IN CHINA MISTRESSING IS BUSINESS AND BETTER THAN WORKING LIKE A SLAVE IN A FACTORY

DAILY BEAST : INSIDE CHINA'S MISTRESS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX full article,

Increasingly, young migrant women turn to hostessing in karaoke bars, a form of prostitution that creates a pool of potential mistresses looking to improve their financial security.

It is difficult to make moral judgments with a broad brushstroke. As long as the mistress business involves adults with sound minds and without coercion or intimidation, one could argue that the exchange of company and sex for money is not that fundamentally different from selling one’s manual labor or mental capacity.

Iris doesn’t appear to have moral qualms about having a relationship with a married man. “It was a little weird at the beginning, but I got over it quickly.” She says she assumed his wife was middle-aged and not attractive, and didn’t ask any questions about her. “Morally, if he didn’t care, why should I? I am not obligated to another woman’s happiness.”

THE LOUISE BROOKS SOCIETY IS INTERNATIONAL

LOUISE BROOKS SOCIETY - KEEPING UP WITH EVENTS ALL OVER THE WORLD  Another Google Blog!

A blog about an actress, silent film, and the Jazz Age; and occasionally the Denishawn Dance Company, writer Frank Wedekind, his character Lulu, Weimar Germany, books, music, art, history, the cinema and other things sometimes only tangentially related to the heart of the matter, written on a regular basis by Thomas Gladysz, founding Director of the LBS.

LOUISE BROOKS SPEAKING OF THE LIFE SHE LEAD IN 1948 and 1953 AS A KEPT WOMAN

Kenneth Tynan writing in the introduction of the book "Lulu in Hollywood".  This is what LOUISE BROOKS told him, printed on page xxxiv.

"Between 1948 and 1953, I suppose you could call me a kept woman," she said.  "Three decent rich men looked after me.  But then I was always a kept woman.  Even when I was making a thousand dollars a week, I would always be paid for by George Marshall or someone like that.  But I never had anything to show for it - no cash, no trinkets, nothing.  I didn't even like jewelry - can you imagine?  Pabst once called me a born whore, but if he was right I was a failure, with no pile of money and no comfortable mansion.  I just wasn't equipped to spoil millionaires in a practical, farsighted way.  I could live in the present, but otherwise everything has always been a hundred percent wrong about me.  Anyway, the three decent men took care of me.  One of them owned a sheet-metal manufacturing  company, and the result of that affair is that I am now the owner of the only handmade aluminum waste basket in the world.  He designed it, and it's in the living room, my solitary trophy.  Then a time came, early in 1953, when me three men independently decided that they wanted to marry me.  I had to escape, because I wasn't in love with them.  As a matter of fact, I've never been in love.  And if I had loved a man, could I have been faithful to him?  Could he have trusted me beyond a closed door? I doubt it.  It was clever of Pabst to know even before he met me that I posses the tramp essence of Lulu."


Book
Lulu In Hollywood
by Louise Brooks, with Introduction by Kenneth Tynan.
C 1974 and 1982 by Louise Brooks
University of Minnesota Press

PARIS FASHION 1923

SHOULD SHE TELL HER MAN SHE WAS ONCE A KID PROSTITUTE ON THE STREET ? OPINION BY MISSY

QUESTION FOR MISSY: 

OK Missy, I'll tell you.  I was a prostitute.  I ran away from home when I was 15 and lived on the streets.  I lived with other kids and managed to survive.  Like I never had a pimp or was beat up and I didn't get HIV.  Actually I'm vegetarian and I don't drink or do drugs.  It was real tough but I made it out.  Fourteen years ago I moved into a room in a house with one box of stuff to my name and now I work in real estate!  I have nothing to do with my family. Missy, I feel compelled to tell the man I've been seeing the truth about me.  I feel if he really loves me he will understand.  He's been asking me questions like "Do you usually spend the holidays with your family?" and "What's your mother like?"  I just said "no" and "she's a real character."

Andrea

ANSWER FROM MISSY:

Andrea, the key here is 14 years ago.  That was a long long time ago.  I'm so glad you got out of that life and made it because many do not.  I understand you want to be authentic.  However, you are not bringing disease or drug addiction into this relationship so I wonder how what happened 14 years ago effects the relationship.  Who you are today is who you are today. That's what should be important, I feel.  I can't be sure how this man will take the news and I know you want me to assure you that he does love you and it will be all right.

