Catherine Deneuve: The Art of Being Somewhere Else

 

They called her ‘ice queen’, unaware that to portray detachment you require deep passion. From the start, she displayed the tension between vulnerability and control. Catherine Deneuve made a career of letting her beauty distract an audience while she performed from the side.

It is this high-wire act, balancing impatience with serenity, condemnation with acceptance, that led her through the 60s, having little in common with her cohort Brigitte Bardot, a braising blonde having fun in the sun.

Her sensuality was somehow divorced from the corporeal. Never, ever was there to be sweat.

Ghost white and frail, she projected the strength that comes from an ironic intimacy, protecting her from the madding crowd. She rarely laughed aloud, just a slight smile here, a tilt of the head there, just enough to keep her in the scene.

Slim shoulders, pearls, Yves Saint Laurent held her in his clothes, feminine, understated, confident without aggression (how rare), the last to show up at the party and the first to leave, not condescending but distracted.

Never mind the year, the lighting, or the script, when needed, she could make her face a beguiling mask, which always suggested that it wished to be somewhere else.

 

#catherinedeneuve #french #actress #brigittebardot #francoisdorleac #1960s #pop #popular #culture #ianclarke #letsplaysomethingelse

Natalie Wood: Butterfly with Damaged Wings

 

There was often something tentative about her. Not fearful, but uncertain. Playful becomes despondent but then, in a flash, charming. You can feel it in her eyes—those dark eyes that roll emotions so effortlessly, two upturned screens of pain and pleasure.

She ignored her beauty in a way that made her more beautiful, just stroking her hair in place, seemingly confident and caring, yet hesitant, those dark eyes sweeping the room, looking for a way to laugh, to escape. Sometimes a feminine tomboy, then bored of herself, now twirling a dress, a rebel with a cause. But there she is, a million images of her captured at 24 frames a second with James Dean and Steve McQueen and Bob, Ted and Alice.

Consider her mother, Maria Zakharenko: During a film, when 8-year-old Natalie couldn't cry on cue, her mother ripped off a butterfly’s wings to provoke tears. (As an adult, Natalie often wore a butterfly necklace). A 16-year-old Wood was raped by a Hollywood star while her mother waited in a car outside, subsequently telling her to "suck it up". Her mother, O her mother…

There is psychoanalysis, seven days a week, for more than eight years, even stipulating in her film contracts time to attend sessions. The aesthetics of damage.

Terrified of open water, she succumbs. Santa Catalina Island, hugging the California coastline with the endless Pacific rolling behind. In darkness, she drifts beneath and above, not alone for the Garibaldi fish keep close, wrapping her warm in a long, gold winding sheet.

"At night,” she once said, “when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space."

As you leave the movie theatre, a thought occurs, out of nowhere: they say that a butterfly can still float beautifully with damaged wings. How is that possible?

Peter Fonda: You Can Ride but You Can’t Hide

 

It’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. Captain America of 1969. Easy Rider— (the original title? - ‘The Loners’. Not the same vibe. Not at all.)

And there’s Peter Fonda, tall, slim, taciturn, burdened, already laboring under the weight of precognition: he sees his fate, as he does that of his buddy, Billy (Dennis Hopper). And he gleans, throughout their motorcycle voyage, the fate of his generation. You can ride but you can’t hide.

It is this pervading doom—in a biker movie of all places—that becalms Fonda’s performance, raising it to perfection. He need not have made another film, so discreetly did he meld his own being to a narrative. The planes of his face, the wind-swept hair, the billowing, floral-print pullover, it all made sense. This is a complete person. Here, inside this film, forever, is where he belongs.

Easy Rider, even with its twangy rock/folk soundtrack and intimations of freedom, cannot dispel an irony of optimistic malaise.

So there he goes, riding for a lost generation of drugs and war and music, all swirling up in acid-drenched sunshine dreams, or riding a moonlit undiscovered highway, you know the one that takes you far, far beyond the vanishing point.

