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Tag: old hollywood

  • From Maitreyi to Hailey: MOST talked-about looks at Vogue World 2025 | Bollywood Life

    All the fun and glamorus looks from Vogue World 2025, Read further to know all the looks that’s everyone’s been talking about.

    When Hollywood and haute couture collide, the result is pure magic and elegance. At Vogue World 2025: Hollywood, stars swapped their movie scripts for designer masterpieces, turning the Paramount Pictures Studios Lot into a living, breathing fashion film set. The night celebrated the classic old-school glamour with a modern twist, and every look told its own story.

    Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in classic Manish Malhotra

    Maitreyi Ramakrishnan embraced her culutural roots in a stunning Manish Malhotra piece. Her look featured a pearl-studded sculpted bodice and a gold brocade skirt that radiated vintage elegance. A sheer embellished veil added a modern-day that give very elegannt ghungat touch. Rhinestone heels, Cartier ear clips, and a delicate nose ring completed her regal look. With sleek, side-parted hair and soft glam makeup, Maitreyi reestablished cross-cultural couture.

    Dakota Johnson in Valentino

    Dakota Johnson turned heads in a dreamy blush-pink Valentino gown designed by Alessandro Michele. The dress featured crystal floral appliqués and a tulle neckline that shimmered with every move. True to her signature style, Dakota kept it minimal, straight hair, wispy bangs, dewy skin, and simple drop earrings paired with a sleek black clutch.

    Miley Cyrus in Saint Laurent

    Miley Cyrus brought rock ‘n’ roll energy to the carpet in head-to-toe Saint Laurent. Her oversized trench, cinched at the waist over a crisp white shirt, was a bold nod to androgynous power dressing. Leather gloves, a biker cap, sheer tights, and pointed slingbacks added that signature Miley attitude, edgy, fearless, and effortlessly cool.

    Madison Beer in Valentino

    Madison Beer served up 90s nostalgia in a vintage black-and-white Valentino mini dress. The playful piece, complete with a dramatic bow, was paired with strappy sandals and minimal jewellery. Her soft waves and rosy makeup made the look feel fresh and timeless.

    Hailey Bieber in Mugler Magic

    Hailey Bieber brought drama and chaos in a custom Mugler leather dress from the Spring/Summer 2026 runway. The off-shoulder silhouette and bold cut-outs showed off her signature confidence, while a sculpted leather rosette added a touch of artistry and made her look like a dream.
















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  • The Return of Smoking Aligns With the Return of Retro Practices in General

    It’s a “trend” (read: way of life) many have been noticing for the past couple of years: smoking. Its steady rise back into mainstream culture arguably reaching a crescendo with Brat summer, the Charli XCX-fueled phenomenon-by-way-of-an-album that laid out what constitutes a “brat,” at least aesthetically: “pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra.” Note that pack of cigs was placed at the top of the list, even if XCX was largely just bullshitting/trolling the press…as is the wont of a true brat.

    And yet, it was as though she “manifested” the full-fledged opening of the floodgates when it came to “social smoking” being back in a big way. Unapologetically so. For, where once there was a stigma about it, the summer of 2024 seemed to confirm something that had been brewing for a while: if the “culture” was going to be subjected to the retro practices being consistently touted and implemented by a certain administration helmed by a certain orange creature, then it wanted to at least get back one “good” retro practice out of it: the joy of smoking. No matter that everyone, by now, is well-aware of the bodily harm it guarantees. 

    Here, too, another factor is at play with regard to the “why” of cigarettes a.k.a. “cancer sticks” taking off so much in recent times: it’s apparent that more and more people aren’t seeing much of a viable future for the world, so why not really find (a.k.a. buy, for an extremely exorbitant price) the thing you love and let it kill you? It’s not like there’s going to be an assured tomorrow anyway, n’est-ce pas? So “let it rip.” Or, in this case, let it burn. Put another way by Jared Oviatt a.k.a. “@cigfluencers” (now the go-to person for articles about why cigarettes are “back”), “The dream of stability, owning a home, financial security feels increasingly out of reach. So the question becomes: why not do what you want? Why not smoke? Nothing matters!”

    However, speaking to that aforementioned point about the exorbitant price, the people smoking are actually the ones who can own a home, do have financial security. To be sure, there seems to be something to the idea that “only” celebrities are smoking again (ergo, in some enraged people’s opinions, trying to make it “cool” again)—perhaps because the cost of a pack of cigarettes, to them, amounts to pennies. Which is why Rosalía brought an entire “cigarette bouquet” to Charli XCX for her 32nd birthday on August 2, 2024. Because, while roughly fifteen dollars a pack (when bought from a metropolitan city like L.A.) is alms to the richies, it makes far more of a dent in the average person’s so-called salary. Hence, the popularity of cigarettes among celebrities not necessarily causing a major uptick in smoking among “the commoners.” Who tend to prefer vaping anyway, a much more déclassé form of smoking, with only slightly less harmful health effects. Even so, Lana Del Rey remains committed to it, despite previously being one of the earlier known celebrities of the twenty-first century to parade her cig habit (once an indelible part of her visuals). 

    But then, that’s because Del Rey was always touting twentieth century views and “ideals” in the first place. It’s only now that “everyone else” has “caught up” to her (as she herself presently chooses vaping instead—to which her recent opening act, Addison Rae, would say, “Ew, I hate vaping”) by allowing themselves to fall behind. And why shouldn’t they, when everything around them reflects a society that has entered a time machine, reinvoking the worst of what “hippies” and “crusaders” fought against in the mid-twentieth century: racism, sexism and an overtly patriarchal society.

    Alas, since all of that has bubbled up to the surface again with a vengeance, many seem to think that, at the bare minimum, that should include the erstwhile “glamor” of cigarettes. Before the myth of their “doctor recommended” cachet was debunked with an early 1960s study that definitively concluded cigarettes cause lung cancer. It was in 1964, with the publication of Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, that things for the tobacco industry started to get really dicey. Because that’s when the PSAs, both in print and on TV, started coming out, making increasingly indelible impressions on people as the decades wore on. 

    The 90s were an especially “anti-smoking” time, in terms of campaigns going hard against tobacco. One ad, seeking to satirize the supposed glamor of smoking now mostly associated with Old Hollywood films, depicted a man and woman with “movie star vibes” as the former asks, “Mind if I smoke?” Her reply: “Care if I die?” The message was out: smoking was decidedly gross, selfish and, worst of all (for men and women alike), caused impotence. And yes, it’s almost certain that’s a problem for “cigfluencer” Matty Healy, who went from dating the “wholesome” Taylor Swift to the “brat-adjacent” Gabbriette, a fellow smoker. Because, despite the 90s being always on-trend with the likes of those in the “Brat orbit,” anti-smoking isn’t something that took hold from that hallowed decade. Besides, even the it girls of the day (e.g., Kate Moss, Chloë Sevigny, Winona Ryder) clearly never paid much attention to such ads. Or the influence their unabashed smoking had on those who wanted to be like them.

    Even so, that didn’t stop the effects of the anti-smoking movement at the government level, with California in particular being ahead of the curve on banning smoking in restaurants, workplaces and bars starting in 1995 (though Beverly Hills specifically started banning smoking in certain public places in 1987). Rather ironic considering that Hollywood was the place that started selling cigarettes as “glamorous” in the first place. The dive that the reputation of the cigarette took by the mid-2000s was so noticeable that it can best be summed up by Aaron Eckhart’s character, Nick Naylor, in 2006’s Thank You For Smoking, when he laments that the only people you see smoking in movies anymore are “RAVs”: Russians, Arabs and villains (the former two often neatly fitting into the latter category for Americans anyway). 

    Enter Mary-Kate Olsen, who, despite her twin also being a smoker, was arguably the first to really bring back cigarettes as a mark of “class” and “wealth.” This while also embodying the brat definition of wielding them as an accessory long before Charli XCX herself crystallized what brat even meant. MK’s cigarette-smoking advocacy reached an apex at her 2015 wedding to Olivier Sarkozy, an event that prompted Page Six to famously describe the reception as having “bowls and bowls filled with cigarettes, and everyone smoked the whole night.” It was a phrase—and scene—that pop culture enthusiasts couldn’t stop obsessing over. And maybe it took XCX’s Brat to “inspire” a new generation glom on to what Mary-Kate had already done for cigs anyway. Well, her and a few other 00s-era “bad girls,” including Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears (as a certain infamous 2008 Rolling Stone article phrased it, “She is an inbred swamp thing who chain-smokes”).

    All of which is to say that, sure, the “coolness” of smoking has survived numerous threats to its clout in the years since the truth about its dangers was made public. But it—smoking—has always been there, just waiting in the wings to reemerge again as a viable thing to do for securing one’s “effortless” chicness. However, the fact that the confluence of retro political policies and stances on gender (de facto, gender roles) has aligned with smoking’s latest renaissance doesn’t seem like a coincidence at all. So much as an additional way to “mirror the past.”  And to further undo all the human progress that was made since.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Vintage Vixen: Ava Gardner – Part 2 (15 GIFs)

    Vintage Vixen: Ava Gardner – Part 2 (15 GIFs)

    Actress, Ava Gardner, was the hot momma of her era. Men swarmed her like bees on a honeycomb only to be stung and left with heartbreak. Rumored to be the great love of Frank Sinatra’s life, she reciprocated his affections but left him when his wondering eye (allegedly) saw greener pastures with the likes of a call girl. It’s said that neither Sinatra nor Gardner ever recovered from the breakup and pined for each other until death.