You might want to read around Jillian Lauren, who I wrote about a few months back, using the search feature in this blog to bring up those posts.  Jillian has her act together today but she had many years of suffering as well.  She was an escort, a stripper, and the mistress - consort of two very wealthy royal men, but she also had a long ordeal with drug addiction.  Today she is a wife and mother and successful writer.

I can only share a story with you.  I met a woman who was in your situation herself years ago who is now married to an executive in the movie business.  They've had a long marriage.  She told me "I was on the street. I told him right away, after I met him, that I'd been on the street."  From this I get two ideas.  One, tell him simply, "When I was 15 I ran away from home and was on the street for a while.  It's best for me if I don't have a relationship with my family.  I'm so glad our relationship is so loving."  Two, if you're going to tell, him tell him soon.  I think most people know that when you say you were on the street as a teenager they know it was rough.  Focus on the here and now and who you are today.  Don't go on and on with stories of things that happened to you, just keep it simple.

May you be blessed!

Missy

MODELING'S DARK SIDE - NIGHTCLUB PROMOTERS - RICH MEN AND GIRLS TOO YOUNG : MISSY SPEAKS

A PEEK AT THE DARK SIDE OF MODELING by NIKKI BATTISTE, DAN LIEBERMAN and DAN HARRIS  full article link

"Lonely and low on cash, many models fall prey to a tempting but dubious lifeline: party promoters, perhaps the biggest and best-kept secret of the modeling world.

"It's almost like a secret society, so if you're not in it you don't understand it," said a promoter named Isaiah.

 

It appears to work like this: Party promoters befriend young models. Nightclub owners pay promoters to bring models as young as 15 to their clubs to attract rich men. Rich men go to the nightclub because young models go there, then spend lots of money partying with them. The club owners pay promoters a cut of the nightclub's profit.

 

Some might liken party promoters, many of whom are college-educated, to pimps."

***

MISSY SPEAKS!

As we mature we become better at knowing (because we are taught, observe, and have experiences) at what we will or won't do.  We should check in with ourselves about where we stand on things from time to time because over the years we change.  There are all sorts of things I said I would never do or that other people should or shouldn't do when I was a teenager that I've become more liberal or conservative about.  Most of us want to own our own lives while allowing other people theirs, until it comes to something like child molestation - then almost everyone thinks WRONG!

It concerns me that many teenagers and youthful women who are just maturing and don't know themselves so well, are lured into the party drug and booze lifestyle and then exploited like this. 

However beautiful you are in youth, you really should be thinking about finding a vocation or avocation that will hold your interest and that you can invest yourself in by working, volunteering, or educating.

If you're a bored and lonely model, there are plenty of things you can do while you work towards modeling success.  First, there are many volunteer opportunities that do not require consistency or long term commitments, just for you to show up.  When you approach a non-profit simply tell them that this is the case.   You may not get the choice assignment but you'll be there to learn.  Actors also have to be free to audition or work around dance classes, you're not the only one.  So decide what it is  you enjoy or have interests in and attempt to find that kind of volunteer experiential.  You'll be building a second resume.  One of the best places to do this kind of volunteering is the public library.  There is almost always something that can be done that will be appreciated.  What about horses?  You may be able to muck out the stall in exchange for exercising the horse.

You get the idea!

 

 

REVISIT ALINA KABAEVA OUR RUMORED MISTRESS OF THE MONTH FEBRUARY 2011

USA TODAY PUTINS RUMORED GIRLFRIEND OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY full article!

Yes Alina Kabaeva did help light the Olympic Torch. Since I last devoted an entire month to Alina, Vladimir Putin HAS divorced his wife of very many years.  Alina competed and won medals ten years ago.

EXCERPT: Five legendary Russian athletes, combined winners of 12 Olympic gold medals and dozens of world championships and major titles, were among the final torchbearers for Friday night’s Olympic Opening Ceremony in Sochi. They were also joined by a lesser athletic figure, Alina Kabaeva, a one-time gold medalist and a bronze medal winner. Her presence was more conspicuous given that she’s rumored to be the longtime girlfriend of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE START PAGE FOR ALINA HERE AT MISTRESS MANIFESTO! MISTRESS MANIFESTO

VOGUE 1920'S

WILL YOU BE MY VALENTINE?

BARBARA BENNET INTRODUCED LOUISE BROOKS TO WALL STREET MEN

Louise Brooks was invited to their parties by Randolph Hearts and his mistress Marion Davies both in California and New York.  She was also a friend of the Bennett family, known for the actress Constance Bennett, Joan Bennett, and Barbara Bennett.  Barbara was a good friend.

pages 14 - 15 of LULU IN HOLLYWOOD - essays by Louise Brooks

... Among the Hollywood detestables, even I was no match for Constance, who could sit across from me at the dinner table in Marion Davies' beach house and never acknowledge my existence with so much as an icy nod....

It was then that Barbara introduced me to a group of Wall Street men who made it possible for me to buy expensive clothes.  These most eligible bachelors in their thirties, finding debutantes a threat, turned to pretty girls in the theatre, whose mothers weren't husband hunting.  Cafe society developed about this time.  The theatre, Hollywood, and society mingled in the monthly Mayfair dances at the Ritz, where society women could monitor their theatrical enemies and snub them publicly.  All the rich men were friends who entertained one another in their perfectly appointed Park Avenue apartments and Long Island homes.  The extravagant sums given to the girls for clothes were part of the fun - part of competing to see whose girl would win the Best-Dressed title.  Sexual submission was not a condition of this arrangement, although many affairs grew out of it.  For a time, Barbara was kept by William Rhinelander Stewart, who gave her a square cut emerald from Cartier.  One night when we were swimming of Caleb Bragg's houseboat, the Masquerader. she watched it slip off her finger into Long Island Sound.  She kept this hilarious accident secret from Stewart by buying a fake emerald from Denis Smith, whose jewelry business was unknown to innocent lovers.  They would have been staggered to learn how many of their gifts were converted into imitations and cash.  Truly, ours was a heartless racket.  After receiving an ermine coat from Jaeckel's, the gift of a stockbroker named John Lock,  I let him take me just once to a tea dance at the Biltmore Hotel.

I HAVE A LEANING FOR YOU

LOUISE BROOKS IN PANDORA'S BOX 1929

 UPDATE JUNE 2021  STOP!  Due to a copyright claim to YouTube the film has been taken down.

I'm linking to the full film on YouTube  YOUTUBE LOUISE BROOKS IN PANDORAS BOX 1929

Check YouTube for trailers and clips.  So Sorry!

LOUISE BROOKS ON BECOMING SOPHISTICATED

page 10  Excerpted from LULU IN HOLLYWOOD - essays by LOUISE BROOKS

..."Culture, I was to learn, was not a prerequisite for becoming a sophisticate New Yorker.  It was, in fact, a handicap.  The rich men who before long were exhibiting me in fashionable restaurants, theatres, and nightclubs shrank like truant schoolboys from the name of Shakespeare, and they looked upon an evening spent at the Metropolitan Opera or at a concert in Carnegie Hall as unthinkable misery.  Since I could not gossip about these socialites' families and friends, did not feel secure discussing the theatre and movies, and detested the vulgar game of dirty jokes and sexual innuendos, I talked scarcely at all.  Years later, the dress designer Travis Banton told me that in 1925, at the Colony - the grandest restaurant in town - he watched from another table and put me in the category of "beautiful but dumb," where I remained to the end of my film career.

In 1922, then, if I was to create my dream woman, I had to get rid of my Kansas accent, to learn the etiquette of the social elite, and to learn to dress beautifully.  I could not correct my speech at a fashionable girls' school.  I could not learn table manner from escorts embarrassed by my social inferiority.  I could not afford Fifth Avenue couturiers.  Therefore, I went for my education directly to the unknown people who were experts in such matters - the people at the bottom whose services supported the enchantment at the top of New York..."

Note: Louise Brooks grew up in a household where there were piles of books everywhere, and in her mid -life became a writer of articles about the Silent Film era.

LOUISE BROOKS THE FLAPPER

LOUISE BROOKS TO KENNETH TYNAN ON BEING MOLESTED AS A GIRL

To Kenneth Tynan in the Introduction of  of LULU IN HOLLYWOOD - essays by LOUISE BROOKS.

"Having paused to light a cigarette, which provoked a mild coughing spasm, Brooks resumed her story.  "I almost forgot a strange incident that happened in 1952.  Out of the blue, I got a letter from a woman who had been a Cherryvale neighbor of ours.  She enclosed some snapshots.  One of them showed a nice-looking neighbor of ours.  She enclosed some snapshots.  One of them showed a nice looking gay haired man of about fifty, holding the hand of a little girl - me.  On the back she'd written, 'This is Mr. Feathers, an old bachelor who loved kids.  He was always taking you to the picture show and buying you toys and candy.'  That picture brought back something I'd blacked out of my mind for - what? - thirty-seven years.  When I was nine years old,. Mr. Feathers molested me sexually.  Which forged another link between me and Lulu: when she had her first lover, she was very young, and Schigolch, the man in questions, was middle -aged.  I've often wondered what effect Mr. Feathers had on my life.  He must have had a great deal to do with forming my attitude towards sexual pleasure.  For me, nice, soft, easy men were never enough - there had to be an element of domination - and I'm sure that's all tied up with Mr. Feathers.  The pleasure of kissing and being kissed comes from somewhere entirely different, psychologically as well as physically.  Incidentally, I told my mother about Mr. Feathers, and - would you believe it? (Peal of laughter.) She blamed me!  She said I must have led him on.  It's always the same, isn't it?"  And Brooks ran on in this vein, discussing her sex life openly and jauntily, unbuckling one more notch of the Bible Belt with every sentence she uttered."

