Some of my favorite people have birthdays in early August. There are my friends Albert (who braved the Hammer Museum screening of Check and Double Check with me last year) and my friend John (who recently became a neighbor). Then there are the people I've never met, but who I wish I could have known, like Sylvia Sidney. Today is a day to celebrate her centennial.


Despite her decades of work in film and television, my first encounter with Sylvia Sidney came as it did for most of my generation, via Tim Burton, who cast her in Beetle Juice and Mars Attacks, the latter of which was her last role (if you don't count her stint on Fantasy Island). What a great one, too!

My first taste of classic Sylvia came in the form of Fritz Lang's thriller Fury, the American debut of German director Fritz Lang, in which she plays the fiancee of the victim of a lynch mod (Spencer Tracy). I caught this movie, a great one, on TV a couple of weeks ago, and was newly-mesmerized by Sidney, with her feline eyes and endearing screen presence.


Above: Sylvia watches as flames engulf her man in Fury. Below: Sylvia and John Loder compare appetizer preferences in Sabotage.


Lang cast Sylvia in his next film, You Only Live Once, in which she plays a thinly-veiled Bonnie Parker character to Henry Fonda's Clyde. Had things worked out a few years earlier, she might have also been directed by Sergei Eisenstein in An American Tragedy. Going back even further, she might have appeared in The Godless Girl, one of Cecil B. deMille's best movies.


Sylvia Sidney's career spanned more than one hundred feature films and television shows and lasted seven decades. Glancing over both her body of work and the information about her private life that's out there, one gets the sense that she lived very much the way she wanted. She could relax in her antique farmhouse in Connecticut, indulge in needlepoint, tell it like it is about the business (her comment about working with Alfred Hitchcock is golden) and make some refreshingly left-field acting choices every year or so (the Omen sequal, for instance).

Tortured divas like Crawford, Garbo and even Clara Bow get lots of coverage from celebrity biographers. Sylvia Sidney seems to have lived a life that was happy, creatively fulfilling and an inspiration to all of us who want to follow our bliss, do good work and spice up life with a little variety now and then.


Could this glamorous creature, with lilies down her back, imagine that, one day, she would save humanity from annihilation simply by listening to Indian Love Call?

As an aside, here's a photo of me from yesterday, waiting to see All About Eve (for the first time) at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. Taken by the above-mentioned Alberto. (Shout out to Michael, who insisted I come with.) I don't think I've ever posted a photo of my on here, so enjoy!



To indulge your Sylvia-love a little more, check out Dr. Macro's Annex (the source for the above photos), ShillPages and Starlet Showcase.

Flying Aces and Lost Girls

I was really excited for day-two of the festival, perhaps more than any other day, because it would afford the rare opportunity for me to see The Flying Ace, a 1926 independent feature film with an all-black cast. I was initially intending only to see this film, but was able to persuade a friend to join me for another film. More on that later.

First thing first, I met up with a local friend and had lunch at Baghdad Cafe, which is always a good way to start the day. After catching up with him for about an hour, we went our separate ways and I got in line. The audience was almost entirely white; in fact, I can recall spotting only two African American audience members. It would be nice to see the film reach more members of the black community at some point, but the fact that this movie survives at all is miraculous enough on its own.



This screening was my first exposure a very-cool feature of the festival: beautifully curated slide shows themed after each film to break up the monotony of sponsor advertisements. In this case, we were treated to cards with facts about race films, and each one was followed by a poster or still from a particular film mentioned there. Titles included Within Our Gates, The Colored American Winning His Suit, The Love Bug, The Bull-Dogger and The Trooper of Troop K.

(Side Note: Every one of these slide shows had at least one typo. In this case, Trooper of Troop K was identified as Trooper of Company K. When I point this out, I don't mean any disrespect to the creator of the slide show, Meghan Pugh, who did a terrific job. I have made that exact same mistake . Blame it on that amateurish indie movie with a similar title)

As with all the other screenings, this one got started late. We were treated to a short by Georges Méliès with an English title that went something like Professor Crazybrain and His Flying Machines (if you want to try finding it on the IMDBs, get on there and pack a lunch). I never seek out Méliès movies necessarily, since they all rely on the same gimmicks (painted sets, double exposure, acrobats, roman candles - sounds like New York's hottest new club). Still, they can be fun and manage to be surprising, and this one was cute enough.



Before The Flying Ace could roll, it needed an introduction (of course). Starting things off, a fellow named Mike Mecham or Mechan (I can't read my hand-writing) took the stage to talk about the restoration of the film. It was preserved by the Library of Congress in 1980, but the print we would be watching was brand new, and completely re-timed. In fact, it had just been struck that Wednesday (this was a Saturday) after his colleague Ken Guban (again, guessing on the names) made more than 2000 timing changes. Everyone applauded.

Two women from the Norman Film Museum, Annw Byrd and Carolyn Williams, took the stage next to tell us about the film. First, Ms. Byrd (an adorable little old white lady) explained how Jacksonville had once almost become the film center of North America because of its year round sunshine and diversity of locations. Problem was, film companies kept doing annoying things to cut costs like, say, pulling fire alarms to draw free crowds or starting riots when they needed riot scenes. The results of the 1917 mayoral elections in Jacksonville, coupled with the still-prevalent notion that the movie business was less-than-respectable, ensured that most companies were run out of town. By then, Edendale and Universal City were film centers anyway, and had milder weather and even more locations like, say, mountains?

Allowed Ms. Byrd: "We're real sorry about that today."

Independent productions, including many black films, were still made in Florida, and Carolyn Williams spoke to us about that. In particular, we were told that the buildings where the film were shot still exist (as part of the Norman Film Museum) and that the character played by Kathryn Boyd was based on a real aviatrix, Bessie Coleman. She also advised us to pay attention to the 'colorism' in the film, with light-skinned heroes and dark-skinned villains and buffoons.

The lights were dimmed and the picture began. Right away, there were some glaringly amateurish features to it. Five main characters are introduced right after each other in the first scene, without much in the way of setting them up or making us care about them. There are lots of redundant dialogue titles. The intertitles make use of very mannered language, giving us dialogue such as "Just keep mum and no-one will molest me." True to Dr. Williams' , the darker-skinned actors play the villains; one of them plays a bumbling, corrupt police officer (film history's only black Keystone Cop?) who speaks in an... interesting form of slang. Let's just say that his intertitles use lots of apostrophes.

Here's the basic plot. A railroad paymaster comes to town and lets everybody know that he has the entire payroll in him. He is kidnapped, along with the money, and everyone thinks the cute little old station master, Mr. Sawtelle, is responsible. On a side note, the local man with mysterious income has his eye on Ruth, Sawtelle's beautiful and... young-looking daughter. The feeling is not mutual, even after a long scene where he shows her his plane and points out all the controls and steering mechanisms; by the end of this interlude, any of us in the audience could have operated that plane.

A local boy-turned-railroad detective-turned-World War I fighter pilot comes back into town at that moment, keeping his uniform on the entire time, lest we forget how noble he is. He's played by somebody named Laurence Criner. Picture, if you can, Francis X. Bushman from his Essannay days, and then turn him slightly black, and you hopefully will have some kind of mental picture of Laurence Criner. Needless to say, Ruth likes him A LOT more, and very soon he sorts out the plot by the local bootleggers (sorry, I'm spoiling it) to steal the money and frame Sawtelle. There is a climactic chase by air and a plane to plane transfer that was all filmed on the ground, but is still relatively effective.

The Flying Ace of a silent talkie, but it's still a solid piece of storytelling. The cast is a mixed group. Laurence Criner seems to come from the Milton Sills School of Acting, and Kathryn Boyd has a limited range of expression, but all the other serious parts are played in a restrained manner, and the comedic interludes between Peg and the cop are played well, and not intrusive to the larger story. The writer/filmmaker Bret Wood summed up the appeal of a film like The Flying Ace when he wrote about, and did a great DVD commentary for, the Dwain Esper masterpiece Maniac: Like a work of folk art, it has beauty and dignity in its rough simplicity, and to behold it, with all its flaws, can be much more rewarding than a glossy studio film of the same era.



