I'M GONNA SIT RIGHT DOWN AND WRITE MYSELF A LETTER : SARAH VAUGHAN

SARAH VAUGHAN : I'M GONNA SIT RIGHT DOWN AND WRITE MYSELF A LETTER

MISSY ASKS YOU : DO YOU HAVE A PLATONIC MAN FRIEND WHO MAKES UP FOR WHAT YOU DON'T GET FROM YOUR MAN?

I think it's wonderful to have a platonic male friend or three, straight or gay, who you can go places with and have fun with and talk to about your problems - if he's the "keep it confidential" type.

But have you ever felt as if your platonic male is providing things that YOUR MAN IS NOT?

We can't get everything we want and need with JUST ONE PERSON IN OUR LIFE.  This is one of the reasons we have friends. 

But, if so, what exactly do you get?

Google images search - public domain

 

THE COCOANUT GROVE RESTAURANT in the AMBASSADOR HOTEL

images from Google Images

 

THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL and the COCOANUT GROVE RESTAURANT

which was inside the hotel... the restaurant in where more than one famous actress was discovered.  It's décor featured monkey's with glowing red eyes hanging from trees.

 

 

 

(For a wonderful recreation of the Cocoanut Grove Restaurant check out scenes in the film THE AVIATOR starring Leonardo DiCaprio! and if you're interested in Howard Hughes, see my posts on Faith Domergue!)

The 500 room Ambassador Hotel, which is also well known as the place in which Robert Kennedy was assassinated, was torn down in February of 2006 after 84 years on the site, having never been officially declared a historical landmark in the city of Los Angeles.

SHE'S COURTING A MUSICIAN WHO IS NOT COURTING HER : OPINION BY MISSY

QUESTION FOR MISSY

Missy,

I'm in my first serious relationship.  My boyfriend is a musician.  He is talented, plays several instruments, recorded with a band, and has production credits.  He works hard and is always on call.  His income goes from low, so he drives for Uber, to high, and then he invests in a lot of equipment, studio rehearsal time, and other career oriented costs, leaving very little money for dates.

I make $25,000 a year which is tough to be renting my own apartment. 

I reassessed my relationship as you suggest in your blog here.

I realized that in 2015 I shopped, cooked, served, and cleaned up after dinner for two about 25 times.  That was more time consuming than I realized.  I didn't even have the time to give myself facials or do my nails!

He shares a house with room mates. We mostly hang out at my place. I feel a burden in having to keep it up to his standards, with everything in its place.  I asked him to help me move furniture and he said he would, but he never got around to it.

In that time he asked me out for coffee or dinner a few times, but it took weeks before we actually went.  One time he told me to pick any restaurant and I did but he kept vetoing my ideas.

When it comes to going places, making plans, it seems to fall to me.

He also let me know in November that he thinks we are not seeing each other enough and would like to come over twice a week.  The idea exhausted me but I do want to keep seeing him.

I realize that dating is a try out for living together or getting married.  My friends say this is how it is when you're with a musician.  I know that I would probably have to do all the shopping, meal preparation, and housework if we were living together or married so I feel kind of guilty that I feel so put upon. The main thing is that I want to go out on dates, get out of the  house, eat in restaurants instead of cooking so much.

Your opinion?

Molly,  Los Angeles

ANSWER FROM MISSY

Hi Molly,

A first serious relationship often becomes important in a woman's life even when it doesn't last because it becomes a reference point, and since you are so involved with this man and thinking of living with him or marrying him, I get it that you don't want to break up with him. It's difficult to change the routine or his expectations though not impossible, but obviously you need a change.

Here's what gets me.  This man is getting the comfort and refuge of hanging out at your place with you and the pleasure of home cooked meals  WITHOUT COURTING YOU. You are not really playing house. If you were you would have had some agreement on who pays for what... right?  It seems he expects you to cover the expenses as is.

