Antiques, Pascin and Pussy

Dear Miss Boodles,

Just watched Antiques Roadshow from Los Angeles, and they did a side bar field trip to the Academy of Motion Pictures library. There they pulled out some costume design sketches and appraised them. Dorothy Jeakins sketches for Joan of Arc with Ingrid Bergman approximately $2,000

Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc

James Dean in Giant $5,000 - $6,000

 James Dean in Giant

and Walter Plunkett’s  acid green “drapery” dress for Vivienne Leigh in Gone With The Wind,  $12,000 - $15,000 (of course). 

 

 

Vivienne Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara  in the drapery dress

They stressed the importance of accompanying the original sketches with production stills from the films showing the costumes as worn by the actors. It greatly increases the value of the sketches. We need to immediately start searching for original production stills for all of your movies. I will do this for you online if you want, just let me know.  I know that you have kept many of the great costumes from Faye Dunaway in Bonnie & Clyde, so you can only imagine the value, especially for such a seminal film. Oh well, I’m always harping on this, but Boodles,  your designs are very important and must be preserved for posterity.

Here is a little book of sketches by Pascin which I love and thought would inspire you. 

 

The artist Jules Pascin

 

 

Your drawings are as good as these. The proportion of the legs is wonderfully distorted, especially since he draws the women from the level of the pussy looking upward… He adored women and was obsessed with sex. Poor thing finally committed suicide for reasons that nobody knew. Bipolar? Je ne çe pas.

Also, some music that I compiled for your listening enjoyment. Maude Maggart is a local LA girl with a wonderful voice.

 

 Maude Maggart

Noel Coward would have loved this gal.

 Noel Coward

She performs sometimes at the Gardenia and she’s the sister of Fiona Apple.

 Fiona Apple 

And finally a photo of Raquel Welch in your great costume design from Myra.

Gawd!!

Raquel in Myra bathing suit

The Blond Leading The Blind

Mistress Boodles.

I watched a film recently, La Chamade, based on a story by Françoise Sagan, and it was not great, but good, in that it perfectly encapsulated the French attitude of the times – the late ‘60’s early ‘70’s. You know, terminally blasé, lots of pouting and existential angst. St. Laurent did the wardrobe and it is at times, divine. And La Deneuve, at the apogee of her beauty,  takes your breath away. The hair is huge and fluffy, her complexion is like luminescent porcelain and in profile she looks like a 12 year old girl. Honey... child.

 

 Denueve in St. Laurent in La Chamade 1969 - based on a story by Francoise Sagan

Here is the video box description.   Alliteration 101.

“The expensively kept girlfriend of a wealthy older man, Lucille is beautiful, bored and blissfully blind to her shallow existence… until she meets Antoine. Passionate but poor, Antoine offers a whole new world of experience and kindles Lucille’s smoldering desires. But as the charms of Antoine’s workaday life begin to fade, Lucille must choose between the love of her life and the love of her lifestyle”

 And then there’s this…

Isn’t this an amazing photograph!

Here is the text that accompanied the news item.

“This 1888 photo released by the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston shows Helen Keller when she was eight years old, left, holding hands with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, during a summer vacation to Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod. A staff member at the society discovered the photograph in a large photography collection recently donated to the society. When Sullivan arrived at the Keller household to teach Helen, she gave her a doll as a present. Although Keller had many dolls throughout her childhood, this is believed to be the first known photograph of Helen Keller with one of her dolls.”