    See Part 1 HERE

    Lead Image: Pierre Tourigny / CC BY 2.0

    Laura Lee

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  • Maxxxine: What Ryan Murphy Wishes He Could Do

    Maxxxine: What Ryan Murphy Wishes He Could Do

    Over the past decade, Ryan Murphy has positioned himself as the “go-to” for all things campy/pop culture-oriented. More than that, all things “retro” pop culture-oriented. Hence, “vintage”-favoring shows from the “Murphy factory” that include Feud, Pose, Hollywood, Halston, American Crime Story, Dahmer and, lately, just about every season of American Horror Story. It’s the latter series, still arguably his most well-known, that has lately favored returning to the Decade of Excess. Namely, AHS: 1984 and AHS: NYC. And yes, a considerable amount of his work has included the dissection of the Hollywood machine, its mercilessness and its tendency toward sexism, racism, cultism and all the other bad isms. Case in point, AHS: Hotel, which also frequently sets its stage in an Old Hollywood setting and showcases Richard Ramirez as a character (as is also the case in AHS: 1984).

    All of this is to say that Murphy has been infiltrating, for some time, the same themes and time period that Ti West’s Maxxxine—the third film in a trilogy that rounds out X and Pearl—explores through the same horror/slasher-tinged lens. Except that Maxxxine achieves what Murphy only wishes he could do. Never quite “landing the plane,” so to speak, on most of his projects. The ideas are there, sure, but not the artful, satisfying execution required to make them as great as they could be. And, speaking of landing planes, as we join Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), formerly Maxine Miller, in “Tinseltown, California” six years after the bloodbath (or Texas Pornsaw Massacre) that ensued while she was just trying to make a skin flick in the middle of nowhere, we see that she’s got herself a little job at a titty bar near the L.A. airport called The Landing Strip. Only Maxine isn’t working the pole so much as going into a back area for “Flight Crew Only,” where all the pornos are filmed.

    This is where she goes after auditioning for her first “proper” movie, a horror sequel called The Puritan II. An audition she knows she nailed, and told all the girls waiting outside in the casting line as much, too. That they all might as well go home. Of course, that’s the thing about Hollywood: every aspiring actress is hungry, hot and convinced they’re better than all the other girls she’s competing with. But Maxine is “different,” as they say. Special. That once-in-a-blue-moon kind of actress with “it” factor (or “X” factor, in this scenario). A star. Indeed, the word “star” and what it means in Hollywood is immediately addressed at the beginning of Maxxxine with a title card touting the Bette Davis quote, “In this business, until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.”

    Maxine is already a monster waiting to sacrifice herself to the Hollywood beast, it’s just that most people don’t know what she’s been willing to do in the past in order to quite literally make it. Not even her best friend and the only guy in town not trying to fuck her (as he says), Leon (Moses Sumney). To be sure, apart from her agent, Teddy Knight, “Esq.” (Giancarlo Esposito), there are few other people in Hollywood that Maxine can count on (and maybe it says something that only two men she trusts aren’t white). Sure, she has “coworkers,” like Amber James (Chloe Farnworth) and Tabby Martin (Halsey, who isn’t exactly “L.A. enough” for this movie), that she occasionally commiserates with, but, by and large, Maxine is out there on her own. And with the specter of Richard Ramirez (night)stalking the plot (just as Murphy would have it). For it’s 1985, the height of his murderous rampage, and news reports urging L.A. residents to stay vigilant and avoid going out late at night are constant.

    Maxine doesn’t seem to mind though, convinced she’s already dealt with a psychotic killer once before, so what’s another to her? When she tells Tabby she can “handle herself” walking home, Tabby ripostes, “Said every dead girl in Hollywood.” Tabby is also the one to point out that she supposed Elizabeth Short a.k.a. the Black Dahlia never would have become famous if she hadn’t been killed, so maybe it isn’t such a bad thing. You know, for publicity.

    That Ramirez’s crimes were fueled by his dogged belief that he was Satan’s “foot soldier,” put on this Earth to carry out vicious and brutal murders in the name of the Dark Lord only adds to the near-boiling-point sense of moral panic that was simmering in America in the eighties. As West himself remarked, he wanted to “embrace the darker side of eighties movies. A lot of people think of eighties movies and think of John Hughes or they think of leg warmers and big hairdos and things like that, but that’s not all the eighties was. And so, to set a story in Hollywood, I really wanted to embrace the absurdity that is Hollywood and contrast that there’s this incredibly glamorous place…but then there’s a sleazy, darker underbelly. And 1985 in particular was a very unique year because there was a lot of moral outcry in the States about the type of movies that were being made, the type of music that was being made, and also in the summer of 1985, there was a serial killer, a satanic serial killer, in Los Angeles that they couldn’t catch, and the way that they were trying to advertise and trying to get people to help find him was by putting him in the news and newspaper, so hopefully that, by sort of making him famous, people would help find him.”

    Undeniably, notoriety-based fame was becoming more and more of a “thing” in the latter part of the twentieth century, as not-so-talented people still wanted to secure what Andy Warhol dubbed their fifteen minutes of fame. So why not get it through more nefarious means? At the beginning of the movie, West wields archival footage of the day, ranging from Ronald Reagan saying that America’s glory years aren’t behind it to Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider giving a speech at a Senate hearing about labeling “offensive” music with what would eventually become the Parental Advisory sticker. In another clip, a mother complains about buying her daughter the Purple Rain album, only to realize too late that something as explicit as “Darling Nikki” was on it. The overarching motif? Parents of the eighties were appalled by a world increasingly unconcerned with not only desensitizing their children, but making them grow up far too fast. Sexualizing them far too fast.

    In a decade like the 1950s, many believed it was “easier” to protect their children from the dangers of falling prey to “Satan” and “sin.” And, sure, maybe it was in terms of “salacious” content being far less dense at a time when TV and “rock n’ roll” music were still in germinal, analog stages for dissemination. But that didn’t mean those children who wanted to “seek out” trouble couldn’t still find it anyway. Like Maxine herself, who, despite being a preacher’s daughter, found her way toward “transgression” in spite of all her father’s indoctrination. And yes, Ernest Miller (Simon Prast) is once again featured prominently via a home movie from 1959 at the beginning of Maxxxine. A clip that smacks of Bette Davis as Baby Jane interacting with her own father in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? It is in this early “movie” of Maxine that she first gloms onto the mantra, “I will not accept a life I do not deserve.” Imparted to her by Ernest, the fire-and-brimstone televangelist (a so-called profession that would ramp up in the eighties).

    Ernest’s specter is as prominent as Ramirez’s, which is to be expected considering X ended with him proselytizing about his daughter’s wayward existence. How she was taken from his “loving home into the hands of devils.” In 1979, those devils might have been pornographers, but, in 1985, it’s Hollywood in general, itself no longer abashed about being the biggest pornographer in the game, selling sex onscreen in order to compete with all the other media and mediums that had come about since its Golden Age. And right there in the center of it all on Hollywood Boulevard is Maxine Minx herself. For, in addition to working at The Landing Strip, she also works nights at a peep show called Hollywood Show World. A woman willing to do “whatever it takes.” But her interests are increasingly focused on the “prize” of “real” stardom. Which is why she’s over the moon when the director of The Puritan II, Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), casts her as the lead.

    Bender (whose last name could very well be a nod to John Bender [Judd Nelson] in The Breakfast Club) knows she’s taking a big gamble on Maxine, and that, as she tells her, “Hollywood is prejudiced against artists.” The machine, instead, prefers to keep churning out the things they know are safe, and will keep audiences from being outraged. And, in 1985, audiences are outraged amid the moral panic that’s sweeping the nation. So outraged that they’re willing to show up outside the studio and picket against its “filthy” content. Including fare like The Puritan II. That everyone is well-aware of Maxine’s porn background only adds fuel to the fire. Nonetheless, Elizabeth can sense both a hunger and a star quality in Maxine that she’s willing to stick her neck out for—even though it could mean that neck being positioned on the chopping block if Maxine fucks up.

    Unfortunately for both women, this is the exact moment when Maxine’s grisly night in Texas comes back to haunt her, with a private investigator going by the assumed name of John Labat (Kevin Bacon) threatening Maxine and her big break with a duplicated tape of the porno she made while staying in the guesthouse at Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl’s sequestered farm. But more than that, Labat knows how to pin the crime she committed on her. This, obviously, takes her mind off what it needs to be on, which is becoming the character in The Puritan II, a horror flick that takes place in the 1950s. Because, in true Ti West meta fashion, Elizabeth tells Maxine that she wants to really say something with this movie, that though the fifties seemed like this idyllic, picturesque time in America, the truth was that it was just as seedy as people think it is now.

    This echoes West’s sentiments about people in the present still romanticizing the eighties as a better, more “innocent” time despite all the unseemly behavior going on just beneath the surface. Which is exactly why West brought up the ultimately wholesome nature of John Hughes movies as a major emblem of the decade, belying the fact that this was a time of horrific serial killings, the advent of AIDS, systemic discrimination as buttressed by the Reagan administration and the next wave of political scandals mired in sex/infidelity-related shaming (see: Gary Hart and Donna Rice). To this end, although not a Hughes movie, St. Elmo’s Fire has a constant running appearance in Maxxxine, always displayed on the movie theater marquee near Miss Minx’s apartment. And then, of course, the John Parr theme, “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion),” plays on the radio as Maxine drives the streets of L.A. Funnily enough, that would also be the summer that David Blum branded this group of young actors frequently known for appearing together and/or in John Hughes movies as the “Brat Pack.”

