Catherine Deneuve, and her sister Françoise Dorléac
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instagram: toobeguiling, behind the scenes
“Lily harbored a den of coyotes in her back yard. They went about their nocturnal haunts stealthy-like, unless they were circling to prey and then they raised all hell. Yelps and howls, high-pitched and stunningly shrill, vibrated in the dark. In echoing canyons or flat streets stretching to meet the hilly wilderness, Los Angelinos — both dreaming and about to be eaten — startled into heightened perception.”
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Want to hear the beginning of a story? Let me read to you, link in the profile.
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#goodmorning #audio #losangeles #noir #goodreads #historichomes #amreading #amwriting #writer #storytime #bookworm #bibliophile #december #mood #explore #create #blackandwhitephotography #portrait #interiordesign #elegance #booklover #creative #antique
Do nondisclosure agreements apply to #fiction? I don’t think so... Link in the profile.
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“I had become a suit, and I vowed to myself, if not anyone else, I would never forget movies were made on cavernous stages and dusty streets all over the world; not in the corporate tower where my old boss had held sway.
What of my old boss? The guitar-strumming scion of the old Hollywood family had decamped the area for the trout streams of Montana... I do get distracted sometimes. Please forgive me. What was it I meant to say? Oh, yes. I remember. In Hollywood employees are contractually obligated not to squeal on social media about the internal workings of the dream factory.”
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#romanàclef, #hollywood, #studio, #behindthescenes, #amwriting, #writer, #novel, #explore, #reading, #visualsoflife, #agameoftones, #bookquotes, #wordsmith, #reflection #postitfortheaesthetic
Night falls on the red roofs of California. Sweet dreams.
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#historic #historichome, #historichouse #historicpreservation #oldhomelove #architecture #architecturelovers #exteriordesign #architecturaldetail #style #design #nightphotography #lightandshadow #nightsky #uplighting #nightscape #garden #curbappeal #losangeles #houseportrait #captivatinghouses #romantichome #californiadreaming #goodnight
What am I hiding? A spider bite! Do I hide much in the pages of my new Hollywood novel? Nothing you won’t have fun trying to figure out...
“Late in the summer following my sophomore year, I was living in the Beverly Hills home of a blonde former figure skater. She had met Mr. Major Movie Star on a commercial promoting California cheese...arguably a metaphor for something.”
There are more pages up on the blog today, link in the profile.
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#portrait #author #authorlife #blackandwhitephotography #bookaddiction #bookstagram #bibliophile #booklover #behindthescenes #hollywood #moviemagic #lovereading #bookworm #bookish #lovereading #excerpt #amwriting #readers #lovetowrite #californiadreaming
See what’s unfurling on the blog, it might be a new #Hollywood novel...
“Life never is a simple linear narrative; it’s too messy and senseless. On the other hand a memoir, no, make that a novel (a much less contentious prospect) is an attempt to resolve the random acts of a life and give them meaning — put them into some sort of context. Whether this reads as simply an insider chronicle of a life lived in Hollywood or another of those cautionary tales about the same, I’ll leave to you, gentle reader, my unknown confidant.”
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#bookaddiction #bookstagram #bibliophile #author #booklover #mustread #petals #rose #behindthescenes #moviemagic #lovereading #bookworm #bookish #ilovereading #amwriting #readers
It’s a good night when @kfullermendez calls me from the east to herald a moonrise over the west. #goodnight #supermoon #sweetdreams @heybillkuhn @antiquegoddess
“These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationary store, and when almost everybody wore a hat. Here is the last of that generation of chain smokers who woke the world in the morning with their coughing, who used to get stoned at cocktail parties and perform obsolete dance steps like “the Cleveland Chicken,” sail for Europe on ships, who were truly nostalgic for love and happiness, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are.”
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I picked up a sweet #volume of short stories in the new year, continuing my #love affair with fictional Manhattan.
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#stories #manhattan #nyc #johncheever #bookbliss #bibliophile #exploretocreate #empirestatebuilding #architecture #streetscape #citylife #literature #author #writer #bookstagram #bookstoread #cityscape #skyscraper #bluesky #writerslife #thestoriesofjohncheever
Traveling SW I promised @heybillkuhn I’d take pictures... Over breakfast in the dining car I learned how to bet the horses. Sharing a meal with people I’ve never met is now one of my favorite things to do.
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So relaxing watching the country roll by, thinking about what to make for Christmas dinner back home. #Pavlova? #ChocolateMousse? For recipes check out the link in the profile.
