Me Elsewhere: Fashioning A Mystery

This news went out via Twitter and Facebook over the weekend. Time to sing it from the rooftops here.

I am pleased to report that Rosemarie and I have been named the 2013 winners of the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers. The award, given annually by the organizers of the Malice Domestic conference to new novelists, is for our book Design for Dying: An Edith Head Mystery.

The whole thing was Rosemarie’s idea. A comic mystery – ideally, the first in a series – with the legendary costume designer (who would eventually receive thirty-five Academy Award nominations and win eight times, more than any other woman) forced to turn detective and solve a murder in 1937 Hollywood. It was an opportunity for the two of us to work together, on a project that combines some of our favorite things: intrigue, glamour, and show business. If you follow Rosemarie’s Twitter feed, you now know where all those #30sbeautytips and #30sfashiontips come from.

Needless to say, we are thrilled to be this year’s recipients. This is a tremendous validation of our efforts, and we will eternally be in debt to the judges. (Although not literally – it’s a cash prize!) Some fine writers have won this award in the past, and we hope to do it justice. We cannot wait to attend the Malice Domestic convention in May to accept the honor. With luck, the new draft will be finished by then.

Miscellaneous: Silent in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the great cities of the world, a metropolis overflowing with treats culinary and cultural. What do I know about the place? Two things: the Castro Theatre and cocktails.

Earlier this year I was in town for Noir City. This trip coincided with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The three screenings I was able to attend made the jaunt worthwhile. Mantrap (1926) is a buoyant comedy with bite, a meringue laced with bourbon. Clara Bow at her sauciest is a big-city manicurist who marries the only trader in the tiny title Canadian town. When a tenderfoot lawyer shows up, Clara sets her sights on him out of equal parts instinct and boredom. A triangle of the more tragic variety plays out in the 1929 German film The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna. Brigitte Helm of Metropolis is the kept woman who falls for a virtuous young lieutenant. Their romance drives her to become a better person while he falls prey to corruption – with his commanding officer, Nina’s former lover, waiting for his opportunity to strike back.

Best of the trio was Josef von Sternberg’s The Docks of New York (1928), co-presented by the Film Noir Foundation. Brawny ship’s stoker George Bancroft and his crewmates have one night in the big city before they push off again; a shot of the six of them anticipating the evening’s pleasures is like a Mount Rushmore of lust. Before the party begins Bancroft saves the life of a suicidal bar girl played by the mesmerizing Betty Compson. He’s drawn to her, she’s amused by his interest in an existence she’s grown weary of, and they play roles for each other as their night together progresses. It’s a simple story told with bracing power. Each film featured live musical accompaniment, but Donald Sosin’s piano score for Docks deserves singular praise for its impact and effortless use of period songs.

The real highlight of the festival? Getting the opportunity to meet Leonard Maltin. Film critic, historian, and one of the great popularizers of motion picture art. His guides are always close at hand at Chez K, and it was a genuine thrill to spend a few moments chatting with him. (All credit is due to Rosemarie. I would have admired him from afar but the missus, an even bigger Maltin fan, walked right over and introduced herself. She’s like that.) Here’s Leonard’s take on the festival.

As for cocktails, we finally were able to bend an elbow at San Francisco’s famed Cliff House, a location in the noir favorite The Lineup. We also stopped by Tradition, the latest in the bar empire from the people behind Bourbon & Branch. It’s only a stone’s throw from B&B, offering a more relaxed atmosphere and a broad array of specialties; I recommend the A La Louisiane, with rye, Benedictine and absinthe. I also recommend the street theater. We arrived several minutes before the doors opened and spent that time watching a man search every inch of his car save the rocker panels with a crystal meth level of determination that rendered him oblivious to the fact that his pants had slipped down far enough to reveal what our genial host Eddie Muller dubbed a “triple Aykroyd” of plumber’s crack. We never learned what he was looking for, or if he found it. We had cocktails to consume.

Hey, we did do something cultural! We saw the exhibit “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier” at the de Young Museum. It highlights ingenuity not only in Gaultier’s ceaselessly inventive work – a dress from the then-impoverished designer’s debut collection employed wicker placemats – but in its staging, with stunning use of mannequins and a closing runway show. The exhibit runs through August 19.

Miscellaneous: Words of Wisdom

Chose cinema over potatoes. I found myself watching the women’s clothes, drinking in their texture, appreciating every bite the actors put in their mouths. When one of the characters (because of some imbecility of plot) wore old clothes and pretended to be poor, I was furious and felt cheated, having chosen this over a meal. Now I really understand why the Italian poor detest De Sica and neorealist films, and why shopgirls like heiresses and read every line in gossip columns. I mean, I understand it, and not just intellectually.

- March 1952 diary entry by author Mavis Gallant, Madrid, Spain. From the July 9 & 16, 2012 issue of the New Yorker.

Book: It’s All About The Dress, by Vicky Tiel (2011)

Some phrases automatically conjure up feelings of retroactive jealousy, a nostalgia for something you weren’t even around to experience. One such phrase is “jet set.” If you want a sense of the heyday of international playboys and globetrotting decadence, you could do worse than read memoirs by people in the fashion business.

Vicky Tiel went from a fairly middle-class upbringing to the full bohemian life in 1960s Greenwich Village, where she passed the hat for Bob Dylan and developed the scandalous alter ego Peaches LaTour. While studying design she met Mia Fonssagrives, whose worldly background provided an entrée into fashion circles when they moved to Paris to start their own business. Soon the twosome, credited with creating both the miniskirt and hot pants, were plucked to design costumes for What’s New, Pussycat?

What follows is a catalog of sex, food, clothes and general fabulousness, the kind of life that simply doesn’t exist anymore. A night with Vicky is the prize in a contest between Pussycat director Clive Donner and co-star/writer Woody Allen. (Read this article if you want to learn the winner, complete with great Woody Allen punchline.) She becomes part of the famous Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton entourage, wandering the world with the tempestuous couple and eventually becoming business partners with Taylor. Only Tiel could be captured with actress Romy Schneider while trying to buy caftans in Jordan in the wake of the Six Day War during production of a Richard Harris movie no one has ever heard of.

Put it another way: you know you’re dealing with a woman who has an in with the universe when she takes up painting as a hobby, develops a coffee-table book featuring her work, has it rejected by New York publishers – so Connecticut neighbor Martha Stewart can snap it up.

The book is dishy, breathless and hugely entertaining, thanks to Vicky’s flair for the dramatic. She’s convinced she warped Woody Allen for life and offers the final scene of Manhattan as proof, believes a single romantic indiscretion on her part is indirectly responsible for the entire Arquette family, and thinks that her late life successful marriage to a man outside her social circle inspired Liz Taylor to hook up with Larry Fortensky. The book is punctuated with original Tiel illustrations, recipes, and life lessons from luminaries. (Kim Novak says foot massages are key, while Ursula Andress suggests foregoing undergarments.) Vicky joins Oleg Cassini as fashion demimonders who recount their charmed lives very well.

One side note: as Tiel reels off the list of truly horrible movies that Burton and Taylor made during her time with them – Burton was personally convinced by Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito to play him in a film that would only screen in the Soviet Bloc – I realized that I have no sense of them as actors. Taylor won two Oscars and Burton was nominated multiple times, but their proto-Brangelina status dwarfs those accomplishments. La Liz is the woman who married eight times, and while I love Dickie in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold I confess my first image of him is the star of crap like The Medusa Touch. I need to change that. Maybe I’ll start with this book. Vicky liked it.