TAKE A LETTER MARIA : R.B. GREAVES

SHOULD SHE BREAK WITH THE MAN SHE HAS LOVED ALL HER LIFE?

QUESTION FOR MISSY

I have loved Michael since I met him when I was fourteen.  When I was twenty one we married. I believe Michael did love me for a long long time. He's now fifty and I don't think he loves me anymore. We are a childless couple and that's my fault.

I never spied on Michael but one day I was out shopping and I saw him in a restaurant with another woman. She's got to be in her twenties. I saw them kiss. I'm so depressed. I haven't told him that I saw him.  I just set myself up in the game room and told him no more sex. He said "Ok."

Should I fight for him if he no longer loves me?

I can barely get up.

Melody

Illinois

ANSWER FROM MISSY

Melody, 

It sounds like your depression is serious and clinical.  You should see about some meds, temporarily at least. 

That's what a friend of mine did when her husband of fifteen years announced he no longer wanted to be married. It took a while to realize that he had lied and lied and lied. About moving to another state to be near his family. a state which wasn't a community property state. That he didn't expect her to work. That he had not met someone else.  Yes it hurt.  

She is a person who has rarely been without a man in her life. She did find another, better, man, which would not have been possible if she had stayed with this husband.  She has now been with him for more years that she was married.

She did not put up a fight. She might have had millions of dollars more if she had. She was too depressed.  She was in denial that they could live apart and be "friends" like he suggested. That first Christmas, when he first took a grad student he'd met on an expensive vacation, and then showed up at her house which was the smaller house she went to while he kept their big house she had remodeled, and wanted to be let in and sit around and be family and probably have sex with his ex, she opened the door to say Merry Christmas but did not let him in.

It's my feeling that it's a rare person who does not experience some betrayal or heartbreak and life can be complicated but, if you think back on it, you may realize that there have been indications in the past that Michael was no longer so into you. He has to know something's up, like you know he's kissing another woman, because he's not fighting to get you back upstairs.

Don't blame this other women and keep your issues with Michael separate from his personal issues.  It's up to him to figure out what he wants - you, her, to be free, to stay married.  You figure out what you want.

I feel from your message that basically you blame yourself and childlessness for his lack of interest.

That could be but there are many childless couples. 

You deserve to be free of what depresses you.

So get that help.

Call around for a therapist. If he won't go with you, you go.

If he asks you what you're doing down there in the game room, say you're "thinking."

You can LOVE AGAIN.

Missy

P.S. Some ex couple s are friends. So much depends on the personality, character, values  and if there are children and how it all came down. I feel some time off after a break up is essential.

DEAR

 

ELIA KAZAN : THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE BARBARA LODEN

 

Excerpted from Google Books

Then one day she stood naked before me, took my hand, and put it on her left breast. "Do you feel it?" she asked.

I found a lump there.

It was January of 1978.  She died in September 1980, on the fifth.  Here is a record of what happened in those thirty three months.

As soon as she found the lump in her breast, she did what a well trained actress does, she researched it, read books, interviewed friends, particularly one friend, a woman who had come through it - "at least so far." She consulted physicians, weighed their advice, came to her own conclusions. The record is notable for her desperate wavering from one course to another. What I saw when it was over was that no one, no expert oncologist, no spiritualist, has the vaguest idea of what to do about cancer.  We live in the dark.

...she was looking for a way to deal with it that didn't call for an operation. Reading books of the subject and a magazine called East-West, she decided to become a vegetarian and undertake a macrobiotic diet.  She came upon the writings of Michio Kushi, a Japanese doctor who'd had some success treating cancerous patients with diet and acupuncture, she went to the Acupuncture Center of Massachusetts and adopted his wheat plant  juice diet, which she found distasteful, and the macrobiotic diet of kale, brown rice, no meat.  A consultation with Kushi drew this opinion that the problem was not in her breast but in her liver. He said her liver was "feeble." Ginger presses were to be applied to her liver area.

(Barbara had other consultations and resisted having the lump removed due to the fact that permission pre surgery was that the entire breast as well as muscle could be taken off as well. I believe this is still a standard permission. About two years before she died she did have the lump removed.  She continued to try what we would call Holistic or New Age remedies but as the disease progressed she did try radiation and then chemo - what she dreaded most.)

