Tag Archives: Los Angeles

Phyllis Diller – Style Icon

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“My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee.” – Phyllis Diller

NAME: Phyllis Diller
OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Comedian, Pianist
BIRTH DATE: July 17, 1917
DEATH DATE: August 20, 2012
EDUCATION: Chicago’s Sherwood Music Conservatory
PLACE OF BIRTH: Lima, Ohio
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California
Originally: Phyllis Ada Driver

Best Known For:  First noticed as a contestant on Groucho Marx‘s game show in 1955, Phyllis Diller went on to become a successful comedian, actress and author.

Actress and comedian Phyllis Diller was born in Lima, Ohio in 1917. She was first noticed as a contestant on Groucho Marx’s game show, and went on to become a successful comedian, actress and author, recognizable by her eccentric costumes, overdone makeup and trademark laugh. In 1992, she received the American Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Diller was also an accomplished pianist and author. She died on August 20, 2012, at age 95,  at her home in Los Angeles.
Breakthrough Role

Comedian, actress and author Phyllis Diller was born as Phyllis Ada Driver on July 17, 1917, in Lima, Ohio. Diller was the only child of Frances and Perry Driver. After graduating high school, she continued her studies at Chicago’s Sherwood Music Conservatory for three years, before eloping with Sherwood Diller in 1939. The couple soon moved to California, where they had six children (one of their children died in infancy).

In 1955, while working as a journalist for the San Leandro News-Observer, Diller appeared as a contestant on Groucho Marx’s game show, You Bet Your Life. Her memorable performance on the show sparked the advent of her national exposure. She received an offer to make her comedic debut at The Purple Onion Comedy Club in San Francisco, where she floored the audience with her dynamic one-liners and comical costumes. This success led to future bookings at New York’s Blue Angel, as well as an appearance on The Jack Paar Show.
Comedy Routine

In her monologues, Diller adopted the stage personality of a typical housewife and spoke of topics that affected American suburbia—kids, pets, neighbors and even mothers-in-law. Her most notable routines were filled with anecdotes about her fictitious husband, “Fang,” and her numerous face-lifts. Diller’s delivery was accentuated by her animated facial expressions, eccentric costumes, overdone make-up and signature loud, cackling laugh. During performances, she would often flaunt a cigarette and laugh at her own jokes with her trademark cackle.
Acting Highlights

In 1961, Diller acquired her first minor film role, as Texas Guinan in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass. She also co-starred in a few low-budget movies with longtime friend and fellow comedian Bob Hope, including Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966), Eight On the Lam (1967) and The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell (1968). Additionally, Diller made recurring appearances on Hope’s annual Christmas Special (1965-94).

Diller’s first stage acting appearance was in The Dark Top of the Stairs (1961). However, her most notable theatre performance was in 1970, when she replaced Carol Channing as Dolly Levi in Broadway’s Hello, Dolly!. After Hello, Dolly!, Diller would not return to the stage until 1988, when she played the vivacious Mother Superior in San Francisco’s Nunsense.
Personal Life and Death

In 1965, Diller ended her 26-year marriage with Sherman Anderson Diller. The two were divorced in September of that year, and Diller hastily married Ward Donovan just one month later. In the late 1960s, Diller focused her creative efforts toward television. She created two poorly received television series: the sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton in 1966, and the variety show The Phyllis Diller Show two years later, in 1968.

In addition to her comedic talents, Diller could boast that she was both an accomplished concert pianist and author. Over a 10-year period, from 1972 to 1982, under the pseudonym “Dame Illya Pillya,” Diller performed as a solo pianist throughout America, with more than 100 symphony orchestras. She published five best-selling books throughout her career, including 1963′s Phyllis Diller Tells All About Fang, 1966′s Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints, 1967′s Phyllis Diller’s Marriage Manual, 1969′s The Complete Mother and 1981′s The Joys of Aging and How to Avoid Them.

