Review (Nonfiction) of 'The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood'

The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood by Diana McLellan:

How was I supposed to resist a title like that?

This is the allegedly true, research-based story of Hollywood's two most famous LGBTQIA actresses of the 1930s, Ms. Greta Garbo and Ms. Marlene Dietrich. Neither woman self-identified as lesbian, bisexual, or pansexual during her lifetime, so I have to state for the record that it's a bit unfair to label them after their deaths, when they lived in a very different world than we do now. However, there is ample evidence to support that both women had ongoing romantic relationships with women and men. Dietrich's affairs seem to fit the bi/pan label more closely - she didn't seem to have much of a preference either way - while Garbo seems to have had a preference for women over men.

And yes, it does appear that at one point, they had a romantic relationship with each other.

Both are name-checked in Madonna's iconic hit "Vogue," but what did I really know about Dietrich and Garbo, whose best films were made in the 1930s, when my grandmothers were little girls? I'd read a little about Dietrich's sexy, androgynous, ice-blonde persona in film studies and media studies books and articles over the years. I don't think I've ever seen one of her movies.

Dietrich in 1933. Creative Commons image from the German Federal Archives

Dietrich, who was born in Germany, is perhaps best remembered for the movie The Blue Angel. In it, she plays a character named Lola Lola who seduces a professor. In the English-language version, she performs a song called "Falling in Love Again," which became her signature song. Her first name is a contraction of the first name she was given at birth, Marie Magdalene. She died in 1992.

Garbo in 1924. Public domain image. 

I know I've seen at least one Greta Garbo movie on the big screen - Anna Karenina (not the silent version, but the talkie), when I was a student at St. Mary's. I enjoyed it. Greta Garbo was born in Sweden. In addition to playing the title role in Anna Karenina, she is also known for her film Camille, based on the play by Alexandre Dumas fils. In her personal life, she was known for the great deal of secrecy around her, to the point that she was somewhat reclusive in her later years in New York City. She died in 1990.

According to The American Women's Almanac, Louise Brooks said about Garbo, "She made a pass at me." About Brooks, the silent film star who popularized the "bob" hairstyle for women, Wikipedia says she made friends with lesbian and bisexual women, and experimented sexually with them - including Garbo - but did not consider herself to be lesbian or bisexual.

Louise Brooks. U.S. Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection. No known restrictions on image usage rights

Some of the other fascinating characters in Garbo and Dietrich's "sewing circle," according to this book, include:

Emma Goldman: Goldman can perhaps be considered the founder of the "sewing circle" of lesbian and bisexual women in the U.S. theater and film communities. She was an ethnic Jewish woman born in what is now part of Lithuania, but which at the time was part of the Russian Empire.

Goldman in 1886. Public domain image

Moving to the U.S., she was an editor and orator whose causes included anarchy, reproductive rights, and gay and lesbian rights. She was said to have inspired the man who assassinated U.S. President William McKinley, although it was not her intention to do so. Goldman was strong critic of marriage and advocate of free love, and among her many lovers was, allegedly, Alla Nazimova.

Alla Nazimova: Born Miriam Leventon in Yalta, Crimea - the province that only a few weeks ago was taken over by Russia, although legally speaking it is part of Ukraine - the Jewish woman emigrated to the United States, where she became a theatrical and film actress. She is alleged to have had sexual relationships with a number of women, including Goldman, Eva La Galliene, Mercedes de Acosta, and Oscar Wilde's niece Dolly.

Nazimova, photographed by Maurice Goldberg in 1922. Public domain

She appeared in the silent-film version of Camille opposite Rudolph Valentino and possibly carried on affairs with both Valentino's first wife and his second wife, Natacha Rambova. Nazimova was married to two men, resulting in two divorces. Toward the end of her life, her domestic partner was a woman named Glesca Marshall.

Nazimova was also known for generously helping other women launch their acting careers. Among the women she helped to get started in film was Anna May Wong. Nazimova continued working throughout her life. She appeared with a young Montgomery Clift - they played mother and son - in a stage play titled The Mother.

Natacha Rambova: Despite her Russian name, which she gave herself during her years as a ballerina, Rambova was an American of Irish descent. She worked on the set of Camille as a set and costume designer. She served as art director on a number of Hollywood productions, and later had some success as a fashion designer. She may or may not have been bisexual - Valentino was almost certainly bisexual or, perhaps, preferred men to women and was actually gay. Being a gay male was considered more taboo than being a lesbian or bisexual women, even in the relatively forgiving climate of the Hollywood Gilded Age.

Valentino and Rambova. Thought to be in the public domain; photographer unknown

What can be said with certainty about Rambova is that she was a spiritualist. McLellan's research indicated to her that later in her life, Greta Garbo sought out Rambova for seances. Garbo had remained friendly with Ramon Novarro, the Mexican-American actor who'd starred with her in Mata Hari. Novarro was friends with Rambova, and Garbo asked Novarro to arrange for her to meet Rambova for a seance. Novarro invited a crowd, though, which spooked Garbo, and she ran off without ever meeting Rambova.

Novarro, photographed by Carl Van Vechten. The Library of Congress believes this image is in the public domain

That Novarro and Valentino were lovers is a bit of an old Hollywood legend. The legend goes that Valentino, famously well-endowed, gave Novarro a sex toy modeled after Valentino's own privates. Sadly, Novarro lost his life in 1968. He let two men into his home for the purpose of having sex with them, but they mistakenly believed he was hiding a large sum of money in the home. They beat and tortured him for hours trying to get him to say where the money was hidden, but he had none. They left him for dead, taking only $20 with them. He choked to death on his own blood as a result of the beating, probably unconscious. A Hollywood urban legend held that Novarro had choked to death as a result of Valentino's gift being forced down his throat, but this has no basis in fact.

