
—Clark Gable


Dallas, Texas, 1975

Red Leaves on Cracked Earth, 2006



Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, Pirnitz 1870–1956 Vienna)
Manufacturer: Wiener Werkstätte
ca. 1910
Silver, amethyst, carnelian, and ebony

— Angela Lansbury

Portrait of a Girl, c1490
Tempera on panel
44.1 x 29.2 cm
Private Collection

Paris, 2010

Sue Lyon, 1960

Screenplay by Ben Hecht
Based on the play Design for Living by Noël Coward

Woman Reading to a Little Girl, 1900
oil on cardboard
58 x 70 cm
Private Collection

—from Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed By Robert Sellers

Witching Hour, 1977
Tempera on panel

Still life, Parkdale, 1998





I ordered “Hellraisers.”
I am trying to think of an American movie star who has the qualities of Clark Gable. He seemed very comfortable in his own skin. A college roommate of mine was Rich Lang who was a very interesting guy. Among other things he was a ham radio guy with his own little “radio shack” behind his parent’s house in Brentwood. On his desk there was Gable’s Oscar for “It Happened One Night.” Gable had given it to him. Rich’s mother was “Fieldsie”who was Carol Lombard’s personal rep, as my mother in law was Jane Russell’s.
The ubiquity of Marilyn sometimes makes me wonder “why her?” – especially with so many competing starlets during the same period. I have to watch the movies again to remind myself of her talent as a comedienne, and that vulnerability that was so rare. And then there’s pictures like this, that underline the peculiar quality she had – not just another pretty girl, but one with a fresh, captivating look that never felt hard or wary. (Though to be honest, she probably could have benefited from some hardness or wariness, in hindsight.)
Nice pictures! I can’t get over the “before and after” of Marilyn Monroe.
These days cars have a generic quality but in the Sir Wm Lyon days (who founded the Swallow Sidecar Co) a Jag always gave a lot for relatively little money. Compare say an E-Type of 1964 to an Aston Marton DB5 of the same year, and twice the price.