Born On This Day- July 24th... My Good Close Personal Friend Filmmaker Gus Van Sant

"Fate sucks. I swear. "

Matt Dillon as Bob in Drugstore Cowboy

If I had been somewhat clairvoyant while on the set of Drugstore Cowboy, I would have realized that one day I would someday be living in Portland Oregon, in fact, just 1 mile from where we were filming. I most likely would have dismissed the entire notion as too much candy from crafts service. I loved living in Seattle & I had the best agent in town. I had been fortunate enough to have worked in television (Murder She Wrote, Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, A Day in the Life) & a whole lot of commercials & voice-overs, but the Gus Van Sant project was my first feature film. I was thrilled to be working with the talented director of Mala Noche, a film I was crazy about & that had received an enthusiastic reception at The Seattle Film Festival in 1985.

I was working in a feature! My scenes were with Matt Dillon! I have done 12 films, but this one will always be so special because the very soft spoken Gus Van Sant creates an extremely creative atmosphere for working. Many of the actors that have done films with Van Sant have remarked on how great he is to work with & how wonderful the conditions are on the set of his films. He was not big on rehearsing, but he would ask for something completely different with each take. Matt Dillon (who I have worked with twice) was such a nice gentleman. He would stay & read his lines back to me for our reverse shots & he was such a “regular” guy. He would eat lunch, sitting at a big long table, with the rest of the cast, crew & grips & rarely spent time in his trailer. The rest of the cast were fun & friendly: Kelly Lynch, James LeGross & Heather Graham. I did not get to meet William S Burroughs…my only regret from this experience.

I was invited to the premier of Drugstore Cowboy, but did not attend because I was performing in a play at the time. The film went on to rave reviews & won Independent Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay for Mr. Van Sant & Daniel Yost, Best Cinematography, Best Actor for Matt Dillon, & Best Supporting Actor for Max Perlich. It won Best Screenplay awards from the LA Film Critics Association, the National Society of Film Critics & the NY Film Critics Circle, & Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. At the film’s Seattle premier, the Husband turned to me half way through the viewing & stated- “Oh. My. God. You are in a really GOOD movie!”

 Gus Van Zant’s films have ranged from Oscar winning studio fare: Good Will Hunting & Finding Forrester, to very experimental: Gerry & Last Days, Indies: Elephant & Paranoid Park, noble, brave & baffling experiments: the shot by shot re-make of Psycho & Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. He has done 4 films that I love & to which I award 5 Steve Stars: Drugstore Cowboy (of course), My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, & in my top 10 films of all time- Milk.

In 2002, shortly after relocating to Portland after 20 years in Seattle, I was standing with some new Portland friends & some dear former neighbors from Seattle on a street in the Peal District. My friend Susan: “oh my God… look! That is Gus Van Sant!”. The Husband: “Yeah, he lives in this neighborhood & Stephen knows him”. Our little group mumbled some- “yeah, sures & uh-huhs”. When Mr. Van Sant walked past us, he looked up, & said in his usual soft manner- “hello… there… Stephen. I haven’t seen you in a while... strange… your head looks bigger…” & then he went on his way. My friends looked baffled & everyone wanted to know what he meant. I had no idea (what could he have meant?), but I told them that it was an industry term, that good actors had heads that were proportionately too large for their bodies. It was my Gus Van Sant moment.

Born On This Day- March 18th... Fred Astaire's Straight Man

From the very start of film as an art form, slightly coded gay characters were used for the easy laugh: sissies, gallery owners, interior decorators, fussy bachelors & prissy artistic types. These incidental characters added spice to the urbane sophisticated comedies of the era. The homosexual hints these minor characters provided were in juxtaposition to the livelier & sexier romantic men of the era. Film comedies deftly employed actors like Clifton Webb, Frances Langford, & Edward Everett Horton as gay comic relief with stereotypes that didn’t threatened the moviegoers, male or female.



I have always had a place in my heart for the work of Edward Everett Horton. I immediately identify Horton with his work in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals at RKO including the apt named The Gay Divorcee, but he provided notable roles onscreen during the 1930s included a portrayal of The Mad Hatter in the 1933 Alice in Wonderland, & a neurotic paleontologist, who first appears disguised as a woman, in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937).