In 1992, Diller received the American Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Diller died on August 20, 2012, at her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, where she had briefly served as honorary mayor. She was 95 years old, and was survived by three children and several grandchildren. According to an Associated Press article, Diller’s longtime manager, Milton Suchin, said that Diller “died peacefully in her sleep, and with a smile on her face.”

The Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel – Not So Secret Obsession

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knickerbocker

The Hollywood Knickerbocker Apartments, formerly the Knickerbocker Hotel, is a senior home located at 1714 Ivar Avenue in Los Angeles, California. Built in 1925 by E.M. Frasier in Spanish Colonial Revival style, the historic hotel catered to the region’s nascent film industry, and is the site for some of Hollywood’s most famous dramatic moments. Rudolf Valentino was a regular at the bar before his death in 1926. On Halloween 1936, Harry Houdini‘s widow held her tenth séance to contact the magician on the roof of the hotel. Frances Farmer was arrested in her room at the hotel in 1943, after skipping a visit with her parole officer. In 1948, studio head D. W. Griffith died of a cerebral hemorrhage on the way to a Hollywood hospital, after being discovered unconscious in his room at the Knickerbocker.

The hotel retained its glamor through the 1950s. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio often met in the hotel bar. Elvis Presley stayed at the hotel (Room 1016) while making his first film, Love Me Tender (1956).

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On December 1, 1954, a camera crew from the NBC program “This is Your Life” surprised retired comedy legends Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy in room 205 of the hotel. The duo was relaxing there with a couple of friends who were in on the gag. While both comedians were polite throughout the show, Stan Laurel was apparently privately somewhat displeased to be put on television without his consent or prior notice.

In 1962 celebrated Hollywood costume designer Irene, believed to be despondent over Gary Cooper’s death, committed suicide by jumping from her 11th floor room window.

On March 3, 1966, veteran character actor William Frawley was strolling down Hollywood Boulevard after seeing a film when he suffered a major heart attack. His male nurse dragged him to the hotel where he died in the lobby. Contrary to popular belief, Frawley did not live in the hotel at the time. Although Frawley had spent nearly 30 years living in a suite upstairs, he had moved to the nearby El Royale Apartments several months before.

By the late 1960s, the neighborhood had deteriorated, and the hotel became a residence primarily for drug addicts and prostitutes. In 1970, a renovation project converted the hotel into housing for senior citizens; it continues in this capacity today. In 1999, a plaque honoring Griffith was placed in the lobby.

Edith Head – Style Icon

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For millions of American women, Edith Head became the authority on what was chic, what was of the moment, and how to wear it: she was every bit as influential as her fashion editor counterparts in New York City. Edith Head became a celebrity in her own right, known for a rather severe flat-top hairdo, oversized sunglasses, and a reluctance to smile when she knew she was on camera. She was a frequent guest on Art Linkletter’s House Party, and played herself in several films and a memorable episode of “Columbo.”  She also designed the uniforms that were worn for decades by Paramount security guards on the lot. She died two weeks after finishing her last film, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” and left her estate to charity.

The following excerpt is from “Let’s Bring Back”:

EDITH HEAD (1897-1981)

Legendary costume designer, Ms. Head–aka the “Dress Doctor“–was as glamorous as the stars she dressed, and she dressed countless major Old Hollywood stars in some of their most memorable roles. If you loved Grace Kelly’s iconic look in “Rear Window” or Audrey Hepburn‘s lavish wardrobe in “Funny Face,” one of Hollywood’s ultimate fashion movies, take your hat off to Edith.

The winner of eight Oscars (she was nominated for an astonishing thirty-four), Ms. Head also had a heavy appetite for glamour and absolutely heaped it on the stars of “Notorious”, “All About Eve”,  “To Catch a Thief”, “A Place in the Sun”, and over four hundred other films. (“I’ve designed films I’ve never seen,” she once admitted.)

