Excerpt page 201 : Gloria and Joe were having dinner on Rodeo Drive when Joe handed her a leather--bound copy of Stroheim's massive script and told her Robert Sherwood had finally read it and pronounced it the best film story ever written... (Queen Kelly's script was originally entitled The Swamp.)
Excerpt page 14 : By starting their ambitious film project as a silent (film) four months after the release of the all-talking Lights of New York, producers Swanson and Kennedy and director Stroheim were extraordinarily careless, suicidal, or both.
The movie was worked on in 1928-1929 - the years in which the stock market fell and the Great Depression took hold. At the time technology for recording wasn't terrific and frustrated the actors and directors who had to carefully move on set to be near hidden microphones. Sound engineers were trained by the telephone companies and if an actor turned his head away from the microphone they'd have to yell cut and start over. Some actors waited to see how it would all work out. Some actors lost their careers when the public heard what they sounded like. In some cases sound was added to silent film. All all-talkie was a film in which the entire film from start to finish had sound - the actors voices - background.
Excerpt page 205 : ... (A front page story read..) "Miss Swanson will appear in a few talking sequences and it marks the first time for her voice to be heard by the general public. She had never made any personal appearances tours nor has she ever spoken over the radio.: A Variety item a week later announced that Ben Glazer, the overseer with Le Baron of the Stroheim project, was working on the screen treatment of FBO's first talkie, a film scheduled to go into production in ten days. Persistent rumors that Stroheim and Swanson did not see eye to eye on Queen Kelly were only laid to rest on November 5 when Motion Picture news reported that the film "went into actual production Thursday morning on location at the old Lasky ranch."
Another possible issue that might have delayed the making of Queen Kelly was that Joe Kennedy said that more than anything he wanted the two of them to have a child. Kennedy already had many children with his wife, Rose. Gloria said there was no way she would be willing to do that. Yet, it is possible that she did become pregnant and had an abortion.
Excerpt: Queen Kelly, in the scheme of things, was an anachronism, a Gloria Productions film for United Artists, shooting on RKO stages because of its star's personal relationship with the ancien regime... and with each passing week, wearing out its welcome
In the end, Stroheim went way over budget and the money lost was significant. Queen Kelly was released as a silent film by United Artist in 1931. According to Wikipedia, it was released as a part-talkie in European and South American markets because of a contract she had with Stroheim and that version had a different ending - a different director and cinematographer - a year or so later.
C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.
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
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.
Excerpt: "You want to take everything about my family and make it dirty and nasty, but the truth is, that is what you are," she said Friday in the courtroom where a jury declared that Tiede must return to prison. "You, sire, are nothing to me. You took my grandmother's life. You took the last years of her life and you stole her money. But you know what her legacy is? It's my family."
Note : Shanna was a teenager when her grandmother was murdered.
Billed as a comedy, this film will appeal to your dark sense of humor. It's starring Jack Black as Bernie Tiedi and Shirley Maclaine as Marjorie Nugent, the murder victim, as well as Matthew McConaughey as Buck Davidson, the local prosecutor who takes the murder trial to another county because Bernie is too well loved in Carthage, Texas. I loved the testimonials of gossipy townspeople throughout.
I'm always searching for Kept Men I can elect as Mantress of the Month and profile here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot. This man, Bernie Tiede, is of interest to us because his story is so unusual. Suspected by some of being homosexual, his Keeper a much older woman, the definition of Kept goes slippy-slidy. Was he actually her companion/care-giver without a monthly paycheck with husband privileges? Did he earn all those vacations and first class dinners and accommodations by being on call 24/7? Was he an emotionally and psychologically abused partner who no longer knew who he was? Was he punished more than a woman who had done the same might be? He did confess to her murder...