    With West creating a parallel, in many ways, between the 1950s and the 1980s, it bears noting that, when the fifties came to a close, it was as though that thinly-maintained veneer of “politesse” started to crumble in the next new decade. This couldn’t have been better exemplified than in the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in September of 1960, the same year a “heathen Democrat” like JFK was elected president. In contrast, the eighties commenced with one of the most conservative presidents since Eisenhower. Elizabeth reminds Maxine that there was moral outrage in those Eisenhower years, too. The kind of outrage that transferred easily onto Psycho, an unheard of kind of film in that era. Elizabeth adds that Hitchcock was of course vindicated and further hailed as an artistic genius once the shock and furor surrounding the movie died down. As a result, the film “set a new level of acceptability for violence, deviant behavior and sexuality in American films, and has been considered to be one of the earliest examples of the slasher film genre.” With Janet Leigh paving the way for an actress like Jamie Lee Curtis to parlay her own career into a “respectable” one after starring in 1978’s Halloween. And yes, as soon as Maxine gets the part, she goes to the video store where Leon works to ask him to name five movie stars who got their start in horror. He rattles off Jamie Lee Curtis, John Travolta, Demi Moore and Brooke Shields before Maxine interjects, “Maxine Fucking Minx.” Marilyn Chambers is mentioned in this exchange, too, and 1985 was a big year for her in terms of getting arrested (in San Francisco and Cleveland, respectively) for “promoting prostitution” and “performing lewd acts” in a public place.

    In any case, it’s Maxine’s way of telling Leon she’s on her way to the top, that everything is finally falling into place. Save for this unpleasant little “Nightstalker” of her own. And not just the Buster Keaton lookalike (played by Zachary Mooren) from Hollywood Boulevard whose junk she ends up crushing with her boot when he tries to attack her with a knife in an alleyway (this and many other elements reminding viewers of the Quentin Tarantino style—with Once Upon A Time in Hollywood being the most obvious of his films to compare Maxxxine to). No, there’s some other sinister force at work trying to hold her dreams back because that force itself finds her to be the sinister one. The “sinful,” “godless,” “amoral” monster further contributing to Hollywood’s grotesque power. Its chokehold over so many other “young girls” (though, in Hollywood, young tends to be the age of twenty and under) willing to do anything to get a place in the spotlight.

    Just six years ago, Maxine was still that girl, telling Wayne (Martin Henderson), her “producer” boyfriend who orchestrated their film shoot, “I want the whole world to know my name. Like Lynda Carter or some shit.” And yes, Wonder Woman (or rather, someone dressed as her) does make a cameo on Hollywood Boulevard in Maxxxine. With such callbacks to the other movies in the X universe also being notable—for example, when, standing on Theda Bera’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Maxine puts her cigarette out on it. This, of course, is a nod to the alligator in Pearl being named Theda, for Pearl lived her own youth during the heyday of the silent movie star’s reign. What’s more, her subtle presence in the film is of importance because she was considered an scandalous sex symbol of the then-new medium called film. Other connections to non-X trilogy movies go back to John Hughes yet again, with a scene toward the finale of Maxxxine opting to soundtrack her red carpet arrival with New Order’s “Shellshock,” which also features prominently in the Hughes-penned Pretty in Pink as Duckie (Jon Cryer) rides his bike obsessively near Andie’s (Molly Ringwald) house and follows her to Iona’s (Annie Potts) apartment in Chinatown.

    “Knowing” references such as these are also in keeping with the Ryan Murphy style, but something about the way West employs it doesn’t feel quite as self-congratulatory (perhaps a euphemism for masturbatory). Case in point, the Judy Garland allusions not just in the coroner (Toby Huss) “quipping” to Detective Torres (Bobby Cannavale) that “two homos cruising each other near Judy Garland’s grave” found the latest pair of bodies with pentagrams engraved on them (sometimes a signature of Ramirez), but also in the costuming Maxine wears at the end of the movie as her character in The Puritan II. Although Elizabeth gushes that she looks like a “Hitchcock blonde,” her dress is decidedly Dorothy Gale-coded. She’s finally made it to Oz and she “never wants it to end.” Not like movies themselves do.

    And even if “the wizard” might turn out to be disappointing, Maxine can handle the skin-deep nature of things that only seem real in Hollywood. Like the Psycho house itself, a set she runs to when trying to escape the clutches of the persistent Labat. When she opens the front door to keep running, there is nothing actually there—nothing actually inside (save for her hallucination of the elderly version of Pearl). All there really is to it is the façade. This also being something Elizabeth comments on to Maxine when taking her for a little ride/pep talk in one of those studio golf carts for the first time: how Hollywood can make something appear so real that the illusion is almost the exact same as the real thing. Begging the question: who cares what’s real, anyway? Not when it’s about how the images and illusions make a person feel.

    At the beginning of X, Wayne said to everyone in the car, “No ma’am, we don’t need Hollywood. These types of pictures turn regular folks into stars. We’re gonna do it all ourselves.” To a certain extent, that’s what Maxine has been doing all along—everything herself, whatever it takes. But in the end, she still needs the approval of the Hollywood Establishment in order for her hard work to be recognized in a mainstream setting. Through all The Neon Demon-esque debauchery/macabre competition, and the onslaught of faux moral outrage, she proves what Pearl never could: “I’m a star!” (Or, as Maxine says in the mirror, “You’re a fuckin’ movie star!”) And, as an added cherry on top, she even gets to see Lily “Emily in Paris” Collin’s chopped-up body roll down a staircase.

    So, to quote the Maxine of X after she finally offs Pearl and then snorts some cocaine in celebration: “Praise the fuckin’ Lord.” Jesus was on her side rather than that of the moralists, after all. And yes, Maxine Minx definitely needs to play Mary Magdalene at some point in her career. No, make it the dual role of Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary à la Goth playing Maxine and Pearl.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Vintage Vixen: Raquel Welch (25 GIFs)

    Vintage Vixen: Raquel Welch (25 GIFs)

    American actress, Raquel Welch, only had three lines in the 1966 adventure/fantasy film One Million Years B.C., but the teeny, tiny, doe-skin bikini she wore on screen catapulted her to sex symbol status. 

    Enjoy number three on Playboy’s “100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century” and this week’s Vintage Vixen: Raquel Welch.

    Laura Lee

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  • Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Cover Is A Landmark Moment…But Also Presents a Double Standard in Terms of Praising a “Correct” Way for Women to Be Embraced As “Sexy” at Any Age

    Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Cover Is A Landmark Moment…But Also Presents a Double Standard in Terms of Praising a “Correct” Way for Women to Be Embraced As “Sexy” at Any Age

    There are “kinds” of women who get lauded for doing the same things that other women have already been doing for quite some time. Martha Stewart is just such a kind of woman to receive praise for things that women in the latter category would instead be (and are) maligned for. And while her Sports Illustrated cover signals what one can only hope is a greater shift toward acceptance of women being sexy and sexual at whatever the fuck age they want to be, it also serves to reiterate a double standard in our society. One in which “good,” “homemaking” women are more respected than women who have been associated with iconoclasm and shirking “conventional femininity.”

    Although Stewart was long ago forced to shed her impervious image of full-stop goodness after being sent to prison in 2004 for insider trading, securities fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy (oh my!), her reputation didn’t take long to bounce back. And, if anything, her time in prison only augmented the public’s fascination with her. All of the sudden, she was way more interesting once the veneer of “infallibility” cracked. She had “cred.” Even Snoop Dogg started to hang out with her after she got incarcerated. But it was just the “right amount” of an impish streak, one that still made the public see her as a generous, ultimately docile and obedient soul. Her appearance on the cover of the famed Swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated marks her, at eighty-one, as the “oldest” cover model. In fact, one might say that setting records for being the oldest to do something is a new trend of late—considering Joe Biden’s presidency. And it speaks to a larger trend about how the so-called elderly are no longer shutting themselves away inside to avoid being met with torches and pitchforks for their mere existence. This was something that would have been unfathomable in the Old Hollywood era, when stars seemed to retreat permanently into their mansions at a certain age or die in bleak obscurity after their drug/alcohol addictions got the better of them (e.g., Barbara Payton and Mabel Normand). Better than to be “caught” looking as they did in their “aged” state. Arguably the first actress to defy this tacit, Logan’s Run-esque Hollywood rule was Gloria Swanson when she played, in meta fashion, a washed-up silent movie star named Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. A faded star, as it were, who stays, as alluded to, shut inside her house to avoid the reality that the outside world might inflict.

    But oh how times have changed since 1950, with “old” women out and about parading themselves like it’s no big deal at all. And it really isn’t. Especially with all the advancements in anti-aging treatments. Ones that a woman like Stewart can afford with no problem. And yet, despite looking barely a day over fifty (hell, maybe even forty with the right airbrushing), Stewart is still having a “break the internet” moment by gracing this cover. For it pushes a new boundary and sets a new precedent. Except that, well, it actually doesn’t. Because there’s been a certain other woman who’s been rallying behind anti-ageist views and gatekeeping for some time now, only to be met with venom and vitriol as a result. That woman, of course, is Madonna. Who has appeared on countless magazine covers and within their “spreads” to show as much (usually more) skin as Stewart is in Sports Illustrated. And sure, Stewart is almost a full twenty years older than Madonna, so it is more noteworthy in that sense, but the real reason so much praise instead of acrimony is being hurled toward Stewart is because she represents what society views as the abovementioned “right” kind of woman. More specifically, the “right” kind of “old” woman. She is “tasteful,” “beneficent,” “not slutty.” Madonna, in contrast, has always wielded her sexuality like the key ingredient of her personality that it is. And, obviously, part of her hyper-sexed nature is a result of growing up Catholic, told from the get-go that sex was wrong, forbidden, sinful—but it was especially wrong for any woman to take actual pleasure in sex. An act meant solely for men’s pleasure…and for women to fulfill their “duty” as a birthing mill.

    Stewart herself is a symbol of that kind of conventional “domestic goddess” femininity that patriarchal society still champions and reveres. And, funnily enough, she was raised Catholic as well. But it seemed the indoctrination of that religion didn’t instill within her quite the same rebellious sexual exhibitionism that it did within Madonna. It did, however, perhaps make her appreciate the value of pageantry that extended into her various homemaking and entertaining endeavors. Yet, despite being a symbol of “domesticity,” Stewart is in direct opposition to that stereotype by capitalistic virtue of being one of the most successful businesswomen in history. Monetizing reproductive labor in a manner that few women actually performing it in their day-to-day lives can. Madonna, then, is her polar opposite—the “whore” (yes, it’s ironic considering her name) on the two-sided spectrum of things that women can “be” in the eyes of men. Who still dictate what we digest via media outlets like Sports Illustrated. And, like Stewart, she is one of the most successful businesswomen ever to have existed. Except what she’s selling is not “home and hearth” (even if she did appear on the cover of Good Housekeeping back in 2000, not to mention a cover for Ladies’ Home Journal in 2005).

    Though she did attempt to for about a five-year period during her eight-year marriage in the 00s. Indeed, while married to Guy Ritchie, Madonna did have something of her “Martha Stewart phase,” catering to tropes about being “the missus” and “the Guv’nor’s wife” and “Mrs. Ritchie” as she moved to the English countryside and dabbled in writing children’s books before soon restoring herself to her original hyper-sexual form after the divorce (see: the W magazine cover that immediately followed: “Blame It On Rio,” in which she was featured “canoodling” with her brand-new, barely-clothed boytoy, Jesus Luz, among other men with anti-British bodies). In the end, Madonna perhaps realized that she couldn’t sell conventional domestic life with conviction, which is why she’s done her own version of it by being both “mother and father” to her brood of six children, three of which (Mercy, Stella and Estere) were adopted from Malawi after her divorce from Ritchie.

    Stewart flies more under the radar for her unconventional femininity, also having divorced her husband, Andrew Stewart (whose last name would prove invaluable to Martha), long before her empire reached its apex. Even so, that she’s dated so minimally (with Anthony Hopkins and Charles Simonyi being about the extent of her romantic past) since the divorce has undeniably helped fortify her “homey” image. A virtuous nun worshipping at the altar of homemaking and entertaining.

    In May of 1995, Stewart was heralded by New York Magazine as “the definitive American woman of our time.” That hasn’t really changed, despite the illusion of the alleged changing face of the domestic sphere. One that hasn’t gone much beyond the “progressiveness” of a movie like Mr. Mom in 1983 (side note: “Mr. Mom” only conceded to step into that role because he lost his breadwinning job). With Stewart’s Sports Illustrated cover, it is encouraging that women are being shown (in a rare instance of patriarchal weakness) that it’s possible (with enough money) to be “sexy at any age.” But, by the same token, it’s not comforting to realize that the reason this is being conceded to is because the underlying message remains the same as it always has: so long as you’re the “right” kind of woman, who has long advocated for the “right” kind of values, you’ll be embraced.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lana Del Rey’s “Candy Necklace” Video Deliberately Blurs the Line Between Fantasy and Reality With Its Meta Framework

    Lana Del Rey’s “Candy Necklace” Video Deliberately Blurs the Line Between Fantasy and Reality With Its Meta Framework

    When an artist reaches a certain point in their career, self-reference can’t be avoided. In Lana Del Rey’s case, that tends to become quite a quagmire in terms of how most of her music and aesthetics were already referencing other people to begin with. This includes not only “paying homage” visually to the “classics” of Americana and 50s-era icons like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Elvis Presley, but also more esoteric fare, including instrumentation and intonation from Eleni Vitali’s “Dromoi Pou Agapisa” for “Video Games” (though some have tried to push back on that theory). Then, of course, there’s her signature of randomly throwing in the lyrics of musical heroes like David Bowie (“Ground control to Major Tom” in “Terrence Loves You”), Patsy Cline (“I fall to pieces” in “Cherry”), Bob Dylan (“Like a rolling stone” in “Off to the Races” and “Lay-lady-lay” in “Tomorrow Never Came”), Beach Boys (“Don’t worry baby” in “Lust for Life” and “California dreamin’” on “Fuck It I Love You”) and Leonard Cohen (“That’s how the light gets in” in “Kintsugi”), to name a few. And let’s not forget her tendency toward weaving literary quotes into much of her work, to boot (which is much easier to sneak in and have people assume is one’s own because nobody’s all that well-read anymore, are they?). Many of which take from Nabokov’s evermore problematic tome, Lolita. Hence, the Del Rey songs “Lolita,” “Carmen” and “Off to the Races.” There’s also Walt Whitman in “Body Electric,” T. S. Eliot in “Burnt Norton” and Oscar Wilde in “Gods and Monsters.” With so many people to “inspire” (read: take from), it’s no wonder Del Rey is so prolific.

    But it all makes sense because of how much Del Rey has always represented the millennial gift for pastiche. Themselves having experienced it on overload from the day of conception, thanks to being “cultivated” in a postmodern world. Where society is at now leaves potential for many more “posts” to be placed in front of that “modern” (just how many might depend on who you ask). And maybe that’s why the love of all things meta has taken root so deeply in pop culture ever since Scream came to theaters. Del Rey herself has never much favored playing with the concept too overtly, perhaps deciding it was time to do so after all this talk of her various “personas” throughout album cycles—though mainly the “Daddy”-loving one that sucks on lollipops, sips “cherry cola” and still insists, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss” (another lyric borrowed from someone else: The Crystals). So it’s only right for director Rich Lee (who previously teamed with Del Rey on videos for “Doin’ Time” and “Fuck It I Love You/The Greatest”) to commence “Candy Necklace,” the first single from Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd to receive a video accompaniment, by opening on a klieg light. Everything about such an emblem signifying the grandeur of Del Rey’s music, as well as her ongoing commitment to presenting Old Hollywood glamor as a lifestyle choice people can still choose to make.

    Lee zooms into the shot of the klieg light and then cuts to the man wielding it behind the back of the truck Lana is “driving” on set. One with a screen backdrop that plays footage of trees on a loop to make it seem like she’s actually driving though some woodsy area (“You can find me where no one will be/In the woods somewhere,” as she says on “Sweet”) when, obviously, she’s not. But it’s all part of the “put-on,” innit? That razzle-dazzle that only Hollywood—de facto, Del Rey—still knows how to achieve better than anyone. And where is she driving to but L.A.? Some small-town girl bound for the big city to do “big things.” Much like the woman Del Rey visually emulates in the video, Elizabeth Short. Better known as the Black Dahlia. Like Del Rey, Short shares a name with Elizabeth “Lizzy” Grant and also spent much of her youth on the East Coast (with some stints in Florida, also like “Lizzy”) before ending up in L.A. after various boppings around between her father and some Army and Navy men.

    Rumors of whether or not Short was a prostitute began to crop up in the wake of her murder, tying right in with another favorite topic of Del Rey’s, as explored on “A&W.” Indeed, after so much rejection in her life, it would be easy to imagine Short callously thinking to herself as she prowled the streets of L.A., “It’s not about having someone to love me anymore/This is the experience of being an American whore.” Regardless of whether or not she did prostitute herself at one time or another, there was an innocent aura about her. Which then, of course, brings us to the flowers—dahlias—Short wore in her hair. As Del Rey used to adorn her own hair with a “sweet” flower crown despite talking of subjects like cocaine, older men and being born bad.

    The dichotomy of a woman when viewed through the myopic lens of men—particularly men controlling Hollywood and the narratives that were churned out of it—is embodied by Del Rey as the vixen, the vamp and the lost little lamb throughout the video. Cutting from her in the truck as “Lana” to her as the Black Dahlia sometime in the 40s as she’s guided out of a car by a John Waters lookalike (maybe the real deal wasn’t available), Lee sets the stage for something sinister to build—only to keep taking us out of the moment with constant behind-the-scenes “asides” from Del Rey herself who, as usual, helmed the concept. As she walks into the stately mansion she’s led to by this older gentleman (Johnny Robish), she reminds one of Lana (quelle coincidence) Clarkson being led to the slaughter by Phil Spector. Eerily (and perhaps intentionally) enough, Robish actually did portray Spector in a TV series called Silenced. And yes, one could imagine Del Rey moonlighting as a hostess at the House of Blues and ending up in such a man’s abode had things gone in an alternate direction for her. In fact, one of her chief defenses against those calling her portrayal of the Black Dahlia insensitive (since, by now, everyone is desensitized to Marilyn’s image being habitually plundered) is that, “It’s not insensitive when you started the same way and you could’ve ended up that way, but that hasn’t been how the story played out and no one knows how it will. So, leave if you don’t like the idea.” But obviously, plenty will like it, for Del Rey is not without her devoted legions, even if they aren’t able to move mountains in quite the same way as Swifties or Beyhive members.

    But Taylor and Beyoncé don’t tend to go quite so niche (at least not in ways deemed as polarizing) with their visual brainchilds. In this video’s instance, a key part of the concept is highlighting “what it’s like for those in front of the camera, behind the smokescreen of fame.” Almost like what Britney Spears was doing in the video for “Lucky” as a matter of fact. But, as usual, Brit doesn’t get much credit for her profundity. Del Rey also follows the tradition of movies that serve as a “film within a film” designed to debunk the supposed perfection of it all—totally manufactured by those behind the camera as much as those in front of it. For someone mired in the debate about “persona,” it couldn’t be a more on-the-nose notion. Almost as on the nose as the various “rundowns” of the video that have come out, offering only such reductive “commentary” as, “Lana Del Rey Transforms Into Marilyn Monroe in New Video.” No shit. But, as with most Del Rey videos, there’s much more to it than the surface.

    Considering her collaboration with Lee on the merged videos for “Fuck It I Love You” and “The Greatest” (clocking in at nine minutes and nineteen seconds to make it a length contender with the videos for “Ride,” “Venice Bitch,” “Norman Fucking Rockwell”/“Bartender”/“Happiness Is A Butterfly” and, now, “Candy Necklace”), he actually alludes to it when making mention of her skateboarding down an alleyway in Long Beach for that shoot. An alleyway will factor in during this video as well, but not with such a “fun-loving” tinge. What’s more, it’s worth noting that the lyrics to “Fuck It I Love You” encapsulate the “everygirl”—like Elizabeth Short—who moves to L.A. with “big dreams” (“said you had to leave to start your life over”). Only to fall into the trap of “fast living” (yet again). This apparent in lyrics such as, “Maybe the way that I’m living is killing me/I like to light up the stage with a song/Do shit to keep me turned on/But one day I woke up like, ‘Maybe I’ll do it differently’/So I moved to California but it’s just a state of mind.” And that state of mind can often lead to a dark destiny, hidden behind the oft-repeated phrase: “the myth of California.”