 

#peterfonda #easyrider #dennishopper #jacknicholson #ianmclarke #1969 #1960a #pop #culture #film

Gore Vidal: The Difference Between Genius & Talent

 

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal didn’t like many people, an attitude which rarely extended to himself. He wrote essays, books, plays and screenplays, though few are read or seen anymore. He said provocative things like "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television,” and "There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices." Things like that.

He revered the U.S. Constitution but was sickened by the country, politicians and people. He lived in Italy for over thirty years.

He called William F. Buckley “a crypto-Nazi”, and Buckley called Vidal “a queer".

Despite his rejection of the gay label, Vidal lived with his male partner, Howard Austen, for 53 years. Gay rights activists said he could have done more to further their cause.

Vidal sued Truman Capote for slander over the accusation that he had once been thrown out of the White House for being drunk, putting his arm around First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and insulting her mother. Capote said of Vidal at the time: "I'm always sad about Gore—very sad that he has to breathe every day."

He wrote that Jacqueline Kennedy was "selfish and self-aggrandizing beyond the usual." Of Bobby Kennedy, he wrote, "Between Bobby's primitive religion and his family's ardent struggle ever upward from Irish bog, he was more than usually skewed, not least by his own homosexual impulses, which, Nureyev once told me, were very much in the air on at least one occasion when they were together."

Reflecting on a long life of letters, controversy, friends and enemies, he confessed, “The only thing I ever really liked to do was go to the movies.”

Oscar Wilde said, "I have put my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.” Sensing familiarity, Gore may have been somewhat uncomfortable with this sentiment.

Unlike Wilde, his life and works cannot be separated. The point of Vidal is his personality—the patrician hauteur, witty and detached, a dandy in aspic/acid, suspended forever between a clever line and bemused compassion.

 

#gorevidal #normanmailer #trumancapote #johnfkennedy #jacquelinekennedy #politics #america #williamfbuckley #1960s #convention #gay #oscarwilde #hollywood

 

 

Marshall McLuhan: Everybody Went ‘Awww’

 

His pomposity was tolerable given the profundity of his theories. Just the way he’d tuck in his chin with a slow wag of the head.  Your poor souls, it said. Professor Marshall McLuhan seemed most comfortable when he spoke and others listened. And what they heard was a brilliant mind trying to make sense of the world of the 1960s and beyond.

He managed to supra-distill a far-reaching theory about communications into one sentence - the medium is the message. And it was… and is.

Gentle performer, public intellectual, bow-tied provocateur, it became hard to know where the performances ended and the promulgations began. More than once he suggested that people took him too seriously (“I don't necessarily agree with everything that I say”), further inflaming jealousies of his academic brethren.

He became a star, compensated and celebrated, a skit actor in a Woody Allen flick. The journalist Tom Wolfe famously wrote, "Suppose he is what he sounds like, the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Pavlov—What if he is right?" The question persists… though the Internet unknowingly bolsters his claims.

Inside the Ivory Towers, those who had once offered obeisance, now bemoaned a belief, perhaps rightly, that his theories were not a testable, repeatable, or practical scientific methodology.

In the final years leading to his death, McLuhan witnessed condemnation and belittlement of his work. But it turns out, for the most part, that he really was right.

"We live in a global village, connected by instantaneous electronic networks." How did he know, so confidently, sixty years (plus) before the World Wide Web?

As an intellectual entrepreneur, he was willing to risk where no tome had gone before. Very rare. To borrow from Kerouac, McLuhan was “like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

 

#marshallmcluhan #universityoftoronto #pierretrudeau #1960s #professor #mediumisthemessage #haroldinnis #university #normanmailer #cbc #canada #media

Nico: The Wayward Beauty of Solitary Confinement

 

“I have been in the highest and the lowest and both places are empty.” - Nico

 

Why even ask—Who is Nico — she that was born Christa Päffgen in Cologne in 1938? Survives the Nazis... Then in Paris. She’s 16 and meets Coco Chanel. Models. Gets bored. Travels to New York City. Studies acting with Lee Strasberg. Talks to Marilyn Monroe.

