Category Archives: Friendship

So Alive…an excerpt from It’s in His Kiss by Vickie Lester

July 21, 2018 by Vickie Lester

SO ALIVE In 1996 Keir Bloomfield got his first sole screen credit as a writer. Granted, it was on a low-budget, a very low-budget, movie that the producers guaranteed would be seen on oil platforms and tuna boats the world over. But it was a credit and it was his. Toni Todd, the film legend, had nothing to do with it; contrary to the advice of her facialist, she crinkled her nose at the whole project as if it had […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Humor, Life, Literature, Los Angeles, Movies, Photography, Relationships, Short Stories, Story, Travel, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: #amwriting another novel about Hollywood, #itsinhiskissbyvickielester, Beachwood Canyon, Hollywood, Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood Royalty, Hollywood sign, inside story, screenwriter

When characters come to life…

July 21, 2018 by Vickie Lester

Cameron Crow: Having created Norma Desmond, what did it feel like making the movie? Was she a living, breathing person to you? Billy Wilder: Yes she was, yes she was. Yes, absolutely. Suddenly there is a person there, not just on paper. She was a real character, who had lived, who could be living on Sunset Boulevard…

Categories: Art, Blogging, Books, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: Billy Wilder, Cameron Crow, Conversations with Billy Wilder by Cameron Crow, Gloria Swanson, Norma Desmond, when characters come to life

“I once asked Barbara Stanwyck the secret of acting. She said, “Just be truthful – and if you can fake that you’ve got it made.” Fred MacMurray

July 16, 2018 by Vickie Lester

Categories: Art, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Fiction, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Life, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized • Tags: #FredMacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Double Indemnity, Fred MacMurray quote

“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

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

Tell me, don’t you think there’s a difference between calling someone a Dragon Lady or a bitch?

March 4, 2018 by Vickie Lester

I do. There’s a question of degree, certainly, and while the term Dragon Lady implies an implacable force, the bitch epithet contains a big splash of disrespect and venom. One term was used by Olivia de Havilland in real life, the other came from the pen of a screenwriter. There’s a fascinating article in the New York Times about Olivia de Havilland’s suit against FOX that I recommend you read, it centers around the right of publicity, or the ability […]

Categories: Art, Blogging, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Film, Friendship, History, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Memoir, Movies, Photography, Story, Theater, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized • Tags: Academy Awards, Gary Cooper, Joan Fontaine, labor laws, Olivia de Havilland, oscars, Peter Stackpole, right of publicity, wartime austerity

“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

“Our office lunches consisted of peanut butter and Jello sandwiches, served with slugs of vodka.” Nicky Haslam

February 2, 2018 by Vickie Lester

The world was interconnected, even before the Internet. Nicky Haslam worked with Diana Vreeland (peanut butter and Jello?), who was a dear friend of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, seen here reading Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD. Just this morning I was walking when I saw a neighbor sitting on his front step, scarf wrapped around his neck, cigarette in one hand, book in another, intently reading the same thing in the first rays of the sun. A book is a gateway […]

Categories: Advertising, Art, Blogging, Books, Cooking, Culture, Design, Entertainment, fashion, Film, Friendship, Gastronomy, History, Hollywood, Life, Literature, London, Memoir, New York, Photography, Publishing, Recipes, Story, Truth & Rumors, Uncategorized, Writing • Tags: author William Kuhn, cookbook, decorator Nicky Haslam, Diana Vreeland, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Jello, Lady Diana Cooper, Nicky Haslam, Reading Jackie, unbound

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

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