    Del Rey as Black Dahlia starts to slowly uncover it as we see her atop a grandiose staircase, in the home of the creepy older man who takes her there. Another camera cut shows Del Rey overlooking the scene with Jon Batiste, her trusty piano player on the song and also, of course, a Grammy-winning dynamo in his own right. But in this context, the two both appear as outsiders looking in, heightening the meta concept of us as the outsider audience watching them look like outsiders, too. When Del Rey then descends the staircase while “acting the part,” it feels like a callback to Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard doing the same thing after retreating entirely into her delusions.

    Whatever is happening throughout the video, Lee is always sure to keep our eyes on the varying necklaces Del Rey is wearing, with the term “candy necklace” being symbolic of a lure itself. Something women use to “ensnare” by drawing the male gaze to her vulnerable neck and then up to the mouth as she sucks on the candy. It’s also a metaphor for something sweet and disposable—the way most young women are viewed, particularly by men in “the industry” who see such women as mere “perks” of being in it. Ergo, Del Rey’s dissection of yet another disappointing man who she thought she was madly in love with echoes a sentiment expressed in “Shades of Cool”: “I can’t fix him/Can’t make him better.” But by the time she—or rather, the Black Dahlia version of herself—realizes it, it’s too late.

    At the two-minute, forty-eight-second mark of the video, Del Rey is up to her old “National Anthem” tricks again by portraying Marilyn Monroe, but this time with the full-on re-creation of her blonde coif (as opposed to just wearing a replica of the Jean Louis gown that Kim Kardashian felt obliged to destroy for the sake of her vanity). Shot from a movie-within-a-movie perspective again, we hear the “real” Del Rey tell Lee, “I just don’t know, like, how to not be, like, a robot. I just need to shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.” And shoot she does…in the persona of Marilyn holding a book in her hand (there’s also a book in the background appropriately titled Handbook of General Psychology). While some would write Del Rey’s portrayal of Marilyn off as yet another tired trick in her usual playbook, it bears remarking that her putting on this particular “character” has more significance at this moment in time, with Del Rey currently being thirty-seven—a year older than Marilyn was when she died (or committed suicide, if that’s the theory you’re going with). This meaning she survived past a “scary age” for those who pay attention to the women slain by the Hollywood machine. Which harkens back to Del Rey’s mention of how when she started out as Lizzy Grant taking on the big city and finding herself in precarious situations with men-wolves, her fate might have gone down just as dark a path as Short’s or Monroe’s.

    After talking about being like a robot, Del Rey adds, “I’m not, like, it’s not, like, working anymore for me.” There are two interpretations of this line: 1) the concept isn’t working for her anymore or 2) doing the shoot no longer feels like work to her because she’s so “in it.” In this manner, as well, there is a layer of duality to everything. Transitioning back to Black Dahlia mode, Del Rey offers another behind-the-scenes soundbite in the form of, “‘Cause the whole thing about the video is, like…why it was all supposed to be behind-the-scenes is because all these women who, like, changed their name, changed their hair, like me and stuff [correction: her like them], it’s like they all fell into these different, different, like, snake holes, so the whole point is like how do you learn from that and not fall into your own thing?” Del Rey grapples with that question as she puts on another wig—this one more Veronica Lake-esque. Along with a Red Riding Hood-style cape in white. The Red Riding Hood vibe being undeniably pointed, per the mention of the men-wolves above—the ones that still run most industries. And still make them all a rather scary place to be a woman. Especially a “fragile” one (as Del Rey so often likes to remind people that she is—something Jewel was doing quite some time ago).

    Walking down a darkened alleyway in this glam-ified Red Riding Hood getup, Del Rey finds herself singing—performing—yet again in a club (as she has also done so many times before in videos such as “Blue Velvet,” “Ride” and “Fuck It I Love You”). One where the seedy Phil Spector-reminiscent character waits and watches. A wolf in no sheep’s clothing. As Batiste plays the piano next to her, Del Rey locks eyes with this foreboding male presence…yet another “Daddy” figure in her music video canon (see also: “Ride,” “Shades of Cool” and “The Greatest”). The one to lead her into the proverbial woods, rather than out of them, as she would like to believe.

    Back in the alleyway with this man who will serve as her “date” for the rest of the “evening,” Del Rey rips off the wig she’s wearing to reveal Black Dahlia curls again…or are they Del Rey’s own? As usual, she toys with viewers’ perception on the matter, with wig-snatching as yet another bid to break down the wall of artifice created by Hollywood glamor. Subverting the “real” goings-on “behind the scenes” again by flashing a middle finger at the camera in her dressing room and demanding, “Get out. Seriously.” But is she being serious, or is this a sendup of the difficult diva persona? Once more, the decision is at the discretion of the beholder.

    Close-ups on Del Rey’s necklace become more pronounced after this scene, though it’s been accented the entire time that each “character” she plays wears some kind of ornate necklace. The one lured (whether aware of the lure or ultimately uncaring that it is a lure) into the backseat of “Daddy’s” car keeps caressing the “candy” necklace she’s wearing as Lee cuts to Batiste repeating the phrase like a narrator who can only communicate her fate through this ominous pair of words. All at once, there’s a moment when it seems as though the necklace feels to her like a choking hold that she tries to remove before looking around frantically out the window. Is it too late to escape what she herself walked into? As necklaces both candy and jeweled fall against a black backdrop and into blood, we find out what the answer is…and what we knew it to be all along: she can’t escape the gruesome outcome that awaits. This shown dramatically by a shot of the car door open and her white cape strewn from the seat to the floor, covered in blood. The camera pans to the back of the car, where a trunk is attached. The perfect size for fitting a mutilated body. Partially open, the camera closes in on its blood-spattered exterior, zooming into the blackness of the trunk only to then reflect back the POV from within: a bevy of reporters letting their flashbulbs go off in a frenzy, ready to splash the horrid tale all over newspapers across the country. The girl is just a story now. Another cautionary tale. One that tells women: don’t be “loose,” don’t “ask for it.” And suddenly, among the fray of “paparazzi” (a word not yet coined in the Black Dahlia’s time), there’s Jon Batiste, who presently comes across as the A$AP Rocky of the narrative, for Del Rey does so enjoy to portray herself as the romantic fetish of Black men. And the fetish of bad men.

    Another cut made through the flashbulb and into the reality where Del Rey is just a star who was playing a tragic dead girl concludes the video. Or was this the alternate reality Del Rey wants to offer up for all the girls who didn’t survive the wolves of Hollywood? Whatever the case, she poses with her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one that doesn’t actually yet exist, but maybe it will soon) with that shit-eating grin of triumph. The black-and-white scene then segues into color, indicating the falseness of it. A few close-ups on some more neck shots of Del Rey wearing her various necklaces are followed by the final frame being Del Rey’s smiling face as seen through the camera monitor. This concluding the meta blending of fiction and reality, with Del Rey happier than ever (to use an Eilish phrase) about confusing the two. For to live in the twentieth century and beyond is to never really know the difference anymore. Just ask Gloria Swanson/Norma Desmond. Or Norma Jeane/Marilyn. Or Elizabeth Short/the Black Dahlia. Or Lizzy/Lana.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Contrarian: Marlon Brando’s Paradoxical Life

    The Contrarian: Marlon Brando’s Paradoxical Life

    “If I hadn’t been an actor, I’ve often thought I’d have become a con man and wound up in jail.”

    So writes the iconic Marlon Brando in his 1994 autobiography, Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me, co-written by Robert Lindsey. The smoldering star of A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, and Last Tango in Paris, Brando redefined what it meant to be an actor and a star.

    Yet the man behind the star is a much more slippery affair. Songs My Mother Taught Me reads in part as an apologia from a charming, brilliant, curious, deeply eccentric man who claims he used to be angry, used to be bad to women—without offering much proof of his professed transformation. 

    Brando refused to write about his wives or his eleven children, and uses pseudonyms for the romantic partners he does discuss—meaning that we don’t hear about his alleged relationships with the likes of Richard Pryor, Shelley Winters, Christian Marquand, and Ursula Andress. Though he can’t resist admitting to a quick affair with his friend Marilyn Monroe—whom he believes was murdered. 

    But then again, who knows what Brando really believed? As his longtime secretary told William J. Mann—author of the overly sympathetic but beautiful written biography The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando—Brando was a “master manipulator” who “did not tell the truth if a lie would suffice.” It’s an assessment Brando would have agreed with.  “I’m good at telling lies smoothly, giving an impression of things as they are not and making people think I’m sincere,” he writes. “A good con man can fool anybody, but the first person he fools is himself.”

    Bud 

    Marlon Brando Jr. was born April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents were larger than life: the vivacious, beautiful bohemian Dorothy and Marlon Sr., a handsome, womanizing traveling salesman and “card-carrying prick” whose “blood consisted of compounds of alcohol, testosterone, adrenaline and anger.”

    Brando viscerally described a gut-wrenching, neglected childhood centered around his beloved mother’s torturous alcoholism. Brando and his two older sisters would spend hours searching for their mother, who disappeared frequently during benders, only to return home to give family life another go. “Sometimes alcohol sent her into a crying jag,” he writes. “But initially it usually made her happy, giddy and full of mirth, and she might sit down at the piano and sing to herself, and we often joined in.”

    Called “Bud” by his family, the sensitive, curious Brando was already acting out in kindergarten due to his unstable family life.  “I was the bad boy of the class and had to sit under the teacher’s desk,” he recalls, “where my primary activity was staring up her dress.”