Later that day, I met up with another friend and we saw Diary of a Lost Girl with Louise Brooks. That phenomenal experience deserves a blog post of its own. For now, in the words of Annette Hanshaw, That's All.

Images from The Flying Ace were found here.

"Amazing Tales" from Amazing People, in the Amazing Castro Theater

This weekend, I am up in Northern California. Though the respite from the recent (and sudden) Los Angeles heatwave of 2010 is welcome, I have returned to the geopolitical region of my birth for something much more important: the 15th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It's my first time, and I'm constantly kicking myself that I didn't start coming to it years ago. I'll certainly be back again.

My first day at the festival, Friday, was pretty brief. (I didn't go to the opening film on Thursday night, John Ford's The Iron Horse, though it would have been fun.) After trying to plan an elaborate Caltrain/Muni route from my parents' house to the Castro District, I was relieved to get a ride from old mom and dad, who were going to be passing through there (they went out of town for the weekend). I'm not complain, but it feels really weird being dropped off in a gay ghetto by your parents.

I was there (at the Castro Theater) for a presentation called Amazing Tales from the Archives, in which several people spoke about preservation issues and showed clips from things that had been recently preserved. I started things off with a coffee from Cafe Flore and a stroll around the block after making sure I didn't need a ticket for the event (I didn't). I also texted a friend to say "i'm in sf bitch!"

The first feeling upon walking into the Castro Theater was that feeling I always get when I walk in there: pure elation that I'm standing in/sitting in/moving through such a stunningly beautiful space, crowded in with tons of other geeks just like me. The turnout for this event was much bigger than I expected. I took a seat in the middle-back of the auditorium, and (this always seems to happen) two heavy breathers settled into seats on either side of me. I don't want to judge them, but the gods of age and metabolism had not been kind to either of these cinephiles. A gaggle of attractive, well adjusted-looking guys sat in front of me, giving me hope for what I might look like in five or ten years (provide I grow five inches, drop fifteen pounds and achieve significant facial hair growth).

On screen flashed a slideshow of glass slide movie advertisements. Titles, which I now really want to see, included Padlocked (with positively fierce graphic design), Trent's Last Case, All of a Sudden Peggy, The Land of Jazz (with a cartoon halo of musical notes around Eileen Percy), Thirty Days, His Secretary and the short comedy One Spooky Night. In their hand-colored, low-fi, sometimes outright tacky way, glass slide movie ads are invariably gorgeous, and sometimes they are the only available visual record of a particular film. I had to call a friend to sort some schedule stuff out and, in a moment of total conceitedness, I sighed "You don't know what you're missing."

Among the other slides was this one, which I loved:



The show got started, and somebody who's name I don't remember (but should) spoke to us about the preservation efforts of the L. Jeffrey Selznik School of Film Preservation, which I'm embarrassed to say I need to look into now, and introduced a few of their scholarship students who were in the audience (to well-deserved applause). The 2010 scholar, who's name I will find and fill in later, will be restoring Mr. Fix-It this year, and their hope is that it will be on the screen at the Castro next year.

Kyle Westphal, the school's 2008 scholar, then took the stage and talked us through a project he worked on, two 1926 Kodachrome shorts, Parisian Creations in Colour with Hope Hampton, and Parisian Inspirations in Colour with Hope Hampton. He talked through them (there was musical accompaniment as well) and it was a little hard to focus on both, but his explanation of the films, the technology, and Ms. Hampton were all very interesting. Fun tidbits include:

1. These Fashion Newsreels were created by McCall's Magazine and distributed by some entity with a name like Educational Pictures Inc. They were not a very good distributor, so the films didn't get far. More people probably watched the film at that screening than had in 1926.
2. The Kodachrome stock and processing used in the film was an early version, very different from the Kodachrome stock for home movies that modern audiences are familiar with. Still in its infancy, it required lots of printing and reprinting in order to achieve the correct print exposure. Around this same time, Technicolor had already streamlined their process. Technicolor prints were cheaper, too ($0.08 a foot vs. $2.00 a foot for Kodachrome).
3. These films were just two of several similarly-titled shorts that were filmed by McCalls at the Long Island mansion of Hampton and her husband, Jules Brulatour. The list in the "Herself" portion of Hampton's IMDb page looks close to the titles Westphal rattled off. He asided that they do tend to run together.
4. Hope Hampton and Jules Brulatour didn't like the fashions that McCalls supplied for the film series. Fortunately for them, they had considerable funds of their own to go on what must have been a redonkulously expensive shopping spree.



For my part, I thought that A) it was cool to see footage of Hampton for the first time, and B) she looked a lot like Billie Burke. (The Photo of her above does not represent anything from the film I just described.) Also, C) the fashions were fantastic. Mr. Westphal kept apologizing for the length of the two movies ("It always goes on longer than I remember"). I for one could watch days of 1920's color fashion footage, so I wasn't complaining.

Once we finished with The Lady Hampton, we watched reel two from a King Baggot movie (I don't recall the name), in which he plays a dual role as a wealthy man and a double. All that survives of the film is this second of three reels; all the special effect footage, where Baggot faces off against himself, was in reel one (you're cruel jokes are not lost on us, Universe). There was a trailer reel for The Last Warning, On Trial and White Shadows in the South Seas, and, before I get too far ahead of myself, there was a snippet of A Chili Romance, which we were told was found rolled in with the King Baggot footage. (For a relatively generic slapstick comedy, it was very funny.)

Finally came the pièce de résistance: Paula Felix-Didier and Fernando Peña took the stage to talk about the restoration of the "new" version of Metropolis which was announced to exist in Argentina in 2008. The film screened to a packed house that night (I was not there, sorry) but it was interesting to hear them talk about the film's discovery, which wasn't nearly as instantaneous as it sounds in the press reports. Peña recalled how he had heard about the long-lost longer version of the film: Colleague Salvador Sammaritano described a film society screening during which the print was not running through the projector correctly. To correct it, Sammaritano had to run to the projection booth and hold his finger on the shutter to keep it from shaking. He held it there for two-and-a-half hours; when Peña said he had never heard of a version that ran so long, Sammaritano replied "Trust me, if it was your finger pressing on the gate for two-and-a-half hours, you would remember."

Felix-Didier and Peña had brought with them some clips of Argentine films, which they screened for the audience off of an ok-quality DVD. The first, a dramatic film called La cuena de la muerte (almost literally The Flute of Death), a story about a white man and a white woman who go on vacation in rural Cordova and have affairs with native people there. The quality was not exceptional, but the fact that such footage survives is miraculous. They also told us that this might have been the first "Gaucho" film, and the only silent Gaucho film, as most Argentine films made afterward were usually concerned with the middle class and were almost always shot in Buenos Aires.

There was also a documentary about the health hazards of flies (with microphotography that made me look away a few times). Finally, they presented ("cheating" as Sra. Felix-Didier confessed) the first sound film produced in Argentina. It consisted of four musical vignettes which would have been synchronized to a record. In both content and presentation they were similar to a Vitaphone short or even an Alice Guy-Blache song-film, but still I couldn't take my eyes (or ears) off the screen. The numbers consist of a singer in an unflattering gingham dress singing along with a three-piece band. Two mestizo Gauchos do some heel-stomp-dancing while . A musician plays something on . Finally, a different singer from the one before (and in a better outfit) does an entrancing rendition of a Tango song "Preciosa." This was the first Tango recorded on film, and thus puts the film under UNESCO's umbrella of World Heritage preservation (UNESCO has designated Tango to be an item of shared cultural significance, and with good reason).

