No comments about A&E Biography: Rush Limbaugh (Always Right).

2 comments about Biography - Jayne Mansfield.

1. I first saw this documentary on A&E and was excited that a program decided to FINALLY pay homage to an almost forgotten and overlooked star of Hollywood. I grew up in the 1950's and I never even knew much about Jayne Mansfield. Most of the time she was immediately linked to Marilyn Monroe as sort of a copycat. Jayne held her own and her story was inspiring for those who want to achieve a goal that seems impossible. However, her life took some unexpected turns , but she always stayed a trooper to her popularity. This documentary chronicles her rise and fall on the Hollywood scene like no other program concerning a star that remains a legacy. I became an instant fan and have remained one since. Her talent didn't always lay in film, but she was a wonderful comic actress on television and for the troops during Bob Hope's U.S.O. tours. I encourage anyone to see this video and you won't be sorry for the choice made. Watch it and this bio. will amaze you about the Blonde Bombshell that could have been more. Thank you A&E and Amazon.



2. I agree with Sandra Preston's review of this movie, but can only give it 3 stars due to the quality of the picture (5 stars for content, 1 star for picture quality). The color is all washed out, and some of the color scenes you can hardly tell are in color. This surprised me since generally speaking, A&E does a superb job on the quality of the production.

No comments about Biography - Julia Child.

2 comments about Biography - James Brown: The Godfather of Soul.

1. JAMES BROWN IS THE MAN.this is a Solid Video Tape.Great Footage&Interviews.You Hear The Grand History of The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.His Impact on Music Around The World is TImeless.It's Great Having This Video Reflecting on a Man Who Wasn't Afraid Too Say I'M Black&I'M Proud.FOr Me He is Way Underrated.Because He is The Mozart Of His Time.SO Many FOlks Have Rocked His Style it Ain't Even Funny.&Sampled Him Too Death in Music&in Style.He is a True One Man Show&Still SUPER BAD!



2. Unlike so many biographical documentaries, this videocassette covers the artist's entire career to date. The typical presentation concentrates on "the hits". "James Brown - The Godfather Of Soul" provides insight into the development of his music in general, thanks in part to comments from Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, and biographer Bruce Tucker. For the already initiated the very rare stills which permeate the production, plus the c. 1969 live clips of "Please, Please, Please" and "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" should make it more than worthwhile. (Looka here - How about a future expanded edition with long excerpts from the 1968 TV Specials? Just kidding...).

5 comments about Biography: Hayley Mills.

1. As a lifelong fan of Hayley Mills I enjoyed this video enormously, and recommend it to all of my fellow fans. Hayley Mills' astonishing career began with a starring role in the British film Tiger Bay, in which she stole the whole movie from her famous father, John Mills. It led to awards from the British and German movie academies, but, more importantly, it brought her to the attention of the legendary Walt Disney, who was looking for someone to star in his upcoming film Pollyanna. That movie made Hayley Mills an international movie star and was followed by The Parent Trap, which made her an even bigger star. This documentary traces her whole remarkable career, including her two marriages, her stage performances, and her eventual return to Disney, where she made several successful sequels to The Parent Trap and the film Back Home. There are interviews with sister Juliet Mills, father John Mills, and various other fascinating characters, including Hayley Mills herself. If you're a fan, check this one out. I have watched mine several times. It really is delightful.



2. A&E's "Biography" has done bios on Shirley Temple and Annette Funicello,but Hayley's bio was great! It had interviews with Hayley Mills,her father John Mills,her sis Juliet Mills, Juliet's husband Maxwell Caufield,"The Parent Trap" co-star Maureen O'Hara and "Pollyanna" co-star Nancy Olsen. For almost 55 years,Hayley Mills is really somebody other cable networks can do. Yeah,Yeah,Yeah!



3. There is only one probelm with this video. It needs to be 2 hours long instead of just 50 minutes in length.Hayley was the child star in the 1960's.In America she is mainly noted for her work for Disney. In the UK, she did some more serious work while still a child.Coming from a talented Mother and Father, Hayley no doubt inherited a lot of her extraordinary talent from her parents. Her older sister Juliet is also well known for her work.I have viewed her childhood films from England and they are quite extraordinary. She won many awards both in England and the United States for her performances. It is unfortunate that many Americans have never viewed Tiger Bay (now on DVD) or Whistle Down the Wind (very hard to find in the US right now).Underneath all the glamour of being a child star lived a little girl who was very insecure.In between films, she stayed at a British boarding school. In many ways she was a happy sheltered child of loving parents.Her educated was interrupted so much for her many films that she left school at the age of 15.Sensitive about her normal weight in the 1960's when it was fashionable to be quite thin, she became bulemic.The documentary goes on to show Hayley striking out on her own and shocking her parents by marrying a man 33 years older than she was.The biography is well rounded with interviews From Hayley, Juliet and John Mills as well as Juliet's husband.This is a documentary I shall view over ond over again



4. If you love Hayley (and HOW could anyone NOT love her) you'll love this biography of her life. She is by far the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. No one else even comes close!



