Fiction | BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

“She surrounded herself with a hot plate, telephone, scotch—and books.”

April 30, 2018 by Vickie Lester

Oasis: The bookshop on Fifty-second Street and Fifth Avenue in New York which stays open till midnight. Dietrich: In the German language: the name for a key that opens all locks. Not a magic key. A very real object, necessitating great skill in the making. The actress Marlene Dietrich spent the last ten years of her life bedridden, in her apartment on Avenue Montaigne, in Paris, refusing to see old acquaintances and avoiding photographers… She coped with isolation by running […]

Categories: Art, Audio, Blogging, Books, Choreography, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, #bibliophile, marginalia, Marlene Dietrich, Marlene Dietrich quotes

This is a purely fanciful tale, a little nightmare produced by the unaccustomed high living of a brief visit to Hollywood.

March 28, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I have a thing about how Los Angeles is portrayed on film and in books. An author who makes me laugh, perhaps because of his dour satiric streak, is Evelyn Waugh. He visited Hollywood in 1947 to discuss a film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, loathed the place, and ended up with a luxurious trip abroad for he and his wife in the California sun, an un-produced film, and the setting for a scathing book about Los Angeles. Let me digress […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, Evelyn Waugh, I used to write screenplays, Joan Didion, Raymond Chandler, The Loved One, writers in Hollywood

I sound like the unholy offspring of Suzanne Pleshette and Elmer Fudd…

March 19, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I have a cold. I have been wearing the same hoodie for three days and have sipped innumerable cups of warm honey lemon water. I know there are more pressing matters going on in the world right now, yet, I am wondering how to get rid of the goo that has settled around my vocal chords. So, it’ll be quiet around here for a bit. I plan on napping a great deal… …and to continue writing from page 221 in […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Audio, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting, #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, #HollywoodFiction, actress Pippa Rathborne reads, author William Kuhn, I am a woman of a certain age, novel excerpt, roman à clef

“Art may spill over from creating a world of language into the dangerous and forbidden task of trying to create a human being.”

February 26, 2018 by Vickie Lester

INTERVIEWER There’s a passage in one of your books in which you and Auden are on a train, and you’re savagely attacking religion, and he says: “Be careful, my dear, if you carry on like that, one day you’ll have such a conversion.” Do you think of it in those terms, as a conversion? ISHERWOOD Yes. I rather think so. I went through all sorts of attitudes to it. There was a period when I thought I might become a […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: A24, Christopher Isherwood, director, Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird, Lady Bird screenplay, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, screenwriter, W H Auden

Okay, I lied about last night. I didn’t watch “All the President’s Men”

January 31, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I had a Preston Sturges film fest instead, and went to bed blissfully happy…movie magic…binge watching of the best kind 😉 . The Lady Eve… In which card shark Barbara Stanwyck tries to swindle bashful scientist (and heir to a fortune) Henry Fonda, and loses her heart. and The Palm Beach Story, a romantic screwball comedy with wit and verve and wonderful performances…

Categories: Art, Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Romance, Story, Theater, Uncategorized • Tags: Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Preston Sturges, Rudy Vallée, scene from The Palm Beach Story, screwball comedy, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story

“The best thing for being sad…is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.” T. H. White

January 31, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I just completed a very big task in terms of the book I wrote, and I thought I’d reward myself, by reading a childhood favorite of mine; a novel I read—enchanted, immersed—compulsively one week during a hot summer vacation many, many years ago. A book written over a period of years from 1938-1958 by T. H. White, The Once and Future King. I picked up the yellowed paperback, and suddenly I wasn’t reading it as a fantasy, but as a […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fiction, Film, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, London, Movies, New York, Relationships, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: Act Up, activist, courage, health, human dignity, I consider myself a very opinionated man who uses words as fighting tools, I don't consider myself an artist, It’s about speaking up being a buffalo if you have to being mean if you have to, King Arthur, Larry Kramer, Larry Kramer Lives to See His ‘Normal Heart’ Filmed for TV - NYTimes.com., Larry Kramer quote, Merlin, Merlyn, political, reading a novel in the context of history, speaking up, T.H. White, The best thing for being sad...is to learn something, The Normal Heart, The Once and Future King, the right to love, valor, WWll

My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England – I was going to play all the sweet roles…

January 23, 2018 by Vickie Lester

Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers. Ida Lupino Is it any wonder she turned to directing? In an era, I might add, when that was a nearly impossible career choice for a woman. Have times changed? Not much. The percentage of women directing films and TV now is under 10 percent. Will times change? Darlings, that is inevitable. Back to glorious Ida Lupino, born of a long line of […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, behind the camera, behind the scenes, Catholic school, Claudette Colbert, comedy, composer Jerry Goldsmith, director, film noir, Gypsy Rose Lee, Hayley Mills, Ida Lupino, June Harding, Rosiland Russell, screenwriter, second woman in the DGA, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir TV series, The Trouble with Angels

I didn’t say it was good — I said it was meatloaf — three versions: Joan Crawford’s, Jack Benny’s and mine

January 1, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I’m greeting the New Year with the cold that spans the world right now, so thanks to Mr. Benny and Ms. Crawford we have some comfort food for cold weather. And by “cold weather” I mean something like this: Now, in my house meatloaf is variously known as “oh, that!” and an “unidentified meat object” but its most virulent critic is away at university now, so let the meatloaf recipes commence. Serve with mashed potatoes and a green salad and […]

Categories: Architecture, Blogging, Books, Cooking, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, Gastronomy, History, Hollywood, Humor, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Parenting, Photography, Recipes, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, #itsinhiskissbyvickielester, I didn't say it was good I said it was meatloaf, Jack Benny, Jack Benny's sponge cake recipe, Joan Crawford, Joan Crawford in the kitchen, Joan Crawford's meatloaf recipe, meatloaf recipe, unidentified meat object

On Writing a Hollywood Novel: Finding Yourself Tap Dancing on a Minefield You Weren’t Aware Was There, Or When Fun Fiction Meets an Uglier Reality

December 29, 2017 by Vickie Lester

Something has been troubling me recently, and as the New Year is approaching I decided to clear my mind. Little did I know that when I thinly disguised two (secondary) characters in my first novel that the people the characters were partially based on would be drummed out of the industry this year. Here’s my disclaimer. I didn’t know the extent of their real life depravity and predatory behavior, or I would have written something much darker than the satiric […]

Categories: Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fiction, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Literature, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Palm Springs, Photography, Publishing, Story, Theater, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, #itsinhiskissbyvickielester, an interview with Vickie Lester, Billy Wilder, Gloria Swanson, Hollywood, I had a blast writing the book, I must admit to laughing a great deal throughout, inspired by real people and situations

BEGUILING HOLLYWOOD

If you want a little historical perspective you're home.

Category Archives: Fiction