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, to the un-manly yet indefatigable Joel Cairo, in The Maltese Falcon,...