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#trainstation #exploretocreate #artofvisuals #waiting #portrait #citylife #architecture #homewardbound #urban #dawn #interior #graphicdesign #art #lifeisbeautiful #journey #style #friends #everyonehasastory #itsinhiskissbyvickielester #amwriting another #hollywood #novel
An enigmatic frozen angel (mysterious, cold and distant, yet lovely)
I’ve been out all day. I’ll have to catch up tomorrow. Catherine Deneuve is drop dead gorgeous. Real sophisticated, timeless beauty… Love these pictures.
Hello Angel, I was just thinking… “what would Lisa do?”… I wrote a post for tomorrow, that deals with middle-age, human sexuality and grey hair, and for once I used an off color phrase — but I’m going to be bold and just go for it. Blog-life is a learning experience, yes? Hugs to you and wishing you a lovely evening!
I say, go for it! It’s liberating. Vickie, I don’t think it’s possible for you to write anything short of brilliant, off color phrase and all. I look forward to reading your thoughts and feelings, as always. xoxo
Love and Hugs!!
Lisa
You are very kind and encouraging – it goes up at 10 my time, noon in the mid west 😉
xox,
V
Yes she is quite beautiful with an unforgetable face.I cannot see her however without thinking of her tragic older sister Francoise Dorleac,also an actress.I have seen at best only two films with her in and to an extent both her and her sad and early death being burnt alive in a car crash shortly after completing her last film has never quite left me.How strange that her short life can still reach out and touch one after the passage of so many years.A beautiful butterfly of the sixties and like so many icons of the period having a short life that burnt bright.
Thank you, Edward I had no idea – and now I have to see “The Young Girls of Rochefort”, Dorleac, Deneuve, and Gene Kelly – how could I have missed that!
O yes, Edward is quite eloquent and moving about poor Francoise (I didn’t see her image the 1st time I visited). She was memorable in Polanski’s odd Cul-De-Sac with Donald Pleasance increasingly feminized, and Lionel Stander. The Young Girls Of Rochefort is a beautiful chocolate box of a movie though not up to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
I just hopped on the site and I see two comments from you but I’ll answer this one first – you didn’t miss the photo the first time, I just put it up in response to Edward’s account of her life ;)…
And, I won’t even look at my London clock to see what time it is there, but I know you’re nocturnal so I’ll stop scolding.
I am being nocturnal at the moment anyway.Actually I am a few hundred miles away from London and am an Englishman living in Wales.However the UK is a very small place so the time difference would be very,very small.Francoise Dorleacs last film was Billion Dollar Brain,a spy film that followed the success of The Ipcress File, which is still one of the best grainy and realistic,rather dark and forboding non James Bond type films, whose subject is brain washing.Billion Dollar Brain which unlike The Ipcress File I do not have a copy of, is a bit more of a romp if imperfect memory is correct.
I want to see “Billion Dollar Brain” — by the time I became aware of Ken Russell he was notorious for some very bizarre onset behavior (in the 1980s). I have one friend in particular I’d like to post about her experience with the director – I don’t think I could do it justice.
Oh scold me, scold me, it makes me feel wanted! Bwahahaha! Glad I hadn’t gone nuts by missing Mlle Dorleac.
Good night and God bless, agnostic and (yes, you’re quite correct) nocturnal R (hey, it’s not 1 o’clock yet I’m doing well!)
Thank you Vickie for putting the picture up.I am not sure quite what her magic is, but whatever it is she has it.Perhaps thats what it is after all, the subject of magic some might say is the mysterious and the unknown and for me she embodies something otherworldly.Perhaps a Jungian analyst would suggest that she has something of the quality of an Anima figure,a creature from which poetry can be spun and myths gather.
My pleasure, and I think your tribute to her is beautiful,”a creature from which poetry can be spun and myths gather”… now I definitely have to see her films.
Thanks for your kind comment with regard to my words.Much beauty today is skin deep only,cosmetically deep even or created by the surgeons knife.There is another type of beauty that does not depend on these things and of a much rarer type.It cannot be described and it cannot be produced, it can be known only when you encounter it and when you do it cannot be explained,it just is and you either see it or you dont and poetry is the correct response.
Dearest V
How could you possibly know?
Again!
les parapluies de cherbourg is just The Dandy’s most favourite musical – jazz operetta? – ever!
Demy and Lerand’s score. Bernard Evein’s unforgettable ‘decoration’, Nino Castelnouvo, the incomparable Anne Vernon, the voice of Danielle Licari and…. la Divine!!!