1959. In Rome. Hello to Frederico Fellini. Gets bit part in La Dolce Vita. Really, who is she?

Back in New York City. 1963. Sings ‘My Funny Valentine’ at the Blue Angel Club. Can barely stay in key, but that makes it better. A determined contralto if you will. Rarely smiles.

Hey, she’s over in Paris. With Serge Gainsborough and then pregnant by Alan Delon. Has a son. Leaves him behind.

Hangs with Brian Jones. He plays, along with Jimmy Page, on her first EP.

Really, how does this happen to one person?

In London, meets Andy Warhol’s friend, then off to New York City again. Calls Andy. Her first line to him. “I only like the food that floats in the wine.” Warhol is thunderstruck.

Nico enters Warhol's Factory and dethrones Edie Sedgwick. Such is life.  Meets Bob Dylan. He gives her a song.

Stars in three Factory films. Andy becomes manager of The Velvet Underground. Says he wants Nico to sing. Member Lou Reed disagrees. Nico sings. She is what happens when the Weimar meets the Haight.

Parts from the Velvets. Makes music of her own. Now to Los Angeles. Beds Jim Morrison. Next morning, Morrison is found naked, dancing on a rooftop. Nico, also naked, is crying in a garden. Lots of drugs. Goes from Jim to Iggy Pop. Interesting progression.

Records music. Takes lovers. Wanders the world. Dies in Ibiza, 1988. Age 49. Today, revered as a Goth pioneer.

Some artists follow a muse; for others, the muse is themselves. It’s an involuntary reaction. Nico lived as she did to stay alive. A soul in solitaire. 

Look closely, her eyes are rimmed with frost, for her beauty comes from the pain you see when a face is frozen by tears.

 

#nico #andywarhol #loureed #jimmorrison #thedoors #iggypop #goth #music #blog #pop #1960s #ChristaPäffgen #leonardcohen #bobdylan #fellini #velvetunderground

Twiggy: Perfectly You

 

Just a wisp. Short and skinny. A boy’s haircut. Awkward poses. Lesley Hornby. A most unlikely fashion model yet perfect for a time and place that loved to smash the parapets. Who wants to be ‘normal’?

Twiggy by name and by nature. O those Margaret Keane eyes. It was her very anomality that made you notice how much fun she was, how different from steely-eyed glamazons glaring from Vogue covers. Fewer pretensions in a Britain too poor for a class war. The candor of her gaze expelled irony. We could join her at the party.

Carnaby Street. She strolls by without a watch, a purse or purpose. Up for the next laugh, celebrating her good fortune, unencumbered and unfettered, swinging now to a future so deeply in love with itself.

And of herself, she said, “I always describe her, 60s Twiggy, as my little friend who sits on my shoulder.” How wonderful to stroll the leafy lanes of life knowing that you have been, all along, indisputably, irrefutably, perfectly, you.

 

#twiggy #lesleyhornby #carnaby street #fashion #1960s #1967 #davidbailey #theboyfriend #documentart #london #davidbowie

Sharon Tate: How to Enter the Mystic

She appears delicate. Her skin, almost translucent. Feminine and maternal. There is an innocence in the deep-set eyes, watchful but wistful, perhaps a playful turn of the lips. We uncover a realism in her persona that makes her noticed. Uncommon. She is unexpectedly nervous.

Her films are forgettable. She needed more time. But her future, and motherhood, ended in a slash of violence decreed by a mentally ill man, trying to raise awareness for his demons.

Her name endures with the crime of her demise. Or does it? There’s more. Others have met terrible exits. Somehow, she’s the fleeting nymph under a diamond sky, dancing unchained from Time. Somehow the crypt has no purchase. It makes little sense. But immortality has nothing to do with material gain. Unveiling that ruse is the first step to entering the mystic.

Perhaps her soul was more powerful than others, far from madding Manson and the broken Polanski. There is no conclusion to her tale. Her film will never read ‘The End’. She always leaves the frame before forfeiting her freedom.

Perhaps people like Sharon Tate hold furtive, flickering candles, wayward ghosts who light the way out of forgotten caverns.