    As the family moved around, ending up at a farm in Libertyville, Illinois, the increasingly angry, defiant Brando was left to his own devices. Obsessed with rhythm, he wanted to become a drummer, and became a self-proclaimed master of “pranks,” which he brags about with juvenile relish. After being fired as a teenage usher in a movie theater for refusing to wear a shirt under his hot jacket, he stuffed the air conditioning system with rotten broccoli and limburger cheese. 

    Fed up with the sixteen-year-old Brando’s bad attitude, his father sent him to his alma mater: the Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minnesota. But Brando could not be tamed. “I did my best to tear the school apart and not get caught at it,” he writes, in what could be a manifesto for his life. “I wanted to destroy the place. I hated authority and did everything I could to defeat it by resisting it, subverting it, tricking it and outmaneuvering it.”

    Hadley Hall Meares

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  • The Real Renfield: How ‘Dracula’ Broke Classic Hollywood Star Dwight Frye

    The Real Renfield: How ‘Dracula’ Broke Classic Hollywood Star Dwight Frye

    On November 7, 1943, Dwight Frye—a “tired and bloated” graveyard shift employee at Douglas Aircraft—boarded a bus home from the glittering Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, where he had just taken his wife and son to see Sherlock Holmes Faces Death. The bus hadn’t even pulled away from the curb, his son later recalled, “when my Dad fell right in the middle of the aisle.” It’s doubtful that anyone on board realized the weary man who had collapsed in front of them was a horror movie legend. Once upon a time, Frye was known as the “man of a thousand deaths”—someone whose portrayals of “half-wits, lunatics and moon-maddened neurotics” caused even hardened film critics like Pauline Kael to find themselves “suddenly squealing and shrieking.”

    His iconic role as the fly-eating Renfield in Tod Browning’s 1931 classic Dracula—a part reimagined by Nicholas Hoult in Universal’s Renfield, out Friday—cemented his place in the pantheon of pop culture. For Frye, though, the role was a dream job that led to a decade-long nightmare.

    Dwight lliff Frye was born on February 22, 1889, in Salina, Kansas. According to the authorized biography Dwight Frye’s Last Laugh (cowritten by Gregory William Mank, James T. Coughlin, and Frye’s son, Dwight D. Frye), his parents were upright farmers and devout Christian Scientists who coddled their precocious only child. 

    The Frye family soon moved to Denver, Colorado, where the young Dwight, a piano   prodigy, became known as a handsome musical genius. He joined a musical comedy troupe and toured the country on the Pantages vaudeville circuit before being discovered by Broadway producer-director Brock Pemberton.

    Courtesy of Everett Collection

    By 1922, the intense, charming Frye debuted on Broadway in the farce The Plot Thickens, playing a bumbling robber. He would play a variety of Broadway roles over the next few months. In 1932, a heady Frye sent a telegram to his parents: “Have Signed Five Year Contract With Pemberton Everything Going Fine Letter Explaining No More Worry Dreams Coming True My Love.”

    True stardom came to Frye in 1925 through the Broadway drama A Man’s Man, in which he played a weak, striving young husband. In this role, Frye displayed the intensity that would later make him so perfect as demented horror characters—and help typecast him for life. 

    “I thought Dwight was … odd, strange,” his costar Josephine Hutchinson recalls in Dwight Frye’s Last Laugh. “He was so imbued with working on his part that he wasn’t very communicative to his fellow players. When he was in the theatre, all he thought about was his performance. Now, all these years later, I realize: Dwight really was the original ‘Method’ actor.”

    For a time, everything seemed to be straight out of a fairy tale. In 1928, Frye married his wife Laura, a kind, gentle actress whom he had originally worked with out West.  He was lauded as a “future [blonde] John Barrymore,” receiving rave reviews as he performed alongside rising luminaries Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March, Humphrey Bogart, and Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi. 

    But like many young Broadway stars, Frye wanted more. In 1929, he and Laura moved to Hollywood, which was desperately in need of theatrically-trained voices for the new talkies. That year, he starred in Rope’s End at the Vine Street Theater in Los Angeles, playing a young murderer in a play inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case. 

    It may have been the wrong choice, and Frye seemed to know it. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, an argumentative Frye fought against being typed as a “troubled weakling.”

    “I am a character man,” he told the paper. “There seems to be an impression I do one type of thing. I don’t and I haven’t. One of my first successes was in comedy…. I don’t like specialization. I have no interest in anything but character work, and I have made it a point to vary my roles as much as possible.”

    Work in movies came quickly. After turns in the James Cagney film The Doorway to Hell and The Maltese Falcon, he started work on Dracula. 

    Hadley Hall Meares

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  • Why Audrey Hepburn’s 3 Wedding Dresses Continue to Blaze a Trail in Fashion

    Why Audrey Hepburn’s 3 Wedding Dresses Continue to Blaze a Trail in Fashion

    Along with her enduring legacies in film and style, Audrey Hepburn’s wedding dresses continue to influence sartorial perspectives and individual expression. Her cultural impact can also be traced to her on- and off-screen bridal style, most famously to the designs she wore over a 40-year friendship and collaboration with Hubert de Givenchy. At the forefront and creation of everlasting fashion trends, Hepburn even inspired the contemporary bridal fashion world to embrace the black-and-white wedding dress after she debuted a strapless embroidered organza Givenchy gown during a stunning party scene in 1954’s Sabrina.

    “She is what people mean when they say they want to look ‘classic and timeless,’ or ‘elegant but no fuss,’” says Lily Kaizer, owner of luxury vintage wedding-dress salon Happy Isles. 

    The “Lucky” (Almost) Wedding Dress

    While filming 1953’s Roman Holiday, Hepburn was engaged to English industrialist James Hanson. So she commissioned the Fontana sisters, who also collaborated with Edith Head on Hepburn’s costumes in the film, to design her wedding dress.

    Elegant and pared-down, Hepburn’s first wedding dress offered a glimpse into a fashion icon’s definitive perspective: demure boatneck, long sleeves, and a playful high-low hemline. Ultimately, she called off the nuptials and asked the sisters to donate the design. “[I want the dress] to be worn by another girl for her wedding, perhaps someone who couldn’t ever afford a dress like mine—the most beautiful, poor Italian girl you can find,” the future UNICEF ambassador reportedly said. 

    Audrey Hepburn’s first wedding dress from the 2009 auction.By Tony Trasmundi/Courtesy of Kerry Taylor Auctions.

    The couturiers found a recipient, Amiable Altobella, and invited her to their Rome atelier for alterations. “The whole experience must have been incredible for [Altobella and her fiancé],” says Kerry Taylor, founder of London-based Kerry Taylor Auctions, of the couple’s visit from the city of Latina. 

    “They had three daughters and five grandchildren. Amiable said, ‘I’ve had a happy marriage, so the dress brought me luck’ and that was very much the feeling when the dress was handed over,” says Taylor, who auctioned the dress in 2009 for $23,000. “The whole family felt such pride at having had something so special and so unique.”

    The Balmain Wedding Dress

    After a whirlwind romance, Hepburn married American actor Mel Ferrer on September 25, 1954, in Bürgenstock, Switzerland. 

    25th September 1954: Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer on their wedding day. Dress designed by Balmain. By Ernst Haas/Getty Images.

    Fawnia Soo Hoo

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  • Celluloid Immortality Doesn’t Make A Slow Career Death Any Less Painful: Babylon

    Celluloid Immortality Doesn’t Make A Slow Career Death Any Less Painful: Babylon

    There is Old Hollywood and then there is Germinal Hollywood (“Silent Era” Hollywood, if you prefer). The latter has been less a fascination in the public eye because it appears, on the surface, not to have as much “glamor” attached to it. But oh, how the silent film stars of the day were shellacked. Coated in a veneer of glitz that belied what was going on behind the scenes. Such debauchery and excess that could only occur at the beginning of the “film colony.” Before the rest of the world infiltrated it with its opinions and judgments, all so infused with “morality.” Before the Hays Code and sound in pictures came along to decimate the germinal era.

    Writer-director Damien Chazelle’s preoccupation with “the Hollywood machine” was made evident with his sixth film, La La Land. A movie that, lest anyone forget, initially received all the much-deserved praise it got before a backlash suddenly arose about it exemplifying the #OscarsSoWhite phenomenon—and then came the controversial false announcement that it had won Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards (it was actually Moonlight, so way to fuck shit up for a Black triumph again). But despite all that, La La Land remains a timeless story about the “clawing your way to fame in Hollywood” narrative. However, it appears Chazelle might have thought Emma Stone too precious in that role (as Mia Dolan) and wanted to show an even more realistic, darker side of Hollywood. As Kenneth Anger wanted to with his notorious book, Hollywood Babylon, which, yes, speaks of the same scandalous lifestyles Chazelle is acknowledging in his latest underrated work, Babylon (what else would it be called?).

    With this particular film (coming in at a sprawling three hours), Chazelle is adamant about immediately acquainting the viewer with just how debauched Hollywood in its infancy really was. We’re talking shit that makes the story of Harvey Weinstein look totally innocent. This is why Chazelle is certain to make reference to the 1921 Fatty Arbuckle scandal in the initial twentyish minutes of the movie, with a fat man being “entertained” (read: pissed on) by a naked actress who has just secured her first part in a movie. When the Fatty Arbuckle-esque actor, named Wilbur (E.E. Bell), has to inform Bob Levine (Flea—yes, Flea) of Jane Thornton’s (Phoebe Tonkin) passed-out, brutalized state (Virginia Rappe didn’t end up quite so fortunate, dying instead), Bob calls on Don Wallach’s (Jeff Garlin) all-around servant/jack-of-all-trades, Manuel Torres (Diego Calva). Having crossed the border with his family at twelve, it’s immediately made clear that Manuel is enamored of the movies, of what they “mean.” Never mind the sordid lives of the people who make them. The people who are deified by the masses, therefore can only disappoint in the end when the reality of their personal lives comes to light. As it always does, even back then… Thanks to gossip columnists like Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), a Louella Parsons type who skulks around every party and event stoically in search of some morsel to print.

