REBEL IN SEARCH OF A CAUSE
©2024 By Legs McNeil On the 100th Anniversary of Marlon Brando’s Birth (April 3rd, 2024), Burt Kearns Honors Our [...]
VIDEO: LEGS TALKS TO PUNK LEGEND IVAN JULIAN
Ivan Julian is a guitarist, singer-songwriter, and, as a founding member of Richard Hell and the Void Oids, a punk legend! Ivan talks with Legs McNeil about his long and colorful career, including his time singing for a Led Zeppelin cover band, playing Build Me A Buttercup night after night, the golden age of NYC punk, his times in London, Macedonia and Guantanamo Bay — and his new album, Swing Your Lanterns.
‘LEGS AND CIGARETTES’: VERONICA VIGIL SCREENS AT AMERICAS FILM FESTIVAL
Yes, it does sound like it could be a biography of the founder and editor of Legsville.com, but NO! Legs and Cigarettes is a documentary short film, directed and produced by Legsville contributor Veronica Vigil that’s screening on Monday, June 19 in competition at TAFFNY, The Americas Film Festival of New York. Veronica’s documentary is described as “a deep and intimate conversation with photographer Robert Whitman, on one of his most iconic and provocative collections, ‘Legs and Cigarettes.’ A beautiful studio in Tribeca, a male photographer, a female producer and the lack of political correctness, are the main ingredients of this modern experiment with NYC as its background.” Whitman is a provocateur, whose career kicked off in a big way in Minneapolis in 1977, when he was invited to photograph a young local musician who was recording his first album. The musician’s manager hoped to use the photos in a brochure to help the nineteen-year-old get a record deal. The musician was Prince.
THE WILDEST SHOW IN LAS VEGAS: FRANK SINATRA & THE BEGINNING OF THE END
(From the moment they blasted off in the Casbar Lounge in Las Vegas in December 1954, there was no stopping Louis Prima, Keely Smith and Sam Butera and the Witnesses from becoming the most popular act in show business. No one but themselves. In a pair of exclusive Legsville stories based on long-lost interviews with sax legend Butera and jazz and pop goddess Smith, Burt Kearns unearthed the beginnings of the legendary act, Now, a year later, he traces the beginning of the end — the personal dramas and betrayals that would end the rocket ride, not in a glorious splashdown, but in flames. We return to the Casbar Lounge. Four years after lift-off, it’s now the “Casbar Theatre” — and everybody wants in. Including Frank Sinatra…)
EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM THE NEW LAWRENCE TIERNEY BIOGRAPHY: THE TOUGH GUY RETURNS TO HOLLYWOOD
The first biography of the legendary and notorious actor Lawrence Tierney was published on Tuesday, December 6, by the University Press of Kentucky. Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood’s Real-Life Tough Guy, by Legsville contributor Burt Kearns, traces Tierney’s career from his overnight success in the 1945 film Dillinger, through the drunken scenes, brawls, and arrests that derailed his career, to his “rediscovery” by Quentin Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs.
VIDEO: THE FRIENDS OF LAWRENCE TIERNEY, HOLLYWOOD’S REAL-LIFE TOUGH GUY
More than sixty films. More than thirty television roles. More than seventy arrests. Lawrence Tierney was the toughest, meanest, coldest actor in Hollywood, onscreen and off. An overnight sensation in 1945 as Public Enemy #1 in the movie Dillinger, he proceeded to drink and brawl his way out of a career by the early 1950s – or so it seemed. Lawrence Tierney is the great untold story of the dark side of Hollywood – a story of alcoholism, madness and violence, but also survival, loyalty, and genius.
THE ULTIMATE JERRY LEWIS INTERVIEW: WHY LABOR DAY WEEKEND WILL ALWAYS BE JERRY’S WEEKEND
©2022 By Burt Kearns Labor Day Weekend will always be Jerry’s Weekend. It will for a great many [...]
THE MYSTERY OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN TOOK TO HER GRAVE
We mourn the death of Olivia Newton-John. She was a pleasant singer and actress, an icon to a certain generation of fans who grew up with her, most after she made the transition from British-born Aussie country singer to pop star, the little girls wanting to be her, young boys wanting to be with her – and even more boys wanting to be her. Now that she’s gone, after a long and valiant battle with cancer, Olivia Newton-John is receiving well-deserved honors, but she has left this plane with a mystery that dangles and clouds her legacy. It’s a mystery partially of her own making, a question left unanswered: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PATRICK MCDERMOTT?
EXCLUSIVE! THE LOST INTERVIEW: AL MARTINO & THE FIGHT TO PLAY JOHNNY FONTANE IN THE GODFATHER
Al Martino played crooner (and wedding singer) Johnny Fontane. It was a role that Frank Sinatra tried to rub out. Frank believed the character in Mario Puzo’s novel was based on him, but it was a role Martino knew was his. A popular Italian-American balladeer in the early 1950s, he’d been forced to move to Great Britain after he defied the mobsters who’d bought his management contract. Martino returned to America and fought his way back onto the charts and success in the 1960s.
