Steve McQueen, King of Cool
Tales of a Lurid Life
Darwin Porter
From the writing and editorial team who UNZIPPED Marlon Brando, brought Babylon Back to Hollywood, and put Paul Newman in an altogether new light—a COOL biography that was TOO HOT to be published during the lifetime of its subject.
The drama of Steve McQueen's life far surpassed anything he ever played on screen. He followed in the footsteps of his mother, a prostitute, who eventually seduced him as part of an Oedipal fling. Earlier, he'd been brutally molested by some of his mother's "johns," and endured gang rape in reform school. In a bordello in Santo Domingo, he hired himself out as a sex object and porn performer.
Returning to New York, he hustled on the streets of Times Square. Later, in a borrowed tux, he became a "gentleman for rent," the toy boy of rich, aging women, two of whom included Joan Crawford and Lana Turner. When stardom finally came, the abused became the abuser. "I live for myself, and I answer to nobody,” he proclaimed, “And the last thing I ever want is to fall in love with a broad.”
The string of seductions that followed earned him an almost mythical status as a pansexual Love Machine. His A-list conquests included Jacqueline Bisset, Judy Garland, Lauren Hutton, Sharon Tate, Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Natalie Wood, and Marilyn Monroe.
Publicly, he insisted that he loathed homosexuals, yet he often went to bed with them, especially if they were bikers or race car drivers. He had a tumultuous sexual relationship with James Dean, and a longer love/hate affair with Paul Newman. Other sexual liaisons developed with Peter Lawford, Sal Mineo, Rock Hudson, Chuck Connors, and George Peppard.
McQueen lived life at top speed, like the machines he raced so famously. His early death remains a source of lurid speculation, all of it explored within this pioneering biography by celebrity chronicler Darwin Porter.
McQueen: Screen hero. Rebel. Sexual Outlaw. Megastar. Loner. Male hustler. Street kid. Gigolo. Restless husband. Mysterious recluse. Brutal yet tender. Savage. And, in the words of Jacqueline Bisset, "a beautiful, beautiful man."
With the publication by Blood Moon of this pioneering work, the result of years of research, untold stories are exposed. Within its pages, "McQueen's Unreachable Star" comes down to Earth. As defined by London’s Sunday Express, this is “a book that’s potentially dangerous for middle-aged men.”
"With astonishing focus and intensity, Darwin Porter shows how Steve McQueen arrived in New York City as a poor and obscure twenty-something determined to carve out a path to fame and fortune. His close-up of McQueen, along with his overview of the icon's psychology and sources of creativity, should prove endlessly fascinating for his fans.
Porter approaches Steve McQueen through his cinematic image: 'A man's man and a woman's dream' to his admirers, or a star saddled with a face that 'looked like a Botticelli angel who had been crossed with a chimp' to those less enchanted with his Bad Boy appeal.
Exhibiting a tabloid reporter's enthusiasm, Porter investigates how McQueen developed the unique persona that captivated audiences in such movies as The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt.
McQueen's early years were a nightmare of abandonment, neglect, abuse, and exploitation. His mother was an alcoholic; purportedly one of his 'stepfathers' put him on the street as a child prostitute; he spent time in reform school and ran away to kick around brothels as a towel-boy. All that was a nasty prelude to a direction-changing three-year stint with the Marines (he enlisted at 17) and acting classes in Greenwich Village.
If McQueen was secure in anything, Porter assures us, it was his physical appeal and sexual allure. Notorious for having the morals of an alley cat (according to many sources), he admitted to one of his girlfriends that he would do anything with anybody--men, women, acting coaches, co-stars, competitors, idols -- if it landed him a part. He told Rod Steiger, 'I became a slut in New York looking for sluts.' There are no complaints on record.
McQueen may have wanted to remain a tantalizing mystery to everyone, but even women he bedded suspected his competitive friendships with James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson, George Peppard, and others went beyond a few beers and shop talk. Lee Strasberg and Shelley Winters shared their own theories about McQueen's sexuality with Porter, and they are suitably lurid.
To his credit, Porter, although at times tarnishing McQueen's luster, celebrates his star to the heavens and, miraculously, brings us closer to him." SHELF AWARENESS
With his icy blue eyes staring challengingly from beneath heavy lids, a sneer on his lips and an air of nonchalant disdain, Steve McQueen was Hollywood’s epitome of cool.