On the flamboyance of the times, Ms. Head once described Old Hollywood as a “Barnum & Bailey World,” filled with gold bathtubs, ermine bathrobes, and film actresses draped in satins and minks. “I caught the flavor and the fever,” she recalled.

Ms. Head’s snippets of advice and witticisms were as closely heeded as those attributed to Coco Chanel, and they remain relevant today:

• “You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.”

• “Life is competition; clothes gird us for the competition.”

• “The cardinal sin is not being badly dressed, but wearing the right thing in the wrong place.”

• “Your dresses should be tight enough to show you’re a woman and loose enough to prove you’re a lady.”

• “Clothes not only can make the woman; they can make her several different women.”

• “I say sacrifice style any day for becomingness.”

Edith Head’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6504 Hollywood Boulevard.

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Banned Books That Shaped America: Fahrenheit 451

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The Library of Congress created an exhibit, “Books that Shaped America,” that explores books that “have had a profound effect on American life.” Many of the books in the exhibit have been banned/challenged.  Give yourself the gift of a beautiful story and read one and them imagine what your life would be like if you were never given that gift.

Fight censorship.

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953

Rather than ban the book about book-banning outright, Venado Middle school in Irvine, CA utilized an expurgated version of the text in which all the “hells” and “damns” were blacked out. Other complaints have said the book went against objectors religious beliefs. The book’s author, Ray Bradbury, died this year.

fahrenheit_451

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920. By the time he was eleven, he had already begun writing his own stories on butcher paper. His family moved fairly frequently, and he graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. He had no further formal education, but he studied on his own at the library and continued to write. For several years, he earned money by selling newspapers on street corners. His first published story was “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma,” which appeared in 1938 in Imagination!, a magazine for amateur writers. In 1942 he was published in Weird Tales, the legendary pulp science-fiction magazine that fostered such luminaries of the genre as H. P. Lovecraft. Bradbury honed his sci-fi sensibility writing for popular television shows, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. He also ventured into screenplay writing (he wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s 1953 film Moby Dick). His book The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950, established his reputation as a leading American writer of science fiction.

In the spring of 1950, while living with his family in a humble home in Venice, California, Bradbury began writing what was to become Fahrenheit 451 on pay-by-the-hour typewriters in the University of California at Los Angeles library basement. He finished the first draft, a shorter version called The Fireman, in just nine days. Following in the futuristic-dustpan tradition of George Orwell’s 1984, Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953 and became Bradbury’s most popular and widely read work of fiction. He produced a stage version of the novel at the Studio Theatre Playhouse in Los Angeles. The seminal French New Wave director François Truffaut also made a critically acclaimed film adaptation in 1967.

Bradbury has received many awards for his writing and has been honored in numerous ways. Most notably, Apollo astronauts named the Dandelion Crater on the moon after his novel Dandelion Wine. In addition to his novels, screenplays, and scripts for television, Bradbury has written two musicals, co-written two “space-age cantatas,” collaborated on an Academy Award–nominated animation short called Icarus Montgolfier Wright, and started his own television series, The Ray Bradbury Theatre. Bradbury, who still lives in California, continues to write and is acknowledged as one of the masters of the science-fiction genre. Although he is recognized primarily for his ideas and sometimes denigrated for his writing style (which some find alternately dry and maudlin), Bradbury nonetheless retains his place among important literary science-fiction talents and visionaries like Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, George Orwell, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick.

Fight all forms of censorship.

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Dining Out For Life – Fogon Cocina Mexicana

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DINE OUT. FIGHT HIV.

Dining Out For Life returns on Thursday, April 25th, 2013 for its amazing 20th year! When you dine at a participating restaurant on this day, a portion of your bill will be donated to Lifelong AIDS Alliance and the fight against illness and hunger in the greater Seattle/King County/Puget Sound area.

