Richard Zoglin has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is Hope.
Hope
Summary
Born in 1903, and until his death in 2003, Bob Hope was the only entertainer to achieve top-rated success in every major mass-entertainment medium, from vaudeville to television and everything in between. He virtually invented modern stand-up comedy. His tours to entertain US troops and patriotic radio broadcasts, along with his all-American, brash-but-cowardly movie character, helped to ease the nation's jitters during the stressful days of World War II. He helped redefine the very notion of what it means to be a star: a savvy businessman, pioneer of the brand extension (churning out books, writing a newspaper column, hosting a golf tournament), and public-spirited entertainer whose Christmas military tours and tireless work for charity set the standard for public service in Hollywood. But he became a polarizing figure during the Vietnam War, and the audiobook sheds new light on his close relationship with President Richard Nixon during those embattled years.
Bob Hope is a household name. However, as Richard Zoglin shows in this revelatory biography, there is still much to be learned about this most public of figures, from his secret first marriage and his stint in reform school, to his indiscriminate womanizing and his ambivalent relationship with Bing Crosby and Johnny Carson. Hope could be cold, self-centered, tight with a buck, and perhaps the least introspective man in Hollywood. But he was also a dogged worker, gracious with fans, and generous with friends.
Hope is both a celebration of an entertainer whose vast contribution has never been properly appreciated, and a complex portrait of a gifted but flawed man, who, unlike many Hollywood stars, truly loved being famous, appreciated its responsibilities, and handled celebrity with extraordinary grace.
©2014 Richard Zoglin (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Elvis in Vegas
Summary
"Outstanding pop-culture history." (Newsday) The "smart and zippy account" (The Wall Street Journal) of how Las Vegas saved Elvis and Elvis saved Las Vegas in the greatest musical comeback of all time. Elvis’ 1969 opening night in Vegas was his first time back on a live stage in more than eight years. His career had gone sour - bad movies, mediocre pop songs that no longer made the charts - and he’d been dismissed by most critics as over-the-hill. But in Vegas, he played the biggest showroom in the biggest hotel in the city, drawing more people for his four-week engagement than any other show in Vegas history. His performance got rave reviews; "Suspicious Minds", the song he introduced there, gave him his first number-one hit in seven years; and Elvis became Vegas’ biggest star. Over the next seven years, he performed more than 600 shows there, and sold out every one. Las Vegas was changed, too. By the end of the ‘60s, Vegas’ golden age - when the Rat Pack led a glittering array of stars who made it the nation’s premier live-entertainment center - was losing its luster. Elvis created a new kind of Vegas show: an over-the-top, rock-concert extravaganza. He set a new bar for Vegas performers, with the biggest salary, the biggest musical production, and the biggest promotion campaign the city had ever seen. He opened the door to a new generation of pop/rock artists and brought a new audience to Vegas - not the traditional well-heeled older gamblers, but a mass audience from Middle America that Vegas depends on for its success to this day. At once "a fascinating history of Vegas as gambling capital, celebrity playground, mob hangout, [and] entertainment Valhalla” (Rolling Stone) and the incredible "tale of how the King got his groove back" (Associated Press), Elvis in Vegas is a classic feel-good story for the ages.
©2019 Richard Zoglin (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
Comedy at the Edge
Summary
What Peter Biskind did for filmmaking, Richard Zoglin does for comedy in this meticulously researched and eminently readable account of stand-up comedy in the 1970s, when a small group of brilliant, iconoclastic comedians ruled the world and quite possibly changed it, too.
©2009 Richard Zoglin (P)2010 Audible, Inc.