The star of Bullitt, The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven became the world’s highest-paid actor, a Sixties pop icon slouching through movies as if he had a grudge against the world.
He seemed to have it all – beautiful wives, mansions, planes, fast cars and the film world at his feet. Yet his devil-may-care insouciance came at a terrible price, reveals a sensational new biography to be published in Britain soon, for behind the glittering facade hid a troubled psyche.
In Darwin Porter’s shocking exposé Steve McQueen, King Of Cool: Tales Of A Lurid Life. the actor is described as the illegitimate child of an alcoholic prostitute, beaten and brutalised by a drunken stepfather who pimped him out as a rent boy.
He grew up as a gang member, arsonist and thief, was sent to reform school and seemed headed for a squalid life of crime, Porter claims. “If I hadn’t made it as an actor, I might have wound up a hood,” McQueen confessed.
Between jobs as a circus barker, lumberjack, brothel worker and a stint in the US Marines – in which he was busted down to private seven times – McQueen survived by selling sex, the book reveals.
“He had no morals,” says Porter, who previously penned biographies of Marlon Brando and Paul Newman. “He was an alley cat who would have sex with anyone. Yet that’s what helped make him a star because he was willing to sleep with anybody – men, women, acting coaches, co-stars, rivals, idols – if it could win him a role.”
The actor claimed he slept with all his leading ladies and his list of alleged lovers is a Who’s Who of Hollywood, from Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich to James Dean and Paul Newman. He also had affairs with older actresses including Ava Gardner, Mae West, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
Porter says McQueen was never happy. “He had suffered so many abuses in childhood that as an adult he could never have enough money, enough sex, could never be satisfied. He was a sad, lonely man.
“Even in his glory days, being paid $5 million and 20 per cent of the gross for a movie, he still demanded that producers pay him an extra $250 for his watch because he’d worn it in the film.”
McQueen was born in 1930 in Indianapolis, Indiana, to beautiful blonde 19-year-old hooker Jullian Crawford. His father, stunt pilot Terrence McQueen, ran off weeks later without marrying her and never saw his son again. Jullian dumped her son on relatives while she walked the streets, occasionally returning to take him back into her squalid life.
Moving with his mother to Los Angeles, McQueen fell in with a street gang, robbing old ladies, breaking into shops and stealing cars. His stepfather beat him up, then had him sent to a brutal reform school to straighten him out.
McQueen’s unhappy childhood would later make him a study in contradictions. “He loved women yet treated them appallingly,” says Porter. Director Henry Hathaway said: “He hated women. He used them for sexual relief and discarded them quickly.”
Porter explains: “He had too strong an attachment to his mother, who never gave him the love he craved. She kept rejecting him. But he was little better. He demanded fidelity yet was never faithful. He cheated on first wife Neile almost daily and didn’t hide his affairs from her. Yet the day she admitted one affair in their entire 15-year marriage, he practically killed her. He could never forgive her and filed for divorce.”
His friend actor James Coburn said: “Perhaps because Steve had been abused all his life he suffered from acute paranoia. If everything was going right he felt something was wrong. If there was no trouble he had to stir some up.”
Porter agrees: “He never got over his childhood scars. Above all he wanted to be perceived as a macho man’s man. He was offered the lead in Breakfast At Tiffany’s but refused to play a kept man. But in real life he was kept for years by his first wife, actress Neile Adams.
“He was a misfit, a bad boy and a rebel just at the time when that became a cool image in Hollywood. He abused drugs, drank to excess, smoked three packs a day and was riddled with self-destructive urges.”
While McQueen did not have a death wish, he clearly harboured a reckless disregard for his safety. “He was a skilled motorcyclist and racing car driver but crashed repeatedly, nearly killing himself several times,” says Porter. “He claimed that was when he felt most alive.”
It was his sexual appetite that saved his life in 1969 when his sometime lover Sharon Tate invited him to her party in the Hollywood Hills. “He stopped for a drink on the way, met an actress and ended up back at her place,” says Porter.