The entire time, a sign-language interpreter worked tirelessly at the left of the stage. He was very expressive and, to my untrained eyes, an excellent interpreter. And handsome. He's probably not single.

And so concluded day one. I wasn't especially interested in A Spray of Plum Blossoms, which was up next, and I headed home, very sated indeed, and ready for the adventures to continue the following day.

See also:
Silent Film Festival's Blog Unlike me, they actually have photos from the event, along with insider information, show times, better writing, etc.

Another Dead Gay Guy, Part Two: Hollywood Murder Triangle

Eighty years ago this past week, death stalked through Hollywood, taking three lives. It’s not a famous murder case, but one that captured my attention while I was researching the Mary McElroy case last weekend. Perhaps it’s best to start at the beginning:

Once upon a time, in 1927, a young man named Paul Vare was brought out to Hollywood from Billings, Montana, by evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. Some time after that, he was adopted by one Ada E. Wharton, a bedridden widow. By the mid-thirties, Paul Wharton’s talents were in demand from several prominent Los Angeles residents. Under the name Paul Ivar, he dressed famous clotheshorses like Jean Harlow, Aileen Pringle, Carmen Consedine (daughter of Alexander Pantages) and Constance Bennett (he designed the bridesmaid gowns for Bennett’s marriage to Henri de la Falaise, a Gloria Swanson ex).

Then, on the evening of April 25, 1935, Paul Ivar had a little dinner party with his chauffeur and secretary, thirty-five-year-old William Howard, and one (or possibly two) other men. He was still sharing a fashionable apartment with his foster mother. At some point in the evening, Paul brought Ada some dinner and then returned to his guests. Eventually, Ada heard somebody leave the main room outside, then three or four shots rang out, followed by the sound of her foster son groaning and slumping on the floor. Frantically, she crawled out of bed into the front hallway of the apartment, where she found Paul bleeding and clutching a telephone. As he expired in her arms, a man she had never seen before rushed in and stopped dead in his tracks. He was tall and blond, probably dressed in a gray suit and gray hat. Mrs. Wharton pleaded for help but the man disappeared into the kitchen and was never seen again. William Howard had also vanished.

Across town, a thirty-nine-year-old UCLA law professor named Henry E. Bolte was coming home from a dinner for his law class, noticed a stranger near the entrance to his apartment but paid no attention to him. Bolte walked to his apartment and practically had his key in the door when the stranger pulled a gun and shot at him three times, wounding him twice. Bolte’s wife, Virginia, opened the door to find her husband lying in a pool of his own blood, still alive but in critical condition. Investigators hurried from the sight of Paul Ivar’s death to Bolte’s apartment. William Howard was found nearby; he had shot himself in the head.

Two seemingly unconnected murders were now linked, and the connections that emerged over the next few days came out in the press in code words and suggestive phrasing. The news stories on April 26 described the tall blond “Mystery Man” sought by police for questioning.

Two men and two women, one reportedly dressed like a man, were questioned by the police. Meanwhile more facts about Paul Ivar emerged. He had struggled with an addiction to narcotics (but had been cured by Aimee Semple McPherson). At the time of his death, he was on probation for the theft of an $800 diamond ring belonging to a Mrs. Ray Wolfe of Bevely Hills. He and his crowd were described in coded terms by the newspapers: "pale," "strange," "exotic." Quothe Captain William Bright, head of the LA Sheriff's homicide division, in the Palm Beach Post: "They were strange men who led strange lives." Social politeness of the day meant that he and other law enforcement officials wouldn't comment on the possible motive, once financial disputes had been ruled out; readers who were "in the know" would have guessed in half a second that something lavender was afoot.

Actress and notorious clotheshorse Aileen Pringle, in an "exclusive" interview with the same publication, elaborated on her professional relationship with the designer: “He was exceptionally talented, and his designs were simply lovely. They were a little – well, a little bizarre. But good. Before he finished them, he told me he needed some new clothes for himself, and asked if he could use my charge account at a store. He said he could check off our bills to each other in that way. When my statement came back from the store, I found he had bought, not clothes, but several hundred dollars worth of perfumes, atomizers, cosmetics and similar things. I asked him about them, and he told me, ‘well, I use them.’”

Pringle went on to explain that “he had had a fight with Constance Bennett when she discovered he was Chinese.” I have not found any other information articles that suggest he was Chinese, and the one photo I did find didn’t hint that he was anything other than Caucasian. She allows one last revelation: “He occasionally appeared at my home… with curious, feminine-looking men.”

Aileen Pringle ought to have known something about 'bizarre - but good' fashions. Nine years earlier, she was being dressed by Erte. I'll leave the story there for now. Next month, the conclusion, more fun facts, and the identity of the big blond Mystery Man.

Another Dead Gay Guy, Part One: I Feel Like an Asshole

I want to warn you in advance: This post is going to have a rather long set-up.

Whenever I have a big assignment or a midterm or, in the case of this past weekend, both looming ahead of me, I tend to do a LOT of procrastinating. Things get done one way or another, but not before lots of time has been spent checking email, checking social networking sights, footnoting articles on Wikipedia, and so on. This particular story actually starts with me reading IMDB trivia for the movie Kansas City. That in tern lead me to do a number of searches on Mary McElroy, the young woman on whos kidnapping the movie was based. (The kabillion-footnote Wikipedia article Mary McElroy (kidnapping victim) was written in the next few hours by yours truly.)

While reading scanned, highlight-sensitive newspaper articles from 1935, I found (I believe it was in the Miami Daily News) a somewhat scattered, confusing article about a Hollywood dress designer’s murder, one of three connected deaths. A bed-ridden spinster, a tall blond mystery man and Jean Harlow were all connected to the case.

Obviously, this was too good to be ignored. I went ahead and probably lost a good couple hours scanning for articles and coming up with a surprising amount of info that still seemed to have some missing pieces. What I found was tantalizing; I ate it up like the true crime vampire that I’ve always been. (I hope to follow up this post – hence the ‘Part One’ in the title – soon.) Then I checked facebook.

And I was stopped cold. Checking in on a few people from high school (they rarely come up in my news feed – something I don’t know how to change) I happened to search an acquaintance, not a close friend, but somebody from my past who I knew for a brief period and was friendly with. When I found him again on the site a year or so ago I was totally envious of him: he had a great job as a designer, lots of time and money to spend on trips to exotic places where Spanish is the primary language, a shockingly handsome boyfriend, a six pack you could bounce quarters on.

He was dead. His wall was covered with “we love you,” “RIP,” “we’ll miss you,” etc. I was shocked. It seemed so unreal. I’ve lost classmates before but this moment proved that each loss is just as sad and unnerving. There was no word as to the circumstances of his death on his page, so I did a quick google search: His death was everywhere. I don’t want to go into the details, and I only have what’s been printed and posted and forwarded and editorialized. I don’t really feel that I have the right to either. The absolutely appalling comments on NY Daily News’ site are bad enough.

It struck me, as I went from one page to the other, trying to get more details about Ale’s death that there must be somebody else out there doing the same thing, but not for the same reason. Just a few minutes before I had been devouring the details of a seventy-five year old murder case without feeling any sympathy for the victims in the case. There had to be another me out there, at the same moment, doing the same thing with this case. I felt like an asshole. Serves me right.

I want to close with my memories of Ale. He was two years ahead of me at Paly. He was closeted at the time, and I don’t begrudge him for that, knowing his circle. He still seemed to be himself, very intelligent and witty, with an appreciation for the finer things (Peter Greenaway comes to mind first). We knew each other briefly outside of high school, when he came to a couple of youth group support meetings. We had a mutual friend, my neighbor Katie, who had some classes with him and graduated the same year. I’m sure I still have his business card in a drawer somewhere. As much as he would have hated growing old, we clearly lost him too soon.

