Guys
Classic movie stars, artists, quotes and male pulchritude…Huss-hes!
Featured:
Dinners Once Upon a Time (really!) with Burgess Meredith
“Like the seasons of the year, life changes frequently and drastically. You enjoy it or endure it as it comes and goes, as it ebbs and flows.” -- Burgess Meredith.
Yes, darlings, the Brazen Hussies’ own Sher actually hung out with this wonderful man, a true star, several times.
Mr. Meredith was a consummate actor with an incredibly long career in theater, film and TV. I'm delighted that back in the day I met this supremely classy, friendly and erudite gentleman, full of joie de vivre. I was very young, working on a movie he was starring in at the time. He was as energetic as many men (and women) decades younger. And Burgess Meredith was also, let’s face it, downright fascinating.
I had dinner with him several times, sitting in sheer heaven, transfixed as he talked about Paulette Goddard and Orson Welles and others from Hollywood’s Golden Age. I was mesmerized as he recounted a strange tale about a messenger from Carlos Castaneda who turned up on doorstep one night, too…
He told me I was "secretly a princess" and that one day I would realize the talents inside of me. Then, in a whisper, he said, " ..and you will discover you have wings -- and you can fly!"
I haven't found my wings and it's now late in the day..
But I'm still trying, Mr. Meredith. I’m still trying.
Frank Capra: Master Director of Classic Hollywood Classics!
"I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries." -- Frank Capra, born May 18, 1897.
Looking for a flick to peruse, darlings? One to make you laugh, or cry, or want to canoodle with the one you love? We promise you’ll find one – likely many more – among movie directed by the wondrous Frank Capra
“New Hollywood” Director Peter Bogdanovich
"I don't know exactly what it was that pushed me towards directing, but I think it was a naive notion that, if I directed, I would be able to play all the roles. A kind of greed." – director Peter Bogdanovich.
While the Golden Age of Hollywood is known for a host of innovative film directors, Peter Bogdanovich emerged in the l970s as a creative new force in film. In fact, he became known as one of the greatest "New Hollywood" directors of the l970s. He was also a writer, actor, critic, and a movie historian, who, like the Brazen Hussies was influenced the brilliance of many classic movies. But he didn’t copy them although he clearly was inspired by them and learned from them.
Hanging Out with Jimmy Carter
Yes, darlings, I’ve been known to do things other than practice the art of the withering stare and having multiple sarcasms including hanging out with Jimmy Carter. Really.
And he has a special place in my heart for his kindness towards me when I was very young and had little self-confidence. He's the only president I can say I knew way back in the day and actually hung out with - but I did....
Busby Berkeley: Director of Dream-like, Mind Boggling Scenes
"In an era of breadlines, depression and wars, I tried to help people get away from all the misery...to turn their minds to something else. I wanted to make people happy, if only for an hour." - Busby Berkeley, born November 29, 1895.
Busby Berkeley was a director and choreographer extraordinaire. He truly brazenly experimental, creating musical numbers that still make viewers do double takes - scenes that are dream-like, hallucinogenic, crazy, beautiful and just plain (well, they were NEVER plain) mind boggling!
In many ways, Berkeley was truly the star of his own movies, although he wasn't seen. In addition to the choreography, the logistics and sweeping camera angles are often unexpected and always over-the-top. There's nothing quite like a Busby Berkeley movie (with the possible exception of some truly mind altering psychedelics, not that we would know anything about such, darlings).
Imagine living through the Great Depression and escaping from it all for an hour or two inside a darkened theater where scenes of cinematic musical magic take you to another place where anything seems bright and possible, no matter how improbable.
Ray Bradbury
I never met him, darlings… but did talk to Mr. Bradbury on the phone when I wrote for the late and lamented fabulous OMNI magazine. It was the only time in my loco vida I remember turning into a fangirl and blithering.
Mr. Bradbury didn’t seem to notice – he was charming, helpful, sigh, wonderful… and an inspiration since I was 12 years old. As soon as I first read his mesmerizing stories, I suddenly I wanted to write, write, write, too! --Sher
“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.
You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise.
Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” -- Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012).
Tom Robbins
"I write to twine ideas and images into big subversive pretzels of life, death, and goofiness - on the chance that, like the Trickster figure in tribal myths, they might help keep the world lively and give it the flexibility to endure. On the other hand, having been at it off and on since age five, writing may simply be a lifelong bad habit." - Tom Robbins, the over-the-top original author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction, Still Life with Wood pecker and more.
And, of, we adore his BRAZEN originality and quirkiness!!
From Jitterbug Perfume: “Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.”
Rudolph Valentino
Yes, darlings, his memory is still, well, HUNKY (we need something cool to drink after perfusing his mal pulchritude).
"Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams." - Rudolph Valentino, who went to that great opening night party in the sky on August 23, 1926.
James Cagney
"There's not much to say about acting but this: Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say." --- James Cagney, born July 17, 1899.