Have you ever heard of the Bowerbird?  The male flies around the countryside with a keen eye for shiny and sparkly things like trinkets and bits and pieces of tinsel or other interesting and unusual little items and he builds a nest with a mud walkway to the entrance. He puts all these things he found on display on the walk way and asks a female to come see and inspect and approve of the dwelling. She's looking and her instinct is that any male who can find such things must be very good at being a provider, especially of worms for the hatchlings they will have some day. She is honored that he did all this to prove to her that he is worth being her partner. So she goes down the path and into the nest.

The Bowerbird COURTS his lady.

And so it has been for a long long time that a man has to prove he is READY, WILLING, and ABLE to be a woman's partner.  The first way to prove it is to PAY FOR DATES.

Here is the modern woman's situation. It is still a man's world, even in the West, even in the First World. Women may have made progress in general and there are a few standouts, but income inequality exists. Women are also punished in the workplace for time off such as for child bearing and caring for their parents. Our lower incomes mean less money to use for education, less money to pay into social security, down payments on housing, and retirement savings. Very few women have the traditional life of being retired permanently into marriage and motherhood.  Women are not only mothering but also income earners, single or married.  This means that if you are going to have a man in your life, and he has so many advantages as a man, he should be contributing at least fifty percent of your relationship costs.

Of course your musician's career expenditures make sense and maybe if he was consistently making more money he could take you out on the town more often, but he is not READY, WILLING, and ABLE at this time.

You KNOW you WANT to be COURTED. You want a man to prove himself to you.  Wouldn't you be horrified if you found out that he is using some of his money to date someone else?

I can think of many examples in which a man who was serious about sharing his life with a partner made choices to do that.

For instance, one friend of mine who went through several long term "serious" relationships into his mid-thirties had been, since the age of 21, slowly paying off a 2 caret diamond ring which he felt would be good enough to give to "the one."  He knew all along that he didn't want to marry until he had that ring, and his business was making steady money.  He married a 19 year old when he was 35!  That ring was just the start of her jewels.

A woman friend of mine, after a secret affair in high school with the football hero, got involved with the poorest kid in her class, at that time the nerd. He was serious about her and so he went to community college while working as a cashier at a grocer. He eventually got a college degree in fire science.  He studied for the test and got 100%.  Today he makes over $100,000 a year and that's good because she's now a stay at home mom with several children!  During the entire time they were dating he managed to ask her out, pay for dates, pick her up in his car, and sometimes he even came over on the weekend to personally wash her car.

Another of my friends, a beautiful woman with a wealthy step-father, was often pursued by men who were so intent on marrying (her) money that she was asked rude and personal questions on first dates like, "What's in your stock portfolio?"  In order to let her Bowerbird find her, after many heartbreaks, we conspired to have her stop wearing her good jewelry and designer clothes when she was socializing to stop advertising her wealth, to begin to give answers, with a wink and a joke in her voice like "Tell you what, if you and I ever announce our engagement in the Times, you and daddy will have to sit down and talk."

So, Molly (and all you others out there who are feeling put upon), here are some easy ways to check that generous spirit.

If a man asks you to dinner and you agree, do not invite him anywhere until he follows through and takes you to dinner, even if weeks go by.  You should not have to remind him or coax him.  With this you are finding out if he is GOOD FOR HIS WORD.

Don't make up for not seeing a person in person by having long phone call "visits" or providing informational texts, selfies, or sending interesting links to let them know you're still around and interested.

To get out of the routine of providing home meals when you want to go out, say "I've been so busy that the idea of shopping, cooking, and cleaning the kitchen afterwards tires me out.  Let's go out for coffee.  (Then give yourself that facial and do your nails.!)

Best Wishes, Molly!

Missy

 

BBC DOCUMENTARY ON CLARA BOW : HOLLYWOOD'S LOST SCREEN GODDESS

CLARA BOW :  Schulberg owned Preferred Pictures, which was not considered to be the best of the studios. He and his studio made a fortune on her, especially as he lent her out to other studios. In this BBC Documentary called Hollywood's Lost Screen Goddess, it's said that he worked her like a dog. In 1925 she made 15 films. She was called "Box Office Gold."









