Taylor Swift, Revisited; Ivanka in Swampland; and Johnny Depp’s Financial Hole

A Special Delivery From the Vanity Fair Archive View in your browser | Update your preferences     A daily digest of things to discuss over drinks December 13, 2020   Taylor Swift's Telltale Heart The very openness that helped make Taylor Swift a record-breaking pop-country idol later turned into a double-edged sword. After baring her heart in hit songs, the musician found her love life—or some distorted version of it—treated as a joke. In 2013, during a girls-night-in at Swift's Nashville apartment (the one with the indoor koi pond), Nancy Jo Sales heard about the real thing. R E A D  M O R E »   Depp Financing How did a major star like Johnny Depp—making $20 million up front for each Pirates of the Caribbean sequel and a purported $16 million for a fragrance campaign—find himself in a financial hole? In 2017, Depp charged his former business managers, Joel and Robert Mandel, with fraud, while their counterclaim cited his manic spending: the private islands, French château, 156-foot yacht, and much, much more. R E A D  M O R E »   Zuckerberg Unbound With Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg built more than a business: he created a culture, combining the ethos of subversive hackery and the fervor of a messianic sect. So, in June 2011, when Google launched Google+, a head-on competitor, Zuckerberg put his company into "lockdown." In an adaptation from his 2016 book on Silicon Valley, Antonio García Martínez, a Facebook product manager at the time, described the war that followed. R E A D  M O R E »   Santa Gets His Claws The cinematic holiday once ruled by Irving Berlin, Charles Dickens, and It's a Wonderful Life now belongs to a little 1983 sleeper, A Christmas Story. Looking back at the movie's ingredients—the comic genius of radio star Jean Shepherd, the low-budget magic of director Bob Clark, a cast that seemed like any American family—Sam Kashner described how a fluke project punctured the cozy sentimentality of Hollywood tradition. R E A D  M O R E »   Swampland One year after Ivanka Trump entered her father's administration, her friends in Manhattan turned their backs, and her husband and father were steeped in a legal nightmare. With her father's term now coming to an end, what's an heiress to do? R E A D  M O R E » Get on the list Subscribe to our Hollywood newsletter for your essential industry and awards-season news, every day. Sign Up Now     This e-mail was sent to you by VANITY FAIR. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, vanityfair@newsletter.vf.com, to your address book. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2020. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.