Fun Rambova fact: In the Ken Russell film Valentino, she was played by Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas.

Eva La Galliene: Unlike the women mentioned above, La Galliene was never "in the closet." She lived openly as a lesbian during her own lifetime. La Galliene was an English theatrical actress whose mother was a Danish journalist. Her father was a French poet. La Galliene is said to have carried on a 5-year affair with Mercedes de Acosta.

La Galliene's acting credits include playing the White Queen in the 1955 TV-movie version of Alice in Wonderland.

Mercedes de Acosta: de Acosta was an American poet, playwright, and novelist of Spanish and Cuban descent. She was one of Garbo's closest friends and, according to McLellan, carried on romantic relationships with both Garbo and Dietrich. Her lovers were said to include the dancer Isadora Duncan (who died tragically at age 50 when her long, flowing scarf became entangled in the spokes and rear axle of the car in which she was a passenger), Nazimova, La Galliene, Ona Munson (best known for playing the madame Belle Watling in Gone With the Wind), and possibly Alice B. Toklas.

Mercedes de Acosta. Public domain image

Among de Acosta's works for the stage included Jehanne de Arc (Joan of Arc). Eva La Galliene played the heroine onstage, but de Acosta hoped a filmed version would be a vehicle for Garbo. The film never materialized, however. She fell severely out of Garbo's favor, in part due to the behind-the-scenes manipulations of Salka Viertel and in part due to publishing a memoir that talked about Garbo. The memoir never explicitly referred to lesbian relationships, but Garbo was so protective of her privacy, even a veiled memoir was too much of a violation.

Salka Viertel: A Jewish woman born in what is now Ukraine, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Viertel was the screenwriter who co-wrote Garbo's films Queen Christina and Anna Karenina. She was a close friend of Garbo's and, according to McLellan, schemed to keep Garbo and de Acosta apart as much as possible. One of her sons married Deborah Kerr, the star of From Here to Eternity.

Tallulah Bankhead: The daughter of a respectable Southern politician who eventually served as the U.S. Speaker of the House, Tallulah never used the word "bisexual," but she did describe herself as "ambisextrous." She started modeling at age 15. Her theatrical career began on London's West End, and then she made the jump to the U.S. stage. She originated the role of Sabina in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (another play that featured the young Monty Clift).

Bankhead, photographed by Carl Van Vechten

Bankhead's lovers were said to have included Garbo, Dietrich, de Acosta, Nazimova, and La Galliene, as well as Billie Holiday and Hattie McDaniel (who played Mammy in Gone With the Wind and was the first African-American actress to win an Academy Award, for that role).

Hattie McDaniel, studio publicity photo. Photographer unknown. Public domain

Reportedly, Bankhead was David O. Selznik's first choice to play Scarlett O'Hara, but she was considered too old to play the character at the age of 36. The flamboyant, smoky-voiced Bankhead played a character called Black Widow in a 1967 episode of Batman, and Cruella de Ville is said to have been based on a caricature of her. After her stage and film career wound down, she became widely known as a radio show host.

As you can probably tell, I found this book absolutely fascinating. You'll probably enjoy it if you're interested in Old Hollywood history, women's history, and/or LGBTQIA history. Some of McLellan's sources are a bit dubious, but that's the nature of the beast when you're trying to uncover the history of something that was deliberately kept hidden. As the World War II era gave way to the 1950s, people in Hollywood had to worry about being associated with Communism. That gave them another reason to obscure and hide some of their past relationships, as well as the cultural swing that was becoming even more repressive of gay, lesbian, and bisexual sexuality. The 1950s were the golden age of the closet.

I bought this book with my own funds from Barnes and Noble and read it on my Nook. I was not obligated in any way to review this book. Here is the link: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/girls-diana-mclellan/1114477109

I'm not a Barnes and Noble affiliate. If you shop there, I don't get anything but the satisfaction of supporting a brick-and-mortar bookshop.

This is an affiliate link:

Hollywood Classics Title Index to All Movies Reviewed in Books 1 - 24 by John Howard Reid. $0.99 from Smashwords.com
Another essential book for a film buff's library, this one is packed with information and reviews. Some of the entries are quite extensive. JHR provides all the information you need, including complete cast and production staff. I find JHR's information invaluable. I like to read not only who acted in a movie, but who made it, both top-billed and lesser mortals. -- Ross Adams in DRESS CIRCLE mag.

Oh How Pinteresting (OHP): Vintage/Black and White

Happy Wednesday! Let's link up with Michelle at TheVintageApple.com for Oh, How Pinteresting.



Pinterest has a large collection of pictures of Marilyn Monroe reading; she read often. I made a this post with just some of those images.



I'm glad Tennessee Williams won a Pulitzer for Streetcar and not Suddenly Last Summer. I'm still somewhat traumatized by the latter. Did you know Brando was native to Omaha, Nebraska?

Yesterday was Jack Kerouac's birthday. Kerouac desperately wanted Marlon Brando to play the lead in a movie version of On the Road, but it never happened. You can read Kerouac's letter here.



This is a gorgeous screencap from From Here to Eternity: Montgomery Clift (another native Nebraskan, btw) as Prewitt, doing what Prew does best, and Donna Reed as Lorene, the ultimate ride-or-die chick, down for whatever. Donna Reed has the best costumes in this movie - especially the party dress she's wearing when Prew first sees her at the club. Gorgeous.



The English actress Lily Elsie.



Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well.



Okay, this one's not vintage. It's just a lovely image from Alex O'Hurley's Sexy Man Monday posts.

A Ritual For Celebrating Monty Clift's Birthday

Montgomery Clift was born on October 17, 1920, along with his sister Ethel; this should be a bisexual national holiday. There should be a ritual for celebrating said holiday. It should go something like this. (It totally does not matter if you are a guy or a woman.)

Breakfast: Smoke half a pack of unfiltered Camels from a Tiffany cigarette holder, then work on your abs. 

Watch From Here to Eternity. Get angry at Burt Lancaster for getting top billing. 

Recite "A man don't go his own way, he's nothing" along with Prewitt. 

Cry when Maggio dies, then drink a tumbler of Scotch, neat. 

After the movie, go four rounds in the boxing ring with your trainer. Take a long shower. Admire yourself in the mirror; you are the damned prettiest thing that ever lived. 

Lunch: 12 ounces of raw steak. 

Throw a party in your apartment. Make out with the nearest girl who looks vaguely like Elizabeth Taylor. Call her Bessie Mae, assure her that if you were going to marry anything it would be her, then wrestle her to the ground and bite her shoulder. 

Single-handedly finish off that fifth of Scotch and get out your Sinatra records. 

Dinner: Snort lines of finely-crushed Seconal off the shaved chest of a blond hustler who vaguely resembles a young Marlon Brando, all the while thinking that Brando is a hammy over-actor and he's starting to get love handles. 

Make out with said blond hustler. Abandon him to discuss the work of Anton Chekhov with your friends; help them finish off a bottle of champagne, the actual French stuff. If you lapse into speaking French, no one will mind.  

Pass out face-down on the carpet; your assistant will carry you to bed.

Listen, I'm being facetious. This is what I think Old Hollywood people did in the 1950s. I'm not advocating that you abuse alcohol or other drugs. 

10 Things You Might Not Know About Montgomery Clift

Ten things you might not know about Montgomery Clift, the devastatingly handsome and intense actor who starred in classics like From Here to Eternity and A Place in the Sun:

1. His two favorite words were "fuck" and "shit."

2. It drove his mother crazy when he wore t-shirts or khakis. She wanted him dressed like a gentleman at all times.



3. Born in Omaha but raised largely in Europe, he spoke French and German fluently, and spoke with an English accent as a young man.

4. He wanted to play Hamlet and could recite most of Shakespeare's play from memory - but he never actually starred in a production of it.

5. To prepare for Lonelyhearts, he read every novel Nathanael West had written.

6. He excelled at skiing and tennis.

7. His favorite singer was Ella Fitzgerald.



8. The playwright he most admired was Anton Chekhov.

9. He slept naked and had a tendency to sleepwalk, leading to some awkward nights in hotels.

10. Even though he thought James Dean was "weird" and consciously imitating Monty himself, he was terribly upset when told that Dean had died.

     -->  

Patricia Bosworth's book is an intense and, at times, disturbing biography. It's quite appropriate that Clift played Freud, since his life was a psychoanalyst's dream come true. He was unusually close with his twin sister Ethel and brother Brooks. He had wild mood swings, exacerbated by alcohol and drug abuse and by health problems, including a thyroid disorder. He could be sweet, tender and childlike one minute and then vicious (especially with words) the next. He was as insecure as he was gorgeous.



In real life, I probably wouldn't have liked him very much. But I'll never have to worry about that, because he died when my parents were 13 and 14. In my imagination, I'd like to do things with him that were almost certainly illegal in the 1950s.

That's the wonderful thing about movies - they capture beautiful people when they are young, beautiful and intensely talented. There will never be a time when people will say "Montgomery Clift was not a good actor." In fact, he was one of the best ever.

Coffee Talk Week 2: Answer. Post. Link Up.

I finally gave in and joined Tumblr. Do you Tumble? Join me there.


Natalie Blair's blog, simply called Natalie Blair, is one of my new fave stalking reading grounds. On some things, we're similar, and on other things we're really different. I like that. I don't mind that she doesn't like The Hunger Games. No one who has any kind of human empathy likes it when Rue dies. (My uncle and I were just talking about it at brunch on Sunday.) I get that.

You should read Natalie's post about why she got an Arabic tattoo. P.S. Anybody who would judge a person for having a tattoo in Arabic is kind of a shit.

1. What's your favorite kind of coffee?

I like a hot, flavored coffee, or a plain coffee with a French vanilla or hazelnut creamer. I'm not opposed to whipped cream.



2. What is your dream laptop/computer? What are you using right now?

I still miss the mini-HP that my hubby tried to fix and ended up destroying. It was tiny. I could take it everywhere. Now I'm using a bigger HP laptop, a Pavilion g6. Not so easily portable.

3. Have you ever regretted a blog post?

Yeah - No More Content Warning. I thought I could get rid of my content warning, but apparently Google won't let me. I'm too dirty for my own good.

4. What is your favorite book?

That is not a fair question to ask a certified book nerd.

I'm a little obsessed with James Jones right now, but could I possibly pick a favorite between From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line and Whistle? No - I love them all. You can't break up a trilogy.

(A related obsession - Montgomery Clift.)

Seriously, I have a new favorite all the time, but if I were stranded on a desert island, I really hope I'd have Wuthering Heights. The Scarlet Letter is another one of my all-time favorites, and so is Fahrenheit 451.

5. What's in your bag?

Ugh, my bag. I'm a backpack-purse girl, 'cause my mini-HP used to fit in one. One day hubby and I were at the mall, and for some reason we went into Zumiez. I think we are the oldest people who have ever been in a Zumiez. (I'm a wannabe surfer, not a wannabe snowboarder/skater, anyway.) That's where I saw this rainbow-striped backpack purse I thought was really cool (I might have been a little drunk - we might have just come from Granite City). So I got it, but it turns out to be way bigger than I actually want or need.

So I'm not loving my current bag.

It's mostly full of empty space, but also a butterfly change purse, some i.d. and my debit card, $13 cash (not much of a cash person), my writer business cards, cherry Chapstick, sugar cookie lip gloss, a lipstick (but it's not really any good to me until I get a lip liner that matches - it's a lavender-ish neutral), pens and a list of books to look out for at next week's library used book sale.

https://amzn.to/467d0Kj - this is an affiliate link

'From Here to Eternity' Backstory + My 'Killers' Video

So I'm reading Montgomery Clift by Patricia Bosworth. Beautiful man, very talented in short bursts. Really insecure. Lots of addictions, way too much alcohol. Oddly close relationships with his twin sister and "Irish twin" brother. A Freudian wet dream, really. He had a weird thing about lying and crawling on floors, as if he preferred not to stand up (which you see Perce doing in The Misfits, and it works wonderfully for that character).


My favorite parts of this book are the parts with James Jones, regarding the filming of From Here to Eternity in 1953. (I've finished reading The Thin Red Line and started Whistle. I'm only on page 26 and already about to cry because Bobby Prell - the third avatar of Robert E. Lee Prewitt - is so gravely wounded.)

Jones, Clift and Frank Sinatra got along really well. Bosworth quotes an unnamed press agent as having said, "Jones looked like a nightclub bouncer with his thick neck and broken face. And there's this edgy cocky little wop Sinatra always spoilin' for a fight, and then Monty who managed to radiate class and high standards even when he was pissing in the gutter." Sorry for the ethnic insult, but that's the exact quote.

Jones was quoted as saying, "He'd come crawling down the fire escape, agile as a monkey, and then swing into my room. He'd be brandishing a bottle of Scotch and a pot of espresso. First time I ever tasted that kinda coffee. I hated it, but I drank it 'cause Monty did...He was an odd man, but I felt a strange rapport with him while we were making the movie."

Bosworth writes, "Driving out of Los Angeles Jones talked sotto voce to Jeanne [Green; she and her husband Fred were Clift's close friends] about Monty, saying he found him strange and asking if he was a homosexual. Jeanne said, 'I got very prim and said I had no idea. With that Jones suddenly confided, "I would have had an affair with him but he never asked me." ' "

Given that many James Jones characters are sexual opportunists willing to make love to whoever happens to be at hand, it's not too surprising that James was, most likely, bisexual. Just one more reason for me to feel affinity for the late author.

I don't share his dislike of espresso, though.

Clift was not fond of Burt Lancaster, and called him a bad actor behind his back. (Jim Caviezel and Sean Penn, playing essentially the same characters in The Thin Red Line, did not get along particularly well either. Must be a Prewitt-Warden/Witt-Welsh thing.) He was upset that Lancaster got first billing. He didn't get along with Marlon Brando, either, and he thought James Dean was just "weird." Of course, Dean was a very conscious imitator of both Clift and Brando.

The role of Adam in East of Eden (the "good" brother, not the one James Dean played) is one that Clift turned down. He was also offered a part in a production of Fahrenheit 451; he could have made a really great Montag. (When I first read 451 in middle school, I imagined that Montag was really old - I was surprised when I re-reread it earlier this year that Montag was 30- younger than I am now!)


Incidentally, I made this one-minute video with Ava Gardner stills from The Killers today.


Ava Gardner was married to Frank Sinatra during the filming of From Here to Eternity. Bosworth wrote,   "[Sinatra] seemed obsessed with [Gardner] - she had left him, unable to cope with his rages and his entourage, which followed him everywhere.

"Once during the course of the filming he became so depressed by her rejection he threatened suicide. Monty talked him out of it."

I do not think it would be an ethnic insult - or a stretch - to say that Frank Sinatra was kind of a drama queen. A straight guy drama queen.  At least the way Patricia Bosworth tells it.

That Time I Tried Out For Jeopardy!

Yesterday was my second in-person audition for the U.S. game show Jeopardy! I'd tried out before in 2004. To accomplish this, Tit Elingtin and I had to travel the short distance to Chicago, which we did by commuter train. I brought the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy to read on the train (and was, therefore, stuck carrying this rather ponderous volume the rest of the trip).

We stayed at the same hotel where the tryouts took place, the Sheraton Hotel and Towers. It was ridiculously expensive and not even the nicest hotel we've ever stayed in. (Nicer that the Congress Plaza, though, and the Congress Plaza's pretty nice, with that fantastic view of Grant Park.) Most of Sunday night was devoted to studying, but we did some exploring, too. We went to a mall and ate at Coast Burger, then had a beer at a bar called Canteen (which used to be Grami). The bartender bought us each a shot of Jameson, so obviously, he is my new best friend. But that's all - one shot and one beer. Then, right back to studying.

Public domain

The next morning, after a cup of coffee that I still contend was brewed the night before and a breakfast at Subway - falafel. Whoever thought of selling falafel at Subway is a genius! It goes great with flatbread - I headed down to the morning audition. I passed the online test to get there, but they retested us in person. I can't tell you anything about any of the questions, but then I got to play the mock game with two other players. It's fun, but harder than it looks on TV. I think the interview went well. I hope I'll be getting my call to come out to LA soon. 

Then the pressure was off, and we could go play. We hopped on the subway and went to Wicker Park. This is the first time in many visits to Chicago that I've ever been to the Wicker Park neighborhood. I was intent on visiting Quimby's, the bookstore famed for its graphic novels, comics and zines. The problem was, there were TOO many comics and zines. I ended up not buying anything because I was so overwhelmed by all the choices. Sorry, Quimby's. Wicker Park wasn't a total waste of time, though: we ate at the Thai/Japanese restaurant next to the bookstore. I had the Chicago maki, and it was pretty good, even though the spicy mayo was a little too spicy for my personal taste. (Just a little too spicy, not a lot.) Tit had steamed chicken dumplings and miso soup - the best miso soup I ever tasted. 

When we got off the subway, it was time to make arrangements to get back on the commuter train out of town. We did have time for one more Michigan Avenue stop, though - the Fine Arts Building. We had a beer at The Artists' Restaurant, then went up the second floor in what, I'm sure, is the oldest elevator I've ever ridden. It even had an attendant. 

A Russian blue cat. Photo by Kabir Bakie, 2005. Creative Commons license. 

On the second floor is Selected Works, a used book store run by Keith Peterson and his bookstore cat. Keith is an author; his book is called, appropriately enough, The Body in the Bookstore Sink. I don't know if the big, blue bookstore cat (likely a Russian blue) had ever written a novel. 

My fascinating find at Selected Works was Ernest Hemingway and the Movies by Frank M. Lawrence. I couldn't resist it because it has a side-by-side comparison of Hemingway's short story "The Killers," the 1946 film and the 1963 remake (with Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson in place of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner). 

Because, you know, I can't just watch a movie based on a book. I have to get obsessive and read more about it. If Keith had any nonfiction books on the subject of James Jones, I would have had to buy those, too. 

We took the time to look at and appreciate the turn-of-the-19th-century building - its murals on the highest floor, its terrazzo floors, its iron and brass railings. It used to be the showroom in which the Studebakers sold horse-drawn carriages before they took to making cars. Then we had to get back on the train. 

Freed from having to study for my audition, I was able to return to Patricia Bosworth's biography of Montgomery Clift on the train. It's a fascinating and disturbing read. Bosworth mentions (and, I think, kind of glosses over) Monty's arrest in New Orleans for allegedly soliciting "a young boy" for sex. Apparently, charges were never filed, so there's no evidence to say what, if anything, ever happened. In colloquial use, "a young boy" could mean anything from a very small child to a 17-year-old - and, depending on the state law of Louisiana at that time, a teenager might have been above the legal age of consent. Keep in mind, too, that it wasn't uncommon in the pre-GLBTQ civil rights days for police to arrest men just for being seen in public picking up other men, so it may have been a completely false charge initiated by a cop who just didn't like the way Monty walked or something. 

Public domain

On the other hand, people saw the 29-year-old Monty kissing Elizabeth Taylor when she was 17, and Judy Balaban (her father was the head of Paramount) said she dated Monty when she was 16 and he was in his 30s. Balaban never explicitly says that their relationship was sexual, but she does imply it, saying that one weekend, given the choice of whether to share a bed or stay in separate rooms, they choose to stay in the same bed. Again, 16 may have been legal at that time and place, but by modern standards we'd almost certainly consider that emotionally unhealthy behavior - and potentially abusive, because of the huge difference in experience between them. 

So again, I think Bosworth is glossing over some of the more problematic facts, but I also have to consider the context, the fact that this happened 50+ years ago and the fact that it may be too paternalistic of me to suggest that 16- and 17-year-old young women shouldn't claim the right to make their own sexual decisions. See also "Reviving the Runaways: Who Should Rule When Law, Psychology and Teenage Hormones Collide?" 

The not-problematic part I learned was that Monty and James Jones met at a party, at which Jones personally hand-picked Monty to play Prewitt in From Here to Eternity. Monty studied Jones' mannerisms, and Jones was found of telling people that Monty's performance as Prewitt was, in a sense, an impression of Jones himself. 

Today I received a royalty check for a reprint of an article I'd forgotten I'd even submitted to a small regional magazine. I used it to purchase the Season One boxed set of Person of Interest. Triumph! Every time I get a double-digit royalty check, I feel like I'm Ernest Hemingway. 

Watch This: The Heiress (Washington Square)

Since I'm not back to reading for fun yet, my latest media conquest is The Heiress, the Oscar-winning 1949 film starring Olivia de Havilland and my dead boyfriend Montgomery Clift. (You know the story: The Thin Red Line triggers my "love American literature" reflex, I read-then-watch From Here to Eternity, Prew looks incredibly hot and tragic = obsessed.) The original source material for the story is Henry James' novel Washington Square.



I didn't read it; the Henry James novel (novella, really) I read in 11th grade was Daisy Miller. Daisy travels to Europe, goes out without a chaperone as a young European lady would have, gets bitten by a mosquito and dies of a subtropical fever - her punishment for not conforming to European social mores.

Olivia de Havilland stars as Catherine Sloper, a woman who lives with her aging father, who is a doctor, and her father's widowed sister. You may remember de Havilland as Melanie in Gone With the Wind.

http://pinterest.com/pin/145593000423967829/

She's really a strikingly beautiful woman, so the costuming and makeup in The Heiress have to downplay her looks, since Catherine is supposed to be rather plain and unexceptional. And yes, she is still alive - she turned 96 in July.

Catherine, the heiress, is courted by a genteel-but-penniless-but-incredibly-attractive suitor, Morris Townsend. Unable to win her father's support, Morris abandons Catherine when she offers to give up her fortune to be with him. After this heartbreaking experience, Catherine becomes wiser and stronger; when Morris comes back, she agrees to marry him, then leaves him bolted outside the door of her Washington Square home.

Said gorgeous young gold digger is played by Montgomery Clift.

His smile - I die. Catherine has so much more restraint than I do - I would've been out of my corset faster than Morris could say, "Catherine, will you marry me?" Yeah, I would've made a lousy Victorian. (Technically, although the book was published in the 1880s - the Victorian era - the setting was in the 1840s.) If I were a Henry James heroine, James would've given me a horrible subtropical disease and killed me.

I wonder if the Slopers are the ancestors of the New York society girl who gave Robert E. Lee Prewitt gonorrhea, the "personal reason" for which he can't get promoted at Arlington National Cemetery and must transfer to Hawaii. (She didn't do it on purpose.)

A more modern film version of Washington Square, named after the book, came out in 1997 and starred Jennifer Jason Leigh as Catherine and Ben Chaplin as Morris. The English actor Ben Chaplin played John Bell in The Thin Red Line in 1998.



When I think of Washington Square, the place, I think of the Joan Baez song "Diamonds and Rust," which at one time I was able to play on my guitar. Some of the lyrics are:

"Now I see you standing with brown leaves falling all around and snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window of that crummy hotel over Washington Square
Our breath comes out in white clouds, mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me, we both could have died then and there."

Watch This: Raintree County

First things first: I haven't seen the Season 5 finale of True Blood yet. Just the other day, I tweeted:

Tara says, "Pam and me - never gonna happen," but I so hope it does. #TrueBlood
— Erin O'Riordan (@ErinORiordan) August 26, 2012

Yesterday I happened to stop by Dorothy Surrenders, and I got a little bit of a Season 5 spoiler: Pam and Tara kissed. Yes!

Speaking of kisses, the other night I dreamed Adrien Brody kissed me. I was sitting beside my father at the time, and it was more of a friendly/chaste kiss than anything lustful, but it was still pretty darn nice. So much nicer than the dream I had in which William Shatner kissed me. You know who I really wish Adrien Brody kissed, though? Nick Stahl.

http://pinterest.com/pin/46936021087438916/

Nick Stahl has a small role as Ed Bead in The Thin Red Line, and Brody plays Cpl. Jeffrey Fife. In James Jones' novel, Bead is a clerk who works under Fife, and the two have an arrangement to take care of each other sexually (even though they both swear up and down that they're not gay). When the 19-year-old Iowan Bead is shot in the side, Bead calls for Fife to come hold his hand. Fife momentarily worries about what the others will think, but instinctively puts his arms around Bead as Bead dies. You won't see any of that in the movie, but in the book, it's a very moving, poignant scene.

I shall return to reading The Thin Red Line after my Jeopardy! tryout, in mid-September.

Speaking of films based on literature, yesterday I watched Raintree County, the second movie Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift starred in together (after A Place in the Sun, before Suddenly Last Summer).



This one's literary backup is a lengthy 1948 novel by Ross Lockridge Jr. I can promise you now, I have no intention of reading the 1000+ page behemoth - I read Gone With the Wind several years ago, and though I quite liked it, I have no immediate need to read another sprawling Civil War epic. Lockridge, it should be noted, is another of my fellow Indiana-born authors; Meg Cabot was born in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. The fictional location, Raintree County, is in Indiana, and the raintree of the title is a mythical plant allegedly planted there by Johnny Appleseed.



The hero, John Shawnessy (Clift), is a dreamy, idealistic, romantic poet and, eventually, schoolteacher in the late 1850s/early 1860s. He and his youthful sweetheart Nell (Eva Marie Saint) are perfectly matched, but his head is turned by Southern belle Susanna (Taylor). As revealed in the trailer, she gets him to marry her by tricking him into thinking she's pregnant - but Susanna has serious mental health problems.

Actually, Susanna has a lot in common with Sawyer on Lost. Her mother, jealous of Susanna's Cuban-born nanny, jumped to the conclusion (perhaps correctly so) that Susanna's father and the nanny were having an affair, shot them both to death, then set the family mansion on fire to cover up the crime, killing herself in the process. Nine-year-old Susanna was rescued by one of the family's slaves. She still has the creepy-looking burnt doll that was saved from the fire along with her.

John makes a valiant effort to make his marriage to Susanna work. When she runs off to the South with their young son during the early days of the Civil War, he decides to join the Union army effort in hopes of finding her. I said:

Montgomery Clift looks super hot in his Union uniform, but I do not dig the Civil War beard.
— Erin O'Riordan (@ErinORiordan) August 28, 2012

As a Union soldier, he probably fought against the ancestors of Kentucky-born Robert E. Lee Prewitt. Either way, he finds his son, is wounded, and eventually gets reunited with Susanna, now confined to a mental institution.

He takes her home and attempts to care for her back in Indiana, where after the war he resumes teaching and considers a career in politics. But Susanna escapes into the swamp, where she drowns, a probable suicide. John fears their son may have met the same sad fate, but he and Nell find the unfortunate little boy safe, though grieving his mother, in the swamp.

That's the end of the movie, but I hope that in the book John goes on to a happy second marriage with the still-unmarried Nell. Nell has never stopped loving John.

My favorite scene in the movie? The bathtub. John has agreed to run a foot race against Flash, a friendly rival. Flash has an unusually high tolerance for liquor, and the young, inexperienced John tries to match him drink-for-drink. John's friends then attempt to sober him up for the race by throwing him into a bathtub and throwing cold water on him - and prompting me to say:

Monty in the bathtub - so hawt.
— Erin O'Riordan (@ErinORiordan) August 28, 2012

Shirtless Montgomery Clift in From Here to Eternity (take a look here) was perfectly shaved/waxed and had flawless abs. In Raintree County (filmed four years later) he still has fantastic abs, but went with the more natural, unshaven look. Either way, this is a beautiful, beautiful man. I rank Monty's bathtub scene up there with Christian Bale's shower scene in American Psycho - not that we get to see much, but just in terms of how happy it makes me. 

The Tennessee Williams Play That Freaks Me Out

I haven't been reading for pleasure lately, stopping in the middles of The Amber Spyglass and The Thin Red Line to study up on the U.S. Constitution, presidents, Supreme Court justices, bodies of water, Canadian provinces et al. for my upcoming Jeopardy! try-out. I've also been dusting and reorganizing my bookshelves, and when I came across Who the Hell is Pansy O'Hara? The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy, I couldn't resist flipping it open.



From Here to Eternity is on page 131. I'm pretty sure I read this section before, but I didn't mean as much to  me before I finished FHTE. I learned (or re-learned) that James Jones is like Robert E. Lee Prewitt in the following ways: Jones' father was an alcoholic, which was part of the reason Jones left the family home as a teen, and he was also a boxer in a unit renowned for its Golden Gloves participants. I also learned that the book FHTE beat out when it won the National Book Award was The Catcher in the Rye.

Catcher in the Rye is a favorite subject of the conspiracy theory bloggers, by the way. See this post at MK Culture, for example, or this post at Pseudo-Occult Media implicating the cartoon Family Guy (a cartoon I personally dislike, for the record). The Wikipedia entry on the book mentions that it's been linked to John Hinckley Jr.'s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Mark David Chapman's shooting of John Lennon and Robert John Bardo's shooting of Rebecca Shaeffer.

Anyway, another book I came across was Famous American Plays of the 1940s, edited  by Henry Hewes, which was one of my school books from my freshman year of high school. The first play is Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, and it includes the cast of the first production (November 18, 1942). It included Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina (P.S. that was my maternal grandpa's mom's name) and Montgomery Clift (then aged 22) as young Henry.

I've been borrowing Montgomery Clift films from Netflix, and after reading Tennessee Williams' rather catty quote about Marilyn Monroe via D.R. Haney's Salon.com article on Marilyn's death anniversary, I somehow came to the conclusion that I should watch the Williams adaptation Suddenly Last Summer, which features Montgomery Clift. I was imagining it would be a family drama along the lines of Streetcar,  with Elizabeth Taylor doing a turn as a Blanche Dubois-esque Southern Belle, probably with some tragic result. I had no idea it would be so creepy and disturb me so much.

The screenplay, by the way, was written by the recently deceased Gore Vidal.

(Vidal is on the right, next to Tom Wolfe.)

At the beginning of the movie, Montgomery Clift's character, psychiatrist Dr. Cukrowitz (from the Polish word for sugar, cukro), is performing a lobotomy at a former school made into a mental health hospital; the building is literally falling apart. He's from Chicago, but recently moved his practice to this state-run hospital in New Orleans. Later that same day, he meets a potential benefactor in Mrs. Violet Venable (Katherine Hepburn). 

Mrs. Venable, who arrives to greet Dr. Cukrowitz via an elevator that makes her look like a goddess descending in an ancient Greek drama, is deeply in grief over the death of her son Sebastian. Sebastian (explicitly named for the saint who was martyred after being shot with arrows) supposedly died of a heart attack in Spain the previous summer, and his death was witnessed by his cousin, Catherine Holly (Taylor). Catherine suffered a mental break because of her cousin's death and is now confined to a Catholic mental health hospital.



Mrs. Venable, who is widowed, shows the doctor around Sebastian's jungle-like garden, where she feeds her Venus fly-trap. The garden contains a statue of the angel of death, which resembles the alleged "angel skeleton" on The Simpsons. 

Violet was unusually devoted to her son, even going to so far as to say the mother-son pair was regarded as a couple. Sebastian and Violet's relationship was overly entangled, if not outright incestuous.  

Mrs. Venable's deeply offended by the "babblings" of Catherine in her "madness," which impugns Sebastian's "moral character." Violet wants Catherine to have a lobotomy, supposedly for her own good. When we first meet Catherine, she has intentionally burned a nun's hand with a cigarette, and stands accused of molesting a 60-year-old male gardener and then claiming the man attempted to rape her. Is Catherine really mentally ill, or is she a sane woman who suffered a terrible trauma and is now chafing under the restraints of an overly restrictive hospital where she does not belong? 

At that first meeting between Catherine and Dr. Cukrowicz, she kisses him. He does nothing to discourage her, dismissing this inappropriate interaction as "a friendly kiss." They're going to have major transference issues. 

However, the much larger danger to Catherine is that Violet's money, power and influence will induce the state hospital (to which Catherine is moved; the nuns have a hard time controlling her) to perform a lobotomy on Catherine. Tennessee Williams had a sister on whom a lobotomy was performed, and he appears to have been deeply traumatized by his parents' decision to allow this. 

Dr. Cukrowicz is reluctant to perform the surgery, at least until he can get from Catherine the true story of how Sebastian died in Spain. When Catherine does finally tell the story at the film's climax, it is very disturbing. We can assume from Catherine's narrative that Sebastian has used her to attract attention, then propositioned the men who swarmed around her. Before Violet got "too old," this was Violet's function for Sebastian as well. There's a suggestion - although nothing this explicit could have been stated in a 1950s film - that Sebastian may have taken advantage of underage boys, who are so poor he can coerce them with money.

For whatever reason, the mob of boys and young men turns against Sebastian, chase him through the streets and kill him in a manner most gruesome - they tear him apart, and some of them eat bits of his flesh. Since his previous play was titled Orpheus Descending, it's not too far-fetched to imagine that Williams may have been thinking of classical Greek and Roman mythology, with its fiercely violent followers of Dionysus and Bacchus - a theme also used by Charlaine Harris. Barbara Walker's Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets will be happy to tell you that St. Sebastian is a mythological figure linked to the Gaulish version of the Annually Dying God, who is sacrificed each year. The website CatholicOnline says of St. Sebastian, "He is also commonly referred to as a homosexual icon, which remains an on-going controversial tie between  the gay community and the Roman Catholic Church." 

This is a much grislier fate than befalls the typical Tennessee Williams character; The New York Public Library Literature Companion says of the one-act play on which the film is based, "Even for Williams, the play is unusually bleak." Critics have suggested that according to the moral code of the 1950s, gay men were "monsters" who, like Frankenstein's monster, were to be dealt with by chasing them down with pitchforks and torches. If Mrs. Venable, in some aspects, represented Williams' mother, he may have identified with the refined, shy, sensitive poet Sebastian, and he may have felt he was being cruelly punished by society for being gay. Even if Williams identified with Sebastian, though, the film paints the character in a negative light. 

Katherine Hepburn's character, Mrs. Venable, is truly a villain, willing to destroy her young niece in defense of her dead son's reputation and to avoid facing the truth. 

Sebastian is disturbing. Mrs. Venable is disturbing. The relationship between Dr. Cukrowitz and Catherine - following the tried-and-true Hollywood trope that the hero must always get the girl at the end of the picture - is also disturbing. Dear Gore Vidal in gay heaven, this is such an inappropriate story onto which to tack a love story.  Yes, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift were BFFs, but turning Catherine - who told the doctor about an experience of being sexually assaulted before she told him about her traumatic experience of witnessing Sebastian's death, and had also recently attempted suicide - into a romantic heroine is just bizarre.  She's far too vulnerable to be able to have an equal relationship (other than a professional relationship, that is) with her doctor, and he has totally forgotten his Hippocratic oath.

I'm not the only one disturbed by this fascinating, well-acted but problematic and strange melodrama. For further reading:

http://www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/archives/2000/3paller.htm

http://www.helium.com/items/1132913-movie-reviews-suddenly-last-summer

http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/12894119/devouring-creation-cannibalism-sodomy-scene-analysis-suddenly-last-summer

http://filmgeist.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/suddenly-i-write-about-suddenly-last-summer-by-joseph-l-mankiewicz-1959/

http://www.cinemaqueer.com/review%20pages%202/suddenlylastsummer.html

I Don't Think I'm In Kansas Anymore, and Back to the Thin Red Line

I'm back from my long weekend in Manhattan - not the fun Manhattan, but the one in Kansas - where my nephew got married. When leaving Kansas, I felt obliged to say, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." While we never got around to visiting the Wizard of Oz museum in nearby Wamego, I chose to associate Kansas with the L. Frank Baum classic. The other literary work I associate with Kansas is In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, which is rather less pleasant.

We did drive through Mark Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, but we didn't stop there.

The paperback I carried with me on my trip of Patricia Bosworth's biography of Montgomery Clift, a cheap paperback I purchased from Better World Books. Look how neatly its yellow edges match my manicure (and the dress I wore to the wedding reception.)

In Aggieville (the quaint shopping and pub-crawling neighborhood in the vicinity of Kansas State University), I visited The Dusty Bookshelf. There I bought my great-niece a Mickey Mouse coloring book and a picture book based on the Disney version of Peter Pan. For myself, I purchased The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Midnight.

But now that I'm back in the Great Lakes region, I'm back to reading the books I left behind, including The Thin Red Line. I'm about halfway through The Thin Red Line, the second book in James Jones' trilogy. Since I kind of cheated, in that I watched the movie before I read the book, and I've now read and watched From Here to Eternity, I feel somewhat prepared to compare the characters of Robert E. Lee Prewitt and his counterpart in the second book, Bob Witt.

You know what might be even more fun, though? Comparing the actors who portrayed Prewitt and Witt, respectively Montgomery Clift and Jim Caviezel. They have stuff in common, other than playing essentially the same character in adaptations of James Jones novels. (In fact, I now know that some of Witt's monologue in the Thin Red Line movie comes from the book version of From Here to Eternity, further fusing two fictional characters who are already essentially the same. Not exactly the same, though: Prew is 22 years old in 1941, while Witt is 21 in 1943, to name just one example of how their biographies differ. Obviously, Prewitt is dead at the end of FHTE - he never makes it to Guadalcanal.)

They both modeled during their early acting careers, for example. Clift modeled for Arrow shirts and Steinway pianos, among other gigs. Caviezel modeled clothes for The Gap. This is not a great picture, but you get the idea.

http://jimcaviezelfan.tumblr.com/post/47796028083/this-photo-was-on-buildings-buses-and

Clift appeared in a Gap khakis ad posthumously, via a still from his film I Confess.

(P.S. The nephew who got married? Also a former model, and so is his brother.)



They were both called upon to learn the trumpet, or at least to look as if they knew what they were doing with one. Clift's scene is the emotional climax of the From Here to Eternity movie: Prew's brokenhearted rendition of TAPS in Maggio's honor.



Caviezel's scene is in the romantic drama Angel Eyes. The music is forcing his character to remember a past he'd done his best to try to forget.



The other things they have in common? A perpetual tan. Intense eyes. Long, dark eyelashes that women envy; prettiness that at times verges on androgyny, but also the ability to rock a sexy beard. They're both part Irish, too.



I warn you not to stare too long, or you may end up pregnant.