True Celebrity Biography

On August 6, 1978, firefighters discovered the charred remains of a body inside a wooden crate, set ablaze in an empty lot in the Bronx, New York. The male decedent had been worked over, stabbed, and shot multiple times. The victim was identified as John “Jack” Tupper, a restaurateur, age 34. His killer turned out to be 48-year-old Howard “Buddy” Jacobson, who at one time was the country's leading Thoroughbred horse trainer. The shocking act of violence was the result of a classic love triangle turned deadly.

William J. Mann is the author of ten books, including his most recent, Bogie and Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood’s Greatest Love Affair. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Fact Crime for Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, and the Lambda Literary Award for Biography for Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines. He is also the author of The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando and Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.

In October 1979, Sir Alec Guinness met a 12-year-old Daniel Henning and asked him to make a startling promise. Twenty years later, Guinness, who is known all around the world as the sage Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi from the original Star Wars, recounted this exchange in his final memoir.

Born in a little cabin in Tennessee, Dolly Parton always dreamed big, and she was right to! She wrote her first song at age five and became a country music star by the time she was in her early twenties. Of course, her success didn't stop there. Dolly Parton is also an actress, author, businesswoman, and philanthropist whose "Imagination Library" reading initiative reaches children throughout the US, Canada, and the UK. There is simply no one like Dolly Parton!