Burt Reynolds
Put the Pedal to the Metal
Darwin Porter & Danforth Prince
Burt Reynolds: Put the Pedal to the Metal is the never-before-told saga of a tormented, lusty horndog who oozed masculinity. Macho, rebellious, and charming, and with a "loud and proud" footprint in country-western, rural America, he was a good old Southern boy who made hearts throb and audiences laugh. A former football hero, he was a guy you might have shared some jokes with in a redneck bar.
Raised in Florida, with links to Georgia and other parts of the South, he became the number one box office champ of the "anything goes" 1970s. Like a merry-go-round, he set out to seduce the leading sex divas of his era: Tammy Wynette, Lorna Luft (Judy Garland's daughter), Catherine Deneuve, Farrah Fawcett, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor. He even had time to fall in love with "heartbreakers" Sally Field and Dinah Shore. He also had an obsession for the aging screen goddesses of yesterday—would you believe Bette Davis and Mae West? He aroused homoerotic desires in Hollywood's two most famous bisexuals—Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. There were those boozy nights with Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and John Wayne, followed by "wench hunts" with Johnny Carson. He even plotted the murder of his nemesis, Marlon Brando.
Burt's story was one of rags to riches to bankruptcy, but he did it his way. His tormented life was filled with tabloid exposés, implications in two of Hollywood's most famous murders, and a career of bad choices. He rejected gigs as the male lead in the James Bond, Rocky, and Star Wars franchises, and some of the women he consorted with and/or married proved ruinously expensive.
Even so, he continued to make movies until a month before his death, sometimes satirizing his image as a macho and carefree movie star and stud.
Details
Paperback 978-936003-1
Trim size 6x9 Ppg 680 with 200 photos
Price $34.95
Available in September, 2019
Print & emedia links for Burt Reynolds
BURT REYNOLDS was a rake, a rogue, and a proudly defiant redneck...
AND AMERICA LOVED HIM!
Prime-time talk-radio interview with Danforth Prunce about Burt Reynold's status as one of moviemaking's most profitable (and most tragic) sex symbols.
BURT REYNOLDS: How a nude centerold sex symbol seduced Hollywood
Listen to Danforth Prince describe Burt's experience as a nude centerfold sex symbol, and high (or low) points in a film career that lasted longer than almost anyone else's in Hollywood.
About the Author:
“Darwin Porter is the master of guilty pleasures. There is nothing like reading him for passing the hours. He is the Nietzsche of Naughtiness, the Goethe of Gossip, the Proust of Pop Culture. Porter knows all the nasty buzz anyone has ever heard whispered in dark bars, dim alleys, and confessional booths. And lovingly, precisely, and in as straightforward a manner as an oncoming train, his prose whacks you between the eyes with the greatest gossip since Kenneth Anger. Some would say better than Anger.” (as quoted from Alan W. Petrucelli’s THE ENTERTAINMENT REPORT at Examiner.com).
Porter began his career writing about politics and the entertainment industry for Knight Newspapers and The Miami Herald. Today, he’s one of the most prolific biographers in the world. His portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Howard Hughes, John and Jackie Kennedy, Paul Newman, Merv Griffin, Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, and Michael Jackson have generated widespread reviews and animated radio and blogsite commentaries worldwide. Some of his biographies have been serialized to millions of readers in The Sunday Times of London and The Mail on Sunday.
Porter is also the well-known original author of many editions of The Frommer Guides, a respected travel guidebook series that’s among the most prominent and well-respected in the world.