Past is prologue, and prologue just may be that wind-swept bikini-clad woman on a blue-sky Malibu beach, out of touch but never out of reach, leaving no footprints as the pounding white surf pulls her far down the coastline.

 

#sharontate #charlesmanson #romanpolanski #film #hollywood #tarantino #beachboys #crime

Ernest Hemingway: Beneath the Waves

 

“Oh, Jack.” Brett said, “we could have had such a good time together.”

“Yes,” I said. “Isn't it pretty to think so.”

-          Last lines of ‘The Sun Also Rises’

“All stories, if continued far enough, end in death.”

-          Hemingway

Everyone could write like Hemingway. It was simple because his style was simple. But when they tried, there was no magic. Scribes manqué. They had never faced the Big Fear and that was the key.

Hemingway said he followed the iceberg theory whereby most of a story’s meaning is hidden beneath the surface. How he did this has never been determined.

In many of his most compelling tales, if you’re quiet enough, you can hear a mind that’s running off balance, a scattered electricity somewhere, stressed metal that crackles and sparks. There’s a nameless dimension that might flash out of dark corners, unexpected, a tension where there should be peace.

With Ernest Hemingway, cold shadows of Death can suddenly cross the sun of the most benign scene. But you only realize it years later. Things are best when they are clean and well-lighted. Keep away from the shadows. Always. And remember, without death, life would be intolerable.

All the books, the hunting, the accidents, the wives, the drinking, the guns—all of it seemed to mean nothing. He just wanted to stop the pain.

So, he did. A man of action determined to annihilate... action. It all makes sense when you accept that for those who can see beneath the waves, all is darkness.

#ernesthemingway #hemingway #carljung #philosophy #bookstagram #stoicism #marcusaurelius #stoicphilosophy #seneca #books #nietzsche #ernesthemingwayquotes #socrates #poetry #literature #quotes #virginiawoolf #friedrichnietzsche #alanwatts #love #photography #oscarwilde #terencemckenna #dostoevsky #philosopher #sorenkierkegaard #plato #wisdom #aristotle #blog #IanMClarke #letsplaysomethingelse #pop #popular #culture #1960s

Muhammad Ali: People Like That Never Get Knocked Down

Rarely have performative and athletic aptitudes intertwined with such fluency. When we first noticed him, around the Liston fight, we noticed he was different—different in the way an exposed diamond is different from a chunk of cement. It was as if the boxing ring had become a bejeweled pulpit, and the sermons that rang from above held more holy suspense than blood action.

It became obvious—for Muhammad Ali—that boxing was a secondary skill, one that furthered a spiritual quest. He was a seeker for that which  lay far beyond Vegas hotel rooms and ringside misery.

Once called the most famous man on earth, he had a detachment from those who wished him good or ill. Redemption arrived from beyond the roiling crowds and praise and money. If the gloves were cut off, the hands would remain in prayer.

At the end, when the body failed and he could no longer raise his arms, salvation swooned and led him from the Ring. Ali then entered the mystic, that forever sanctified, quiet kingdom where victory and loss are unknown. 

Rest assured, people like that never get knocked down.

#muhammadali #boxing #miketyson #anthonyjoshua #boxinglife #floydmayweather #canelo #tysonfury #mma #ufc #boxingtraining #deontaywilder #boxeo #mannypacquiao #mayweather #caneloalvarez #ggg #knockout #champion #ryangarcia #cassiusclay #boxinghistory #fight #ali #boxer #fitness #thegreatest #boxingnews #fighter #tyson #letsplaysomethingelse

Anna Fallarino: Tales of Pleasure and Pain

 

A crime of the heart?

Zannone. A beautiful Mediterranean island. Italian. Warm waters ebb and flow. Overhead, an azure sky. In the 60s, the Marquis Camillo Casati Stampa di Soncino, or just Casati Stampa, leased the island.

His villa was the scene of endless parties, replete with orgies. There was a 'hidden mirror room' where the marquis and friends would watch sex sessions, many involving his wife, who often swam naked with guests.

His wife. Anna Fallarino, an actress searching for a different stage. Off to Zannone. Lots of lovers. A cache of nude photos. And more and more.