Starting in the early 1930s, Horton made at least 6 films a year for a quarter of a century. Reflecting his work on the stage, there were occasional serious variations in his roles. He played an unusually forceful role in Douglas Sirk's Summer Storm (1944), & he delivered a comedic masterful turn in Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here (1943).


Horton worked steadily for more than 60 years. He may have been a sissy, but he was no dummy. He bought up property in the San Fernando Valley starting in the 1920s. He developed what he named- Beleigh Acres, a 23-acre development where he lived with his long time partner- Gavin Gordon & his mother, who passed away at age 102.


Like a good homo, Horton collected antiques, & at the time of his death in 1970, he had a collection worth a million dollars. He was busy on television throughout the 1950s & 1960s: onscreen, voice-overs for commercials, & as host for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden. Horton was on the silly Western series F Troop, playing Running Chicken, a Hekawi Indian tribe medicine man. But his most enduring work from the 1960s was as the narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales, on Rocky & Bullwinkle, in which he was prominently billed in the opening credits of every episode. This work endeared him to millions of baby boomers like me. One of my favorites of his appearances is an I Love Lucy episode, where he is cast against type as a frisky, amorous suitor.




Edward Everett Horton died in 1970, at age 84. He continued to work up until the week he passed away.

“I Think That Making Love Is The Best Form Of Exercise” Cary Grant

My Top 10 Favorite Cary Grant Films:
•Bringing Up Baby (1938)
•His Girl Friday (1940)
•The Awful Truth (1937)
•Notorious (1946)
•Arsenic & Old Lace (1940)
•Charade (1963)
•The Philadelphia Story (1940)
•North By Northwest (1959)
•Topper (1937)
•The Bishop's Wife (1947)



Because his performanc­es seemed so effortless & because the debonair, dashing "Cary Grant" persona he created seemed so believable­, I think his talent has been underrated­. I particular­ly love NOTORIOUS. A great favorite of the Husband is THE AWFUL TRUTH, & the team of Grant & Irene Dunne is scintillat­ing, & the Husband cries whenever he catches an another of his favorites, the heartbreak­ing & heartwarmi­ng PENNY SERENADE, again with the fabulous Irene Dunne. ARSENIC & OLD LACE, HIS GIRL FRIDAY, NORTH BY NORTHWEST.­..what a wonderful legacy he left. I don't think he made a misstep as an actor. What is your favorite Cary Grant performance?

Born On This Day- January 14th... Actor/Writer Tom Tryon

I recollect my fascination with the photo on the back cover of the hardback edition of The Other. The movie star handsome author of the tome was staring back at me from the book jacket & I was all a tingle, with my teenage hormones in overdrive. I was 17 years old & doing summer stock in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. All 4 shows were up & running by the beginning of August, leaving me with days free to swim, sun, smoke joints & read. I bought the book because of the author’s photo, but The Other turned out to be a very well written thrill ride of a horror story, & I now had quite a crush on the writer Thomas Tryon as well.

Tom Tryon was an American film & TV actor, as well as author of several science fiction, horror, and mystery novels. He was born Thomas Tryon in Hartford, Connecticut. He used his birth name as an author & the shortened version for the acting career.

Tryon was on Broadway in Wish You Were Here, a long running 1952 musical starring Florence Henderson & Jack Cassidy. He moved on to Hollywood and was cast in several films, including Moon Pilot, The Longest Day & In Harm’s Way. He appeared often on television series & made for TV movies.

His rugged good looks & masculine demeanor typecast him as a matinee idol & Tryon was unhappy at the lack of good acting roles. His best known work was as the star of The Cardinal, a role which brought him a Golden Globe. But he fought often with the director Otto Preminger, who seemed to take sadistic delight in humiliating Tryon on the set. Preminger actually fired Tryon in front of his parents when they visited the set, then rehired him after being satisfied that Tryon had been sufficiently humiliated.

The experience with the abusive Preminger & lack of interesting roles moved Tryon to put the brakes on an acting career & he moved to writing novels. His first book- The Other (1971), a spooky thriller about a pair of evil twins, was a blockbuster bestseller & became a film by Richard Mulligan starring my good close personal friend- Uta Hagen in a rare film appearance. Next was the equally as scary-Harvest Home, a terrifying tale that was made into a rather campy TV mini-series starring Bette Davis. His collection of novellas on the theme of moviemaking- Crowned Heads featured- Fedora, a thinly disguised tale of Greta Garbo, & was made into a 1978 film by Billy Wilder with William Holden. I think the movie is terrific & true to the book. I loved all his books but I have a soft spot for Night of the Moonbow (1989), about a young kid at camp who snaps after being harassed by his fellow cabin mates. Tryon’s best work revolved around boys, & the mischief they get into.

I sensed that Tryon was gay. He struggled with his sexuality throughout his career, but basically came out when he became the lover of Calvin Culver, known in the porn world as the superstar Casey Donovan. At the same time, Tryon also was lovers with Clive Clark, a member of the original cast of A Chorus Line, & an interior designer who decorated Tryon's Central Park West apartment, which was featured in Architectural Digest. Culver helped Tryon finish Crowned Heads on an extremely tight deadline by typing up the revisions & offering suggestions. Their relationship ended because the attention & publicity his lover received made the closeted Tryon fearful of being outed, which he felt could destroy his career as a writer.

But, Tryon never wrote explicitly about homosexuality. He was never part of the gay scene. His feelings on the matter are hidden in between the lines of his strange, moody works. He died in 1991 from stomach cancer. I can still picture that handsome man on the back of the book jacket.

Born On This Day- January 3rd... Film Pioneer Dorothy Arzner

Dorothy Arzner was the most well known female director during Hollywood’s Golden Age. Arzner began her film career as a screenwriter, eventually rose through the ranks as an editor, & finally became a feature film director. Never hiding her lesbianism, Arzner went against conventions of the time by wearing men’s suits & sporting short hair. She lived openly with choreographer Marion Morgan for more than 40 years

.

Between 1927 & 1943, Arzner directed 17 features. Almost all have unconventional heroines, strong & self-sufficient, who must reconcile marriage & career. Like James Whale, her films resonate with gay subtexts.

After an illness in 1943, Arzner never again directed a feature & no one knows exactly why. She made Army training movies & taught film at UCLA, and she shot some Pepsi commercials, probably at the express request of her longtime friend & rumored lover, Joan Crawford. The Directors Guild of America, which she was the first woman to join in 1936, finally honored her work in 1975, four years before her death.

A Few Of My Favorite Things in 2010

“I like doing this because it’s what I’ve always wanted my entire life — people asking me my opinion.”
Fran Lebowitz

“I live like Marie Antoinette, if she had had money.
I like to live well & that takes work”.
Joan Rivers

Documentary films are having a golden age in the first decade of the 21st century, & 2 of my favorite films of 2010 were surprisingly honest documentaries about very funny New York women, both are favorites at Post-Apocalyptic Bohemia: Public Speaking, Martin Scorcese’s conversation with Fran Lebowitz & Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work from Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg.


Directed with inimitable & energetic style, Scorsese filmed Fran Lebowitz sitting & talking from 11pm-5am for a few nights, seated at her regular table at the Waverly Inn, in an onstage discussion with longtime friend- writer Toni Morrison & on the streets of NYC. Scorsese’s idea, Lebowitz said. The subject matter was not known ahead of time, her idea. Lebowitz: “The only deal that Marty & I made was Marty said, ‘O.K., we will not leave Manhattan.’ ”





“We live in a world where people think happiness is a condition, but it’s not; it’s a sensation. It’s momentary. So do I have little moments of happiness? Yes. Is that my general condition? No. Is that anyone’s general condition? I can’t believe that’s the case. Are there people that are generally more buoyant than I am? Yes, most people. I don’t think of myself as being unhappy, I think of myself as being morose, but it’s just natural, it’s not my circumstances so much. I can be in bad circumstances like anyone else, or I can be in good circumstances, but in general, if you broke into my apartment & I didn’t know you were there, you would not see me whistling around the house.”


Fran Lebowitz is smart, sharp,& very funny. She started in the New York literary scene in the early 1970s when Andy Warhol hired right off the bus to write a column for Interview magazine. Decades later, she’s an acclaimed author with fans like me who clamber for her acerbic wit.

Lebowitz offers insights on gender, race & gay rights, as well as her pet peeves: celebrity culture, smoking bans, tourists & strollers. Lebowitz: “Gender is a very big piece of luck. Any white gentile straight male who is not President of the United States failed.” On Barack Obama & racism: "Racism a fantasy of superiority & a fantasy can end, you know. It probably won’t, but it can.” On aging: “At a certain point, the worst picture taken of you when you were 25 is better than the best picture taken of you when you’re 45.” About NYC: “New York was not better in the 1970s because there was more crime. It was better because it was cheaper.”


Public Speaking is on HBO on Demand this month. I plan to watch it several more times. I really need to get my cranky on & Fran helps. It receives an A on the Steve Report Card.


I saw Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work on a first date on a beautiful summer evening. The Husband & I were double dating with our dear friend Lil’ Jake & his new beau- Special K. To me, a movie seems an odd first date, just as dining does, sitting with a stranger, performing an intimate act not always meant to be shared: Crying, Laughing, Chewing.


That first date went well, & now we face the true test of a friendship involving 2 couples- Travel. The Husband & I, Li’l Jake & Special K are going to attempt to visit Palm Springs in mid-February for Modernist Festival. After viewing Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work, we all agreed that it was a superior documentary, entertaining, insightful, & freighting (including Ms. Rivers without make-up).



In the film, Rivers is presented as deeply human, motivated by anger, desperation, & fear. & yet Rivers' displays of sadness, grief, & outrage might be calculated for the film makers. Is Rivers just playing the part of an aging celebrity baring her soul in a documentary? Worth watching for the very funny & vulgar humor balanced with unexpected honesty & lack of vanity. An exceptional film about a complex woman. It receives an A on the Steve Report Card.

Put these 2 films on your Netflicks Queue.

Born On This Day- December 10th... Dreamboat Tommy Kirk

He is actually one of my youngest memories, & I sure could have done much worse. I was beside myself with grief after watching Old Yeller at age 4. I have never recovered. I used to use the memory of this movie as my method of crying on cue when I was an actor.

I had my 1st crush, before I could have ever formulated the concept or known why I felt so dizzy & tingly while watching The Hardy Boys serial on my favorite show- The Mickey Mouse Club. Michael Constantine & Tommy Kirk! I couldn’t stop feeling dreamy about them. Oh, how I wanted to be a Hardy Boy & solve mysteries along with those 2 boys. I almost couldn’t make it through Swiss Family Robinson with all the shirtless males & Tommy Kirk as close to naked as I could have ever imagined, & I magine I did.


Tommy Kirk was one of Walt Disney’s leading male star of the late 1950’s & early 1960’s: Babes In Toyland, The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber. His regular presence on the Wonderful World of Disney rocked my young world.


Tommy was the All American Boy. Someone I related to & wanted to emulate. His clean good looks, honest face & comic timing, & wholesome roles were how I aspired to be an actor. Little could I have understood that Tommy was gay.


Kirk knew his sexuality would create problems with his career as well as his strict Baptist parents. Kirk: "I consider my teenage years as being desperately unhappy. I knew I was gay, but I had no outlet for my feelings. It was very hard to meet people &, at that time, there was no place to go to socialize. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that I began to hear of places where gays congregated."




At age 23, Kirk was involved with a 15 year old boy he had picked up from a public pool. The boy's mother went to Walt Disney to complain, & Walt decided Kirk had become a liability, & personally fired him. His contract was dropped, but the studio did allow him to come back for The Monkey's Uncle (1965), which coincidently was Annette Funicello’s last Disney film as well.

Kirk: “My early sexual experiences as desperate & miserable. Mostly brief encounters, very back alley kind of things. When I was about 17 or 18 years old, I finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to change. I didn’t know what the consequences would be, but I had the definite feeling that is was going to wreck my Disney career & maybe my whole acting career. Eventually, I became involved with somebody and I was fired. Disney was a family film studio & I was supposed to be their young, leading man. After they found out I was involved with someone, that was the end of Disney."


It was 1964 & Kirk was 23 years old & had been a star for more than a decade, & he was "box office poison." His films during this time included the campy Pajama Party & Mars Needs Women. Kirk: "After I was fired from Disney, I did some of the worst movies ever made & I got involved with a manager who said it didn’t matter what you did as long as you kept working." Kirk’s personal life also took a downward spiral: "I wound up completely broke. I had no self-discipline & I almost died of a drug overdose a couple of times. It’s a miracle that I lived through it all."


Kirk eventually left show business. Kirk: "Finally, I said, to hell with the whole thing, to hell with show business. I’m gonna make a new life for myself, & I got off drugs, completely kicked all that stuff." For 20+ years, Kirk has had his own carpet & upholstery cleaning business headquartered in the Valley. He wants to be remembered for the Disney work, especially Swiss Family Robinson, his favorite.



Kirk turns 69 today… one of my favorite numbers. Thanks Tommy Kirk for teaching a young boy how to be horny.

Born On This Day- November 19th... Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck

I love the euphemism from the 20th century for homsexual- Confirmed Bachelor. Clifton Webb is the very definition of the term. It shocks me, the films I missed when I was younger, even as I studied Film History. I caught Laura on Turner Classic Movies this autumn. Wow! What a terrific film!

A remarkable character actor, Clifton Webb was a familiar presence on Broadway in the 1920s & 1930s & in American movies of the 1940s & 1950s, a leading New York ballroom dancer, & a respected actor in stage roles both  drama & musical comedy. In his mid-50s director Otto Preminger chose him over the objections of 20th Century Fox to star as the elegant but evil radio columnist Waldo Lydecker in the film noir Laura (1944). His performance won him wide acclaim, & Webb was signed to a long-term contract with Fox. Clifton Webb’s deliciously eccentric, snobbish performance, as both a criric & Laura’s mentor is amazing. Patterned after real-life New York drama critic Alexander Woollcott, Webb’s dialogue is quotable from start to finish.

With Dana Andrews in Laura.

In the golden era of Hollywood,the sissy was usually a sexless fussy foil to the straight star, who entered briefly to liven things up with a quip & a raised eyebrow or a dramatic exit. In Laura, the sissy retains all the old characteristics: sophistication, brittleness, cynicism, while adding a new element of suppressed violence & sexual passion that threatens not only the other characters but also widely held cultural assumptions about the passivity of the effeminate male.

Webb played this role to perfection; as Waldo he is at once droll & scary, capable of pitifulness & viciousousness: "I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbors' children devoured by wolves". He is both held in contempt & mollycoddled by a straight policeman, who doesn't realize until it is almost too late that this sissy is also a killer. Webb had the charisma & authority to rescue the sissy from minor roles; he is either the star or a major player in all of his films that followed.

On stage, Webb's  home was the Broadway theatre. He was tall, thin, & sang in a clear, gentle tenor. Webb appeared in 23 Broadway shows. He introduced Irving Berlin's Easter Parade & George & Ira Gershwin's I've Got a Crush on You, Schwartz & Dietz's I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan. Most of Webb's Broadway shows were musicals, but he also starred in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, & his longtime pal- Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit & Present Laughter, in parts that Coward wrote for Webb .

He was a major Hollywood star, remarkable considering that he was not particularly handsome or a real leading man. 2 years after his role in Laura he was reunited with his co-star- Gene Tierney as the elitist Elliott Templeton in The Razor’s Edge (1946). He received Oscar nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for both his performances in Laura & The Razor’s Edge. Webb also received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1949 for Sitting Pretty, the first in a 3-film series of comedic Mr. Belvedere movies with Webb portraying a difficult but wise babysitter.

Webb was most certainly homosexual,  it was an open secret in the Hollywood community. His most important relationship appears to have been with his mother- Maybelle, to who served as his secretary, business manager, & his constant companion at parties. I can't imagine how he met guys. When Maybelle died at age 90, Noël Coward famously remarked that Webb was “the world’s oldest living orphan.”

Beverly D'Angelo Has A Birthday Today

I am a long time admirer of Beverly D’Angelo’s beauty & talent. The film version of Hair is in my Top Ten Films of all time & she really shines in that movie. Remember her Oscar nominated turn as Patsy Cline in Coalminer’s Daughter? But my favorite performance by Ms D’Angelo is from the little seen & vastly under appreciated Neil Jordan 1991 film-The Miracle. This film is dreamy & expressionistic & although I only saw it once, I have never been able to shake it.

 The Miracle is an unsung yet crucial point in Neil Jordan’s film career, a departure because it takes place entirely in Dublin. Perhaps it was a return home that prompted him to create a film about Ireland itself, & more specifically, the Irish family unit.


The film begins at the start of summer, a season with expectations, & the promise of excitement following the school year. Jimmy & Rose, childhood friends, spend hours daydreaming & making up stories for the people that surround them. No one is safe from their attempts to make sense of their world as they invent fantasies to interpret the mundane happenings of their seaside Dublin suburb. Each person they encounter is fodder for their notebook, a kind of sketchpad they use to develop the people around them into characters for their writing. Despite their dreaming, the young pair are still defined by their circumstances & they never contemplate escape or running away from home. Instead, they make the world around them conform to their vision of how it should be, creating their own chance encounters, happy endings, & ridiculous plot twists. This summer, however, they begin to lose control over their imaginations, and the stories they create seem to take on a life of their own. Beverly D’ Angelo plays an American actress who returns, after a long absence, to Dublin to appear in a local stage production of Destry Rides Again. The young people are drawn to her & she has secrets & mysteries to offer.


Neil Jordan’s films: The Crying Game, In Dreams, Breakfast On Pluto, Interview With The Vampire, always surprise in their ability to communicate their complex realities, whether stylized genres or stark realism, & often a combination of both. In The Miracle, the clash between the fantastic & the everyday occurs when we do not fit our ideal types. By the end, almost everyone has removed their mask, only to slip back into their accepted roles once more.


Check out this version of Stardust with just D’ Angelo & bass:

Born On This Day- November 8th: Talented Out Actor/Writer Craig Chester

I am a fan of actor Craig Chester, best known for starring in a string of independent films with single word titles: Swoon, Grief & Frisk. He also played Fred Hughes in I Shot Handy Warhol & best friend Terry in Kiss Me, Guido. Hollywood doesn't care all that much for openly gay, art film actors, even one who was nominated for a prestigious Spirit Award, so Chester takes time from acting to write screenplays & books.


I thought very highly of his delightfully witty & moving 2003 memoir: Why the Long Face?: The Advenures of a Truly Independent Actor. The title refers to Chester's experience with "Long Face Syndrome", a disfiguring jaw malady. Chester: “As a teen, I was looked like a Picasso sock puppet with pimples. A series of surgeries I was left swollen to massive, inhumane proportions, while on a liquid diet,I was made to sit at the dinner table, almost nightly, & watch in contempt as my father, mother, & sister gorged themselves on pot roast, chicken & dumplings, & sloppy joes." Happily, Chester survived this ordeal to have handsome, unconventional good looks.

On The Moth ( a group dedicated to strytelling) Podcast released on April 26, 2010, Chester recounts his encounter Montgomery Clift, who has been dead for 45+ years. Chester goes on to explain the story of how 2 separate psychics (one a professional psychic, the other a long-time psychic who does not provide readings for money) approached him to tell him about a spirit that insists on reaching him. They both explain on separate occasions, (Chester verified they did not know each other or are in any way connected) that Montgomery Clift wants Chester to write a screenplay about his life. The spirit of Montgomery Clift goes on to explain that he wants Chester to do this because he has the chance to live the life he was never able to; Chester is openly gay & Clift spirit explains he lived "in the closet" as a gay man during his life.


The spirit of Clift reaches out to Chester on another occasion, & explains (through one of the psychics) that he must go to his former home (which has been preserved since Clift's death) & spend the night there. This is where Chester finally made the connection to himself & Clift while soaking in the same bathtub that Clift died in.


Chester: "I understood him in a way that maybe nobody else would. And when we want that person to tell our story be somebody who understands who we are... I could be Monty's happy ending."


After the moment at Clift's house,Chester does not pursue the screenplay or Clift's memory. But soon after, Chester hears from a relative who does not regularly speak with him. She tells him that she had a dream about a man who looked like Chester, & he explained who he was & that she was to call Chester to tell him to find Elizabeth Taylor. Someone close to Chester, who had never been told this story before, & who did not regularly speak with Chester, called him to Cntinue his mission on Clift's behalf. Chester: "Elizabeth Taylor, if you're there, it's me, Montgomery Clift."

 Chester's Filmography:
Adam & Steve (2005)Quintessence (2003)
The Look (2003)
Bumping Heads (2002)
Circuit (2001)
The Anniversary Party (2001)
The Experience Box (2001)
Charlie! (1999)
The Misadventures of Margaret (1998)
Shucking the Curve (1998)
Kiss Me, Guido (1997)
David Searching (1997)
I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
Frisk (1995)
Grief (1993)
Swoon (1992)

Born On This Day- October 28th... Edith Claire Posener

“Good clothes are not a matter of good luck."

EDITH HEAD believed modesty was unbecoming & that you should have anything you wanted in life, but you had to be dressed for it. Edith head knew about dressing. The legendary designer saw all the Hollywood greats stripped down to their underwear or less. As the stars gazed upon themselves in the studio wardrobe mirrors, Head was the woman standing behind them, making them look impossibly glamorous while carefully avoiding glamour herself.


Hollywood's most famous & influential costume designer, as well as its most prolific, Head had a career that lasted 6 decades. She designed clothes for 1,131 films , an average of 35 a year, she dressed virtually every star who shimmered on screen in the golden age of movie making. Head was the last costume designer to be under contract to a major studio, Paramount. She was a woman who succeeded in a world, which in her day, was dominated by men.


Head wrote a pair of books: The Dress Doctor & How to Dress for Success, & played herself, giving a fashion show commentary in the 1955 film- Lucy Gallant, starring Charlton Heston & Jane Wyman.


She could be a bit playful with the truth, taking credit for designs she had not created: Audrey Hepburn's little black dress in Sabrina & the Newman/Redford wardrobe for The Sting, for which she won an Oscar. Always discreet about the size & shape of the stars' bodies, she knew about all the skeletons in their closets, but she was never one to gossip.


Head knew about the intimate secrets of Mae West's vast bosom, Gloria Swanson's wide waist & tiny feet (size 2 1/2), & swan necked Audrey Hepburn's broad shoulders. She often boasted that she was a magician: “I accentuated the positive & camouflaged the rest".


Head would make the stars, with all their flaws, look a million dollars, & she influenced the way millions of women dressed too, as a designer for Vogue patterns at a time when home dressmaking was all the rage, although Head could not sew herself.


Her costume designs for films went global. The sarong she fashioned for Dorothy Lamour in the 1936 film The Jungle Princess, Head had her stitched into it, made the actress a star & was copied by every swimwear manufacturer in the US. It is still copied today.


For Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951), Head accentuated the teenage star's bosom & tiny waist with a strapless, bouffant-skirted white ballgown, scattered with violets. It became the prom dress for American teenagers when it was copied by all the leading department stores. According to Head, Taylor had the most beautiful shoulders in Hollywood, so she created dresses for her to show them off.


Bette Davis: "Edith Head’s life was all about glamour, 60 years of it, in the most glamorous place in the world- Hollywood," Head designed the brown silk, sable trimmed cocktail dress Davis wore as Margo Channing in All About Eve, warning everyone as she swept down the staircase for the big party scene to fasten their seat belts because it was going to be a bumpy night. Davis tried on the finished gown the bodice & neckline were way too big. Head was horrified, but Davis pulled it off her shoulders & shook one shoulder sexily: “Doesn't it look better like this anyway?" Head won one of her 8 Oscars for that film. Davis later bought the dress for herself, because she loved it so much. Head: "There were 8 important men in my life, & they were all named Oscar."


Head was working as a language teacher at the Hollywood School for Girls in 1932 when she bluffed her way into Paramount's wardrobe department. She already had a B.A. from Berkeley & a master's from Stanford, but then went to study art at the Otis Art Institute & the Chouinard School. She was hired by the studio as a sketch artist, although the fashion drawings.


By 1938, she was head designer, working on every prestigious production the studio made, and left only in 1967, when she joined up with Universal. Head spent the remainder of her career here, thanks to her friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, including Tippi Hendren's smart green suit made of textured tweed that would snag easily during an avian attack.


Head's career was not without controversy. After winning her Oscar for The Sting, she was sued by the illustrator who really designed Redford & Newman's clothes. the truth about her design of Audrey Hepburn's little black dress emerged only after her death, when the Paris couturier Hubert de Givenchy quietly admitted that he'd come up with the frock that was copied everywhere & worn by a generation of women; Head had designed all the other costumes in the film.


Head also adored Grace Kelly & was upset when the actress slighted her by not inviting her to design the wedding dress when she got married to Prince Rainier of Monaco. She did create Princess Grace's grey going-away suit, though.


Head: "I regret never having dressed Marilyn Monroe, never designing uniforms for the Chicago Cubs, & being alone. It is much easier being remembered than trying to remember." It was an open secret in Hollywood that Edith Head was a lesbian.


In the Pixar film- The Incredibles, the personality & mannerisms of the film's fictional superhero costume designer- Edna Mode’s sense of style, round glasses, & assertive no-nonsense character are very are a direct homage to Head's legendary accomplishments & personality.

I am so in Junior High School, & I of course think it was fun to write the word- HEAD 24 times.