(12.3.1983 - 4.13.2010)

End of the Month Round-Up

So, here are a couple of fun experiences I had this past (couple of months).

First of all, I actually got to meet somebody who has my dream job. I got to meet Andrea Kalas for thirty minutes at Paramount. She was very cordial and had a lot of helpful, encouraging advice. After all, one of her first major projects. I'm forever indebted to Tom, who spurred the Bessie Love post from last month, for putting me in touch with her.

Secondly, I've had a few production gigs, some of which actually paid, but all of them were good experiences. I've had some shitty, shitty PA jobs before, so I ought to know. There are some in the future, unpaid for the most part, but it makes school bearable.

Right now, I am on Spring Break, and last night I went to see Ran at the Stanford Theater with my dad and my brother. Now, I'm one of those people who needs to see a Kurosawa movie in the theater, and not only because that's the only way to see them. I'm have a bad case of that very modern disease, the ADD, and it makes watching anything on DVD a bit difficult. With nobody to watch you (and judge you), you find yourself folding laundry, checking your email or rushing back and forth from the kitchen to microwave a burrito while the movie plays. If the movie has subtitled, its even more of a problem; half the plot goes missing, characters become indistinguishable, you get the drift. So I always welcome to opportunity to see anything in the theater that I know isn't going to completely captivate me.

(That's not to say that Ran isn't a captivating, powerful film. It is. It's a strong story (you know, King Lear) and beautifully told. The lush greens and brilliant reds really make you appreciate the look of projected film. I'd never seen Ran before, and I'm glad that this was my introduction to it.)

The Stanford Theater and me go way back. I saw my first silent movie, Safety Last, there when I was seven (that's a story for another day). I saw many of my favorites there for the first time: Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, the silent Ben Hur, These Three, The Man Who Laughs. In high school I went all the time, sometimes with a friend but usually alone; I liked to do things by myself at the time anyway.

Flash forward five or six years to now, and I am very much a changed man. I strongly dislike going to movies alone. I haven't gone to see a conventional movie on my own since 2007 (Aranofsky's The Fountain - which I liked). This past month, however, I've had a bit of regression to my past life as a chubby, virginal, be-acned seventeen-year-old in the form of screenings at the Silent Theater down on Santa Monica and Melrose in Hollywood. I was most excited to find out that they were screening a Tod Browning silent from 1926, The Mystic with Aileen Pringle, because, as it just so happens, me and The Mystic go way back.

Flashback to 1996. I'm 11, I'm in sixth grade, and I'm going through a phase where I want to be a fashion designer. After haunting every fashion section of the local library for at least a week, I come away with an awareness of the artist Erte, and his amazing body of work that spanned over fifty years. I was enthralled by his extravagance, his use of detail, his willingness to show bare breasts and, most notably, his time spent in the mid-1920's as a couturier-in-residence at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He designed sets and costumes for the likes of Marion Davies, Carmel Myers (his favorite), Norma Shearer and the exquisite above-mentioned Miss Pringle. Among the illustrations in the two books of his that the Palo Alto Library System holds are both costume sketches and tantalizing set stills from The Mystic. I remember staring at those photos and wondering if I would ever actually see the movie itself. It seems so long ago and so far away.

Well, I got my chance. I want to actually write a review, but that can be done another time. The issue at hand is regressing back to high school. I say this only because I went alone and wished that I hadn't. I made a sheepish attempt to invite a couple of people at the last minute. I didn't expect any sort of big crowd to show up, but when I got there, there was a line out the door. I was worried that I wouldn't get in. Nobody resembled the crowd I expected. Almost everyone in attendance was young, slim, clearly well adjusted and not at all crotchety. They all had dates.

At first I felt encroached-upon. All I wanted to do was slink into a quiet screening of some obscure movie, have my box of candy all to myself, and then slink back out. It was exactly the kind of experience I could have at the Stanford way back then, with the cavernous auditorium barely an eighth full. For some inexplicable reason I felt angry at everyone there. Then I caught myself; I was being stupid. I should have rejoyced, as I do now, that so many people had an interest in this movie. I should have been happy for The Mystic that I almost had to fight my in to see it.

Then there was the fact that I was alone. I felt so weird and naked there, being one of the few people with no date, no entourage. I look back on the situation and I realize that, generally, I don't often expect my friends to have any interest in these events. This is silly, of course. Case in point, I met up with some friends right after (a last minute thing) and they said "Oh, that sounds like so much fun. You should have told us." I don't doubt that I have cool friends, but I forget that we have as much in common as we do.

My resolution for April: Do a better job of inviting people to stuff.

Special Shout Out: To Bessie with Love

This blog is sort of an eleventh-hour act on my part. I have been entrusted, by another silent film enthusiast, with the education of a mutual friend. What education, you ask? Well, those of us in the silent film geek ghost army (we have meetings and everything) love nothing more than to quiz each other on the vaguest and least relevant silent film-related topics we can think of. Then we silently judge that person when they get dates of birth wrong, when they forget that Colleen Moore’s real name was Kathleen Morrison, or when they can’t name the ugly Talmadge sister (it was Natalie, loosers!).

In this case, however, the topic is might be vague, but she is certainly not irrelevant. Even now, she has a following, though she is one of many who, it’s safe to say, are woefully neglected. I am speaking, of course, about the actress Miss Bessie Love. I’ll try to do justice to this talented beauty, because I’m a true friend. And friends don’t let friends go through life without teaching them, in blog post form, about Bessie Love. This one is for you, Kev.


To start of, Bessie was not her real name; she was born Juanita Horton in 1896, the daughter of a rancher in Midland, Texas. A daughter of the west, she started working as an actress in 1916 out of necessity. She appeared in several movies at the Fine Arts studio in Los Angeles, including the 1916 epic Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages (the movie with the elephant pillars). D.W. Griffith, the director of Intolerance, is usually thought of as the person who came up with Bessie's stage name.

Breakthrough roles came very quickly; she was cast opposite William S. Hart and Douglas Fairbanks in 1916 films. One year later, she was playing lead roles in feature films for Vitagraph and Pathé. In 1922, the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers selected Bessie and twelve other young actresses as the WAMPAS Baby Stars. She was still a major player all through the twenties, playing a bootlegger’s girlfriend in Those Who Dance (1924) and Broadway diva in The Matinee Idol (1928, an early Frank Capra endeavor).

The coming of sound derailed a lot of careers, but it earned Bessie Love an Oscar nomination in 1929. The movie was The Broadway Melody, which is still widely thought of as the first true movie musical. She worked steadily in sound films from 1929 to 1932-ish. (at left: Bessie and Anita Page in The Broadway Melody)

Perhaps because of marriage, her career dropped off after the early 1930’s, but for the next several decades of her life, Bessie continued to take the occasional role in film or on television, mostly in England, where she lived for most of her 'post-Hollywood' life. Her notable roles at the end of her career were in Warren Beatty’s epic Reds (1981), as well as Ragtime (also 1981) and the sexy vampire movie The Hunger (1983). She died in London in April of 1986.

Bessie was a Virgo. She was once married to Howard Hawkes’ brother William, which also made her a cousin in law of Carole Lombard. had terrific face, with big expressive eyes and a long nose. Standing approximately five feet, she was petit and doll-like even into her later years.

One more fun fact about Bessie: She wrote a play in 1958 called The Homecoming.

Below is a clip from Hollywood Revue of 1929. To say she's the best part of the movie is an understatement, as you can probably tell. I like this clip because I feel like it shows off her personality and her abundant talent. Thank you dudfilmscorporation for the clip.

Three Great Ladies, One Great Movie

One of the best recent broadcasts on TCM the other night was a gem called Comet Over Broadway, a drama about a woman who's dream of being an actress breaks her life, then catapults her to success, then holds her to some hasty words from years before that she knows she can't go back on. The reason for the broadcast has to do with its leading lady, Kay Francis, who is no longer with us but who turned 105 this past Wednesday.