“Everyone at Tate’s home was killed that night by Charles Manson’s followers.” Semi-literate and barely educated, McQueen made bad career choices, turning down the leads in classic movies including One Flew Over The Cuckoo’ s Nest, Apocalypse Now, Play Misty For Me, The Wild Bunch and Ryan’s Daughter. He dumped Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid because he refused second billing to Paul Newman.
Always “difficult” on film sets, he became a diva, firing crew on a whim. “In the end fewer scripts came his way and he had burned too many bridges,” says Porter. “He was on his way out in Hollywood when he contracted cancer.”
McQueen was diagnosed with mesothelioma, usually brought on by exposure to asbestos. While in the Marines the actor had spent weeks repairing asbestos insulation in buildings and later wore asbestos-lined suits as a racing driver. Diagnosed as untreatable, McQueen went to Mexico where he resorted to experimental treatments that promised to shrink the tumours that ravaged his body. They didn’t work.
McQueen died at only 50 in November 1980. After a simple funeral at his ranch in Santa Paula, California, his three wives – Neile Adams, Ali MacGraw and actress Barbara Minty – all ended up sitting on the actor’s empty bed. “His dream fantasy come true,” said old friend Elmer Valentine, “except he wasn’t there to take advantage. He would have seduced them all.”
Porter adds: “Steve McQueen has become an iconic hero, forever cool, but it’s ironic because he was never really cool; he was a Molotov cocktail that could explode at any time. His fans never knew the real Steve McQueen – until now.” PETER SHERIDAN in London's SUNDAY EXPRESS
Returning to New York, he hustled on the streets of Times Square. Later, in a borrowed tux, he became a "gentleman for rent," the toy boy of rich, aging women, two of whom included Joan Crawford and Lana Turner. When stardom finally came, the abused became the abuser. "I live for myself, and I answer to nobody,” he proclaimed, “And the last thing I ever want is to fall in love with a broad.”
The string of seductions that followed earned him an almost mythical status as a pansexual Love Machine. His A-list conquests included Jacqueline Bisset, Judy Garland, Lauren Hutton, Sharon Tate, Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Natalie Wood, and Marilyn Monroe.
Publicly, he insisted that he loathed homosexuals, yet he often went to bed with them, especially if they were bikers or race car drivers. He had a tumultuous sexual relationship with James Dean, and a longer love/hate affair with Paul Newman. Other sexual liaisons developed with Peter Lawford, Sal Mineo, Rock Hudson, Chuck Connors, and George Peppard.
McQueen lived life at top speed, like the machines he raced so famously. His early death remains a source of lurid speculation, all of it explored within this pioneering biography by celebrity chronicler Darwin Porter.
McQueen: Screen hero. Rebel. Sexual Outlaw. Megastar. Loner. Male hustler. Street kid. Gigolo. Restless husband. Mysterious recluse. Brutal yet tender. Savage. And, in the words of Jacqueline Bisset, "a beautiful, beautiful man."
With the publication by Blood Moon of this pioneering work, the result of years of research, untold stories are exposed. Within its pages, "McQueen's Unreachable Star" comes down to Earth. As defined by London’s Sunday Express, this is “a book that’s potentially dangerous for middle-aged men.”
"With astonishing focus and intensity, Darwin Porter shows how Steve McQueen arrived in New York City as a poor and obscure twenty-something determined to carve out a path to fame and fortune. His close-up of McQueen, along with his overview of the icon's psychology and sources of creativity, should prove endlessly fascinating for his fans.
Porter approaches Steve McQueen through his cinematic image: 'A man's man and a woman's dream' to his admirers, or a star saddled with a face that 'looked like a Botticelli angel who had been crossed with a chimp' to those less enchanted with his Bad Boy appeal.
Exhibiting a tabloid reporter's enthusiasm, Porter investigates how McQueen developed the unique persona that captivated audiences in such movies as The Magnificent Seven and Bullitt.
McQueen's early years were a nightmare of abandonment, neglect, abuse, and exploitation. His mother was an alcoholic; purportedly one of his 'stepfathers' put him on the street as a child prostitute; he spent time in reform school and ran away to kick around brothels as a towel-boy. All that was a nasty prelude to a direction-changing three-year stint with the Marines (he enlisted at 17) and acting classes in Greenwich Village.
