Really? Just reading through this makes me a bit queasy – and doesn’t Mary look stealthy, like she’s plotting our culinary doom?
At least they had the sense not to claim Clara cooked…
I’ve had this, it’s kind of bland and a little sweet.
Not bad, Bessie Love – and what a cute picture 🙂
Yes I think Bessie Love is lovely.I have several pictures of her in my collection.I believe she died in London and once had a haunted house in Laural Canyon.Her house is as far as I know still there,but I do not know about the cowboy ghosts.
She lived in London during WWII and worked as a continuity girl and there she must have stayed after a career in Silents and early Talkies petered out.
That picture of Doug in the apron is amazing!
Cleaver as a can opener… now, why haven’t I ever tried that? 😉
Fabulous. “…like she’s plotting our culinary doom”, yes, you’re right, she does! Love the Clara Bow comment 😉
Re: Clara and cooking, “she admits the undertaking is too much for her.” At least she was honest!
Love Bessie Love, and Mary Astor… this is a great post… Cheers!
I should have found a recipe from Bette Davis for you – next time!
Ahhh, I would LOVE that….thank you
And perhaps Lillian Gish
Vickie,re Bessie Love.She was living in 1977 in a flat near Londons Clapham Common.She had apparently at this time also published an autobiograhy entitled- From Hollywood with Love.I think I will search this one out.During that year she had also appeared on a British TV program about King Edward VIII who was it is said a considerable womaniser and so indiscreet as to cause considerable concern at Government levels.Now that makes me wonder just what she had to say?
She died in London in 1986.
I wonder if it was broadcast on the BBC? They have an extensive online archive…
I’ve had something like Mary Astor’s mock birds–only they were made with veal cutlets (back when veal was cheaper). I never got the point of the disguise but they tasted good, and it’s not inconceivable that M.A. knew how to cook.
I bet she could, but it doesn’t make for a good caption 😉 I remember reading her autobiography, it’s a good one – and she lived in your neighborhood – Temple Hill Drive. Although, wait, let me check… Ah ha! You already knew! http://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/the-trials-of-mary-astor/
Very good–though she wrote two memoirs. I really admire her as a person as well as an actress, even if she did have lousy taste in men!
I think I read the one she wrote at the end of the fifties – tough and smart and had overcome alcoholism – and what a life. Very admirable and one of my favorite actresses for her comedic performance in “The Palm Beach Story” alone – that gal knew how to deliver her lines.
I just read the story about Mary Astor so kindly provided by underthehollywoodsign.I had no idea and how sad.
Vickie,I have done a bit more research on Mary Astor and decided that I want to marry her.She had bad taste in men so maybe I am in with a chance.Cue familiar time machine.
On a much more serious note I was struck by the oddness of Moorcrest as a building and Googled as many pictures of it as I could.I was also struck by the story of Mary Astors virtual imprisonment in that structure.
Somewhere in the back of my mind there was an association or link forming between aspects of the building seen from certain points of view and a story of entrapment.
I had been pondering it since yesterday and knew the link was one that connected both to the building and the notion of escape with a significant 20th Century artist and mathematician whose work centred on images of impossible dimensions that appeared at first glance to be real.I knew I had in mind some of his architectual work sometimes showing figures descending and descending through impossible spaces.
I have now tracked down the fugitive thought and identified the artist as being the very unusual M C Escher and know why both the story and the building had teased me so much.
A quick check through Eschers architectual work will show aspects of Moorcrest as seen through a distorting lens and a shift into impossible dimensions with linkage to implications of entrapment.
Luckily for Mary Astor she was able to climb out of her particular world of imprisonment, the people in Eschers world have no such possibility.
If you are not familiar with Escher Vickie,check him out and see the admittedly odd link that my mind was making.What do you think?
I used to walk past Moorcrest all the time on Temple Hill Drive on my hikes through the neighborhood… Wasn’t Mary Astor fabulous? And a really good writer. Funny thing about the house, I know she hated it, but probably because it was inhabited by her parents. It’s a lovely structure on an open rise surrounded by old trees (I think they might be Doedars) to me it looked gracious and a beautiful, fanciful, part of the Hollywood Hills. You might like this weblog as Moby lives right in that area: http://mobylosangelesarchitecture.com/
Vickie,post script really,but I had always been interested in Escher since discovering him as an art student.The Moorish elements in some of his work that linked in my associations between those found in Moorcrest come from Eschers visit to the Alhambra in Grenada in 1922.Dont you just love the 20s and 30s artistically-I know I do.
Oh yeah… Especially the California Plein-Air/Impressionists. I know it was often dismissed as *pretty* but… I just love it. I know Escher is supposed to suggest the infinite – but to me it does the opposite – precise and geometric and beautiful – and closed. And, this will sound funny coming from someone with a weblog illustrated (mostly) in black and white – I miss the vivid color. Mr. E had a really controlled palette.
Yes Vickie,that was my point in fact-closed/trapped/captive.Beautiful worlds really,but the inhabitants are flies in amber albeit moving.
Well as a matter of fact when an aspiting painter my work was dismissed as facile impressionism by my Head of Department.I never saw anything wrong with pleasing the eye.Would one dismiss a good cook for pleasing the mouth or a poet for pleasing the ear?
The same man told a then friend of mine,Edward Povey, to go away and become a Sunday painter.He is now very,very successful indeed and lives in Texas.Look him up.I think I spied an early work of his on a wall in Wales for sale at over a million pounds.Lord knows how one would remove it.
I think I saw for the first time some Eschers today in colour.
Oh Mr. E – You are preaching to the choir, I love *facile* impressionism! (And I get what you’re saying about Escher – after looking at his work I want to open a window or go outside.)
Edward Povey, I don’t have an educated eye, but maybe a little darkness mixed in with great beauty? Very cool. Thanks for the tip: http://www.edwardpovey.com/art/
He was just starting his artistic career when I first knew him and his first wife.I often spent hours at their tiny flat.He was one of those people who was very good at a number of things and could probably chosen and been very successful across a number of the arts,he wrote songs and I think poetry and was a very good guitarist/songwriter.
I have not seen him for many years now.
You are right about the light and darkness.
Vickie,thanks for the Moby connection.He has some interesting things and is also an artist I like quite a lot.I spent quite some time looking at his site and its links.I very,very much liked the remarkable films of Colin Rich that Mobys shows.They work so well and dramatically with the music.