5. If you love Hayley (and HOW could anyone NOT love her) you'll love this biography of her life. She is by far the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. No one else even comes close!

1 comments about Biography - Jimmy Stewart.

1. I saw this biograghy when Jimmy died and it made me cry because he was such a brilliant actor and seemed like a great guy. I've seen this bio several times and it makes me weep at the end everytime. I recommend people to see it and to buy or rent some of this great man's movies because you will enjoy them emensely. Enjoy a great bio of a man who was so radiant to watch.

4 comments about A&E Biography - Charles Dickens: A Tale of Ambition and Genius.

1. A&E's biography does ample justice to a truly gifted writer! I am a big Dicken's fan and this video was exceptional in it's quality and content. We see Dickens from his early childhood through to his death and learn about how singular moments in his life helped create some of literatures most enduring characters. The length of time is perfect and the content is thoroughly appropriate and easily holds one's attention. Experts, including, his very own great grandson, contribute to making this an entertaining, educational and fun video to watch. Any Dickens fan will be inspired by this video as it allows you to see his wonderful, at times scary, characters through the eyes of the author himself.



2. This is another very good edition of A&E's biography series about a man who is one of my favorite authors. It covers the whole of his life including some of the most important incidents--his family being sent to debtors' prison when he was a boy, forcing him out of school and into work, and his troubled family life in later years. I was also pleased to see that time was spent talking about some of his "lesser known" works which are still fantastic books.

   My only complaint about this program is really just the limitation of the form. What kind of coverage can you get in 50 minutes? You get a nice overview of Dickens' life but for some depth you have to go to one of the many well-written biographies of the author.




3. I came into this particular Biography video with a little trepidation. Charles Dickens is one of my earliest and most significant heroes, the man who first awakened in me a deep love for literature and a desire to one day attempt to make my own contributions to the field. I already knew, though, that Dickens was not a necessarily happy man and that he had treated his wife in a manner I found troubling. What other shortcomings might this video reveal to me? As it turns out, my fears were baseless, as this is an insightful yet very respectful look at a man whom I now better understand and certainly still respect.

   I knew little about Dickens' early life, but this video makes it clear that his experiences as a youth did much to shape him as a writer. His pains and personal demons maintained the fire of genius that burned in his soul and led him to push himself always, even up until the very end of his life. Born into the lower middle class of early nineteenth century England, Dickens suffered the shame of seeing his father eventually cast into debtors' prison; he himself was forced to do menial labor which appalled him during that harsh period of his life. This, the biographers indicate, motivated him to work tirelessly no matter how much success he found, using his pen to help forestall the nightmare of poverty overtaking his life again. His progression through a number of jobs eventually led him into writing, and his first success came in Sketches by Boz, in which he wrote (anonymously at that point) numerous little accounts of the people and events he had seen during his travels. The rejection by his first love left its mark on his soul, but the man poured everything into his work and, after the appearance of The Pickwick Papers, met with amazing success. In the mean time, he married and eventually had ten children. Before leavings his 20s, Dickens was a celebrated and immensely popular writer. The serialization of his early novels brought his works to the masses as well as society's elite, serving to make him the most acclaimed writer of his era. Yet still he was never satisfied.

   In his personal life, success could never hold off feelings of depression and a general dissatisfaction with his life, and in his later years he grew quite cold toward his wife, eventually separating from her. He seems to have become infatuated with a young actress at that time, but scholars debate the existence of a physical relationship between the two. The most peculiar aspect of Dickens' life seems to be his feelings for one of his sisters-in-law who died at the tragic age of 17. She, it would seem, understood Dickens more than his wife ever could - or so Dickens believed - and her death came as a lasting blow to him. Almost all of these repressed feelings and private fears found their way into his novels, as Dickens wrote some of the most autobiographical novels of all time. Most of the quotes used here in this video to explain aspects of Dickens' life are actually lines taken from his novels, bits of private introspection spoken by characters but relating in the clearest of ways to the author himself.