If McQueen was secure in anything, Porter assures us, it was his physical appeal and sexual allure. Notorious for having the morals of an alley cat (according to many sources), he admitted to one of his girlfriends that he would do anything with anybody--men, women, acting coaches, co-stars, competitors, idols -- if it landed him a part. He told Rod Steiger, 'I became a slut in New York looking for sluts.' There are no complaints on record.
McQueen may have wanted to remain a tantalizing mystery to everyone, but even women he bedded suspected his competitive friendships with James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson, George Peppard, and others went beyond a few beers and shop talk. Lee Strasberg and Shelley Winters shared their own theories about McQueen's sexuality with Porter, and they are suitably lurid.
To his credit, Porter, although at times tarnishing McQueen's luster, celebrates his star to the heavens and, miraculously, brings us closer to him." SHELF AWARENESS
With his icy blue eyes staring challengingly from beneath heavy lids, a sneer on his lips and an air of nonchalant disdain, Steve McQueen was Hollywood’s epitome of cool.
The star of Bullitt, The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven became the world’s highest-paid actor, a Sixties pop icon slouching through movies as if he had a grudge against the world.
He seemed to have it all – beautiful wives, mansions, planes, fast cars and the film world at his feet. Yet his devil-may-care insouciance came at a terrible price, reveals a sensational new biography to be published in Britain soon, for behind the glittering facade hid a troubled psyche.
In Darwin Porter’s shocking exposé Steve McQueen, King Of Cool: Tales Of A Lurid Life. the actor is described as the illegitimate child of an alcoholic prostitute, beaten and brutalised by a drunken stepfather who pimped him out as a rent boy.
He grew up as a gang member, arsonist and thief, was sent to reform school and seemed headed for a squalid life of crime, Porter claims. “If I hadn’t made it as an actor, I might have wound up a hood,” McQueen confessed.
Between jobs as a circus barker, lumberjack, brothel worker and a stint in the US Marines – in which he was busted down to private seven times – McQueen survived by selling sex, the book reveals.
“He had no morals,” says Porter, who previously penned biographies of Marlon Brando and Paul Newman. “He was an alley cat who would have sex with anyone. Yet that’s what helped make him a star because he was willing to sleep with anybody – men, women, acting coaches, co-stars, rivals, idols – if it could win him a role.”
The actor claimed he slept with all his leading ladies and his list of alleged lovers is a Who’s Who of Hollywood, from Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich to James Dean and Paul Newman. He also had affairs with older actresses including Ava Gardner, Mae West, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
Porter says McQueen was never happy. “He had suffered so many abuses in childhood that as an adult he could never have enough money, enough sex, could never be satisfied. He was a sad, lonely man.
“Even in his glory days, being paid $5 million and 20 per cent of the gross for a movie, he still demanded that producers pay him an extra $250 for his watch because he’d worn it in the film.”
McQueen was born in 1930 in Indianapolis, Indiana, to beautiful blonde 19-year-old hooker Jullian Crawford. His father, stunt pilot Terrence McQueen, ran off weeks later without marrying her and never saw his son again. Jullian dumped her son on relatives while she walked the streets, occasionally returning to take him back into her squalid life.
Moving with his mother to Los Angeles, McQueen fell in with a street gang, robbing old ladies, breaking into shops and stealing cars. His stepfather beat him up, then had him sent to a brutal reform school to straighten him out.
McQueen’s unhappy childhood would later make him a study in contradictions. “He loved women yet treated them appallingly,” says Porter. Director Henry Hathaway said: “He hated women. He used them for sexual relief and discarded them quickly.”
Porter explains: “He had too strong an attachment to his mother, who never gave him the love he craved. She kept rejecting him. But he was little better. He demanded fidelity yet was never faithful. He cheated on first wife Neile almost daily and didn’t hide his affairs from her. Yet the day she admitted one affair in their entire 15-year marriage, he practically killed her. He could never forgive her and filed for divorce.”
His friend actor James Coburn said: “Perhaps because Steve had been abused all his life he suffered from acute paranoia. If everything was going right he felt something was wrong. If there was no trouble he had to stir some up.”