Find participating Seattle restaurants HERE. Dining Out For Life is the perfect excuse to grab dinner with friends and family, plan on lunch with colleagues, or simply grab a coffee on your way to work. If you cannot make it out on the 25th or live in an area that is not participating, you can donate online HERE.

This year, I will be at Fogon Cocina Mexicana, the restaurant owned by some really great friends. This is the first year they are participating and they are generously donating 50% of their proceeds from the event. FIFTY PERCENT! That is absolutely amazing. Eating at Fogon will help 20% more than almost any other restaurant that night. Even if you cannot make it to Fogon on the night of the event, you should swing by for some great Mexican food/drinks the next time you are in the neighborhood. Be sure to thank them for their support.

fogon

Here are their details:

Fogon Cocina Mexicana
600 E Pine (Pine and Belmont on Capitol Hill)
Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 320-7777
fogonseattle.com

https://www.facebook.com/fogonseattle
Fogon on Yelp
Fogon on Open Table
If you are in a giving mood, please click on over and sponsor my friend Pete as he rides his bike 545 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles for the AIDS Life Cycle Ride to End AIDS.  You can find out more and donate HERE.
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Marilyn at Home

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Marilyn at home

“My home?” asked Marilyn Monroe. “It will be a place for any friends of mine who are in some kind of trouble. As for me, I just want to be an artist and an actress with integrity.” Throughout her life, Monroe occupied a series of residences, owned no jewelry and counted books, records and a picture of legendary actress Eleonora Duse among her most cherished possessions. Even after attention-getting roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950), she still kept a modest, one-room apartment at the Beverly Carlton Hotel in Beverly Hills. “I’m not interested in money,” she once said. “I just want to be wonderful.”

Vincent Price – Style Icon

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I think my first exposure to Vincent Price was probably the Hawaiian episodes of the Brady Bunch, followed next by the Michael Jackson “Thriller” music video.  I have since made up for the lack of well-rounded knowledge.  I actually have a copy of “The Bad” on this very computer, as well as the original “House on Haunted Hill.”  His career spanned seven decades and he is imitated regularly on Saturday Night Live, 2o years after his death.  Ladies and gentlemen, Vincent Price.  Style Icon. 

NAME: Vincent Price
OCCUPATION: Film Actor
BIRTH DATE: May 27, 1911
DEATH DATE: October 25, 1993
EDUCATION: Yale University, University of London
PLACE OF BIRTH: Saint Louis, Missouri
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California

Best Known For:  American actor Vincent Price starred as the villain in the 1953 film House of Wax, which revitalized the horror genre, and was one of the first films shot in 3D.

Vincent Price was born on May 27, 1911 in St. Louis, Missouri. His acting career began on stage in London in 1935. He also performed with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre. In the 1950s, Price started making horror films,  including House of Wax and The Fly. He later worked with Roger Corman on several films based on Edgar Allan Poe stories. Price died on October 25, 1993.

Sometimes called the “Master of Menace,” actor Vincent Price was born on May 27, 1911, and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. Price was the youngest of four children born to an upper-middle-class family. His father served as the president of a candy company, and he had a cultured upbringing. Price was educated in private schools, and toured Europe at the age of 16. At Yale University, Price studied art history and English. He then traveled to England to pursue the fine arts at University of London.

In 1935, Price landed his first major stage role, playing Prince Albert in a London production of Victoria Regina. The play moved to Broadway, with Helen Hayes as Price’s co-star, and it became a big hit. Before long, Price made his way to the silver screen.

Despite his lasting association with the world of horror, Price started out as a dramatic actor. His tall, lanky frame and distinctive voice lent themselves nicely to character parts. One of Price’s most famous early roles was in the film noir classic Laura (1944) which was directed by Otto Preminger and also starred Gene Tierney. Two years later, he reunited with Tierney for the dramatic thriller Dragonwyck. Price also appeared in some comedies, including 1950′s Champagne for Caesar—one of his favorite film roles.