KAZAN ON HIS CONFUSED AND MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT BARBARA

 

Excerpted from Google Books

(Kazan reports that he dreaded marrying Barbara, although he was free to and they had their son Leo. He reports that Barbara gave him an ultimatum, though she is also prepared to pack up her junk and move out. He reports that his friend has advised against it. He goes off to Europe, taking a woman he met in the park, doesn't know anything about, who when asked said she would go anywhere with him. However, in Europe he begins to write with extensive exploration into his own life, what becomes his book and film The Arrangement, saying that he could not write about Molly, his wife, and that the wife character is not Molly.  As he traveled from Greece to France and beyond, he also was having correspondences, and he wrote to Barbara and told her where he was going so she could write back to him.  Eventually the woman from the park ended her travel with Elia and Barbara agreed to meet up with him in Japan.

EXCERPT:  The basic premise was the same.  No enduring relationship was to be formed.  But as I went on planning the structure of my book, I found the character of the woman who stirred up the discontent (in the male character's life) of the hero was inspired by Barbara.  She had some sort of effect on me, one that I now dramatized in fiction. I felt a continuing interest in her and I also felt gratitude that the relationship was still meaningful for me.

... When she arrived I noticed a striking difference in her manner. A female wise in her sex might have tipped me off that this change was a manipulation, chosen to achieve an end.  I would never exclude craft from a place in Barbara's bag of techniques, nor would I deny that any dog could wag its tail and I'd be charmed. Sill I truly believed in her altered personality, even if it was an effort to reassure me that she could make good in a more permanent connection, one in which different personal qualities are required. I was delighted with how we were together for the next two weeks. She was always interesting, frequently surprising, ever loving, and would listen when I talked.. without her mind wandering as it often had in the past...

(He prolongs his stay in Japan two weeks because they are getting along so well. He even confesses that he had another woman along for the trip. But back in New York, he becomes determined to keep both women.)

Missy here: Hopefully you'll be intrigued enough to read this book for yourself.  The feeling I got was that Barbara was not being manipulative, that she was changing and actually becoming more independent and accommodating as much as she could, but that Kazan felt entitled.  If she behaved as he did, such as being secretive about where she was or who with, he resented it.  

Have you ever been in such a situation yourself?  If so, leave me a comment!

DYNAMIC

 

SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN by NATHALIE LEGER is a MULTI GENRE MASTERPEICE

 The book was authored by French writer Nathalie Leger.

THE NEW YORKER : REVIEW FROM 2016 ON SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN

This is an excellent review of the book, which was an accomplishment of Nathalie Leger.  The author had difficulty in researching Barbara Loden.  Sadly the Elia Kazan archives do not contain anything about his second wife.

EXCERPT :  Here, now, is a remarkable new book that does everything - biography, criticism, film history, memoir, and e3ven fiction, all at once, all out in front.  The book is "Suite for Barbara Loden," by French author Nathalie Leger, which was originally publishe4d in 2012 and is recently out in English translation from the small press Dorothy.  It's all the more remarkable for doing so much in a mere hundred and twenty-three pages (in translation by Natasha Lehrer and Cecile Menon). Barbara Loden direct3ed one feature film, "Wanda" from 1970, in which she also starred.  She was already an actress, including  in "Wild River" and "Splendor in the Grass," both directed by Elia Kazan, whom she married in 1968.  She won a Tony Award for her stage role in Arthur Miller's "After the Fall," from 1964.  But Loden's place in artistic history is assured y "Wanda," one of the best American independent films ever made.  She had other projects in minds (including an adaptation of Kate Chopin's novel "The Awakening" but was unable to find financing for them.  She died of cancer in 1980, at the age of forty-eight.

THE ARRANGEMENT : A NOVEL BY ELIA KAZAN THAT MAY BE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

The script by Arthur Miller for the film After The Fall was thought to have been based on his personal experience in a marriage with actor Marilyn Monroe, an ex wife, and she was said to have been the female character. Elia Kazan's 1967 novel that was turned into a film in 1969, The Arrangement, was thought to be based in his relationship with Barbara Loden, also using her as a character. The film started Kirk Douglas as a successful man having a midlife crisis. Faye Dunaway acts as a girl named Gwen - the character possibly based on Barbara.