Watching this movie, I was moved by its story, which was involving and well told. Perhaps the biggest treat in a viewing of the film is the discovery (for me) of three wonderful, woefully-neglected actresses: Francis, Minna Gombell and Sybil Jason. It's also a great showcase for the talents of a man best known for his dance arrangements: Busby Berkeley. Even some die-hard 42nd Street fans don't remember that Berkeley directed several non-musicals between 1933 and 1951. Few of his non-musical ventures were A Pictures. This one clearly falls into the "programmer" category. Yet it's so much better than that. Spoilers ahead.

Kay plays a small-town shopkeeper named Even, married and with a baby, who has vague dreams about acting and a side gig in community theater. When a famous Broadway actor (Ian Keith) comes to town, Eve attracts his attention and she goes to meet him at his hotel room for 'acting lessons.' Her husband (John Litel, nobody famous, but a great actor) gets wind of this and, in the brawl that ensues from confronting the illicit pair, the actor is knocked down a slope and into a ravine (spoiler coming), and fatally hits his head. Eve's husband is brought to trial for the accident and charged with manslaughter. Eve is racked with guilt, particularly when her lawyer explains to her that it was her own foolish ambition that brought this tragedy upon her. As her husband goes into the big house, she pledges to do everything she can to get him out, and once he is out, she'll be there waiting for him.

Snagging a burlesque gig, Eve goes on the road with her baby daughter, Jackie. On the train, the troupe's leading lady Tim (Gombell) takes Kay and the child under her wing. Eve gets pressured by various men to leave the kid with somebody else and focus on her career, and after holding out for a long time, she decides it would be best to leave Jackie under Tim's care. Tim, who had years ago lost her only child to what sounds like SIDS, is elated; she's become very attached to the child herself. Eve travels to country and makes it to New York city, where she meets a handsome British producer, Bert (Ian Hunter), who casts her right away in a production. She is driven away, however, by the show's jealous leading lady (Leona Miracle). Despondent, Eve sales to England on a whim.

Several years pass, and Eve has become the most talked about stage actress in Britain. She sends for Tim and Jackie, now 8 or 9 and being played by the fantastic, utterly adorable Jason. Initially happy to see them, Eve is crestfallen when she realizes that Jackie has grown up under the impression that Tim is her mother, a misunderstanding Tim failed to correct. Reluctantly, Eve goes along with it.

When they return to New York, Eve reconnects with Bert; there is still the same sexual chemistry between them and, now that Eve is a big name, he can be the one to mount her American debut. At the same time, she finds out that her husband's case can be overturned, but only for several thousand dollars that she doesn't have. She agrees to work with Bert if he can loan her the money, which he does.

The play is a huge success, and Eve is forced to accept the fact that she is in love with Bert. In a long and tearful conversation, she tells him the whole story, and why they can never be together. Bert is reluctant to accept this; surely, her husband will understand that, after all this time... Eve agrees. She goes to meet her husband at the prison. He is so happy to see her, she can't bring herself to tell him that she loves someone else. In the final scene, we see Eve walking with Jackie back to the prison, to her fate, with nonetheless a bright and prosperous future ahead, and with her dreams of success achieved. It is then that Jackie calls her "Mommy." The circle of Eve's trials is complete.

Like its three stunning leading ladies, Comet Over Broadway is long overdue for rediscovery.

More Letty Fashion Madness

Here is a still from Letty Lynton, that obscure, celestial beauty that is the highly suppressed Joan Crawford multi-national-extramarital-affair-a-thon from 1932.


I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this get up, but it looks like Miss Le Sueur wasn't having much fun. When you consider how hot those sets could get under all those Kleig light (not to mention how heavy fur coats are), it's no wonder. Still, it's the kind of bold statement a 1930's would make (or die from heat exhaustion trying). (Need to retrace my steps and find the link. Will post when I locate it.)

Here's another picture of Joan in the same outfit. This time she isn't being Little Miss Mopey Face.


And just for kicks, here's another Adrian creation Joan wore in this film. If the beatnik vultures from The Jungle Book needed to be sexy, they could probably use this picture as a reference.

I feel greatly remiss for not having discovered this sooner, but there is a fantastic Joan Crawford website where you can find out just about everything you could want to know about even her most obscure movies. There's a great Letty Lynton page too.

The Toy Wife

Last Tuesday, Austrian-born actress Luise Rainer turned 100. To celebrate, TCM spent that day airing a selection of her films, and I recorded most of them. I still need to watch The Great Zeigfeld and The Good Earth, but last night, I snuggled under the covers and took a gander at a film about which I knew nothing. The title alone intrigued me: The Toy Wife.

Luise, with her Austrian accent, plays the daughter of a Louisiana plantation owner; the fact that she has spent all of her cognisant life in a French boarding school excuses the difference between her accent and the polished Hollywood accents of her father, her older sister and all the other white people in the movie. At the opening of the story, the Brigard family returns to New Orleans, still under French rule, and settle back into their gorgeous plantation house, slaves and all (more on that in a minute). We learn quickly that Luise is not only the baby in the family, she's the most annoying and least likable. The character's name is technically Gilberte, already a bad sign, but everyone calls her by her nickname, 'Frou Frou.'

The naive Luise falls for a handsome lawyer named Georges, and they marry. Since Georges is played by Melvyn Douglas, the attraction is understandable. Georges still carries a bit of a torch for the older Brigard sister, Louise (Barbara O'Neil) and Frou Frou still feels some attraction for a younger bad-boy, Andre (Robert Young). Louise movies in with Georges and Frou Frou to help her sister become a better wife and mother, but finds herself doing all the work. Georges finds that his attraction to the other adult in the house more easily justified, and even more so when his flighty wife elopes with Andre. And so follows all the backstabbing and fighting over children that one would expect from a movie like this.

Between the gleaming foyers and glittering gowns you'd expect characters named Alexis or Krystle to show up randomly and pull on each others' hair pieces, but the real shocking element that sets The Toy Wife apart from other films, even Gone with the Wind, is the treatment of the slave characters. This HAS to be the reason that so few people have seen this film, the reason it's not on DVD. This movie has more speaking parts for black actors than any other film of 1938 as far as I can tell (except maybe for Gods Step Children). Most of them have names and at least basic differentiated personality traits, but they still have bad grammar and names like Brutus and Pompey.

The character played by Theresa Harris presents the most brain-exploding example. She smilingly introduces herself as 'Pick;' because she has no given name, everyone just calls her an abbreviated version of the pejorative 'Pickaninny.' This occurs when Frou Frou is getting acquainted will all the female slaves in the house, and Harris goes down on her knee to say "I wishes I could be your own pa'ticular darkie."

"You do, do you?" answers the benevolent Frou Frou. "Well then you shall be. But if you're going to belong to me you'll have to wear shoes and stockings."

Theresa Harris is an actress that I truly love. I've probably seen her in a dozen movies, and she always plays a maid, but she never lets the absurd dialog get the better of her. Every 'you is' gets treated with perfect diction, and it highlights just how beneath her such characters were. It's as if she's winking to the African American members of the audience, assuring them "It's ok, I know this sucks, but we'll get through it."

Allegedly, this was one of several projects given to Rainer as punishment for her difficult behavior. A reviewer on the IMDb calls it a B-Movie. With its amazing costumes (by the incomparable Orry-Kelly) and detailed set decoration, this period piece doesn't look at all like a B-movie. The direction by Richard Thorpe is too mannered for an already slow screenplay, which has neither economic passage of time or witty dialogue. A long movie, with an irritating lead character, equals a disappointment in my book. Rainer comes off as a capable actress who's doing the best she can with a problematic role. By all accounts she hated this movie.