Porter agrees: “He never got over his childhood scars. Above all he wanted to be perceived as a macho man’s man. He was offered the lead in Breakfast At Tiffany’s but refused to play a kept man. But in real life he was kept for years by his first wife, actress Neile Adams.
“He was a misfit, a bad boy and a rebel just at the time when that became a cool image in Hollywood. He abused drugs, drank to excess, smoked three packs a day and was riddled with self-destructive urges.”
While McQueen did not have a death wish, he clearly harboured a reckless disregard for his safety. “He was a skilled motorcyclist and racing car driver but crashed repeatedly, nearly killing himself several times,” says Porter. “He claimed that was when he felt most alive.”
It was his sexual appetite that saved his life in 1969 when his sometime lover Sharon Tate invited him to her party in the Hollywood Hills. “He stopped for a drink on the way, met an actress and ended up back at her place,” says Porter.
“Everyone at Tate’s home was killed that night by Charles Manson’s followers.” Semi-literate and barely educated, McQueen made bad career choices, turning down the leads in classic movies including One Flew Over The Cuckoo’ s Nest, Apocalypse Now, Play Misty For Me, The Wild Bunch and Ryan’s Daughter. He dumped Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid because he refused second billing to Paul Newman.
Always “difficult” on film sets, he became a diva, firing crew on a whim. “In the end fewer scripts came his way and he had burned too many bridges,” says Porter. “He was on his way out in Hollywood when he contracted cancer.”
McQueen was diagnosed with mesothelioma, usually brought on by exposure to asbestos. While in the Marines the actor had spent weeks repairing asbestos insulation in buildings and later wore asbestos-lined suits as a racing driver. Diagnosed as untreatable, McQueen went to Mexico where he resorted to experimental treatments that promised to shrink the tumours that ravaged his body. They didn’t work.
McQueen died at only 50 in November 1980. After a simple funeral at his ranch in Santa Paula, California, his three wives – Neile Adams, Ali MacGraw and actress Barbara Minty – all ended up sitting on the actor’s empty bed. “His dream fantasy come true,” said old friend Elmer Valentine, “except he wasn’t there to take advantage. He would have seduced them all.”
Porter adds: “Steve McQueen has become an iconic hero, forever cool, but it’s ironic because he was never really cool; he was a Molotov cocktail that could explode at any time. His fans never knew the real Steve McQueen – until now.” PETER SHERIDAN in London's SUNDAY EXPRESS
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Harcover 9781936003051 $26.95 E-Book 9781936003068 $23.95 -
Category Biography Publication Date 2009-12-01 -
Publication Status In Print Trim Size 6 Page Count 466
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Blog
Australian TV (Network Nine) puts its spin on Blood Moon's THE KENNEDYS
10/10/2011
G'Day Mates! Australian TV's spin on THE KENNEDYS
K-News Radio, Palm Springs, PRESIDENTIAL SEX: An Interview with Danforth Prince
8/27/2011
What They're Saying in Palm Springs About THE KENNEDYS. Click here for news from California's Desert Gossip Pros
Those permissive hosts at K-News talk radio in gossipy "sin city" (glamorous PALM SPRINGS, California), invited Blood Moon's president, Danforth Prince, to get up front and personal about his company’s newest celebrity exposé, THE KENNEDYS, All the Gossip Unfit to Print.
Here's what the biggest radio mogul in the Coachella Valley, "Bulldog Bill" Feingold, elicited on July 25, 2011, about marital infidelity, the presidency, and the hot new book that assembles into 426 photo-studded pages the embarrassments and indiscretions of seven key members of America's most entertaining (and horniest) political tribe.
Danforth was in Palm Springs in the aftermath of receiving a literary award from the HOLLYWOOD BOOK FESTIVAL for this book. His tour also involved working with a film crew for the production of Blood Moon's newest promotional video, now out and available on YouTube.com: JACKING WITH JFK IN HOLLYWOOD, Where the President Played: a cinematic preview of THE KENNEDYS, All the Gossip Unfit to Print.
Here's what Danforth had to say about the book, Palm Springs, and the brouhaha associated with the Golden (50th) Anniversary of JFK's ascension to power.
