When celebrated photographer Nan Goldin waged a campaign against the makers of pharmaceutical drug OxyContin in 2017, her motivation was personal: She had just come clean from an addiction to the drug, a period she called the darkest of her life. Goldin started using OxyContin, an opioid to ...
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Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
The Highs and Lows of Brendan Fraser's Career
Once upon a time, Brendan Fraser was a breath of fresh air for movie audiences. Blessed with a matinee idol's good looks and physique, he instead behaved onscreen like a cartoon character come to life and carved out a path to stardom largely on the strength of making people laugh. As it turned out, ...
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Thursday, October 13, 2022
How Steven Spielberg's Love of Film is Rooted in Early Childhood Experiences
For director Steven Spielberg, the movie bug bit early—and bit hard. By 12, he was wowing Boy Scout buddies with his first Western short. A year later, the scrawny, geeky middle schooler was directing high schoolers in an ambitious war-themed film. It wasn't his first. And it definitely wouldn't be ...
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Tuesday, October 4, 2022
How Jamie Lee Curtis Followed Her Mother's Fright-Filled Footsteps to Stardom
By age 19, Jamie Lee Curtis was already questioning whether she'd made the right move by pursuing an acting career. The younger daughter of Tony Curtis, star of classic films like Some Like It Hot (1959), and Janet Leigh, a leading lady best known for the shower scene of Psycho (1960), Jamie Lee ...
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Monday, September 19, 2022
20 Pictures of King Charles III Before He Took the Throne
Despite taking the throne much later than expected, King Charles III spent his entire life preparing for the day he would become king. That moment came on September 8, 2022, when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, the United Kingdom’s longest reigning monarch, died. At age 73, Charles is the oldest ...
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Thursday, September 15, 2022
The Surreal Romance of Salvador and Gala DalÃ
In summer 1929, several members of Europe's surrealist art society descended on the coastal town of Cadaqués, in the Catalonia region of northeast Spain, to meet with a promising young painter named Salvador DalÃ. Dalà had signed on for what was to be his first solo exhibition in Paris in November, ...
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Thursday, August 25, 2022
How Josephine Baker Upended Sexual Stereotypes While Advocating For Civil Rights
In the first half of the 20th century, dancer and singer Josephine Baker left the segregated United States for Paris, where she became one of the world's biggest stars. Baker went on to aid her adopted country of France during World War II by spying on Nazis. Yet, she didn't forget about the ...
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Monday, August 1, 2022
How Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Became Hollywood's Golden Couple
In August 1952, a little-known 22-year-old actress named Joanne Woodward ducked into her agent's office to escape the brutal New York City heat. Inside, she encountered an equally unknown 27-year-old Paul Newman, dressed impeccably in his seersucker suit, with a full head of curly hair and ...
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Tuesday, June 21, 2022
How Lou Gehrig Fought the Deadly Disease Named After Him
Even compared to today's modern athletes, with their access to advanced training and nutritional knowledge, Lou Gehrig was a physical specimen. His immense power and durability enabled him to compile some of the most impressive statistics in Major League Baseball history as a first baseman ...
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Thursday, June 9, 2022
How Elvis Made Las Vegas His Home
On April 23, 1956, Elvis Presley made his Las Vegas debut as the closing act of a show at the New Frontier hotel and casino. Billed as "The Atomic Powered Singer," the rising star had just delivered his first national No. 1 single, "Heartbreak Hotel," and was coming off a series of tours that had ...
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Monday, June 6, 2022
Elvis Presley's Musical Talents Took Root During a Lonely Childhood
A peek at any of Elvis Presley's early television performances from the mid-1950s quickly reveals the magnetism that made audiences swoon. There's the perfectly coiffed pompadour and mesmerizing gaze, a gentle demeanor jolted by a sudden hip thrust before settling into an aw-shucks grin. It's easy ...
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Friday, June 3, 2022
How Elvis Became a Movie Star—By Playing Himself
Rock 'n' roll icon Elvis Presley made 31 movies between 1956 and 1969, of which 27 were produced in the 1960s. Almost all of Presley's films were box-office smashes that made him, his manager and movie studios a lot of money. However, these films were critically derided, and Presley disdained most ...
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Thursday, June 2, 2022
8 Infamous Grifters in History
Many would agree it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, where hustling, cutting corners and occasionally lying is necessary if one wants to stay on top. Of course, some people push the envelope too far. Here are eight of the most notorious con artists, grifters and swindlers from the 19th century ...
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Wednesday, June 1, 2022
6 Trailblazing Queer Women in Comedy
Queer women have been performing comedy for a long time, even if audiences haven’t always realized it. Saturday Night Live hires like Kate McKinnon (cast in 2012) and Punkie Johnson (cast in 2020) made headlines as the first openly lesbian and first openly Black lesbian cast ...
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Tuesday, May 3, 2022
'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Cast: Where Are They Now?
Five years after the Kristy Swanson/Luke Perry-led Buffy the Vampire Slayer came and went in theaters, a televised version reappeared on the upstart WB network in March of 1997. This time, the concept showed stronger staying power. Based on creator Joss Whedon's original movie script, the TV series ...
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Tuesday, April 26, 2022
10 Directors of Color Who Changed the Film Industry
Directors of color have long been underrepresented in Hollywood, affecting which movies get made and whose stories get told. Fortunately, those who find success often wield it to pave the way for other directors of color to follow in their footsteps. Through their unforgettable art and innovations ...
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Monday, February 7, 2022
How Althea Gibson Broke the Color Barrier in Tennis
On August 28, 1950, a 23-year-old Althea Gibson set foot on one of the outer courts of the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens, home of the U.S. National Championships. It wasn't the first time a Black player was competing in an event sanctioned by the United States Lawn Tennis ...
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Tuesday, February 1, 2022
15 Inspiring Audre Lorde Quotes
Perhaps it’s symbolic that Audre Lorde didn’t start speaking until she was five years old. “I was very inarticulate as a youngster,” she once said, explaining that it wasn’t until she learned to read and write that she eventually spoke. But once she did, her words came with an extra flair. In fact, ...
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Friday, January 28, 2022
14 Powerful Marsha P. Johnson Quotes
No quote encapsulates Marsha P. Johnson more than “Pay It No Mind.” After all, that’s what she said her middle initial stood for. And that fearless attitude exemplifies how the Black transgender activist lived her life, leading the charge for LGBTQ+ rights every step of the way — and helping start ...
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Wednesday, January 26, 2022
Major Taylor: The Story Behind America's First Black Sports Superstar
Most people know the inspiring stories of Jackie Robinson, who broke through Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947; Jesse Owens, who ran roughshod over Adolf Hitler's notions of Aryan supremacy at the 1936 Berlin Olympics; and perhaps even that of Jack Johnson, the boxing great who ...
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Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Eunice Hunton Carter: The Woman Who Reeled in Lucky Luciano
In 1935, Charles "Lucky" Luciano was sitting pretty as the de facto head of the "Commission," a powerful syndicate of New York City's five largest organized crime families. Luciano had forged a working peace between the families and become immensely wealthy through the Mob’s long reach into drug ...
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Wednesday, January 5, 2022
How Kenneth Branagh's Family Left Turmoil in Belfast
Growing up in Belfast, Ireland, Kenneth Branagh says, he experienced life as fun, frivolous and carefree — the idyllic way childhood should be. But on August 15, 1969, everything changed. The young boy was in his hometown when he thought he heard a swarm of bumblebees coming his way. Instead it was ...
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