One consolation remains: One can live through racism, hoop-skirts and winning two consecutive Oscars, and still live to be 100. Happy belated birthday, Luise Rainer. I'm sure I'll like you better as Anna Held.

Southern Family Stuff

Right now, I'm in Charlotte, going to that wedding I mentioned in my last story. I am excited, particularly after the very fun rehearsal dinner last night, a huge BBQ-style deal that was at somebody's very gorgeous house out on the Charlotte 'burbs. The houses in the area reminded me of the mansion at the end of the second Harold and Kumar movie. The particular house we were at had a Colonial-style church on the lot behind it, which was brightly illuminated and provided a nice view. Even nicer was (have been) everyone I've encountered since I stepped off the plane. I know I live in one of the least friendly cities in the world, but even after factoring that in, I am struck by how familial and relaxed people are here. Not only is it refreshing, it's infectious. On principal, I try to avoid being rude to customer service people, but here I can't help being extra nice. It feels good to really smile and mean it when you say "Thank you so much."

One thing I got to do (and there are pictures of it) is hold my cousin Amy's new baby daughter. Now, I generally don't like kids. They're loud and dirty and irrational. They don't know how to blow their noses or edit what they say. They carry germs and terrible television is produced every day in their name. However, babies who don't cry for twenty-four hours straight, are adorable, and Little Natalia is no exception. Once she was handed to me I was reluctant to give her up. Amy is also a great parent. After only a few months, she's devoted to her baby but doesn't hover or antagonize other grownups. She also trusts her relatives. When we got there and Amy came up to give us all hugs, we asked where Natalia was and she said "Oh, she's being held by somebody over there." When I grow up, I want to be a mommy like Amy.

Today is the second wedding in the space of about two months that I'll be going to. I'm not going to draw any unfair comparisons between the two (except for the DJ; Jessie and Satish had the best wedding DJ ever). The wedding also won't go all night, so there might still be time to check out the bars and sample the locals. And will Lucy ever relinquish the bathroom? Only time will tell.

My Night with Hollywood Canteen

I'm staying up late to watch Hollywood Canteen on TCM, a 1944 musical comedy written and directed by Delmer Daves, and starring everyone and their mother who was under contract at Warner Brothers at that time.

Robert Hutton plays a GI named 'Slim' who shows up in Hollywood with a buddy. His Bronx-born buddy goes off to drink and Slim wanders around in a montage sequence that features every miracle mile intersection possible. Its the kind of montage that you would only get if you've ever actually spent a fair amount of time in Hollywood, so I have a feeling signs for Sunset and Cahuenga went over Middle America's heads. After doing that, Slim is hungry and goes to a full lunch counter where the customers are all rude to him and the counter man sasses him, a sequence that seems less 1944 and more 1969. All they need is for an extra at the end of the bar to yell "Baby killer!" and this movie would be ageless.

So Slim finds his way to the Hollywood Canteen, and nelly-ass Joe E. Brown is holding court at the entrance, surrounded by sailors who are totally in heat for his autograph. I swear Brown does not actually make a single joke, and he has probably three facial expressions, but the laughs from the extras around him seem to come naturally. I hope they all got SAG vouchers for that one.

Jane Wyman (looking very tan and dark-haired) shows Slim to the counter, where there is A) no line and B) Barbara Stanwyck doling out slop. She and Slimster flirt back and forth in what is the first really magical moment of the movie. Getting the moves put on you by Barbara Stanwyck must have been a uniquely intimidating and exciting experience, and this is the closest I will ever get. Thanks Hollywood Canteen!

One of the busboys is drop-dead handsome John Garfield. He and Slim start chatting and it's homoeroticism at first sight. Garfield vows to find golden woman Joan Leslie to sacrifice to the Slim.

Slim keeps wandering around asking other famous people where Joan Leslie is. Not creepy at all, right? And even though the place is jam packed, they have plenty of time to help him. When Joan Leslie shows up to work dressed in a shimmering cape (what else you gonna wear to night shift?), Bette Davis grabs her and gets her to say yes to meeting him.

Some other musical numbers.

Slim finally meets Joan Leslie. And naturally it's love at first sight. Joan is stunning and the scene between them is beautiful and understated, one of those scenes that makes you wish that all of one's life could be a 1940's movie. Also three words concerning Bette Davis that I can take home from this whole interlude: Best. Wingman. Ever.

John Garfield is being a voyeur i mean gazing longingly at Slim I mean love's young dream happening over in the corner. One stern look from Bette Davis snaps him right out of it.

A soldier hits on Eddie Cantor. Eddie discovers that he's not that funny, and that the young people don't know who he is any more. He and Nora Martin do a song. Then Eddie invites a sailor up and gives him a kiss and makes a gay joke at his expense.

S.Z. Sakall's face gets molested (and roughly) by three different soldiers who he calls 'gheneral.' I cover my lap. What is this movie doing to me?

The Sons of the Pioneers appear and sing something. Roy Rogers rides in on Trigger and the extras part like the Red Sea, which would TOTALLY happen in real life (as SO sanitary ). He makes trigger 'bow.' That is SSOOOOO Tom Mix in 1925. He asks Trigger for a kiss. I never ever again want to hear a human say of a horse "He sure kisses juicy!" Roy sings Don't Fence Me In. Then he jumps back on Trigger and makes Trigger "dance" which is cute at first, but the extras standing look less enchanted and more nervous.

Slim FINALLY has an "I will never wash this hand" moment.

Ida Lupino invites a GI to sit down and pretends to be nice to him and show him "the ropes." He tries to give her a French lesson. She humors him so bad it's cruel. Then a French sailor comes up and asks for her autograph. Is this the Hollywood Canteen or the Mustang Ranch.

For a time when Hollywood was ruled by soft-focus and Max Factor, Ida Lupino is a shining beacon of natural beauty.

There's that French sailor again! Chatting up faux blond Irene Manning.

Patty Andrews looks like a man.

Peter Lorre is Sydney Greenstreet's mini-me, peering out from under the crook of Greenstreet's arm. They also talk to each other like pedophile wingmen scoping out a playground, only with less of an understanding of "personal space." Yes, I know Delmer Daves is doing all this on purpose, but it feels so dirty to watch.

Patty Andrews encourages drinking your tallboy with a straw.

Paul Henreid gets hit on by the GI who thinks he knows French. But Paul is more interested in Irish battle axe Mary Gordon. At least that's what Mary thinks until she leaves them alone and they start talking about rubbing noses and animal instinct.

French GI corners Alexis Smith. She's not having any of that nose-rubbin' talk.

Dennis Morgan: "Excuse me fellas but I gotta be a douche bag and go out and do a patriotic song." (By the way, I'm paraphrasing) Also, the term "a spade's a spade" is still racist.

Every patriotic song needs a chorus of people from the kitchen.

Morgan can't carry the number on his own, so Joe E. Brown comes out again and does his thing. He actually manages to look LESS gay when he's sauntering around to different tables with GIs and singing. Oh, and he finds the Asians in the audience.

The French Guido has a homo moment with a HAWT blond sailor who he thinks is Alexis Smith.

"I like these novelty bands that play music the way it's written!" What?!?

I know this is a little bit gay, but LOVES ME the Joan Crawford. If she walked up to me and asked me to dance, I would faint too.

The boys are back at the camp, having a bunkside chat. Gayer! They're talking about democracy. Gayer!

OMG, Farmer's Market! Been there! Oh, and Joan Leslie shops there! Dressed like Heidi!

Aw, Slim and Joan Leslie, sittin' in a tree. The Frenchman can't take it.

The guys aparently were jonesing for the HC so they're back again the third night in a row. And they think they're going to have their millionth man walk through the doors that night. So now we have some exposition about how the different studio departments all contributed, yaddiyaddayadda...