This high school graduate learned the funeral business as an assistant and moved to the small but proud town of Carthage, Texas, to take a job as a mortician there. As the film "Bernie" which came out in 2011 reveals, this creative and talented man, who had the artistic touch as a mortician, and who was active in local theater, musicals, and his church, was well loved. Bernie was so beloved due to his patience and generosity that many locals who were interviewed said that the wealthy Marjorie Nugent was simply so mean, cheap, greedy, demanding, and unappreciative, that she deserved what she got. Bernie is, however, serving life in prison.
The story goes that when Nugent's oil man/banker husband died, it was Bernie's funeral home who produced the beautiful funeral. At that point he took pity on the friendless, possibly despised, local woman. If you count compassion and patience as love, bit by bit the frosty woman thawed due to his care and consideration.
Thought by some to be "light in his loafers" (homosexual) Bernie was about 38 to Marjorie's 81 years at the time of her death; So a vast age difference there. Would that in itself mean they were not in love or lovers? Bernie was said to keep the company with a "lot of blue hairs." Even if he were not homosexual, speculation about any sexuality between he and Marjorie is just that. Some women are still sexual into their elderly years.
Was he Kept? Rarely does a person who does not need to work for a living do "nothing." (Think of all those housewives!) Though he was excellent at his job, especially "sales," Marjorie either weaned Bernie from his job or demanded at some point in their friendship that he work as her personal assistant. I have yet to read that he earned a paycheck. Couple-like, he traveled with her and lived the good life, which was held against him in court.
At this moment I'm thinking of the actresses who marry their agents. How do we separate what's business and what's personal? How many hours do you put in when you're a stay at home wife and mother? There's the stereotype of Mistresses or Mantress as doing a lot of waiting around, a lot of preening poolside, as they sip on cocktails and work on their beauty or amuse themselves with shopping. If there is anything they do for all this, the stereotype is that it's all about sex. You know from this Blog that's not all it.
Did Marjorie bully her husband? Why do I doubt it? Marjorie may have assumed that people only wanted her for her money. She may have tested Bernie. She was said to be controlling, emotionally and verbally abusive, and exactly as other people had found her to be. In the end, after Bernie shot her four times with a rifle, in what might have been a disassociated state, he stuffed her body in her freezer, and then faked that she was alive.
That he was a funeral director and knew how to preserve a body for a presentation and casketing certainly makes us think twice about that.
Marjorie Nugent was widowed in 1990. In 1991, she changed her will in Bernie's favor. He was to receive ten million. This left nothing to her family. By 1993 Bernie was with her full time, on call 24/7, to be a kind of "Your Wish Is My Command" genie. After she died, well, he hadn't quite inherited the money, because no one knew she had died yet. Still, he went on a spending spree. What he spent on, however, was not just for himself. He gifted a church thousands and made many a local's wishes come true.
He believed in God and in heavenly reward.
Because he was so beloved in Carthage, Bernie Tiedi's murder trial had to go to another county.
He served 16 years and then was let out and lived in the garage apartment of the film-maker; the film was part of the reason he got this second chance. The other reason was that Danny "Buck" Davidson, the Panola County, Texas, District Attorney, who had gone after Bernie Tiedi, had come to think that maybe he'd been too hard on Bernie, the model prisoner.
But instead of having his sentence commuted, or perhaps do another four years, Bernie went back to prison for life.
While much of this post is depending on the film, which is considered to be a dark comedy and does have its funny moments, I read around Bernie and will present the alternative view this month.
I also plan to post about MEN who have been ABUSED BY WOMEN. And by the way, I've just learned that horribly abused women who kill their husbands get much longer sentences than men who kill their wives in this country - the United States.
Missy
C 2021 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
The Pickle Man! Once upon a time just about every woman who watched this film in 1988 came out of the theater wanting a husband like The Pickle Man, even if they were not Jewish, living in New York, or working at a book store. The man is played by actor Peter Riegert and beautiful actress Amy Irving is the young woman with a job and apartment who almost becomes the Mistress of a snobbish literary author who does readings at the independently owned bookstore that she works at. Oh the days pre Internet, pre cell-phone, pre on-line book stores!