CLARA BOW married Rex Bell and had two sons, Joe and Tony, but by 1949 she had checked into a mental hospital having been plagued by insomnia and head aches.  She had electroshock therapy and tried to forget her childhood, that her mother had tried to kill her and that her father had raped her.

FASHIONABLE 1920's

HOW MUCH OF A MAKEOVER DOES SHE REALLY NEED? HE LOVES HER AND HER (OLD) LOOK : ADVICE FROM MISSY

QUESTION FOR MISSY

Dear Missy,

I'm a mistress in New York City and a Classic Case.  The man I've loved for many years is always gone for the holidays so I'll see him again mid-January.  I know he loves me.  I'm fine with almost everything as is.  The other day I was looking in the mirror and I decided that I need a total makeover.  I feel like I'm trying to hard to look too young now.  The problem is that he loves my long hair and I'm so tired of the look and the upkeep.  He also loves my legs and so I always wear short skirts to show them off.  I wear them to work too, because he often meets me after.  My legs are still good, but I feel like I'm trying to be years younger than I am.  He takes me shopping and strongly suggests what we buy.

I'm afraid if I change my hair and my style he's going to hate it.  I think he likes looking at me and likes to be reminded of how I looked when we met close to 20 years ago.  I worry that the transition to looking older is not going to go well in this relationship but I want to age gracefully. I think it's time to make some changes.  Should I just make my changes and surprise him when I see him next ?

Allison

ANSWER FROM MISSY

Dear Allison,

We all age.  He has.  (Is he still wearing the same hair style and clothing he did all those years ago?)  But life isn't fair.  Lots of men who have let themselves go still expect their women to be in great shape. I've know some men who are slobs in their own appearance feel pride that their women are so neatly groomed.  And men seem to cherish that their woman be, or look, younger than they are.  (It's probably deep seated - biology.)

My suggestion would be that you do a make-over gradually.  I don't know how long your hair is, but let's say that if it's down to your bum, you could get maybe four inches taken off.  When he notices don't say anything apologetic or explaining or blaming such as claiming your hair dresser suggested it to get rid of the split ends.  Just say, lightly, "I thought I'd try it."  (Same thing for any color changes or covering the gray.  Don't shock him.  Go the same color or close to it.) 

Tell him things have changed at your work and people are dressing differently there and you want to fit in there rather than stand out.  I think you can start including items in your wardrobe, such as pants that might go with a suit jacket you already own. Just say, lightly, "These are so easy."

When he looks at you, he does notice your hair and your legs, and what you're wearing, but I suggest that when you look at him YOU ALWAYS LOOK HIM IN THE EYES.  Keep the eye contact, Allison.  And my feeling is that this may be the time to remember the romance and reignite it, for which you might also need some new purchases.

Missy

CLARA BOW on the COVER OF MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC MAGAZINE

Image From Google Image

search for Public Domain Clara Bow Magazine

JERRY HALL and RUPERT MURDOCK ARE ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED!

MARCH 2016 UPDATE - the wedding! DAILY MAIL UK - RUPERT AND JERRY MARRIED!
Thought this was the best coverage I've seen on the wedding and the blissful couple!  Missy

APRIL 2011  JERRY HALL was our MISTRESS ? OF THE MONTH.

Jerry Hall was a top model before she entered into a 20-22 year relationship with Rolling Stone lead singer, the sexaholic Mick Jagger, and she wanted to be married to him, but Mick and she had a wedding that he got away with claiming as invalid.  The couple had four children, the youngest now 18 years old, and in my opinion Mick was very cheap with her considering his vast wealth when they split.  Turns out that the house she has lived in since must be returned to Mick if she marries again.

So move on out Jerry, because media mogel Rupert Murdock makes Mick's wealth look like that of a newspaper stand operator.  (And we all know that Jerry is not greedy.) I read the news in DAILYMAIL uk, and there are many other media covering the news, some snidely, but I say MORE POWER TO YA Jerry.

Those of you reading this, don't be so sure you know what's behind the relationship.  The announcement in the Times listed the names of all their children, and you see, the first thing they have in common is a whole lotta offspring.  Secondly, Jerry makes for an attractive and fun companion. 