Finally there is a line of people at the entrance. Tension must be built, you see. Slim is the millonth man (surprise!) and he gets kissed by every junior hostess in the house (surprise!). "You didn't know you were somebody special, did you, corporal?"

Bette Davis has the right to pimp out any actress to the millionth man for the weekend. He chooses... Joan Leslie. And of course Slim doesn't forget his best friend. He gets to dance with Dolores Moran, who apparently has really good "give." Oh, and Joan Leslie shows us she can sing. And then they get rice thrown on them as a joke.

Slim is so taken he can't drive straight. Cute.

A 'rice' rumor starts to circulate. Joan Leslie still lives with her folks, who next door to the Shaggy Dog. She apparently is also in the habit of taking men to her home at night before she's married them. Slim just wants to talk though, cuz you know, he's not much of a romantic. And stuff... That's exactly what they end up doing. It's a pretty adorable scene.

Sexy room service girls tell Slim he's married to Joan Leslie. They go to the studio, and Slim can't bare to watch Joan Leslie kiss her scene partner Zachary Scott. It turns out, she really is into him, and wants him to come to dinner with her parents. I feel like I don't need to watch any more of this movie.

Millionth man's friend gets shown around the studio and they stealth-boom him up on a camera crane after he wanders into a 'Ballet Girls Dressing Room.' Then there's a ballet number that is very 'Wedding of the Painted Doll' only slightly less embarrassingly antiquated, and with ballet sailors and a lot of upskirt.

We meet Joan Leslie's family. Her sister is played by her real sister, who looks like the chick from Gambling with Souls. Her parents are played by impostors.

Joseph Szigeti plays 'Flight of the Bumblebee' which, if you believe this movie and Radio Days, was the most popular song in all of World War II. Bette Davis seems really unsure of her announcements. She introduces a second act, and the principals spend most of it arguing about who is a better performer. Sorry, too boring, I'm fast-forwarding.

There's some cute samba music. Dolores Moran and Frenchy sneak off to to go bang up at Hollywoodland. There's a Spanish dance number I also wasn't interested in. Slim has a monologue, and proves he can't pronounce Czechloslovakia. We are treated to a rousing Rainbow Nation montage of everyone sitting at the Hollywood Canteen. Kitty Carlisle asks for a request from Slim as he leaves, and ends up doing a reprise of the song Joan Leslie sang the night before.

Slim waits a little longer, but Joan Leslie isn't anywhere to be found. Somebody tells him he's just being used, but he writes her a note saying he doesn't care either way. Meanwhile, she's stuck at what appears to be the same gas station from Assassin of Youth.

OMG! Union Station! I've been there! And Joan Leslie makes it to say goodbye. They promise to keep on dreaming about each other. Another adorably smaltzy movie that I totally loved.

Wedding Dresses, History and Me

I am currently working my way through a backlog of entries from the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You, hosted by the always lovely and congenial Cristen Conger and Molly Edmonds, and this past week I heard an excellent episode that not only appealed to my girly side, but mirrored current events (both past and approaching) in my life. It also just got me thinking generally about the topic: Why do brides wear white? At least that was the heading that showed up once iTunes was finished downloading the file; the topic could just have easily been Where to wedding dresses come from? Other than 'shut up, that's why' and 'hopefully somewhere reasonable,' I have a few reactions to the podcast. There are my thoughts.

Just to recap, I had a very dear old friend, well two dear friends, get married recently (they aren't all that old ... late twenties). I also have a cousin who is getting married later this month, and that trip will take me to Charlotte, North Carolina, which I am trying to tell myself will be fun, a chance to see relatives and sample at least one local (and blog about it, using lobby cards from A Woman in Grey as illustrations).

Anyhow, back to weddings. Cristen and Molly stated, at one point, that wedding dresses tend to follow contemporary fashion trends, which is totally true. However, Molly posited that, for example, in a 1970's wedding, "...you'd wear, like, you know, a mini, just like you would wear to go... shopping? Wherever you wear your mini's?" Actually, not as far as I can tell. While I wasn't technically around in the seventies, I can attest to seeing the many wedding photos of not just my parents, but of many friends' parents, all of whom were married in the seventies. All I remember from those photos were long, lace-up-the-front hippy-flavored gypsy dresses. These get-ups were as ubiquitous in these photos as our dads' John Lennon hair cuts. Mini-dresses, however, not so much.

World War II also came up in the discussion. Both sets of grandparents were married during that era, though neither (as far as I can tell) were married in a dress made out of parachute silk. Grandma Kitty and Grandpa Oji-San (Mr. and Mrs. Don Lynch) managed to swing a marriage in Italy in 1944, at the height of the conflict. They were married in a baroque chapel and honeymooned in Sorrento. Sounds romantic, right? Well, for the most part it sounds like it was, but fifty years later, Grandma was a little resentful of the fact that she had to get married in her uniform. Once, when we were watching TV together, a commercial for allergy medication or something started up, and the woman on the screen professed to be so excited about getting married in her mother's wedding gown. Kitty snorted "Nobody would ever want to have been married in my wedding dress!"

My dad's parents, as I said, were also married around that time, and their wedding photo stands in marked contrast. A traditional studio portrait, it shows John Sr. in a three-piece suit and cravate, and Regina in a long, elegant dress and corresponding veil. Again, I can't say whether the dress was made of parachute silk, but I will say that it is gorgeous, understated, and encapsulates the era. Grandma Reggie has never had any pretense about being stylish (she just is) but her wedding gown looks like the equivalent of something Worth or Dior were turning out at the time.

According to Cristen and Molly, the first recorded wedding white wedding dress was that of Queen Victoria I of England. This does actually sound like something I've hear somewhere before, so therefore it must be true. Apparently, Old Vic was the the first bride to have bridesmaids carry her train. My friend Jessie, who just got married, did not have an expansive train as part of her gorgeous gown, but she did work for a company three years ago that was bonding The Young Victoria, an Emily Blunt-starring hoop-skirt-straviganza that needs to come out already (seriously, it's been like three years). So, Jessie's wedding and former job are my connections to the late British monarch and the work of Sandy Powell.

The above photograph was found at a new discovery, the blog Jane Austen's World, which has a lovely illustrated article about weddings from November of last year, titled "Regency Wedding Dresses and Later Developments in Bridal Fashions."

http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com

Happy Birthday to Me (and Myra Breckenridge)

So today is my birthday. I share this birthday with a few celebrities that people know about (Raquel Welch, Rose McGowan, Michael Keaton) as well as a few who I actually admire and care about (Werner Herzog, Paddy Considine, Arline Pretty - see below left).

Virgos are alluring, but have doughy faces, as Ms. Pretty demonstrates here. I am likewise a bit doughy in the face. As for the alluring part, I don't know so much.

I'm about to go out to celebrate, and I just wanted to post a cute clip of what I was watching right before I left. Here's an unrecognizable Ginger Rogers singing two songs in A Night in a Dormitory (1929), from that period where musicals were so bad they almost died. Just goes to show you that everyone needs a little time to grow into their own. I feel like 23 sounds a lot older than 22 but people keep saying I still have time to grow into myself. I'll take it.

I'm Not Your 2001 Monkey

It's only the second day of the fall semester, and already I have a fun anecdote. I was sitting right behind a deaf guy in my History 1 class, and of course he had a sign language interpreter on hand, who signed everything the crazy professor had to say, even his weird asides that make me wonder if it's possible to have a GTS attack and also be snarky. Interpreter girl must have been tired by the end of the class. I was just watching her.

In the last quarter part of the time we had in class, the professor showed us the first 15-20 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of those movies that I know and admire, but have only really seen all the way through once, because if I never saw it, I could never be a real boy as so on. Unlike some other movies (Battleship Potemkin, Casablanca - I know, sacrilege) I think 2001 is a great movie, one of those "even it's flaws are interesting" kind of movies. It was nice to see even just a portion of it after at least eight years (I saw it in middle school).