A fictive film based on the cultural changes that independent Jewish-American women experienced years ago, such as marrying men who were not Jewish, attempting to be single mothers without financial support from men, and rejecting the good intentions of their grandma's. And oh the matchmaker in this film is something else. I'd be afraid of her!
What changes Isabelle's mind about Sam, isn't her girlfriend who wants him, but that he hadn't actually hired a matchmaker after all.
Enjoy this one!
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I first saw the film Jersey Boys when it came out and enjoyed it. Rewatching it more recently, I realized it was excellent, surpassing many other biopics of singers and bands. I haven't seen the theatrical production, but hear it's great entertainment.
The film is about Frankie Vallie and his mates coming of age as Italian-Americans, coming from families who did not have much materially, turning to music instead of crime. Was being in a band just for fun or a way out of a predictable life? For the band that finds success and fame, it's rarely overnight success. Hard work and Hope is the key.
Seeing the play on Broadway lead to April Kirkwood writing Big Girls Do Cry.
The Getty Museums in Los Angeles are two of my favorite places to visit. Oh, I love the view out to the ocean on a clear day from the mountain top. I like finding the fossils in the marble cut thin to make the surface of the buildings. You might find me at the end of the afternoon, sitting with a coffee, watching a dramatic Southern California sunset all greys, purples, and oranges, thinking about the preservation aspect of the collection, most unseen, which eventually allows the general public to see sculpture and paintings that are hundreds or thousands of years old. One of the great things about these Museums is that admission is free to the public. You can even bring your own lunch and check it with your coat at no charge, then go outside and sit to eat later in the day. So there really is no reason not to go! (And you just might meet another art loving person while there.) Sadly, due to water shortages the wonderful fountains no longer run and are filled with stones, but that's in the eco-spirit of the informed in Southern California, more so than budgeting - or so I'm told.
So I'm there and I'm thinking, what sort of man was J. Paul Getty? Was he really as cheap as he is notorious for? He married several times times, and had children, sons who worked for the company in some capacity usually. and he was a workaholic who rarely spent any time with the women he had seduced, married, abandoned. What about Mistresses? Was he incapable of faithfulness? A collector of fine women as well as fine art?
And so it was of great interest to me that a film has been made focusing on the event of the kidnapping of one of Getty's grandsons whose ear was cut off and who Getty refused to pay. The film, "All The Money In The World," is now controversial too because actor Kevin Spacey was replaced due to a sex scandal with actor Christopher Plummer, who I hear was the original choice and doing a great job of acting as. Getty refused to pay so the kidnappers cut off the teenager's ear.
And so, this being MISTRESS MANIFESTO, I turned my attention to the private life of this billionaire, who lived in England for years till the end of his life and never made it back to his Malibu property, called "the ranch," until he was buried there. I depended on author Russel Miller's book "the House of Getty" as well as news articles on the Internet.
I learned from this book that while the press dwelled upon episodes of Getty's cheapness as one of his idiosycracies, in fact the man wasn't always. He could be generous by any average person's standards and then not and he had wanted to be a diplomat, but found he loved the oil business. Perhaps grandson's ears cannot be paid for with corporate holdings or profits but balls of string, by-the-rule-tipping, and avoiding expensive cab fares add up. And so while it's understood that due to his wealth a great number of women were interested (and you might assume, put up with him) author Miller makes a case for Getty being in fact a man who was his best self as a personality and more social than you may imagine when you see pictures of his scowling face, with women.
Starting young sexually, Getty may have tried to do the expected early on by marrying, but by the time he was in mid-life, he had many overlapping relationships, and ended with a harem.
And so you might want to check out the museums and ask yourself just how cheap Getty was because the museums that bear his name and were funded by his estate remain the ONLY always free museum in the city.