DECLARATIONS FOR MISTRESSES ; Equal Pay For Equal Work

"I will research to find out if my pay is competitive, within my company and within my field."

Missy here!  I remember the day that my boss at a horrible job I held, badly underpaid, decided that my researching this very thing was an act of disloyalty to him and the company.  The company was making a fortune.  I could barely keep my used car going.   What a jerk!  One of the women who held a higher position than me but who was on commission told me that researching comparative pay was the first step in asking for a raise. How would I know if I was being reasonable or not? 

Alas, I must tell you that this could happen to you too, but the year is new and your future is bright, so the very least you can do is find out this information.  It's easier these days because so much is published about job skills, college degrees, and pay.  And Hollywood woman actors are saying that they are paid incredibly less than men actors even when they are at the top and the peak.

That said, if you LOVE your job, and your pay is livable, you may have to do a little Clara Bow kind of thinking and decide how much you work for a living and how much you don't think of it as work because you love it!

C 2016 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

FASHIONABLE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

OF ALL THE GIN JOINTS : MARK BAILY on CLARA BOW and MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

Paraphrased from this interesting book (and some of this information is also available through web site searches and other sources):

Clara Bow was the first celebrity to be called an "It Girl" ; the phrase was from her 1927 film "It Girl."  She captivated audiences in silent films with her natural performances which seemed as though she was natural, not acting. 

But Clara had a bad reputation in Hollywood, even among other actors who were hardly prudish. Perhaps her reputation was undeserved but they basically thought of her as a "tramp from the slums of Brooklyn."  "She did in fact grow up in poverty."  When she came to Hollywood in 1923 she was thought to be vulgar and talentless but her "sincere and uninhibited performances struck a chord with movie goers."  (Page 12)

"She was always incredibly sweet, professional, and beloved by the film crews she worked with."  But she was not to be invited to parties.  At least not the parties of anyone who wished to remain among the respectable Hollywood elite. (Page 15)

This saucy teenager was from (gasp!) Brooklyn, her mother was insane, and her father a lecherous hanger-on who was bleeding her dry through a series of failed business ventures. Bow herself was so licentious that she could shock even jaded old Hollywood types. As Budd Schulberg, son of Paramount president B.P. Schulberg and later a gifted screenwriter (On the Waterfront) recalled, "They all thought she was a low-life and disgrace to the community."  (Pages 12-13)

"But the truth about Bow was simpler. She was a scared 20 year old tomboy with little formal education. Her childhood friends were boys, and as a result, the things she enjoyed doing were almost exclusively reserved for men; drinking, gambling, swearing, and screwing.  She was also completely sincere.

A fun-loving innocent, at first Bow behaved no worse that a typical 20 year old. Sure she had parties with USC undergraduates, but they only ended in front yard wrestling matches, like an 11 year old on the streets of Brooklyn. Sure, she kept the back door open so cops could stop by and grab a beer. Who wouldn't?

But Clara Bow had so few friends that she usually played cards with her maid and cook. She ended her multiple affairs with powerful men before they got bored and told her what they really thought. One such powerful men was the elder B.P Schulberg himself - who - in addition to keeping Bow as a mistress had her under contract at Paramount.

(Note; According to the BBC documentary she met and signed with B.P at age 17.)


MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW : OF ALL THE GIN JOINTS

This book covers the Silent Era, the Studio Era, the Postwar era, the 1960's to the "new Hollywood" of the 1970's and includes places the stars went to drink and dine, like the Ambassador Hotel and the Coconut Grove, recipes for the fancy drinks featuring hard liquor (the authors had a bar tender consultant), and profiles of some of the legendary hard users of drink who were famous in Hollywood, mostly actors, names you know. A small and fun book, you may be tempted to spend some time sight-seeing and bar hoping even if you're a local.