So back to the hot deaf action that was going on in front of me. All three of us - me, deaf guy, sighner girl - all knew that she was under some sort of obligation to "sign" the movie, even though there really isn't any dialog in the parts we were watching (all the stuff with the monkeys, and the ship reaching the space station). If there is any dialog that occurs before Floyd gets off the rotating elevator, it’s not the coherent spoken English kind that might need interpreting. Still, Miss Lady Sign Languagesson still had plenty to say with her hands before the clip was over.

This then begs the question: “What does ‘More monkey noises’ look like in American Sign Language?” Sadly, I cannot describe it. I’d like to think that statement was in her jestures somewhere, but it could just as easily have been “It’s that annoying classical music again.” If this guy stays in the class, maybe someday I’ll learn the difference. Until then, I have a mountain of Math Homework to get through.


PS: The above is not a scene from the film, rather an accurate depiction of life in the bureaucratic labyrinth of despair that my school. Those pendulous clouds are from the fire that is slowly engulfing Los Angeles County. Happy September, y'all.

An American Wedding

This past weekend, two of my oldest friends in Los Angeles got married. The ceremony was great, with lots of drinking, great music and carousing with old and new friends. More on that in a moment.

The story of Satish and Jessie, the wonderful couple in question, is long and filled with drama (in a good way). Not to sound like a douche bag, but I was there at the beginning. They had one particular class together, one of those classes that are so complicated that it destroys friendships, and were part of the same group. I came along for a meeting early in the semester at Jessie's house and watched her argue with Satish. Even though they clearly disagreed about several things, they were clearly on a certain wavelength. Since Jessie was the only one with a car at the time, she drove everybody home. She dropped Satish off at his place, and as we watched him make his way up to the front door, she said something along the lines of "I think I want to make out with him."

My reaction: "Go for it!"

Flash-forward to this past weekend. The wedding ceremony was held at a Buddhist college in Aliso Viejo, and among the guests were Jessie's big Filipino family, Satish's big Italian family, and both of their friends, who are one of the most eclectic and international groups of people you could hope to find anywhere. It was classic and elegant, with the poofy dress, the tuxedos, the centerpieces, but it was loose and free in a way that all weddings ought to be.

In episodes of Six Feet Under where primary characters died their funerals would be packed with extras you had never seen before. That struck me as weird, even though I could look to other funerals I've been to, such as my grandmother's in 2006, when old neighbors and my mother's high school friends were showing up. Similarly, in the weddings I've been to in the last few years (and there have been several) there were always those people who you didn't know, the guests you never spoke to, the guests who were just extras and who you'd totally have forgotten about if they weren't walking through the background of your snapshots. All I ever saw on Six Feet Under were the lead characters, and their relationships with other lead characters. This weekend I feel like I had something of an epiphany. Those scenes from the HBO show finally made sense when I looked around and saw all these people who I had never met, but who were there, just like me, to show Satish and Jessie their love and support. I am finding that, from my very selfish perspective, I see my interactions with people as being the only events that really take place. Why would they know anybody I've never met? Why would I not know any other people that they know? Because, I know now, we are humans. Those people I have never met are all humans. I grant that this revelation probably doesn't make sense to anyone else in the world, but for me it's a bit profound. No wonder people are still dismissing me by saying "Oh, you're young."

If you look at depictions of weddings in popular American culture, they are usually pretty staid, sober affairs. Not only have they been manufactured by award-winning production designers with the backing of a major studio, but there is a formal going-through-the-motions quality that seems to be present only when you're dealing with a white, WASPy family. The only loose weddings seem to be the 'ethnic' ones, and that's usually because they are some sort of homogeneous gathering for a particular minority. I look back on Jessie and Satish's wedding, and I am struck by what a microcosm of America the whole thing is. Especially when the newlyweds (Indian and Pinay respectively) and their Bridesmaids (Indian, Middle Eastern, African American) and Groomsmen (Indian, Pakistani, Mexican) jumped on the dancefloor for a surprise rendition of Michael Jackson's Thriller dance (led by a white girl). Meanwhile, Satish's adoptive Italian family, Jessie's Filipino family and everyone else in the room clapped along and hooted and cheered.

Saying that a particular wedding is more American than another doesn't qualify it as better or worse, but this one, with it's white minority and melting pot pastiche of guests, was the most fun I've ever had.

Bonnie and Clyde

I am getting toward the end of the book Go Down Together by Jeff Guinn, a recent (and excellent) biography of Bonnie and Clyde. A real page turner, it reflects a lot of new research that re-examines, and in many cases debunks, numerous popular myths and misconceptions about the famous Depression-era outlaws. Of course, this put me in the mood to do something I had wanted to do since middle school: Start writing my Bonnie and Clyde screenplay. The book has so many interesting stories and pieces of information that I was thinking that a John Adams-style mini-series might (at least sort of) do it justice, but I was dismayed to learn that a movie about the very same subject has been filming since April.

The movie The Story of Bonnie and Clyde, which is due out next year, has garnered a lot of criticism due to the fact that Hilary Duff will be playing Bonnie Parker. Everybody on the webs are up in arms. I have to admit I was too at first. As an ex-Disney pawn (is she still a Disney pawn?), Duff doesn't seem like the type of actress that you want to entrust with a serious role. Her movies so far have all been majorly fluffy, and her Lizzie Maguire TV persona isn't help much. She's too young, too perfect, to modern to accurately play the Bonnie Parker who lived a rough life, aged quickly and died violently beside her sociopathic boyfriend.

I'm gonna say it: Maybe she can do it. Why not? She hasn't really been presented with the opportunity to tackle a challenging role. With a woman at the helm of the production, Duff might be privy to some directorial insight into the character that Faye Dunaway didn't quite get from Arthur Penn. I'll hold out hope that Tonya S. Holly is more Kathryn Bigelow than Catherine Hardwicke.

Am I wary of the choice of Duff to play this hallowed, complicated character? Yes, absolutely. We also have to remember that many of the common notions about Bonnie are false or unproven: Bonnie probably never shot anybody, she never smoked cigars, she most likely never slept around with other members of Clyde's gang. While she's nowhere near my first choice (Mireille Enos), or second (Anna Paquin), or third (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Duff must have done something right in the audition process. The problem of casting her in this role is, partly, the problem of casting any current age-appropriate actress: People look younger, seem younger, and more youth-oriented personas now than they used to. Duff is going to be 22 this year, about the same age as Clyde and Bonnie when they first met.

The only other thing I'm really worried about is the movie's actual overall quality. Since the subject is pretty close to my heart, I want it to look nice and be presented accurately. I want it to be shot in the right locations (it is), on film (fingers crossed), with a large enough budget to allow for accurate costumes and props (one can only hope). I doubt that it's budget is anything close to that of Public Enemies. I'm hopeful that they'll be able to make it work.

Most of the uproar around this movie seems to come from everyone's impression that this is a 'remake' of the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde that starred Dunaway and Warren Beatty at the title characters. I can't agree about this being any particular sort of "tragedy," since I don't like and never liked that film, but calling this movie a 'remake' is about as accurate as Sarah Palin's recent use of the term "Death Panel." This movie is a retelling of historical events, not the rehashing of an older film. If you still want to look at it that way, then just remember that your precious 1967 movie would then, by that definition, also be a remake, since it was preceded by the terrific Gun Crazy and, before that, the proto-noir You Only Live Once.

I'm annoyed that a Bonnie and Clyde movie is being made at the moment, but I'm annoyed for very selfish, unrealistic reasons. I want it to either be good and be well received, or for it to be so terrible that it gets buried by the distributor, with no release whatsoever. The real tragedy will be if it picks up where Public Enemies left off turning the subject of 1930's gangsters into 21st Century box office poison.