Price delved into disturbing territory with the 3D hit House of Wax (1953). In the film, he plays a deranged and disfigured artist, who makes wax sculptures using real people. Price also did well with The Fly (1958), a classic science-fiction horror flim about a scientist who has a tragic mishap with a device that he created, as it turns him into a flying insect. In the 1960s, Price appeared in a number of Roger Corman’s low-budget scare-fests. Price also starred in several film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories, including The Masque of the Red Death (1964).

Part of Price’s appeal as a villain was the humor he could inject into these sinister roles. His distinctive voice also contributed to his ability to create tension in films. He spoke in rich, deep tones, which sometimes had an eerie and unsettling quality. Price thought nothing of his famous speech patterns. “To me, I sound like everybody else in Missouri. I think I sound like Harry Truman,” he once said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

One of his most favorite later roles, Price plays an actor who gets his revenge on his critics in Theater of Blood (1973). He voiced the villainous Ratigan in the animated tale The Great Mouse Detective (1986). The following year, Price took a dramatic turn with The Whales of August, playing a Russian paramour to two sisters ( Bette Davis and Lillian Gish).

Price enjoyed success in many arenas outside of cinema; he made numerous television appearances, ranging from The Brady Bunch to the TV series Batman. In the 1980s, he hosted the PBS series Mystery. He also added an ominous air to the Michael Jackson’s 1983 “Thriller” video, by delivering an opening monologue. Price also worked with rocker Alice Cooper.

A lifelong art aficionado, Price wrote several books on his passion. He even served as an art consultant to Sears in the early 1960s, on a line of artworks for sale. A popular lecturer on art, Price also donated some of his art collection to establish the Vincent Price Gallery at East Los Angeles College. Also a devoted foodie, Price co-wrote several cookbooks.

One of Price’s final roles was in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990). In the film, he plays a gentle version of Dr. Frankenstein, who creates a teenage boy (Johnny Depp). Price’s character dies before he finishes his work, leaving the boy with metal scissors for hands.

Around this time, the veteran actor discovered that he had lung cancer. He died of the disease on October 25, 1993, at his Los Angeles home. Predeceased by his third wife, actress Coral Browne, Price was survived by his two children—Vincent Barrett Price, his son from first wife Edith Barrett, and daughter Victoria, from his second marriage to Mary Grant. Victoria Price later wrote a biography on her father. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she described him as “a lovely, sweet man,” who was “larger than life”—a far cry from the villains that Price played on the big screen.

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Shirley Manson – Style Icon

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I am have been fully obsessed with the band Garbage for nearly two decades, in no small part due to Shirley Manson.  I am a sucker for a misfit badass and a fuck-all outsider.  I adore her passion, her vision, her apologetically living on her own terms, her artistry, her charity, and her singing.  I press repeat whenever “Not Your Kind of People” plays in my ears at the gym, it is my not-so-secret anthem as of late.  Ladies and gentlemen, Shirley Manson.  Style Icon.

Shirley_Manson

NAME: Shirley Manson
OCCUPATION: Singer
BIRTH DATE: August 26, 1966 (Age: 46)
EDUCATION: City of Edinburgh Music School
PLACE OF BIRTH: Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Best Known For:  Shirley Manson is a Scottish singer best known as the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band Garbage.

Born on August 26, 1966, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Shirley Manson is best known for her work as the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band Garbage. Before fronting Garbage, Manson played keyboards and sang back-up with Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie, and performed as the lead singer of Angelfish. In 1995, Garbage released its self-titled debut album, which went double platinum due to hits such as “Only Happy When It Rains,” “Stupid Girl” and “Vow.” Manson went on to release four more albums with Garbage, including Not Your Kind of People (2012).

Shirley Manson was born on August 26, 1966, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The musician was the second of three daughters born to John Manson, a geneticist, and Muriel Manson, a former big-band vocalist.