UNFLAPPABLE FLAPPER

CLARA BOW : ACTRESS, FIRST "IT GIRL" and ROARING TWENTIES MISTRESS OF OLD HOLLYWOOD FILM PRODUCER B.P. SCHULBERG

Image from Wikimedia Commons/ Google Images

(1905-1965) 

 

CLARA BOW  - THE FIRST "IT GIRL"

 

 

This month we celebrate CLARA BOW, the first woman to ever be called an "It Girl," which was after she appeared in a film called "It!" in 1927.  She was 22 years old.  Clara's ability to use facial expressions to transmit a myriad of emotions and thought processes was invaluable for a Silent Screen actress and some say she was the very best actress in that era. But in the end she mostly made other people rich. Nor did her fans know the truth of her hard life. 

   

Film and Hollywood historians consider Clara Bow to have been both overworked and underpaid since she made 58 films from 1922 to 1933, while living in a small 7 room house, in what is now the expensive and exclusive Beverly Hills, but which at the time was a new undeveloped suburb. (46 of these were Silent films and 11 were "talkies.")  As for talkies, her strong Brooklyn accent was at odds with her screen image. 

 

The man who she was mistress to, at least for a while prior to their marriages, B.P. Schulberg, got her work, lots of it, and made most of the money. That she was his mistress is told in the book below, ALL THOSE GIN JOINTS, which says that B.P. Schulberg's son, Budd, who also wrote a book about his father that said so, and other "first hand accounts" admitted as much. By 1931 Clara had left the studio. B.P. married Adeline Jaffe in 1933 and until then only "dated."

 

So we have questions:  Was Clara Bow so thrilled with being an actress and making films that she didn't mind the bad pay? Was this just the way it was for all or most women in Hollywood, or most actors, in the early days of film making?  (As we know right now there's a movement for equal pay for Hollywood actresses lead by Patricia Arquette.) How much did B.P. provide her? 

 

There are clues that he was generous when he had to be and that he was embarrassed by her but also solidly on her side for some time.

 

Raised in a working poor family with mental illness (her mother) and alcoholism (her father) taking its toll, and likely molested by her father, who continued to expect her financial support after her mother tried to kill her and was placed in a mental hospital, Clara was supporting a family she couldn't cut loose even as they tormented her.  And they made her socially unacceptable if her hard drinking, talking, and frank sexuality did not.

 

While associated with the party of the Roaring Twenties, Clara Bow was considered to be an uninhibited girl who grew up on the tough streets, a tomboy who frankly liked sex and was accused of breaking up marriages. Though Hollywood's morals were barely there, she was even shunned by the Hollywood community for her looseness.  Today we might say that she failed to have boundaries.  She thought nothing of French kissing a stranger she'd just been introduced to.  But then maybe she was drunk.

 

In 1931 she married Rex Bell, a cowboy film actor and retired from film making after 1934.  She had two sons and settled into motherhood.  If only the marriage normalized her life!  But Clara Bow had mental breakdowns herself and was often in financial trouble.

 

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 THE FILM CALLED "IT" STARING CLARA BOW

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 Research into Clara Bow included this book, with excerpts coming up, as well as Internet resources like Find A Grave.  In this book on page 13, it states that Schulberg enjoyed the pleasure of her company but needed her to appear less scandalous.  "In an effort to clean up her image, he made her hire a female secretary/chaperone... When she had a nervous breakdown, he sent her off to Reno, but she returned with $100,000 in gambling debts."

 

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HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME - see the links below!

WALK OF FAME B.P. SCHULBERG  (Benjamin Percival Schulberg, credited as being a Hollywood Pioneer film maker.)

 

WALK OF FAME CLARA BOW 

Now, if you're interested in Clara Bow, you may be interested in other Hollywood actresses who were also mistresses covered here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO. You might also like to read about FAITH DOMERGUE, my Mistress of the month for May 2014, LOUISE BROOKS, my Mistress of the Month for February 2014, MARION DAVIESD, my Mistress of the Month for July 2013, and GLORIA SWANSON, my Mistress of the Month in December 2009.

Please read on for more on CLARA BOW and B.P!

C 2016 All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights  Missy Rapport/ Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot