George Hurrell (1904 - 1992)
Working.
Source: Faded + Blurred

At a literary gathering in West Hollywood the other night, a young woman asked me what my blog had to do with my books.

"Sensibility," I replied.  And then, because she tipped her head to one side and smiled in that polite but puzzled way people sometimes do when I say things, I added, "Cecil Beaton was born in 1904." 

She tipped to the other side at this, but the smile remained.  "Nancy Mitford was also born in 1904," I added with the same result.  "And Oliver Messell, and Cary Grant..." And then, because it was dark and noisy and I could do so in this sort of setting, I waved to an imaginary friend in the distance and slipped away. 

It was not an unreasonable question, of course.  Everything needs a context.  Personally I don't like having everything explained to me, I'd rather find out on my own, but it's certainly fair to ask, and I will be the first to admit, shirtless boys may not immediately evoke the Edwardian era.  So context is important.

Monday night Carlos had Eduardo and me over to watch Rich and Famous, the 1981 film starring Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen, written by our friend Gerald Ayres and directed by George Cukor.  Based on the 1943 Bette Davis - Miriam Hopkins film Old Acquaintance, the story has to do with two old friends getting together after a long absence.  One is a serious writer, the other the authoress of sexy pot-boilers.  Eduardo naturally claimed the role of the serious Jacqueline who doesn't wear make-up and has an active sex life, whereas I was cast as the badly over-dressed Barbara Cartland-inspired Candice.  Carlos was Cukor.

You see, the film is a pre-cursor for what in the next decade would become Sex in the City, which is to say a show about gay men in New York in which women play all the parts.  In Rich and Famous Rupert Everett might just as easily have played Jacqueline's bitter effete and pretentious Brit, and as for Candice's down-home Southern girl, well, Leslie Jordan would have done the role justice.  In fact, I urged Carlos to mount an all-male production of Rich and Famous as soon as possible.  I think it would be marvelous, don't you?

But back to context.  Look at Old Acquaintance, and consider for a moment how many of the contributors of that film came into this world at the turn of the last century:

Bette Davis (born 1908)
Miriam Hopkins (1902)
Anne Revere (1903)
Vincent Sherman (director) (1906)
Henry Blanke (producer) (1901)
John Van Druten (script based on the play by) (1901)

And so forth.  You don't have to be a numerologist to realize that a film from the 40s that inspired a film of the 80s that inspired the sensibiilities of a whole generation of young movie goers was actually "born" over a hundred years and two world wars ago.  That's what I'm talking about.  That's the context.  That's the bigger picture, if you will.  And let's not forget George Hurrell (1904 - 1992) who made those famous stars beautiful.

I hope this helps.  If not, you may want to look up Pauline Kael's review of Rich and Famous.  We did, and 30 years later it still manages to pack a punch.  Kael couldn't out the director, George Cukor, who wasn't publicly gay back then, but she could call Rich and Famous "not camp, exactly, but more a homosexual fantasy."  Kael was referring to the camera lingering on Hart Bochner's blue-jeaned rear end, but as you know, Cukor also directed The Women, and if you've ever seen an all-male cast production of that film as I have, you will understand sensibility in a whole new way.

Speaking of context, the other day Little Augury helped place the new Valentino collection in proper perspective.  Lovely.  That's what I'm talking about.  Valentino and the Belle Epoque.  Valentino and Audrey.  George Hurrell and Cecil Beaton and beautiful shirtless boys.  Like Matt Lattanzi, the exquisite gay-man-fantasy Jacqueline picks up in Rich and Famous.  The original Didier.