    And no one would love to be written about more than the as-of-yet unknown Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), who crashes the Don Wallach industry party the viewer is invited to observe as Babylon launches us into a world of depravity and devil-may-care antics. After all, this was a time when no threat of being filmed or photographed by some interloper was even a thought on anyone’s radar. That would come much, much later—with the full-tilt castration of any members of the “film colony.” But in 1926, where Chazelle sets the stage at the end of the silent film era, it was all free-wheeling and rabble-rousing. Which is why Nellie has no qualms about literally crashing the party as the car she’s likely stolen hits a statue when she rolls up to Wallach’s. While the gatekeeper of the house tells her she’s not on the list, Manuel plays along with her charade (which includes telling the guard she’s real-life silent film star Billie Dove) by calling out, “Nellie LaRoy? They’re waiting for you.” With that, Manuel effectively gives her the keys to the Hollywood kingdom, for it turns out she’ll be given the small part that was reserved for Jane Thornton in Maid’s Off now that she’s been decimated by Wilbur. Before this moment, however, she and Manuel will bond over a few piles of cocaine (mostly consumed by Nellie) as he opens up to her about “wanting to be part of something bigger.” Part of “something that lasts, that means something.”

    Indeed, Babylon is all about the chase for immortality that only the medium of film (and its various offshoots at this point) can provide. Unlike the once revered medium of literature, someone is actually brought “to life” every time one of their movies is played decades or (now) centuries later. That’s what someone like Nellie, channeling her Pearl-esque obsession with getting famous (and Pearl, too, existed around the same timeframe Babylon touts), wants more than anything. The same is true for an already-established star like Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), whose personal life is modeled after Douglas Fairbanks (married three times), while his aesthetic and career are modeled more after John Gilbert’s (married four times). For it was the latter who adhered to the advice of the day re: transitioning from silents to “talkies”: use proper stage diction. This pronounced “eloquence” on Gilbert’s part is what often led audiences to laugh openly at his movies with sound. A scene recreated in Babylon when Conrad sneaks into a theater to see the audience’s reaction to his new feature. In 1929’s Redemption, Gilbert has a line that goes: “I’m going to kill myself to let the whole world know what it has lost.” It seems Conrad is ultimately of this belief by the conclusion of Babylon.

    But before that, we witness the last days of Babylon (the OG way to phrase “the last days of disco”) as the elephant we’re very bluntly introduced to in the first few minutes comes out to distract the partygoers from Jane’s body being carried out. Not that they would really need an elephant to distract them, for it all looks like the stuff of Eyes Wide Shut: everyone fucking everyone in any given square inch of the room. Manuel is instructed to take Jack home, enduring his various ramblings about the movie industry and how, “We’ve got to dream beyond these pesky shells of flesh and bone. Map those dreams onto celluloid and print them into history.” After he falls off his balcony during this urging to innovate the medium into something better, something more than “costume dramas,” he invites Manuel to accompany him to work, asking, “Have you ever been to a movie set before?” He admits, “No.” Jack assures, “You’ll see. It’s the most magical place in the world.”

    It is in this moment, “only” thirty-one minutes into the movie, that the title card finally flashes: BABYLON. And with that title mind, let us not forget how Anger commenced his own Hollywood Babylon, with the Don Blanding poem called “Hollywood” from Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove. It goes:

    “Hollywood, Hollywood
    Fabulous Hollywood
    Celluloid Babylon
    Glorious, glamorous
    City delirious
    Frivolous, serious…
    Bold and ambitious,
    And vicious and glamorous.
    Drama—a city-full,
    Tragic and pitiful…
    Bunk, junk and genius
    Amazingly blended…
    Tawdry, tremendous,
    Absurd, stupendous;
    Shoddy and cheap,
    And astonishingly splendid…
    HOLLYWOOD!!”

    Yes, Hollywood is all of these dichotomies. And, to the point of being “amazingly blended,” Chazelle focuses on the trials and tribulations of people of color in early Hollywood, including Manuel, who will later Americanize his name to Manny (which is what Nellie calls him from the beginning). There’s also Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), who appears to offer some nod to the “Dragon Lady” trope of Anna May Wong, though Wong was never reduced to writing title cards for silent movies, which we’re given an up close and personal look at as Zhu writes dialogue for “The Girl” that starts out, “Sweet sixteen and never—well, maybe once or twice.” There’s also Black trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), reduced to eventually putting on blackface makeup to make himself look “blacker” for the purposes of lighting issues within a certain film.

    A meta element in terms of how much Babylon pays homage to Sunset Boulevard with regard to subject matter (“the dark side of Hollywood” and the putting out to pasture of silent film stars—complete with cameos by the likes of Buster Keaton) occurs during a moment where Jack Conrad is speaking to Gloria Swanson on the phone, using reverse psychology to get her to play a small part for cheap in his movie. Swanson would famously star as Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece. With failed screenwriter (a newly-made profession after the “title writers” of the silent movie epoch) Joe Gillis (William Holden) standing by to watch Norma’s madness, her delusions of still being relevant as he narrates, “I didn’t argue with her. You don’t yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck. That’s it. She was still sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career—plain crazy when it came to that one subject: her celluloid self. The great Norma Desmond! How could she breathe in that house so crowded with Norma Desmonds? More Norma Desmonds and still more Norma Desmonds.”

    Watching old movies of her celluloid self projected onto a screen every night, she is made youthful and immortal any time she desires, contributing to the delusion. Nellie, whose character is inspired by Clara Bow, has fewer delusions, especially after hearing two men talk shit about her at another party. One of them says of the silent film stars, “It’s the end, I’m telling you. It’s the end for all of ‘em. All the frogs.”

    For although Chazelle started us in 1926, he then takes us to 1927, with the advent of sound in movies changing everything. A proverbial “Video Killed the Radio Star” effect for the silent movie titans. This is the innovation Jack has been crying out for, unaware that it will be the cause of his own undoing. “You think people want that though? Sound in their movies?” Jack inquires in a public restroom before the sound of someone taking a fat shit in one of the stalls ensues. The studio executive, Billy (Sean O’Bryan), who Jack asks this of replies, “Yeah, why wouldn’t they?” In the next instant, Jack is declaring to Manny and George Munn (Lukas Haas), “This is what we’ve been looking for! Sound is how we redefine the form!” Munn insists, “People go to the movies not to listen to the noise.” This as Olga (Karolina Szymczak), his latest wife, is having a major tantrum involving the bombastic smashing of dishes.

    In a moment of “passion,” she shoots him, but this doesn’t stop Manny from carrying out his instructions from Jack to go check out a screening of The Jazz Singer in New York. Seeing the audience reaction there, Manny informs Jack that everything is about to change (running out of the theater while the picture is still playing to do so). Chazelle then cuts to 1928. Specifically, to a sound stage in 1928, where, in contrast to the noisy, chaotic vibe of the “sets” we saw in 1926, the signage everywhere calls for silence as we note just that in the various shots of the sound stage in question.

    With this new era in cinema birthed, Chazelle gets to the heart of the many challenges to navigate during the infancy of sound in film, complete with one of the sound guys forced into a hot box of an operation that eventually causes him to die for some non-masterpiece, a total throwaway movie. Death is, indeed, everywhere in Babylon, reinforcing the notion that it’s not so serious so long as one knows they’ve been a part of that something “greater” that Manny was talking about. That they’ve secured a small piece of immortality even if they were “only” part of the production crew (after all, their name will still be in the credits). On a fitting side note, Babylon has only been able to enter the race for an Oscar because of the work done on the film by those “behind the scenes.”

    But back to the silent movie era. Another point of this phase in cinema history seemed to be to reiterate that everything in life is just scenes. “Vignettes.” And in the time of the silent movie era, that’s all that could be captured. The advent of cinema—therefore the ability to “document” as never before—changed everything. The way people were suddenly motivated by the performance of life rather than actual life.

    The chaos of onset life before the “talkies” is told in bursts and fits, with abrupt pauses to heighten the sense of calm that comes only when filming stops. An extra’s death after being impaled by one of the props prompts George to note nonchalantly, “He’s dead.” Another man says, “He did have a drinking problem.” George shrugs, “That’s true, probably ran into himself, huh?” Thus, yet another person has sacrificed themselves very literally to the art of filmmaking. And, to that end, there is an iconic scene of Nellie at the party during the opening of Babylon where she lies on the floor, her arms splayed out in “Christ position” as though offering herself to the celluloid gods. That’s what all of these actors and actresses were willing to do. Whatever it took to “get themselves up there.” To become gods to all “those wonderful people out there in the dark,” as Norma Desmond calls them.

    Not only is Nellie able to secure that place thanks to the dumb luck of Jane being subjected to Wilbur, but also because of her unique ability to cry on cue without any aid whatsoever from glycerin. In awe, the director asks, “How do you do it, just tear up over and over again?” Nellie replies, “I just think of home.” For she’s the quintessential type of person who comes to Hollywood determined never to go back to the bowel from whence they came. Appropriately, we find out that the place that makes Nellie cry on cue is New York as she tells Manny, “Why would Conrad send you here? God. I got out of this place first chance I got.” And yes, most of Hollywood’s early film community had “immigrated” from NYC. Proof that the East Coast has always known that the West holds more promise despite their cries of “inferior!” While back in her hometown, we find out that Nellie has a mother in a sanatorium—how very Marilyn. Though Clara Bow would have a mother in one of those long before Norma Jeane did.