Manson began taking piano lessons at age 7, and her love of music led her to eventually study at the City of Edinburgh Music School. Perhaps music was a refuge for the young girl, who was bullied relentlessly in school. The harassment took its toll; Manson fell into a deep depression and began cutting herself.

In 1904, Manson found an outlet to express herself: She became a member of the band Autumn, and later joined the group Wild Indians. Manson dropped out of high school at age 16, and soon joined the band Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie as a back-up vocalist and keyboardist. She performed with the band until 1992.

Manson joined the band Angelfish as its lead singer, and together they released the EP Suffocate Me in 1993. Though the album failed to produce hits, it did get Manson noticed by Butch Vig, drummer for the band Garbage, when he saw her on MTV. He contacted Manson, who auditioned for Garbage twice before joining the band as its lead singer in 1994.

Garbage’s self-titled debut album in 1995 went double platinum in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia due to hits such as “Only Happy When It Rains,” “Stupid Girl” and “Vow.” Three years later, the band released its second album, Version 2.0, with Manson serving as not only the face and voice of Garbage, but also its primary lyricist. During the band’s two-year tour, Manson modeled for Calvin Klein to promote the album.

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In 1999, Manson co-produced the theme for the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough, starring Pierce Bronson as James Bond, the iconic character created by author Ian Fleming. Garbage’s third album, beautifulgarbage, was released in 2001 to lackluster sales. Infighting between members ensued, and Garbage broke up in 2003. The split didn’t last long, and the band reunited to release its fourth album, Bleed Like Me, in 2005. Led by the hit “Why Do You Love Me,” the album met with international success and, reaching Top 5 in the United States.

The reunion was brief, and the band took a hiatus for several years. During this time, Manson made attempts to create a solo album, but to no avail.

Her label refused to release the album. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Manson revealed, “I had a collection of songs that I thought were really strong. I took them in [and] played them for the record company. They weren’t interested. They told me they were too dark. They wanted me to have international radio hits and ‘be the Annie Lennox of my generation.’ I kid you not; I am quoting directly.”

Manson made her acting debut in 2008, playing cyborg Catherine Weaver on the second season of the show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She returned to Garbage in 2010, when the band returned to the studio to write and record music for its fifth album, Not Your Kind of People, released in 2012.

Manson married Scottish actor Eddie Farrell in 1996. The couple split in 2001 and finalized their divorce in 2003.

In May 2010, Manson married record producer and Garbage sound engineer Billy Bush, who helped produce the 2012 album Not Your Kind of People. They live with their terrier named Veela.

Manson has no children, but that’s by choice. She told the Daily Mail UK, “I just missed that whole baby calling. I feel a lot of women think you’re a freak if you feel like that, and maybe I am strange, I never got that feeling.”

Manson and her husband reside in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.

S and R, Then and Now.

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Today is Valentine’s Day.  I first met my valentine 20 years ago today.  We were both young guys kicking around the city.  I dug through the archives and found the first mention of our meeting and interaction.  So, here is the TRANSCRIPT from that portion of my life:

14 February 1993: Then on Friday evening, I went over to Scotty’s house to go to a party. Everyone was there. I had way too much to drink and then went to QFC to buy more beer.

Back at the party, we drank for a while and then I got talked into going dancing with a guy named Rick and a few others. I went and had a blast. Then we all piled into the car and went back to the party, by this time it must have been at least 4:00 am.

21 February 1993: Last night I went to the Vogue. Rick was there.

22 February 1993: Rick called yesterday. We are going to go out some time this week.

28 February 1993: On Thursday, I went to ReBar with Scotty. We sat out in the parking lot and split a 40. We felt very Bremerton. Then we had a few more once we got inside.
Rick was there, he looked very good as usual.

I went to Ashlee‘s apartment on Saturday and from there we went to the Frontier Room. Somewhere along our way to the Vogue, Ashlee picked up two boys. They’re in a band (who isn’t?). Rick was there.

20 March 1993: Thursday night I was a drunken mess. Rebar should be renamed “ReBlur.”

From then on, there is no more mention of Rick in the archives. Amazing to think that from that brief interaction 20 years ago, we reconnected and have made our relationship into what it is today. It says a lot about timing, I guess.

One of the first gifts I gave Rick was a book of Pablo Neruda‘s poems with this one bookmarked:

Sonnet XVII - Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Here are some of the photos taken over the last few years.

On Valentine’s Day, I quite often think about poems and letters and there are a few favorites that I have remembered over the years.  One being the above poem and another being the many many love letters between the Fitzgeralds.  Zelda Fitzgerald, née Sayre, was F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s great muse and more. He modeled many of his characters after her, and he even included lines in his books that were from letters that Zelda had written him.

The two went on their first date on her 18th birthday. Her family was wary of him, and she wouldn’t marry him until his first novel was actually published. Zelda was still 18 when she wrote this letter to Scott in the spring of 1919:

“Sweetheart,

Please, please don’t be so depressed — We’ll be married soon, and then these lonesome nights will be over forever — Maybe you won’t understand this, but sometimes when I miss you most, it’s hardest to write — and you always know when I make myself — Just the ache of it all — and I can’t tell you.

How can you think deliberately of life without me — If you should die — O Darling — darling Scott — It’d be like going blind. I know I would, too, — I’d have no purpose in life — just a pretty — decoration. Don’t you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered — and I was delivered to you — to be worn — I want you to wear me, like a watch-charm or a buttonhole bouquet — to the world. And then, when we’re alone, I want to help — to know that you can’t do anything without me.

One week after This Side of Paradise appeared in print, Zelda and Scott got married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. They became known as the quintessential Jazz Age couple: beautiful, flashy, with money, and often drunk in public. The year they married, Zelda wrote to Scott:

“I look down the tracks and see you coming — and out of every haze & mist your darling rumpled trouser are hurrying to me — Without you, dearest dearest, I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think — or live — I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. It’s like begging for mercy of a storm or killing Beauty or growing old, without you.

Lover, Lover, Darling — Your Wife”

Doris Duke – Style Icon

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Her art collection, the house she built in Hawaii, her love life, she did everything large. If Susan Sarandon and Lauren Bacall star in movies about your life, you are doing something right. Ladies and gentlemen, Doris Duke. Style Icon.

NAME: Doris Duke
OCCUPATION: Art Collector, Philanthropist
BIRTH DATE: November 22, 1912
DEATH DATE: October 28, 1993
PLACE OF BIRTH: New York, New York
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California

BEST KNOWN FOR: Tobacco heiress Doris Duke was the only child of American tobacco baron, James Duke. When she was born, the press called her the “million dollar baby.”

Doris Duke (November 22, 1912 – October 28, 1993) was an American heiress, horticulturalist, art collector, and philanthropist.

Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon James Buchanan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman, widow of Dr. William Patterson Inman. At his death in 1925, the elder Duke’s will bequeathed the majority of his estate to his wife and daughter,[3] along with $17,000,000, in two separate clauses of the will, to The Duke Endowment he had created in 1924. The total value of the estate was not disclosed, but was estimated variously at $60,000,000 and $100,000,000.

Duke spent her early childhood at Duke Farms, her father’s 3,000-acre (12 km2) estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey. Due to ambiguity in James Duke’s will, a lawsuit was filed to prevent auctions and outright sales of real estate he had owned; in effect, Doris Duke successfully sued her mother and other executors to prevent the sales. One of the pieces of real estate in question was a Manhattan mansion at 1 East 78th Street which later became the home of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

She was presented to society as a debutante in 1930, aged 18, at a ball at Rough Point, the family residence in Newport, Rhode Island. She received large bequests from her father’s will when she turned 21, 25, and 30; she was sometimes referred to as the “world’s richest girl”. Her mother died in 1962, leaving her jewelry and a coat.

Doris Duke – Style Icon.