   This video provides viewers an informative, intriguing look at the life of Charles Dickens; whether the reference to personal demons oversteps the bounds of truth or not is hard to say, but obviously the darker episodes in Dickens' life cast much fuel onto the fire that made him the 19th century's greatest literary voice and secured him a legacy that will endure until the end of time.




4. I acquired this video to interest my students in Dickens as I was about to assign reading. BIG MISTAKE. This video, while informative (hence the 2 stars), is dry an an old stick. If you use it, use it in small doses--interject your own anecdotes between small stretches of the video. That'll teach me not to preview a tape before I show it.

1 comments about Biography - Phil Silvers.

1. This is a great A&E Biography of the life and times of the reknowned comic-entertainer Phil Silvers(Sargeant Bilko).Phil,we all love and miss you!!

No comments about Biography - Loretta Young.

5 comments about Biography: Bill Gates - Sultan of Software.

1. As with most of the "Biography" series they put a heavy spin on their reporting. Luckily it favors the subject. This starts off with his grandparents and works its way down to almost this minute. The pictures and other visuals form living locations and friends help you understand what goes into making the Microsoft Empire.
   
   Unfortunately it makes you thing that Microsoft and IBM who were both latecomers to the micro computer field, are the only players in the microcomputer business. In reality IBM was a latecomer and had their machines manufacturing farmed out because they had no expertise. They approached Digital Research for the operating system, as CP/M from Digital Research was the universal operating system for ALL small computers.
   
   You may want to look up books on CP/M before viewing this tape. One book is "CP/m and the Personal Computer." Anyway They Digital Research did not trust IBM. So IBM or Bill purchased a CP/M work alike knockoff from a person down the street. Ever sense the original purchase they have incorporated UNIX work alike code to change this MSDOS system to a single user UNIX work alike. Now the system is convoluted with the addition of "Active Directory."



2. I thought this was a very inspirational riches to extreme riches book on Bill Gates. Interviews from everyone except Bill Gates on Gates and Microsoft; from the beginning to the present release date. There were a lot of traditional Microsoft euphemisms, but good nonetheless.



3. This video contains most everything one needs to know to have a basic understanding of the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates. It chronicles his entire life to the date of filming. My favorite part was the heartfelt interviews with the father of the genius. What Bill Gates has accomplished with his life, is pretty amazing for a man still fairly young. The big question that looms over most of the philanthropic world, is what is Bill Gates going to do with the rest of his life? Possible answers to that question are addressed.



4. Without a doubt, Bill Gates will go down in history as one of the most influential people of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this tape, he is rightfully compared to industry titans such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and John Rockefeller. Each of these people led an industry that was essential to the development of the American economy. Certainly, computing should also be included in this category.
   Although some of the events in the life of Microsoft are covered, the majority of the minutes are devoted to the personal life of Bill Gates. He was born into a wealthy family where competition was an essential activity, and it is clear that this is where he acquired his intensely competitive nature. It is hardly a surprise that Trey, which was his nickname, was at times difficult to handle. While he was fortunate in that he was able to work with computers at an early age, it is unreasonable to call him lucky. Clearly, even as a child he exhibited extraordinary vision, something that he retains as he reaches middle age. This is the primary reason why Gates was able to achieve much of his success. All indications are that he is a devoted family man as well. He is shown with his wife and child and there is no question that he is a doting dad.
   While all this is interesting on the human level, that is not why we are interested in biographies of Gates. Our interest in him is due to his leadership of Microsoft, a company both admired and reviled. Nearly everyone in industrialized countries is affected by the decisions made by the Microsoft leadership, so we are interested in his business activity and how those decisions are made. This is where the tape is the weakest, as we do not learn enough about the professional side of Gates.
   However, overall the tape is worth viewing. We are all the consequences of our childhood and so, to understand Gates and what he is, we start by looking at how he was raised. To out-compete someone, you need to learn about their personal characteristics and from this tape, you can learn some of the fundamentals of the richest person in the world.



5. The documentary is rich and very informative. I found itvery interesting and inspiring too.But the context of the material should have gone beyond the American society. The influence of Bill Gates is felt all around the world.Concerning the audio aspect, the sound quality could have been better. Also, mr. Gates should have been interviewed on his vision and what we should expect from Microsoft in the next decade.