But then, what? Call it love. Massimo Minorenti, student/porn actor, a regular sex partner, captured her heart. And they met off the island—an extremely dangerous adventure.

Rome. August 1970. Enter Casati Stampa with a shotgun. Six shells. Three for Fallarino. Two for Minorenti. And the final one for himself. All gone.

A crime of passion? Hardly. Sexual jealousy is no substitute for a crime of the heart.

Today, Zannone is in ruins. At night, wild sheep sleep under their indigo sheets, unheeding the whispering surf with its tales of painless pleasure.

 

#zannone #casatistampa #annafallarino #sex #1960s #island #italy #marquis #lamarchesa #annaecamillo #MassimoMinorenti #letsplaysomethingelse

Warren Beatty: Never a Dandy in Aspic

 

Strategic sex

You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht

Your hat strategically dipped below one eye

Your scarf it was apricot

You had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself gavotte

And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner

They'd be your partner and

You're so vain.

-        -  Carly Simon

Closer to Narcissus than Priapus, or perhaps neither, because Warren Beatty was strategically vain. He had a discipline matched by temerity and talent. Sexual conquests were guided by pragmatism. Like most enduring film stars, he was self-reverential with a charming detachment.

Beatty had little time for the 1960s zeitgeist. He was never counterculture, always closer to the Rat Pack than Haight-Ashbury. But pure Malibu, no Vegas. By the time of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), he had perfected the character of an inchoate man, burdened by cultural confusion and societal norms. He wanted to belong but lacked an invitation. Unsure, mumbling, Beatty in Shampoo (1975) can’t be redeemed by his face alone—so alone he must stay.

Know when to leave

His personal narrative belongs to America for it’s grounded on the terra firma of independence. No other soil breeds those so hungry for freedom that they risk all to remain untethered. Beatty could act, write, direct and produce. His ambition was puzzling. Was he a new kind of movie star? Carey Grant never attended political conventions.

Then the films began to fail, and he just stopped. Didn’t matter—because he was protected by instinct. He was never a dandy in aspic. You see, anybody can show up; only the chosen know when to leave.

 

 #warrenbeatty #shirleymaclaine #shampoo #bonnieandclyde #movie #star #oscar #hollywood #shampoo #reds #swinger #1960s #pop #culture  

 

Donyale Luna: Behind Every Great Face is a Greater Spirit

 

Born Peggy Ann Freeman (1945-79), in Detroit. Later, by her own hand, she becomes Donyale George Tyger Luna. 6’2”. Slim. Her parents married and divorced on four separate occasions. In January 1965, her mother fatally shot her father in self-defense. Luna stayed away.

First Black model to appear on the covers of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar—although Harper’s likened her to a Masai warrior. A supermodel before the term was born.

She said: “I wasn’t accepted because I talked funny, I looked funny, and I was a weirdo to everyone. I grew up realizing I was strange.”

Sometimes, she told people she was Polynesian or Mexican. Some thought she was Indian. Whatever they wanted her to be… She could wear colored contacts and once expressed a desire to be white, blonde, and blue-eyed. Did it really matter? Never a shapeshifter because she always controlled the light.

She palled around with Andy Warhol, Otto Preminger, Salvador Dali and Federico Fellini. Restless, pursued by demons from long ago and far away.

She joked that her home was in the cosmos, hence ‘Luna’. Possible, for her beauty was untethered and somehow intellectually seductive. Very rare. Great photographers know that beauty itself is banal and strictly limited—just a matter of proportions: behind every great face there must be a greater spirit.

Marriage failed, a nervous breakdown, so off to swinging London as 1966 got underway. Then her most famous photo, a cover for British Vogue. Her pose was a riff on Picasso’s ocular-centric portraiture. One of Luna’s eyes playfully peers from between her fingers.

Eccentric, even for a model, she spoke of her love for LSD and had a habit of not wearing shoes while walking on city streets.

The end came from drugs. Too many, too soon. Luna is gone.

