That smiling young person is yours truly, on a rather dingy cold movie set right after The Mister and I decided to get married. We met two years earlier on a movie set in baking hot Palms Springs, and our wedding took place in our backyard in Hollywood right after…
Category: Story
Chapter 20, in which Billie travels to Vegas and comes to a seismic realization. I tended to think of sleep as something healing, freshening, and cleansing. I traced this somewhat peculiar notion to parental influence. I distinctly remembered – though I couldn’t have been more than four at the time…
Merle Oberon said that thing about Hollywood and one night stands. We’ll talk about her joy ride with David Niven later. Now we’re back to the story of Billie and chapter 19 — A film set is a constantly shifting sea. It’s usually crowded concentrated controlled chaos — until it’s…
There is a kind of courtship that goes on between producer and director, a kind of wooing. The producer holds the means of movie making (money) and the director, if they’re any good, provides the vision. There’s a honeymoon period, and often an inevitable falling out. It was a form…
Instead of brocade and a ruff she favored cardigan twin sets and a short strand of pearls. She was bird-boned and regal. She powdered her face Elizabeth 1 white. She had no eyebrows to speak of, and above her high forehead her tight-permed curls were red. As you can…
“You know my mom and dad came out to visit me when I was on that first movie. I took them to set, Grauman’s Chinese, Max Factor’s. We looked at every little bitty star on Hollywood Boulevard and had hot fudge sundaes at C.C. Brown’s. The day they came to…
The exquisitely patrician Connecticut lady pictured above had quite a career – and split her time between the East Coast and the West. Very busy. I don’t know that she really cooked more than brownies and put together hot fudge sundaes – but she did eat and appreciate food. The…
And it’s not only people that make my heart flutter…so can a beautiful building, or the angle of light on a linen pillow case… That said, I have been taking a long break from blogging, working on the new novel and refining my 1924 Spanish Revival home. Household maintenance…