Here is some background on J. Paul Getty, who I will call "Paul" as everyone did, and his family before we begin this month's expose into Getty Mistresses.
He came from one of the families that immigrated to the United States in the late 1700's, and one Getty bought the area called Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the most famous battle of the Civil War took place, purchasing it from William Penn. J. Paul was the only son born in 1891 to Sarah and George Franklin Getty, who had acquired a fortune by Indian Territory standards ($250,000) by 1901. (His mother is an important part of the Getty saga.) At that time, knowing nothing of the oil business, George Getty gambled on a lot in the Osage Nation that struck a geyser of oil. Long residents in the Minneapolis area, Sarah had relatives in California and no real reason to stay. By 1906 they were renting in Los Angeles and Paul was going to Harvard Military Academy where he read Latin and Greek, and may have begun his interest in Roman and Greek antiquities. In 1907 they bought a house near Wilshire Boulevard and Paul still living at home, at 17 started USC. For some time he'd been claiming to his friends to have a "love life" that involved sneaking out and using his parent's car.
There may have been something to his early sexual confidence as by 14 years old he was considered to be girl crazy. He had an affair at about 17 with Edith McNair, ten years older than himself. She was a sophisticated and rich local single woman. USC bored him and he thought fraternities and sororities were snobbish. In 1910-1911 he worked his father's oil fields, you could say starting at the bottom, since it wasn't beyond him to work physically or operate machinery. After he transferred to UC Berkeley and began to travel, he bought his first collection items, Chinese bronzes and carved ivory. But when he transferred to Oxford, in England, he found himself finally at a college he liked. He was considered reserved (for an American) but had enough personality to be invited to the weekend house parties of his set, and enjoyed going out to theatre. (Getty would live in England in the last part of his life as well.)
At his 21st birthday, he traveled to Alexandria, Egypt to see the pyramids. His father's company was worth millions but he really wanted the life of a diplomat. But in 1914, when he was 22, Paul agreed to spend one year in the business and discovered that he loved it. He also loved money and women.
But (you'll love this!) he continued to live with his parents until his first marriage, when he was thirty one (31) years old!
Now when you see the unsmiling photos of Paul Getty, you may think this was a man who was too shy and awkward to be seductive. Money certainly helped, but his friends also knew a man who was charming, polite not pushy, and had a sense of humor and loved to make a woman laugh.
Next I'll cover Getty's early marriages, his pattern of workaholism, and his first known Mistress... and then cover the next one and the next and the next...
Missy
2018 C Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.
Are all hairdressers gay? George *(Warren Beatty) isn't. In fact women are seduced not only by his beautiful trendy looks, and we presume sexual experise, but because he makes them feel beautiful and look beautiful. He's one popular guy. Some of the greatest women in town want private appointments with him, only trusting their hair - and their bodies too sometimes - to him. Carrie Fisher plays the daughter who quizzes him at a home visit to see if he's sleeping with her mom.
At home he has a girlfriend Jill (Goldie Hawn).
He's sleeping with the wife of the businessman he approaches for financing to open his own salon. Jill is used to waiting around for him, or going by the salon he works at to see him and being brushed aside. It's not till the end of the film that she asks him to move out because he admits that he sleeps around. He thinks sleeping around is part of his job.
Jill is shocked but behaves in a noble manner, even if it is the 1960's. Called "one of the American Film Institutes Funniest Movies" to that date, and nominated for four Academy Awards, I didn't quite get that this was a racy farce. George isn't just sleeping with the investors wife, but also his mistress - Julie Christie's character.
Now here is what I noted while viewing the film, which is still a very popular one to borrow or rent:
The business man Lester's mistress - Christie - used to be George's girlfriend and they still like each other and are sexually attracted to each other - but being pragmatic, she's moved on him because he can support her. As George becomes more frantic to own his own salon, he begins to part from Jill, saying that she needs someone who can "Take care of her." Finances are supreme in his mind.