When asked in 1966 about what her success might mean for other people of color, she said, “If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, Negroes, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad.” She thought for a moment. “I couldn't care less.”  Cosmic for sure—because the farther up you go in the sky, all of the Earth looks blue.

 

#donyaleluna #model #vogue  #harpers #beatles #rollingstones #1960s #fashion #andywarhol #film

Dennis Hopper: An Artist Knows Who to Trust

 

"The cocaine problem in the United States is really because of me. There was no cocaine before Easy Rider on the street. After Easy Rider, it was everywhere". – Dennis Hopper

“No other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper". - Matthew Hays. film critic

 

Dennis Hopper was such a good actor that you always assumed he wasn’t acting. That’s an extremely rare accomplishment.

In his greatest role, Frank, in Blue Velvet, he presents mental illness as empowering components of his personality, traits that render him forceful and attractive and violent. It’s a seamless performance. Sure, we say, that’s Hopper. But it’s not. He became a go-to-actor for offbeat roles which, to work, can only be played by so-called ordinary people. Yes, the best comedians are sad and serious. Life works in opposites. It always has.

In his most famous role, Billy, in Easy Rider, he detaches himself from Earth, Camus’ stranger on a motorcycle, tripping the light fantastic, burdened with worry but unencumbered by fear. With hair blowin’ in the wind, we motor with Hopper down dark halls of hippie existentialism. No flowers. No peace. No music. Fade to black.

He long mourned his buddy James Dean. He got sick on drugs and booze. He had five wives—with one marriage lasting eight days. Unemployable. Erratic. Dennis the Menace. Somehow his anger was transmuted to art—without artifice. He stumbled from the fifth dimension, torn and frayed but unbowed. He was what he was. 

He held a tremulous flame. Dennis Hopper enslaved his demons, kept them in chains, to be visited now and then, as they hunkered in their dungeons, waiting for a reprieve that never came. Because artists always know who to trust.

#dennishopper #easyrider #peterfonda #jacknicholson #michellephillips #motorcycle #1960s #james dean #rebelwithoutacause #bluevelvet #davidlynch

Nina Van Pallandt: Detachment is Another Way of Belonging

 

The beauty of detachment

Born 1934. At first it she was Nina Magdelena Møller. From Denmark. Then, after marrying Frederik Jan Gustav Floris, Baron van Pallandt, she became Nina, Baroness van Pallandt… or just Nina Van Pallandt. They formed an unlikely singing duo, Nina & Frederik. Sang folk music, including calypso (!?). Had chart success. Divorced. Nina became a film star. Frederick was murdered in a drug deal.

The future is calling me...

With Nina van Pallandt, the ciphers don’t line up, but still the lock opens. A mystery. We have an attractive woman who is way too European for the 1960s—and the 1960s loved all things European—or thought it did. Somehow, with that elegant poise, Teutonic mannerisms, and a royal title, maybe we understand the cultural confusion. But her awkwardness bespeaks knowledge, not nativity. It’s odd, but there’s an American vibe coming from her attitude, from the way she half-regards a threat; a rebellious nature not found down the cold corridors of the Danish Queens. Her spirit was not indolent.

Nina, a free spirit on a windy beach, the Pacific Ocean frames her figure. And that’s why Robert Altman chose her for The Long Goodbye, for the character Eileen Wade, because of her organic, outsider status. That slight, indeterminate accent that lets you know she’s a survivor. 'Yes', we feel,' she belongs in Malibu much more than Barbie'. A 1960s beach bunny wouldn’t have worked. Beauty isn’t symmetrical; it’s the appearance of symmetry. Meet Nina.

Eileen Wade. It’s her greatest role unless you count the earlier one—as a Danish folk singer married to a royal soon-to-be drug smuggler. Nina Van Pallandt proves that detachment is just another way of belonging.