If interested in when Marilyn Monroe was a Mistress, you can find her in the archive of May 2016:

MARILYN MONROE - ACTRESS - "SEX GODDESS" - and MISTRESS OF TALENT AGENT JOHNNY HYDE

DARING

BARBARA LODEN IN HER FILM WANDA

Called "a hard luck drama" the film that was written by BARBARA LODEN, who also acted in it and directed it, is thought to be based on her own life growing up in the Ashville area of North Carolina. But actually, it's more like what happened to women from her background who didn't move to New York and pursue a career.  The film is about a women with no advantages who goes with the flow. 

Barbara was in her 40's when she came into her own and gained personal career success.

The first YouTube video I posted expired so I'm replacing it on 9/30/2021

DARLING

 

BARBARA LODEN AS ERNIE KOVACK'S COMEDIC SIDEKICK

In New York, Barbara relied on her looks to get modeling jobs.  Her first husband, Larry, acted as her promoter and agent and got her an audition with Ernie.  She looks quite thin to me.  Stick with it as she gets sawed in half.

ELIA KAZAN : AN EXCERPT ON WHEN BARBARA'S SON WAS BORN

 

I was unable to obtain this book, copyright 1988, to read it cover to cover but was able to excerpt due to Google Books. - Missy

"On the second of January, 1962, I flew to Stockholm to publicize a film I'd recently completed, Splendor In The Grass.  The big studios were still doing things in style in those years, and we stayed at a hotel where we were attended by servants who looked as if I should be serving them.

On the day after our arrival I received a cable from New York  City informing me by a prearranged code, that I'd had a new son by a woman not my wife.  I can't remember that I was flustered. I went to a press conference and did my best to "push" my film."

At the time, Barbara continued to be married to her first husband, Larry.  The relationship with Kazan was a bit off and on, but ultimately, after the death of his first wife, Molly, who had been married to Elia for many years, he was free to marry Barbara.  Despite his having had many affairs of shorter duration while married to Molly, and while involved with Barbara, Elia married Barbara.

Missy here: Ultimately I feel that Elia Kazan was not a man who could be faithful to any one woman. He had earned respect as a film director and certainly met a lot of women, famous and not. I keep wondering though how much the sexual revolution and a new urge for sexual exploration and "loving the one you're with" had to do with the choices that these people made to accept what would have been considered to be marital infidelity or adultery just a few years earlier.

Are we "liberated" by having sex with whomever we wish? Does a man prone to Mistresses get a new one after he marries one?  I'm not sure we have the answers to these questions a half a century later. 

DELIRIOUS

 

BARBARA LODEN : TALENTED ACTOR AND DIRECTOR : MISTRESS, THEN WIFE OF CONTROVERSIAL HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR ELIA KAZAN

BARBARA LODEN

Image from Found A Grave

1932-1980

Who says a man never marries his Mistress? Or that a woman can't accomplish something great just because she had a disadvantaged childhood? The story of our Mistress of the Month, actress Barbara Loden, begins in North Carolina, where she was raised by her grandparents, and ends in Manhattan, with lots of Hollywood in between. 

An actor who studied at the famous Actor's Studio, where James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Marilyn Monroe also studied, and which was founded in 1947 by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Robert Lewis, in New York City, Loden became an accomplished actor. The Actor's Studio is famous for an acting technique called "The Method," an emotion-based performance in which the actor embodies the character. Though her study there she was noted by Elia Kazan, who thought her range was limited but that when she was good she was very good. At some point they began an affair which endured.

Barbara Loden, though not a household name, was a working actress on stage, in film and on television. According to the IMBd, a film database, "A one time pin-up beauty and magazine story model, Barbara Loden studied acting in New York in the early 50's and was on the Broadway boards within the decade. She was discovered for films by legendary producer/director Elia Kazan, who was impressed with what she did in a small roll as Montgomery' Clift's secretary in Wild River (1960). He moved her up to feature status with her next tole as Warren Beatty's wanton sister in is classic Splendor in the Grass (1961). As Kazan's protégé she appeared as part of Kazan's stage company in the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater's [production of After the Fall (1964), winning the Tony and Outer Critic's Circle awards for that dazzling performance..." 