    As Manny continues to climb up the Hollywood ladder behind the scenes (more in love with Nellie than ever), Nellie, in turn, proceeds to tumble down it. Not just because her voice and persona aren’t “translating,” but because she’s also started up an affair with Zhu (who has been eyeing Nellie from the beginning of her career, only able to entice her once she sucks snake poison out of her neck in the desert). Manny, determined to keep protecting Nellie any way he can, warns Zhu, “There’s a new sensibility now. People care about morals,” presaging what’s to come with the Hays Code.

    Chazelle then gives us another time jump to 1930 as Jack watches the dailies for his first sound feature. Something he can’t seem to enjoy without George’s presence. For he’s since killed himself in the wake of another female jilting. The film turns out to be a huge flop and, by 1932, Jack admits to Elinor, “Well, my last two movies didn’t work, but I learned a lot from ‘em.” That doesn’t stop Elinor from printing what she really thinks about the washed-up actor, giving him a cover story with the headline, “Is Jack Conrad Through?” When he goes to her office to confront her directly about it after it causes Irving Thalberg (Max Minghella) to dodge all his calls to the studio, she explains simply, “Your time has run out. There is no ‘why.’” The conversation that ensues is one that applies eerily to Brad Pitt’s own career, as he begins to willingly declare a state of semi-retirement now that he’s approaching his sixties. A thought unthinkable: a movie star getting old. But it happens. The only difference now is, the public has an easier time tracking and critiquing the aging process. For, as Elinor says, “It’s those of us in the dark, the ones who just watch, who survive.” And those in the spotlight are left to watch it cruelly dim.

    As Nellie’s certainly has while Manny continues to stick his neck out for her, causing him to be taken to L.A.’s underworld by a seedy character named James McKay (Tobey Maguire). It’s in this den of far bleaker iniquity than what we saw in the true halcyon days of Babylon that Manny is shown a Nightmare Alley-like geek that eats rats. While Babylon might “revamp” history (unlike Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood all out revising it—and yes, Babylon is something Murphy might be able to create if he was capable of more seriousness and less camp), it is entirely accurate in wielding this metaphorical image as McKay delights in saying to Manny, “He’ll do anything for money!”

    In the end, that’s what cinema is about, despite MGM’s logo declaring, “Ars gratia artis” (“Art for art’s sake”). It has never been fully about art, which is partially how a 1915 Supreme Court case ruled that the right of the First Amendment shouldn’t extend to film, with Justice Joseph McKenna insisting film was a “business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit.” But as, Jack Conrad tries to explain to his snobby theater actress wife, film is an art above all else. Even if it caters to “low culture” for the sake of a studio’s profits. And, speaking of studios, as it did in Sunset Boulevard, Paramount Pictures is happy to play the part of the soul-crushing studio that chews up youth and spits it out when the audience is done with the actor in question. In Babylon, it’s “disguised” as Kinoscope (Sunset Boulevard didn’t bother changing the name at all). Where Manny eventually returns with his wife and child in 1952 to see how it has changed. And oh, how the whole town has changed since he was chased out of it thanks to Nellie (the foolish things one does for love, etc.). Marilyn Monroe is clearly all the rage now—along with Technicolor and Cinemascope, tools designed to emphasize that television remains no comparison for the big screen. And it seems in this instant, we’re meant to understand the disappointment of each original generation seeing what comes with the new, and the increasing bastardization of film. At the same time, progress is what all the forebears wanted. To see the industry grow and change and flourish—even if it meant they could no longer be part of it. That is the unsung selflessness of moviemaking.

    As Manny enters a movie theater near Paramount to take his seat, we experience, with him, a “wonderful people out there in the dark” moment as he watches Singin’ in the Rain, stunned into tears as he recognizes the story of Nellie’s own botched transition to the talkies in Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), whose voice is too “unpolished” for dialogue. Chazelle then makes the daring move to break away from this movie and reveal a montage of other scenes from films that have proven themselves to be benchmarks in the incremental progress of the medium. So it is that Elinor’s consolation to Jack is proven, the one in which she asserts, “When you and I are both long gone, any time someone threads a frame of yours through a sprocket, you’ll be alive again. You see what that means? One day every person on every film shot this year will be dead, and one day all those films will be pulled from the vaults and all their ghosts will dine together… Your time today is through, but you’ll spend eternity with angels and ghosts.” And yet, somehow, that unique form of immortality doesn’t take away from the sadness of watching oneself atrophy in real time. It was Chloë Sevigny who once said she disliked the idea of watching herself age onscreen with each passing film. And yet, is that not a small price to pay for the “privilege” of immortality? Even if Hollywood is no longer “the crowd of cocaine-crazed, sexual lunatics” it once was in the days of Babylon. Even if, as Anger put it, “…the fans could be fickle, and if their deities proved to have feet of clay, they could be cut down without compassion. Off screen a new Star was always waiting to make an entrance.”

    Babylon reiterates that point (and so much more) about Hollywood, the greatest dream ever sold. The greatest (and only) means by which to remain truly immortal.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • ‘Babylon’: The Myths and True Stories That Inspired the Classic Hollywood Epic

    ‘Babylon’: The Myths and True Stories That Inspired the Classic Hollywood Epic

    With its riotous orgies, perilous sets, and nonstop meltdowns, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is a Hollywood fantasy—but one that constantly leans on history. 

    Though the film has its own unorthodox versions of the hair and makeup of the period, Babylon is set primarily in the last days of silent film through the early talkies, from 1926 to about 1933. Characters like ambitious starlet Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), established leading man Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), and a handful of supporting players are fictional, but if they feel familiar, that’s because they should. Those savvy about film history will also recognize some tall tales from Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, which lends part of its title and a lot of its attitude to Chazelle’s epic.

    Ahead, a guide to where Babylon draws from reality—and where it diverges from it—plus some silent films and early talkies worth catching up with if you want to know more about what happened and why this era is worth remembering.   

    Nellie LaRoy and Clara Bow

    Our leading lady is Nellie LaRoy, played by Margot Robbie as a hedonistic wild child whom the camera loves. Babylon’s official press materials describe Nellie as a mix of several stars, but the main model couldn’t be more obvious: Clara Bow, born and raised in Brooklyn, then one of the toughest parts of a notoriously tough city. She endured a horrific childhood of neglect, minimal schooling, and physical and sexual abuse. Like Clara Bow, Nellie has a broad accent, though Nellie’s is said to be from across the river in New Jersey. Babylon also adds drug addictions that Clara didn’t have. Still, Nellie’s character hits beat after beat familiar from David Stenn’s definitive biography, Runnin’ Wild: the mental illness in the family, the sleazy and sniveling father (Eric Roberts), Bow’s rejection by the Hollywood elite. 

    Farran Nehme

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  • Babylon: Let’s Talk About That Wild Ending

    Babylon: Let’s Talk About That Wild Ending

    This article contains spoilers for Babylon. 

    Singin’ in the Rain, the classic 1952 musical about Hollywood’s transition from silent films to talkies, is, by all accounts, a joyful romantic comedy. But…what if it wasn’t? What if it was an epic tragedy about the silent film stars who were brutally sacrificed for Hollywood to become what it is today? That’s the twist of Babylon, Damien Chazelle’s coked-up ode to cinema. By the end of the three-hour odyssey, the film feels like a dark prequel to Singin’ In the Rain, culminating in a montage that shows the weird and wild history and future of movies, ranging from the practical horror of the 1929 short Un Chien Andalou, all the way up to the tech spectacle of Avatar. 

    But let’s back up for a moment. What was that ending all about? And what was Chazelle ultimately trying to say? Well, aside from the obvious (Movies, now more than ever!), let’s tuck into the layers of Babylon’s frenetic, maximalist ending of total excess and pluck out the plot points that got us here. 

    At the start, Babylon is a wild tale about plucky nobodies trying to make it in Hollywood. There’s Manny (Diego Calva), the Mexican dreamer, inspired in part by Rene Cardona, a Cuban immigrant who became a successful writer, director, and producer and helped champion the golden age of Mexican cinema. Then there’s Nellie La Roy (Margot Robbie), an ambitious actress, inspired by Clara Bow, the original “It” girl. Along the way, we meet Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a fading silent film star; Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), an Anna Mae Wong-esque siren; and Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), a Black jazz talent who finds a way onto the silver screen thanks to the advent of movie sound.

    Though the film starts in the 1920s, when silent films are booming, the party quickly ends once sound becomes the new frontier. Conrad must navigate what he perceives to be corny new terrain when presented with a choreographed number to the hit song, “Singin’ in the Rain.” La Roy must learn her lines, hit her mark, and speak into the mic, a technical feat that’s never been asked of her before. The mic scene is an expletive-laden homage to a similar scene in Singin’ in the Rain, in which silent film star Lina Lamont fails to speak directly into a planted mic.  

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    The homage gets even more explicit later on after Manny climbs the ladder to become a studio exec and turns La Roy into his own personal Eliza Doolittle. In spite of her Jersey squawk, he casts in her posh roles, including one that’s a near-replica of Lamont’s, coaching her on how to say her lines and soften her vowels. At that point, if it isn’t already obvious, Babylon is a kind of brutal reimagining of Singin’ in the Rain, this time training the camera on the silent film stars whose careers were tragically cut short. (Chazelle, an Old Hollywood musical obsessive, is an avowed fan of the film, using it as inspiration for his 2016 musical La La Land and getting advice from Gene Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, who let the writer-director look at Kelly’s archived props from the film, as well as read his Singin’ script with handwritten notes.)

    There are also other, more subtle references to the 1952 classic, including a scene where Jack Conrad argues with his wife Estelle (Katherine Waterston), a stage actor, because she looks down on movie acting. In Singin’ in the Rain, Don (Gene Kelly) has a similar argument with Kathy (Debbie Reynolds), who sneers that screen actors are “nothing but a shadow on film!” She also decries the diminishing morality of Hollywood. “Wild parties! Swimming pools!” she shouts. She’s like the Victorian child meme, except a single frame from Babylon would be her poison. 

    Yohana Desta

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