Stephen Michael Shearer

BOOK SIGNING VENUES & MEDIA and SPECIAL EVENTS:
"Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star"
"Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr"
"Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life" (Trade Paperback Edition)

SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER 2012 - CONFIRMED
(Book Signing & Lecture Series Schedule)
New York, NY - 09-30-2012 John Jay College
New York, NY - 10-01-2012 Lincoln Center Bruno Walter Theater
New York, NY - 10-03-2012 Presbyterian Hospital

SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER 2012 - PENDING
(Book Signing & Lecture Series Schedule)
New York, NY

Click on EVENTS tab for additional schedules.

An Interview with Author and Film Historian Stephen Michael Shearer for KUSP "From the Bookself" with host Gary Shapiro, Santa Cruz, CA. Discussing Mr. Shearer's recently released trade paperback edition of "Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life"

INDULGE Magazine, April 2011 - Beauty & Style: BEAUTIFUL The Life of Hedy Lamarr Stephen Michael Shearer (St Martin’s Press) One of the most beautiful actresses from the golden era of Hollywood didn’t just cut Samson’s locks and seduce audiences in films with Clark Gable and James Stewart, but also played a critical role inventing technology that had led to cell phones. Extensively researched and filled with such nuggets, this is the ultimate biography on the screen legend.

WICN Public Radio - New England's Jazz & Folk Station (NPR Affiliation)
Radio Interview - Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Join Mark Lynch as he interviews author, Stephen Michael Shearer on:
Inquiry: Stephen Michael Shearer: PATRICIA NEAL: AN UNQUIET LIFE
(Click Icon for Radio Broadcast)

WICN Public Radio - New England's Jazz & Folk Station (NPR Affiliation)
Radio Interview - Thursday, January 27, 2011
Join Mark Lynch as he interviews author, Stephen Michael Shearer on:
Inquiry: Stephen Michael Shearer: BEAUTIFUL: THE LIFE OF HEDY LAMARR
(Click Icon for Radio Broadcast)

Sunday, December 12, 2010 By Molly Haskell (A version of this review appeared in print on December 12, 2010, on page BR16 of the Sunday Book Review.)

Providing probing and detailed coverage of her five marriages, children, various lawsuits, radio roles and shoplifting headlines, Shearer has combined extensive archival research with insightful interview quotes. The result is a fascinating biography that recreates Hollywood's Golden Age of Glamour.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (December 3, 2010)
By JEANINE BASINGER
Her Face Was Her Misfortune Being 'the most beautiful woman in the world' only hindered Hedy Lamarr's acting career.

KARE 11 TV Live Interview, Showcase Minnesota (November 29, 2010)
GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn.-- Minnesota author Stephen Michael Shearer joined us this morning to tell us about his new biography on Hollywood screen legend Hedy Lamarr. In Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr, Stephen highlights her amazing American film career, her romantic trials, and how the much-married Hedy went on to become a world-renowned inventor. (Click Icon for VIDEO)

Minneapolis Star Tribune - October 2, 2010 - "A beauty more than skin deep"

Beauty was a burden for Hedy Lamarr. As a Hollywood star, she was once dubbed "the most beautiful girl in the world.

KIRKUS REVIEW: In this proficient biography of the sultry, litigious Hollywood star, Las Vegas Review-Journal writer Shearer (Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life, 2006) takes pains to render a fair reevaluation of her acting. Exotically beautiful and groomed for the high-toned films of the 1940s and early Technicolor, Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) often groped for the right roles. As a result, she didn't fully explore her acting potential, writes the author in this nuts-and-bolts account. Lamarr is qouted as saying, "My face has been my misfortune," and indeed she was considered in her era that most beautiful of the Hollywood actresses. she was typecast as the vamp and temptress, largely due to her notorious early German film Exstase (1933), in which she appeared naked. Her German accent didn't help. Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna to a middle-class Jewish couple, Lamarr bluffed her way into small acting parts at the Sascha-Tobis-Film in her teens. She briefly attended Max Reinhardt's school in Berlin, then followed him back to Vienna to act in various stage productions, befriending Otto Preminger. After achieving exposure in Exstase, she married the wealthy Austrian industrialist Fritz Mandl-the first of six mostly disastrous marriages to men she believed would fix her financially-before fleeing him (and the Nazis) to board an ocean liner carrying the party of M-G-M mogul Louis B. Mayer. Felicitously, by their arrival in New York in late 1937, she had a new name and a movie contract. From her first film, Algiers (1938), Lamarr set a new standard of beauty, "with those huge, marbly eyes, the porcelain-skin, the dreamy little smile, and the exotic voice that was an artful combination of Old Vienna and the MGM speech school. During the '40s, she worked with all the greats, culminating in Samson and Delilah (1949), then moved on to television roles to support her spiraling law suits and several children. Unfortunate shoplifting sprees later marred her chances at working. Only late in life was the invention she had worked on with composer George Antheil as early as 1941-an anti-jamming device instrumental in torpedo operations-finally recognized. A dogged, basically factual tale of a Hollywood survivior. (Two 16-page black-and-white photo inserts. Agent: Deborah Ritchken/Castiglia Literary Agency)

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW:
In this authoritative biography, Shearer (Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life) surveys the career of actress Hedy Lamarr (1913-2000), born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna. In her teens, she was cast in German films, and in 1933, after she appeared nude in Ecstasy, she was catapulted to international fame. During an Atlantic crossing on the Normandie, Louis B. Mayer offered her an MGM contract and changed her name to Hedy Lamarr. Promoted as "the most beautiful girl in the world," she appeared in more than two dozen films between 1938 and 1958. Metro denied her a loan out to do the lead in Casablanca, but her vibrant screen presence in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) left a lasting impression on both filmgoers and Paramount; it raked in over $11 million to become the most profitable Paramount production up until that time. She faded from films in the 1950s, made numerous 1960s TV appearances and then dropped from the limelight, retiring to Florida in 1987. Providing probing and detailed coverage of her five marriages, children, various lawsuits, radio roles and shoplifting headlines, Shearer has combined extensive archival research with insightful interview quotes. The result is a fascinating biography that recreates Hollywood's Golden Age of Glamour.