Excerpted from LULU IN HOLLYWOOD - essays by Louise Brooks

WOMEN IN FLAPPER ERA ADVERTISEMENTS

LOUISE BROOKS - FREE SPIRITED SILENT SCREEN STAR : MISTRESS OF THE MONTH FEBRUARY 2013

1906-1985

You may know the iconographic face because of the black helmet of hair worn in a severe bob and the black smoldering eyes peering out directly at you. LOUISE BROOKS, a Flapper, liberated from the fashions that made it difficult to move, became a professional dancer in her teens.

Considered now to be one of the most influential actresses (a word she insisted on rather than the neuter term actor) of the Silent Film era, and associated with free-spirited sex, she would live much of her life after a couple dozen films in obscurity and poverty.

She was born Mary Louise Brooks on November 14, 1906 in Cherryvale, Kansas, the daughter of a lawyer and a pianist. At fifteen she began to dance professionally and joined the Denishawn Dance Company (founded by Ruth St. Denis, a contemporary of Isadora Duncan) and traveled.  In New York City, through with Denishawn Dance Company and Ruth with her, she became a Ziegfeld Follies performer.  She said she was seventeen.

Her acting was natural at a time when others were so overly dramatic. Her peers were Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, two different types, who became more famous. Because her voice was beautiful, she made it into Talkies.  

As a young woman she was associated with sex.  In the chapter called "Why I Will Never Write My Memoirs", of her book (cover above) called LULU IN HOLLYWOOD, she said that she was not degenerate enough for one part of Hollywood and too degenerate for another.  

On page 107, she wrote, "I am not speaking of those vulgar brawls publicised as Hollywood orgies, nor of those parties composed of a herd of extra girls (she means movie extras - background actors) infiltrated by producers and actors stimulated by stag movies, nor of those drunken parties that spread into bedrooms and out upon lawns.  I am speaking of those rare entertainments which, so far as I know, have never been recorded in any memoir."

Louise wrote a series of essays about her experiences in what I call Hollywood's Golden era, which were published in LULU IN HOLLYWOOD. She gives chapters to W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, and Marion Davies. 

She writes about Hearst's management of Marion's career and presumption that he would reign supreme in Hollywood. She writes about her friendship with Marion's Davies' lesbian niece called Pepi Lederer, who had a Black woman as a lover, was raped while drunk and had an abortion, and eventually commit suicide.  Louise says she herself was not lesbian but had a couple sexual experiences with women and sometimes encouraged people to think so. 

She writes, on page 42, that while a guest of Hearst and Marion's she knew that Hearst was also keeping Maybelle Swor in New York, who lived a few floors below their apartment at the Warwick Hotel.  (The first I heard that!)

Louise was never happy with the Hollywood system in which actors were owned by Studios and was outspoken about this unhappiness.  It was career suicide.  She was too independent though not an outright rebel.  So though she made 24 films, it wasn't until she was "rediscovered" for her contribution to the development of acting that people began to look her up, and by then she was old and far removed from her heyday.

After being blackballed by being given lesser and lesser roles until she quit, Brooks bounced around a bit, first going back to her hometown in Kansas where she no longer fit in.  She also went back to New York City and worked as a salesgirl at a department store and was shunned by her old friends for working at such a job.  She may have become a prostitute for a few years in New York City, something she alluded to as her last option. Finally she settled in Rochester New York, famous for the home of Kodak film and cameras, where she lived alone and isolated, with her books and her cat. 

William Paley is said to have provided a stipend to her for all the years of her life when he found out she was destitute, though their long ago affair was said to be brief.

Louise herself wrote that she was a "Kept Woman" but without any one man contributing to her welfare. 

Through this month I'll be excerpting from the book LULU IN HOLLYWOOD, which is an introduction by Kenneth Tynan and essays that were written and published by Brooks in the 1960's and 1970's in magazines like Film Culture and Sight and Sound!