And the 1992 restoration (under the auspices of Agnes Varda no less) was a triumph.
It is one of a very, very few movie=ng pictures that I have ever seen on the big screen more than a handful of times.
Oh and the umbrellas themselves, supplied by ONM.
And.. the colours and la Divine!!!
Oh poor Francoise. So very sad Catherine has spoken very little of it ever since.
Can I recommend a wonderful song that the ultimate face of Chanel and the muse of Saint Laurent was to sing many years later… with quite a lovely ‘montage’.
Yours ever and ever Catherine’s
The Perfumed Dandy
Oh lord!!
I hadn’t mean’t that to be so large – please feel free to delete – affreuse!!
Je suis tres desole.
Le Dandy Parfumee
Don’t be désolé – fascinating! Who was that Svengali, singer, promoter, for french girl groups in the 60s? Serge, something?
Dearest V
You mean the legendary Monsieur Gainsbourgh – he of course of the infamous ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ duet with Brigette Bardot.
I would post a link but I am now much afeard of another unintentional big screen fiasco!
His greatest work is probably ‘l’Histoire de Melodie Nelson’ a narrative album of orchestral majesty, though of course he is always remembered for ‘Je t’aime’.
Now if we start straying into YeYe (early French girl rock’n’roll) I may never recover.
Just to say that Francoise Hardy is one of the most beautiful people who has ever lived.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
I couldn’t resist:
You are right wonderful song and wonderful montage.Very moving and romantic.
Dearest V
In that case I raise you…
YeYe, Brigette, Serge, Umbrellas and what dancing! Oh yes there’s even Bonnie and Clyde too!!!
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
I tracked it down at the source. Fabulous, and a little silly, and very charming.
What am I doing wrong!?!
I even instructed it to paste as plain text.
Right that’s it – off back to the 18th century for me….
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
V., I’d recommend you watch Billion Dollar Brain. It’s my favourite Russell film (even if it isn’t all that Russellian, we have memorable Music Lovers et al for that) and it’s particularly interesting because it’s sneakily almost pro-soviet! Even if it isn’t to your taste there’s snowbound landscapes (snow, always good in a film), weirdness, Michael “Blahdy” Caine, a nutso Ed Begley, ice queen Mlle Dorleac, an Alexander Nevsky-quoting scene on frozen ice (also quoted in The Four Musketeers starring Michael York, Ollie Reed and Raquel Welch in her best performance, etc) and, perhaps best of all, a great score by Richard Rodney Bennett who died recently.
Oh, do let your friend dish on Ken Russell, a man who continued to be “terrible” even when he was no longer an “enfant”. Was the film from his american sojourn, Altered States or Crimes of Passion? The latter has a quite *spectacularly* vulgar line of dialogue concerning “Pan-Am Coffee” that I can’t help but remember from that perverse and totally unerotic picture. Fear not, I shall protect your tender ears (or, rather eyes) from it!
Crimes of Passion, I think… Is that the one with Kathleen Turner? He was just so… gross! If I can’t even type certain phrases I certainly can’t relate a story about Ken Russell, so I’ll work on my friend and see if she’ll share. I see more correspondence from you down the line and I’ll be there soon. Hugs, V
Oh, and yes I’ll put Billion Dollar Brain in my Netflix thingy 🙂
Yes, it was and “gross” seems to be an appropriate term! I’m kind of scared to hear that story from your friend now. Um, I don’t know, you may wish you’d skipped that correspondance, hon…worried now…
Yay for Netflix!
Hugs from here, R.
You are a goose. Go check your other comments 🙂
Got me sweetie!
I ran into Catherine Deneuve at Macy’s in the 1980’s… she was signing autographs and selling her perfume. See looked so much that day like Grace Kelly to me. And what a lovely smile she has. “if it takes forever I will wait for you…for a thousand summers if you want me too….” ah..The Umbrellas of Cherbourg….
Okay, now you’ve done it – I’ll be singing that all day!
OMG! I watched “The Young Girls of Rochefort” just the other day. I’d never even heard of it before (a Gene Kelly movie I’d never heard of? HTF did *that* happen?) While it’s not “Umbrellas…” it’s certainly a trip!
I know! I was scrolling through Cary Grant movie credits last night, and there are so many I’ve never heard of — I’m wondering if there’s a reason I’ve never heard of them though… There’s only one way to find out, I’m going to have an obscure movie marathon!