THIS IS THE CITY: THE POETRY OF DRAGNET 1967
©2022 By Burt Kearns Joe Friday was a fictional Los Angeles police detective, created and portrayed by [...]
ESCAPE FROM GRACELAND
©2022 By Burt Kearns (So Elvis is alive. There’s a lot of talk about that new Baz Luhrmann [...]
SUNDAY! ONE NIGHT ONLY! THE MAN WHO KILLED JERRY LEWIS
Bobcat Goldthwait comes out and introduces the clips that Jerry brought, and the clips are running. There's the famous dance down the stairs from Cinderfella. There’s him doing the incredibly famous boardroom bit from The Errand Boy. And I'm watching Jerry look at himself. He was seventy-six, overweight and nobody knows who he is anymore, and he's looking at the twenty-six-year-old version of himself when he was super-famous. And I see Jerry look out at the half-full crowd, and then Jerry fell to the ground. And I think he’s dead.
MAKING THE WILDEST SHOW IN LAS VEGAS PART 2: LOUIS & KEELY
Louis Prima, Keely Smith and Sam Butera revolutionized Las Vegas, the lounge scene and 20th century popular music when they launched their spectacular act in December 1954 at the Sahara hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
APRIL 29-30, 1992: LET THE L.A. RIOTS BEGIN
On April 29, 1992, jurors in Simi Valley, California acquitted five Los Angeles police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. Los Angeles citizens responded to the news with a display of widespread civil disobedience and destruction that became known as the Los Angeles Riots. The evening the violence began, Burt Kearns, a producer of the syndicated nightly tabloid magazine series, Hard Copy, was sharing a pizza with correspondent Rafael Abramovitz at Santopietro’s restaurant. Thirty years later, the following is adapted from his memoir, Tabloid Baby.
MAKING THE WILDEST SHOW IN LAS VEGAS PART I: SAM
Louis Prima, Keely Smith and Sam Butera revolutionized Las Vegas, the lounge scene and 20th century popular music when they launched their spectacular act in December 1954 at the Sahara hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The story of their success has never been told in full, and never accurately – until now. Based on long-hidden interviews with the principals and extensive research, Burt Kearns reveals how all the parts fell into place, long before that historic debut. In Part One, we meet the man who answered the call of The Wildest, the key player without whom this success story would never have happened.
SOMETHING HAPPENED TO FRANK SINATRA’S GRAVE
I’d heard that something had happened to Frank Sinatra's grave. That someone defaced the memorial to the most important musical artist of the 20th century. Attacking Sinatra? This was like taking a wrecking ball to Graceland. Reading about it was one thing. I had to see for myself.
THE WILD WORLD OF ARTIST JOE COLEMAN – PT. 2
Joe Coleman is a world-renowned painter, writer & performer who’s exhibited for four decades in major museums throughout the world
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SIXTIES – PART 4: CHARLES MANSON & DENNIS WILSON
In this series, Legs & Nikolas Schreck discuss Manson & the Tate-LaBianca murders, Pop Culture Satanism, & the mysteries of the JFK Assassination.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SIXTIES – PART 3: THE JFK ASSASSINATION
In this series, Legs & Nikolas Schreck discuss Manson & the Tate-LaBianca murders, Pop Culture Satanism, & the mysteries of the JFK Assassination.
THE MANY LIVES AND GANGSTER DEATH OF JOHNNY “GUITAR” WATSON
Johnny “Guitar” Watson was a hardcore guitar gunslinger with a sound described as “an icepick to the forehead.” He was the Gangster of Love, and he proved it in the way he played, the way he lived – and the way he died.
TONE, PAYTON & NEAL: HOLLYWOOD’S MOST TOXIC TRIANGLE
By Burt Kearns | Tone was a movie star. Neal was a B-movie dolt who looked good in trunks. The woman was Barbara Payton, a badtime, badass blonde who’d gone more rounds (in the sack, of course) than both men put together.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SIXTIES PT 2: HOLLYWOOD SATANISTS
In this series, Legs & Nikolas Schreck discuss Manson & the Tate-LaBianca murders, Pop Culture Satanism, & the mysteries of the JFK Assassination.
A LEGSVILLE ORAL HISTORY: NIKOLAS SCHRECK – PT. 1
The Dark Side of the Sixties: Charles Manson & Porn
THE DAY LEGS’S EX WIFE POSED FOR ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE
Join us as we present A Legsville oral History featuring: Carol Overby (Legs' ex-wife). She recounts the times she was photographed by the great Robert Maplethorpe.
TRUE CRIME: THE DEAD KID IN KEITH RICHARDS’ BED: ANITA PALLENBERG, THE DEVIL… AND ME.
By Burt Kearns | On July 20, 1979, a bullet blasted from the barrel of a stolen .38 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol...