Rocket scientist/devotee of the occult Jack Parsons, whose short life intersected with nascent NASA, the Californian arm of Aleister Crowley’s sex magick cult, witchy artist Marjorie Cameron, and scientology (one-time BFF L Ron Hubbard ran off with his girlfriend, his life savings, and his yacht)
A Lee Miller capture of the dream commute-buddy
Performance artist / musician / actress (and Beck’s mum) Bibbe Hansen, hanging with the Factory crowd and being a much cooler teen than you.
I’m having something of a one-woman revival for 80s Richard Gere, and
although Gere circa American Gigolo is maybe a little on the young side
there’s a nice symbiosis in seeing him playing a Hollywood hustler a
decade before Pretty Woman came along. It’s also a much weirder, darker
movie than I expected; it reminded me of Altman’s Long Goodbye - a distinctively cyclical soundtrack, crumpled suits, the obliqueness of the murder mystery, Nina Van Pallandt. Plus the genius lighting throughout is just 100% sunshine noir
perfection (all those venetians!)
Hidden Figures looks so promising: NASA, the space race, brainy ladies getting shit done in the 1960s. I need to watch it immediately, I mean -
“NASA mathematicians Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) cross gender and race lines to help launch astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell) into outer space.”
Also I think Mary Jackson was definitely a BotD kinda lady, as per her
reaction to meeting John Glenn in the trailer: “It’s equal rights. I
have the right to see fine in every colour"
Look I know that they are both pretty much terrible dirtbags in this film (Ethan especially, oh my god. Thanks for my terrible taste in boys in the early 00s, babe), but I will never not love Ethan x Winona x Reality Bites
Norwegian beauty Marianne Ihlen, one-time muse and lover to Leonard
Cohen and the inspiration behind So Long, Marianne and Bird On A Wire
(and likely a great deal more). Cohen wrote her a letter just before her
death a couple of weeks ago, which has naturally been doing the
internet rounds, and it’s really beautiful:
“Well
Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our
bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know
that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think
you can reach mine.
And you know that I’ve always loved you for
your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about
that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a
very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the
road.”
My very favourite Father John Misty for Playboy a couple of years back. (Yes I bought it, and yes it did feel willfully perverse to buy Playboy for photos of a fully-clothed man). He has a new song out, a sweet hazy seventies romance of a tune that you can listen to over at FBi
Winona channeling Jon Spencer in the Talk About The Blues video was everything I never knew I wanted as a teen. It’s completely inspired casting, and also likely pretty formative in fostering my appreciation of the soft-butch look
Withnail proclaiming Hamlet (“I have of late, but wherefore I know not,
lost all my mirth…”) in the rain, to the unimpressed wolves at London
Zoo, is perfect and ridiculous. And breaks my heart, every fucking time.
Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt in their new movie Allied, where they as per Vulture they play “undercover spies that fall in love while on a mission to assassinate a German official in Casablanca.” Uh, YES PLEASE.
Wanted: someone who is not Woody Allen to take me to the planetarium when it’s raining
Silent film star William ‘Billy’ Haines, who ditched the silver screen in the 1930s for a highly successful second career as Hollywood’s go-to interior designer. Allegedly, Louis B Mayer terminated his contract when he refused to marry a designated starlet, choosing instead to stay with his long-term boyfriend Jimmie Shields. They went into the decorating business together, and remained business and life partners until Haines’ death in 1973, with Joan Crawford describing them as “the happiest married couple in Hollywood.”
The celebrated other half of our previous babe, poet e.e. cummings. While his lines these days seem largely to have served to launched a thousand tumblrs, they are absolutely worth revisiting: playfully brainy and thoroughly romantic (not to mention frequently pretty saucy). This one is a long-time fave -
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
An icon of early 20th century modernity, Marion Morehouse was the
favoured model of Edward Steichen and Cecil Beaton (among others) in the
30s and 40s, and lived with poet e.e. cummings until his death in
1962.
She’s unfortunately mainly mentioned these days as a footnote to cummings’ life, but Susan Cheever wrote evocatively about the couple in Vanity Fair -
“Cummings and Marion, literally penniless, used their last two tokens to take the subway uptown from Patchin Place to a fabulous New Year’s Eve party. They were dressed to the nines: she, long-legged in a spectacular evening gown, and he in a glamorous gentleman’s top hat and tails. The night was freezing cold; how would they get home? Neither of them worried at all as they dazzled the party-goers and had the time of their lives.
In the elevator on their way home in the early morning, the airy, beautiful couple noticed a leaden banker and his stodgy wife. They were all a little drunk on champagne. The banker admired Cummings’s beautiful hat. “Sir,” asked Cummings in his educated accent, “what would you give for the privilege of stepping on it?” The banker paid $10, the hat collapsed on cue, and Cummings and Marion took a cab back to Patchin Place.”
