Jane Allen

A lost literary gem of Hollywood in the 1930s, I Lost My Girlish Laughter is a thinly veiled send-up of the actors, producers, writers, and directors of the Golden Age of the studio system. Madge Lawrence, fresh from New York City, lands a job as the personal secretary to the powerful Hollywood producer Sidney Brand (based on the legendary David O. Selznick). In a series of letters home, Western Union telegrams, office memos, Hollywood gossip newspaper items, and personal journal entries, we get served up the inside scoop on all the shenanigans, romances, backroom deals, and betrayals that go into making a movie. The action revolves around the production of Brand's latest blockbuster, meant to be a star vehicle to introduce his new European bombshell (the real-life Marlene Dietrich). Nevermind that the actress can't act, Brands' negotiations with MGM to get Clark Gable to play the male lead are getting nowhere, and the Broadway play he's bought for the screenplay is reworked so that it is unrecognizable to its author. In this delicious satire of the film business, one is never very far from the truth of what makes Hollywood tick and why we all love it.

Develop Street Smart Awareness The practices for developing the capacities for mature, adaptive and transforming leadership are well developed, but pragmatists often find a gap between current theories and applying them in real life. This book presents a collection of down to earth, Street Smart, simple and profound, practices that can be used in our families, teams, organisations, schools and communities. This promotes more mature and aware decision making and action in every walk and dream of life. Jane Allen and Heidi Gutekunst have gathered practices that chosen contributors use in their everyday life, and that usually are found in more rarified places where senior leaders take time out to reflect on their strategic leadership as individuals and in teams. Street Smart Awareness and Inquiry-in-Action is designed to bring fabulous wisdom and techniques in an accessible way and presented in everyday language. Readers can joyfully implement their own version of their chosen practices in their own life. What is your choice: Bum deal, Quiet and Mindlessness, Four Parts of Speech or..? The final part of the book are thought pieces and provocations by Bill Torbert, Heidi and Jane, demonstrating the application of Inquiry-in-Action in relation to some of the big issues we face as a society, such as the need for feminine power, evolved humanity and mature logic in critical issues for the future. Jane Allen is experienced in transformational leadership as a coach and confidante for leaders responsible for courageous work - supporting them to reach their highest aspirations. She champions the practices of mindfulness and authentic leadership. Heidi Gutekunst is a transformational catalyst for individuals, teams and organisations. She has a track record of leading transformations. She is a regular speaker at international Business Forums interested in her personal entrepreneurship and transforming ability. Bill Torbert is Leadership Professor Emeritus at Boston College. Bill's leadership article "Seven Transformations of Leadership" was selected as the "10 best ever" by Harvard Business Review.

Do your thoughts really matter? Do the words you say in your mind make any difference at all in what you experience in your life? The answer is an unequivocal Yes The timeless classic "As A Man Thinketh" has been rewritten to help the average person understand its lessons. "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Psalms 23:7 "As A Man Thinketh" was first published in 1903. James Allen described this work as an essay about "the power of thought, and particularly with the use and application of thought to happy and beautiful issues. James Allen] tried to make the book simple, so that all can easily grasp and follow its teaching, and put into practice the methods which it advises. It shows how, in his own thought-world, each man holds the key to every condition, good or bad, that enters into his life, and transform his circumstances." Jane Allen felt the early 1900's language made the timeless concepts difficult to understand, and put them into language that can be easily understood int he 21st century.

"In Pier Angeli, a nineteen-year-old Italian girl, Hollywood has found an actress who eludes the town's traditional classifications and whose unvarnished beauty and instinctive talent have already caused her to be called 'Little Garbo'"--Theodore Strauss in Collier's, April 1952. This work is the first full-length biography of actress Anna Maria Pierangeli, from her early life in Italy to her death at the age of 39. She was discovered by Vittorio De Sica and soon after starred in her first film, Domani e troppo tardi (Tomorrow Is Too Late), which began her meteoric rise to fame in Italy. She arrived in Hollywood in 1950 at the age of 18, and the first thing MGM did was change her name to Pier Angeli and predict great things for its newest actress. The book covers her seven year career with MGM, her two unhappy marriages to Vic Damone and Armando Trovajoli, her love for her children Perry and Andrew, her brief and stormy relationship with James Dean, her dependent relationships with her mother and such stars as Kirk Douglas, Richard Attenborough and Debbie Reynolds, and the mystery surrounding her death.