Here's what the biggest radio mogul in the Coachella Valley, "Bulldog Bill" Feingold, elicited on July 25, 2011, about marital infidelity, the presidency, and the hot new book that assembles into 426 photo-studded pages the embarrassments and indiscretions of seven key members of America's most entertaining (and horniest) political tribe.
Danforth was in Palm Springs in the aftermath of receiving a literary award from the HOLLYWOOD BOOK FESTIVAL for this book. His tour also involved working with a film crew for the production of Blood Moon's newest promotional video, now out and available on YouTube.com: JACKING WITH JFK IN HOLLYWOOD, Where the President Played: a cinematic preview of THE KENNEDYS, All the Gossip Unfit to Print.
Here's what Danforth had to say about the book, Palm Springs, and the brouhaha associated with the Golden (50th) Anniversary of JFK's ascension to power.
Blood Moon Releases History's First Cinematic Overview of "Gay Life in New York's Forgotten Outer Borough" as its contribution to PRIDE 2011
6/18/2011
See History's First Cinematic Overview of Gay Life on Staten Island, without charge, by clicking HERE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEBlood Moon Productions, a Staten Island-based publishing enterprise that focuses on celebrity biographies and film guides, proudly announces the release of a 27-minute documentary and infomercial it filmed at the June 4, 2011 celebration of Gay Pride in Staten Island. To see the film, click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN00Mw9wQ6E
The project was conceived, scripted, and narrated by Blood Moon's president and founder, Danforth Prince, who was designated in early June as 2011's PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR by the directors of THE BEACH BOOK FESTIVAL, an association of literary critics and booksellers from coastal communities across America.
As stated by Prince, "Blood Moon already has a history of crafting videotaped infomercials and documentaries as a means of advancing public recognition of its literary products. As such, we were intrigued by the cinematic possibilities of a street celebration that included aspects of both a trade fair and a social revolution. And how else could someone not physically present watch an articulate interaction between the Unitarian Church, the winner of the 'Miss New York' beauty pageant, and Dykes on Bikes?"
"Staten Island is the least visible and perhaps the most conservative borough within the otherwise liberal mass of New York City," Prince continued. "But based on this month's battle for marriage equality in New York State, and the extroverted passions of the island's gays and lesbians, this film has implications that go way beyond the borough."
"Insofar as we know," Prince continued, "no one else has ever attempted a coherent cinematic overview of Staten Island's gay subculture. And it was the clearly expressed passion and politicized fervor of the people we interviewed that became the most surprising and most gratifying part about making this film."
Blood Moon's GAY LIFE IN NEW YORK'S FORGOTTEN OUTER BOROUGH supplements other infomercials it will release this month, including BOOK EXPO 2011, BLOOD MOON'S VIEW FROM THE FLOOR. A 60-minute documentary filmed in May, 2011 at the world's largest literary marketplace, BOOK EXPO AMERICA, it's the newest installment in a series of lessons about how a small press or an author can navigate the shark-infested waters of the book trades.
During the crafting of both of these films, Blood Moon was assisted in the direction, editing, and camera work by Polish-born cinematographer PIOTR KAJSTURA, winner of several awards and grants from, among others, the Tourism Board of South Carolina.
For more information about Blood Moon's other successes and embarrassments, and how its authors are re-defining how celebrity biographies and film guides are written and marketed in America today, click on www.BloodMoonProductions.com
On Friday, March 4, the Awards Committee of the LOS ANGELES BOOK FESTIVAL awarded two Honorable Mentions to Blood Moon Productions for titles released in 2010.
In preparation for this event, Danforth Prince, Blood Moon's president, assembled a Hollywood-based film crew, as directed by the distinguished Independent Filmmaker MS. CRYSTAL CALLAHAN, to videotape the event. Conducted with fanfare from within Hollywood's historic Roosevelt Hotel, the awards ceremony attracted about a thousand distinguished members of L.A.'s publishing and film communities. Blood Moon plans a release of this video, without charge, as part of its ongoing roster of sales promotions, in about two weeks.
As stated by Danforth, "Blood Moon's corporate mission involves the publication of carefully researched new insights into the entertainment industry. The fact that these book awards originate from a panel of judges based in Los Angeles makes them particularly valued and appreciated. We are genuinely honored with these awards, and we thank everyone associated with this event tonight."
