James R Ashley: 27 books

Lupe Velez was the poster child for “Hollywood Girls Go Wild” during the golden age of Hollywood moviemaking. She was quite likely bi-polar and her mood swings alternated between withdrawn and depressed sometimes in private, to a spitfire wildcat in public. She was renowned for her hair-trigger...

Movies during the silent era were hugely influential. They were the primary means of how people leaned social etiquette, how to dress, how to act on a date, and even the proper way to kiss. People studied their favorite movie stars intensely and emulated their mannerisms, speech, and demeanor. The...

Joan’s childhood was right out of a Dickens novel. Her mother was indifferent to her, her 3 fathers ran out on her, and her brother held her in contempt. She grew up alone and friendless, having to work her early years at a succession of menial jobs in order to make ends meet for her mother and...

The motion picture industry started out ridiculed and despised at the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century. The first movies in the 1890s were shown in vaudeville; then in penny arcades; then in nickelodeons. In the penny arcade one deposited a penny in a small machine and saw...

The motion picture industry started out ridiculed and despised at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th Century. The first motion pictures in the 1890s were shown in vaudeville; then in penny arcades; then in nickelodeons, named after the price of admission. In the penny arcade you...

Thelma Todd’s movie career spanned only 12 years (1924-36), during which she was in 55 films. She was a contract player during her entire career and never came close to achieving stardom. Although pretty, Thelma was not beautiful, nor particularly talented. And although she had high hopes for the...

Humphrey Bogart is regarded by the American Film Institute as the greatest actor in movie making history. This is not because he was the handsomest actor, because he clearly wasn’t; almost every top actor of his age had a better looking face than him. As his studio boss Jack Warner once said when...

The vampire myth has fascinated man for thousands of years. In ancient Babylonia the Elkimmus was the soul of a dead person who had been forgotten. With no one to make offerings at its tomb, hunger and thirst drove it out of the underworld to roam the dark alleys and deserted byways in search of warm...

Errol Flynn was literally born the star that he became. His entire life was one of a swashbuckling rogue who strode across life’s stage bigger than life and in the process reduced everyone else’s life to insignificance. As thrilling and exciting his swashbuckling movie roles were, his real life...

Almost everyone, at least in the English speaking world, is familiar with the story of Custer’s Last Stand. By any measure it is a gripping story of how some 200 cavalrymen under the direct command of Colonel George Armstrong Custer met their end at the battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25,...

The three last-stand battles of history most well known by the general public are the Spartans at Thermopylae, during the Persian wars; the British at Isandlawana, during the Zulu wars; and Custer’s Last Stand at the Little BigHorn, during the plains Indian wars. Even if most people know next to...

This book deals primarily with the Al Capone Era in Chicago. Technically this would cover a six-year, eight-month period of time from when Johnny Torrio was shot by “Bugs” Moran in January 24, 1925 to October 24, 1931, when Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison for income tax evasion....

Al Capone had delayed the start of his imprisonment by over a year with numerous appeals which his lawyers knew to have no merit. This was so that Frank Nitti, who was finishing up his prison sentence for income tax evasion, could be released and able to assume control of the Outfit. However, in many...

Jim Colosimo began the 1890s as a newsboy, bootblack, and a thief. After becoming a skilled pickpocket at 18, Colosimo acquired a “stable” of girls and became a pimp. When “heat” from law enforcement put an end to Colosimo’s criminal enterprises, he obtained employment as a street sweeper....