As a contemporary of actresses such as Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood, Barbara was most compared to Marilyn Monroe or Jean Harlow - blonde sex goddesses. She played a version of Marilyn in "After the Fall" which had been written by Marilyn Monroe's real life ex husband, Arthur Miller and a character that most people - including Marilyn - assumed to be based on Marilyn. Yet, unlike these other actresses, she became a feminist icon after her film Wanda. Was she a feminist?  Probably not, in my opinion, but certainly she was influenced by the 1970's feminist movement.

Though she was in plays and in films, early on she appeared on television as a comedic sexy sidekick as a regular on the Ernie Kovacs Television Show. Her first husband, Larry Joachim, to whom she was married from 1954 to1967, was a TV producer and film distributor and acted as her manager and promoter and got her the audition. Together they had one son but Barbara, while still married to Larry, also had a son with Elia Kazan, with whom she had an on and off again relationship and.  After the death of his long time wife, Molly, married Kazan.

Elia Kazan was married to Molly and had children with her from 1932 to 1963.  Molly died, and that freed Elia to marry Barbara, who Molly did know of as an actor.  

Elia married Barbara in 1967, after she'd been his mistress for several years. Sadly, while they were still married at the time of her early death because of breast cancer, at the age of 48,  Kazan was rumored to be involved with another Mistress at the time. In fact, in his autobiography he admitted to having bedded the wives of a number of men who had funded his films and while the book was published in 1988, years after Barbara's death, he is not very complimentary to her. He called her a "hillbilly" for instance, because she was raised in the Appalachian Mountains in rural poverty. He, however, could be called a Turkish refugee.  As I see it, that she got out of there and attempted a career at all is more important. Barbara had risked moving to New York while still a teenager, and like many young women of her generation, took work she could get in which she relied on her beauty.

Kazan (1909 - 2003) is considered to be of one if the greatest film directors in Hollywood with numerous Oscar nominations for his films which you may have seen such as Streetcar of Desire. His films won eight. In 1999 he was given an honorary Oscar as a director, which was controversial because during the hunt for Communists in the McCarthy era, he had named names and testified against others. Many people in the film industry who were labeled as Communists were blacklisted and could no longer find work. As a result, protestors appeared outside the event. Some speculated that he had a habit of turning against people who had helped him.

About Wanda. This film was a remarkable accomplishment for any woman at the time.  Film schools have been full of women in recent decades but it was the first ever film in which a woman wrote, directed, and starred.  Wanda came out in 1970. This crime drama was filmed on a low budget of about $115,000 and had a crew of four - just one other actor. It's gritty realism was notable and no doubt the character Wanda was inspired by Barbara's childhood, the woman she might have become if she had not moved to New York. It's been reported that for all his accomplishments, Kazan attempted to take credit for her film. 

Barbara discovered she had breast cancer when she was about forty-six. She attempted holistic treatment but it didn't work. Eventually she accepted radiation and then chemotherapy. At the time Kazan wanted a divorce but didn't file because of her illness. In his autobiography, he says that their relationship after the success of Wanda had changed as Barbara became more self assured and less dependent and that they were no longer intimate. However, as she first fought the disease with less traditional or "medical establishment" methods and then in desperation took radiation and chemotherapy, he didn't abandon her. It is said that she had agreed to divorce and that he had another Mistress. 

Though she never approached the celebrity of her peers such as Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, or Marilyn Monroe, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (United States) considered the film Wild River (1960), which Barbara acted in, to be significant.  The film Wanda is also noted by the National Film Registry and has been preserved and refurbished by UCLA.

This month I will link to much more information about Wanda, the film, and Barbara and Elia. Stick with me, won't you, and learn much more about this fascinating woman.

C 2021

References for this months posts include a wide variety or resources, some which we will link to, including Wikis, the IMBd database, YouTube videos, and Elia Kazan's autobiography. A few years ago when I wanted to write about Barbara Loden not so much was available.  Today there is great interest in her. 

You might want to search for Hollywood in my archives.