#ninavanpallandt #frederick #singer #actress #actor #thelonggoodbye #robertaltman #elliotgould #film #popular #pop #culture #ianmclarke #raymondchandler #cliffordirving #howardhughes #ibizia

Diana Rigg: True to Her Own Spirit

In the 1960s, she looked like smart fun. Not so much sensual as kinetic... C’mon, catch up, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever... The promise of fresh excitement. Always on her way to somewhere else. Bright but unburdened. Diana Rigg came to prominence with a playful smirk that spread to a smile; with an independence free from rancor; with delicate femininity that could smash glass. 

Her role as Emma Peel in the TV series The Avengers gave her firm footing. Somehow her Shakespearean training was perfect for a program that embraced theatre of the absurd, and sexual flirtation, often in equal measure. 

 It was said she squandered her fame on the theatre. No Bond girl ever tramped by limelight. But her spirit demanded independence. She would not subject herself to Hollywood strictures. Cosmetic surgery not required—for the theatre holds a mirror to the audience, not the performers. So, for the screen, it was bit parts to pay the bills. 

 Euripides, author of Medea, in which she played her greatest role, wrote, “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” Diana Rigg was true to her own spirit. Her beauty is what that looks like.

#dianarigg #theavengers #patrickmacnee #bbc #1960s #emmapeel #johnsteed #popart #popculture #gameofthronwa

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: Cultured Queen of Branding

 

 

Gertrude Stein, reflecting on her childhood home in Oakland, California, famously said, ‘There is no there there’. When considering Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, that quote seems somewhat applicable.

Biographers have had a tough time with Jackie. She was manipulative and false; she was genuine and kind; she demonstrated women’s empowerment; she was a submissive cuckquean; she was little more than a hat rack; she was a style icon.

Where is the 'there'?

It’s this Zelig-like quality that perpetuates her persona. For millions of people, she is whatever they want(ed) her to be at any given moment. When she married John Kennedy in 1953, she knew the score. But it was worth the ride. The money, fame, and glitz. Then Dallas. And then a slow, five-year reinvention before shacking with Aristotle Onassis and big bucks.

She was vilified for selling out, for stamping on love with lucre, but the critics
undervalued her survival instincts. She needed that Fifth Avenue apartment to support her brand—for the brand was everything; it had been from the beginning. No one ever accused Jacqueline Onassis of being dumb.

She was the cultured Queen of Branding, years ahead of her time. It’s not so much what you do; it’s how you do nothing …because for such geniuses, for such existential sirens, there really is—and never will be—no there there.

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Ian Fleming: Master of the Sex/Death Ratio

 

Author Ian Fleming (1908-64) lived with the insouciance and bad behaviour reserved for those who have resigned themselves to an early death. Menefreghismo is an Italian noun which connotes one’s approach to life; it translates– roughly – as ‘don’t give a shit’. It’s hard to discern what held Fleming’s interest, but he certainly lived with a free form, unbridled, if not erotic, passion that seems awkward to a modern sensibility.

And that’s where James Bond comes in. Menefreghismo.

Ursula Andress & the ratio

Although about one half of the Bond novels were published in the 1960s, their genealogical roots are embedded in 50’s, and even earlier. That’s why a female character can be named ‘Pussy Galore’. Not a big deal at the time.

And that’s why James Bond, in books and films, was successful. Fleming knew how to balance the critical sex/death ratio like few authors before—or since. He was so good at it—and it is the ratio that gives the early films their life. When, later, the ratio became unstable, so began the era of Bad Bonds.

The ratio is based on the notion that the proximity of death heightens sexual tension—and, importantly, vice-versa. That’s one reason why you will never see a child in a Bond film—for a child is the strongest representation of Life we have. It just messes with the balance.

The ratio is based on post-WW II notions of masculinity and femininity. Small wonder Fleming was among John F. Kennedy's favorite authors. Times change. JB (James Bond) got the JB (Jason Bourne) reboot in Casino Royale (2006). Now it was mostly about hand-to-hand fighting, lightning cuts, and constant close-ups. However, the ratio did appear, however warily, when needed.

Ian Fleming died as he lived, fully aware that the ratio was unlivable. But longevity was never the point for Fleming, or Bond. It was to greet Death at his own door, look in his eyes, and say, ‘Your move’.

 

#ianfleming #jamesbond #ursulaandress #drno #diamondsareforever #danielcraig #seanconnery #1960s #popculture #popularculture #film #casinoroyale

Elizabeth Taylor: The Sublime Performance of Her Face

 

Perhaps it is the sublime performance of her face. Her perfect nose… violet/blue eyes that turn whatever color you want. Beauty is an accident that never waits to happen.

She remains a movie star, a celluloid daemon that only asks for light to live. We see her as a child, already fluent with assumed attitudes and false fronts. Then, a young woman, soon to mount the golden throne, unassailable, Cleopatra-like, the greatest of them all.

Then the illness, the awards, the husbands, the lovers—all that is demanded by a wayward congregation, always on tiptoes, eyes above the crowd, praying for just a glimpse of the Queen as she enters a long, dark limousine.

A better actor than accredited by critics, her supernova publicity was too blinding to clearly see a performance. Her fame exceeded skill, always a dangerous condition, but one that she embraced, selling toiletries one day, AIDS awareness the next.

For few ever had such a clinical understanding of Hollywood as Elizabeth Taylor. It used her, she used it. Simple, honest, and as coarse as the Hollywood sign itself.

Gratefully, movie stars cannot be manufactured. There are too many unknowns that must intertwine.  The magic remains with the magician. Those most committed to celestial heights embrace an entrepreneurial spiritualism. They just seem to know what to sell, when, and to whom.

Somehow, against all odds, Elizabeth Taylor discovered how to fall deeply and passionately in love with herself.

 

#elizabethtaylor #richardburton #cleopatra #miketodd #1960s #popculture #moviestar #michaeljackson 

 

Jane Fonda: Redeemed by Resilience

 

“Well, there's this man... and I don't know exactly what he wants out of me, or anything like that. But he took care of me… When you're used to being lonely and somebody comes in...and moves that around, it's sort of scary I guess…I want to...manipulate him. In all the ways that I can manipulate people. I mean, it's easy to manipulate men. Right?”

-          Dialogue from ‘Klute’ (1971)

She was never robust, but had a hardness about her, as if Life, early on, had delivered low blows…. a mother’s suicide, an industry that celebrated beauty above brains… You could hear it in her sharp delivery, see it in her curt smiles. Perhaps Jane Fonda’s sublimated pain compelled her – professionally and personally – to haphazard choices.

We have a sex queen in Barbarella (1968) evolving into a political activist who poses in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun unit in Hanoi (1972). Just four years apart... Aside from an extremely private pursuit of integrity, she’s to be admired more for diligence than condemned for dreadful photo ops.

It comes as little surprise that her greatest role is of an emotionally damaged prostitute, striving to escape ‘the life’. The film Klute (1971) seems tailormade for someone detaching from the corporeal and sliding into a more cosmic vibe, the world of the mind where people can’t find you.  Jane Fonda always hummed with a West Coast 60s ethos…but never a hippy like brother Peter. There was a drive to escape herself, to transition the entertainer, the dancing bear, to Citizen Jane, to be taken seriously, damn it.

And she was. Jane Fonda was redeemed by her resilience. She never let up. Even her exercise videos attest to a discipline unknown by many. Relaxation is not in her lexicon.  She always had more angular lines than curves. And it was this emotional awkwardness that empowered her performances. Her difficulty in expressing compassion and understanding did indeed look real.

Again, from Klute.“You make a man think that he's accepted. It's all just a great big game to you. You're all obviously too lazy and too warped to do anything meaningful with your life, so you prey upon the sexual fantasies of others. I'm sure it comes as no great surprise to you when I say that...there are little corners in everyone which were better off left alone. Little sicknesses, weaknesses, which should never be exposed. That's your stock in trade, isn't it, a man's weakness? I was never really fully aware of mine...until you brought them out.”

In her best roles, perhaps in her life, Jane Fonda reveals the difficulty of emotional honesty. And the camera just loves emotional honesty. It’s so easy to fake.

#janefonda #klute #donaldsutherland #peterfonda #1960s #cult #film #rogervadim #barbarella #vietnam #film #review #pop #culture