One gets the impression that perhaps when George is through with a woman or she is through with him, he releases his responsibility by urging her to a richer man. Of course George isn't doing so bad even if he's just the hottest hairdresser in town at one of the busiest and best salons. This film's worth a watch because it got all that acclaim years ago!
Through the years I've heard that the George character was based on hairdresser Jay Sebring who was eventually killed by the Manson Murderers along with actress Sharon Tate. Can't prove it, but thought that was interesting. If so, I'll bet the detectives considered that the murderer might be a man jealous over a woman.
C 2017 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot film review Missy Rapport
"The first person I should love is myself. I make choices that uphold my self esteem."
"When Harry Met Sally" is an old film but a good one that more than one generation can relate to.
After this film, Meg Ryan became famous for her impersonation of a woman faking an orgasm in a deli at table while acting as "Sally," with her friend acted by Billy Crystal, who was "Harry."
The theme is that Men and Women can never really be friends, but after many years from the day they met, Harry and Sally, who were very different people, did become friends, supporting each other through a breakup and a divorce, and then have sex. Harry can't handle it. They break up and that's when Harry realizes he loves Sally. It turns out their long friendship - the first he ever had with a woman - was an excellent way to get to know someone and fall in love with them.
You might just want to pop this old film in the DVD player some night when you want to laugh and maybe cry a little. In the film, Carrie Fisher acts as a best friend who has long been involved with a married man. She realizes he will never leave his wife when she discovers he has bought his wife an expensive nightgown. When Sally tries to introduce her to Harry, she finds herself attracted to his best friend instead. Soon they are living together and then marry. Both Harry and Sally date others, and if you've been on the dating scene in your early thirties, you may find yourself with some of the same dilemmas.
Listening to Sally with her girlfriends, all who believe it is better to be married and then divorced than never married, up comes the idea that if you do not marry YOUR HUSBAND (the man you were meant to marry) then YOU'LL LIVE YOUR LIFE WITH YOUR HUSBAND MARRIED TO SOMEONE ELSE!
It's funny but a true fear that many women have. (And maybe many men too?) Being married to the WRONG person is much worse than not being married at all as I see it.
As for Harry, he tells Sally that there are women who are high maintenance but she is the worst kind, A WOMAN WHO IS HIGH MAINTENANCE but THINKS SHE IS LOW MAINTENANCE. In other words, her idea of how easy it is to be with her is overblown.
Which brings us to the subject of MAINTENANCE, which sound not very romantic at all, right?
It's about how much you expect, what you need, what your self esteem or maybe upbringing would suggest. For instance, many of us were brought up that a man is to make all the plans, ask us well in advance (so you can say yes or no and if you say yes be prepared to go, with the proper clothing and equipment, for instance), and that he pays for everything on the date. The dinner, the movie, the ice cream, the gas in the vehicle, which he drives. In exchange he gets your company, and when you're young, idealistic, religious, or living with your parents, that means company but no sex. And some men do not like to work too hard to have a woman in their life. They want to be with someone who is easy to get and easy to keep, maybe because so much else about their life is complicated.
What is HIGH MAINTENANCE today, at this time in our lives?
I can't really say. It's so individual. But we all have a sense of what works for us.
So, not to decide your values for you, but what it really comes down to is that in any relationship, be that friendship, a love relationship, or even the relationship you have with your coworkers and boss, you must feel that you are treated with enough respect. You don't want to be with people who try to shame you, humiliate you, take credit for your work, or who keep cancelling on you.
I personally have gotten more lax over the years about people being right on time, but I still think they should aim for the right time and call if they are going to be late, and if someone cancels on me as a habit, because they are one of those people who is always wasting other people's time, I usually stop inviting them to go places with me and make my exit of that friendship gently. I also like making plans. I don't like people to just stop on in without calling in advance to ask if it would be OK. I don't like being caught on an off day or when I'm working on something (like this blog) or have the plans I've made for the use of my day to be blasted because of an unexpected visitor.
C Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot. 2015 All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights.
The film correctly reflects the difference in lifestyles between successful courtesans and wives of rich men. Wives were cloistered creatures without education or financial independence, their life devoted entirely to home and family. Courtesans, on the other hand, could mingle freely with the rich and famous, acquire education and wealth of their own, participate in literary, political and intellectual circles, and even publish their work.
Franco was incredibly successful in this milieu; between 1570 and 1580, she edited works of various authors and published books of her poetry as well as epistolary works. She was greatly concerned with the plight of younger women who lacked dowries; her published letters often refer to their plight and her wills left money to help poor women.
Franco’s success inspired extreme jealousy from male courtiers and poets whose position and patronage she greatly threatened. As in the film, a particularly venomous rival was Maffio Venier, a nephew of Franco’s patron Domenico Venier. Maffio repeatedly attacked Franco by name in satirical and often obscene verse. Franco’s poems and letters effectively strike back at Maffio and defend the role of courtesans in Venetian society...
"She was the most beautiful of a pack of Warner Brothers starlets invited to decorate an industry cruise on the "Southern Cross." Hughes singled her out, instantly curious about this graceful teenager with raven hair, hypnotic dark eyes, and a shyness that matched Hughes own... As the party broke up, Hughes insisted upon driving her home in a battered Buick, in which Faith immediately fell asleep."
page 150 of HOWARD HUGES THE UNTOLD STORY by PETER HARRY BROWN and PAT H.BROESKE
After permission from her parents...
"... He then swept her off to a sprawling ranch in the desert, initiating a dazzling courtship and mutual obsession that would stretch five turbulent years in which Hughes would exert iron-fisted control of both Faith Domergue's personal and professional existence... Their first days together were giddy with romance. They flew to the Salton Sea, where they floated in the primeval brine and feasted on cold chicken and champagne. They cruised the commercial "millionaires row" in Palm Springs, where she left the boutiques with towering boxes of clothes. ... "By the end of October, all strain of shyness were gone and we were falling in love, "Domergue later recalled. "It seemed as if danger or unhappiness couldn't get close to me when I was with this man."
Then, because she wanted to know everything there was to know about Howard, Faith, bored with homework and magazines, discovered a treasure chest of Howard's mementos from past (and present?) romances. These were postcards, cancelled checks, jewelry, letters involving Billie Dove, Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, and many others.
She put everything away just so but "Howard cornered her in the upstairs bedroom and accused her of investigating him "like a Pinkerton detective." Then he claimed he would show her anything if she just asked first.
By now the columnist Louella Parsons knew about their romance and put out an article asking if they had a "secret marriage."
In 1941 Hughes was "still operating under a set of mutually agreeable ground rules" with her parents. But he had also started employing her relatives.
"Every morning, a Hughes limousine collected Domergue and delivered her to a series of teachers and tutors at Romaine Street (a property he rented that mostly served as one of his head quarters). She would finish high school and begin drama lessons in a sterile, lonely building in the city's industrial neighborhood. She was furnished with a chauffeur, provided with golf lessons at the Wilshire Country Club, and sent to fashion consultants at Bullocks and Robinsons's department stores, where she was outfitted with a chic, understated wardrobe.
page 151-152 HOWARD HUGHES THE UNTOLD STORY by PETER HARRY BROWN and PAT H. BROESKE
In her memoir, Patricia Kennealy writes of her unhappiness with what Oliver Stone did with her story in his film THE DOORS but she did act in the film as the High Priestess who married her and Jim Morrison! (I was looking for a clip of that scene on YouTube but this is what I found.) She says her living room where they were married in a Celtic witch ceremony was tiny and this scene is total fantasy. I'm linking to it as it's rated R. YOUTUBE THE DOORS FRAGMENTS OF THE FILM from 1991.
