Long before photographers called her one of Europe’s most beautiful women, she was a displaced child sleeping beside her siblings with no certainty about where the family would live next. She was born Bärbel Gutscher in 1943 in Reichenberg, then part of Nazi Germany and now Liberec in the Czech Republic. Her father was away at war, and the collapse of the Third Reich turned … Continue reading She Picked Cotton to Repay Her Family’s Passage to America—Then Became a Bond Girl, a European Sex Symbol and the Mother of a TV Superstar

She came from Baileyville, a tiny community in Maine, but her future would unfold in a corner of Hollywood rarely acknowledged by the major studios. Born around 1941, she reportedly moved to Los Angeles near the end of the 1950s. The city promised opportunity, but actresses who did not arrive with influential agents, family connections or prestigious contracts often discovered another film industry operating beyond … Continue reading Hollywood Sold Her as a Fantasy—Then the Curvy Starlet Behind Its Wildest Films Walked Away and Nearly Erased Herself

Long before the motorcades, packed stadiums and history-making nights in Washington, Barack Obama was simply “Barry”—a boy trying to understand where he belonged. This remarkable family photograph from the early 1970s captures a chapter of Obama’s life that many people know surprisingly little about. Standing beside his mother, Ann Dunham, his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, and his young half-sister, Maya, the future president appears to … Continue reading Before the White House, Barack Obama Was “Barry”: Inside His Extraordinary Childhood Between Hawaii and Indonesia