Comments on: Pure black and white sex

Pure black and white sex

showbiz_liz — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:17:59 -0800

Scandals of Classic Hollywood* is a fantastic series of articles exploring the careers and private lives of old Hollywood's most legendary performers, written by self-styled "doctor of celebrity gossip" Anne Helen Petersen.

Some favorites: The Exquisite Garbo Dorothy Dandridge vs. The World Marlene Dietrich, Femme Fatale Katharine Hepburn's Trousers The Destruction of Fatty Arbuckle Cary Grant's Intimate Bromance *The tags for this series on The Hairpin are inconsistently applied, so you have to check both of these links to find all the articles.

By: troika

troika — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:20:47 -0800

I love this series, it's one of the best parts about The Hairpin. Also, is her title really self-styled? Her dissertation was titled "The Gossip Industry: Producing and Distributing Star Images, Celebrity Gossip, and Entertainment News, 1910 - 2010."

By: Egg Shen

Egg Shen — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:26:24 -0800

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:28:34 -0800

God if Betsy Drake didn't exist he'd have to invent her.

By: DU

DU — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:31:30 -0800

Great stuff. Reading the Cary Grant post I'm reminded once again that the current(ish) actor he most reminds me of in his combination of witty grace and casual everymanitude is Will Smith.

By: Iridic

Iridic — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:35:15 -0800

see also: Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon Or skip it, and read these articles instead. Kenneth Anger peddled libel and sensation; Petersen is writing about libel and sensation, with her main care the lives and sorrows of real, flawed, horribly done-by people.

By: Lyn Never

Lyn Never — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:38:17 -0800

I lost an afternoon to this series a few weeks ago. I really love the angle on these stories.

By: Aubergine

Aubergine — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:51:08 -0800

These stories are absolutely my favorite thing on the Hairpin. There's also a really good series (might be by a different person) explaining the celebrity of UK tabloid fixtures which is extremely entertaining in its own right.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 12:21:15 -0800

Gloria Swanson wasn't here to make friends. She wasn't "just like us." She didn't take out the garbage or "wear cotton" or go to the bathroom. Lady had a gold-plated bathtub. She married a Marquis. She was 4'11," wore a 2 ½ in shoes, and had a waist approximately the size of my neck. She looked most beautiful when frowning. If I was reading a book that started like this I might be forced to just read it cover to cover right there and now.

By: BlahLaLa

BlahLaLa — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 12:27:22 -0800

I'm such a fan of her writing!

By: darksong

darksong — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 12:27:53 -0800

I love these. I love how alive Petersen makes all these people seem -- they weren't just celebrities or people from history. They were living, breathing human beings and utterly fascinating ones at that. I read each two or three times.

By: lurkElongtime

lurkElongtime — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 12:29:23 -0800

I love these too. I wish she'd write more of them, cause I've read them all. Yeah, she should write a bunch more of these & publish them in an essay collection kind of book. I'd buy & read the hell out of that.

By: Egg Shen

Egg Shen — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:16:18 -0800

Kenneth Anger peddled libel and sensation You say that like it's a bad thing. And legally speaking, one can not libel the dead.

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:29:42 -0800

I wish the Haipin's tagging/archiving was better - I don't think either of those tag searches find her transformational article on Marilyn Monroe (well, it was transformational for me) or the one on Natalie Wood. Petersen's author page is probably the most complete collection.

By: kariebookish

kariebookish — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:23:39 -0800

Her website is also a great read - she frequently takes modern-day celebrities and makes me see them in a whole new light. AHP actually made me interested in why Ryan Reynolds is so damn boring - which (if you known me) is an impressive feat.

By: jenfullmoon

jenfullmoon — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:28:35 -0800

I love her writing and analysis of fame and celebrities. She's just awesome and makes me wish I had a degree in celebrity gossip.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:51:53 -0800

I've fallen down a young Gary Cooper appreciation vortex send help

By: Glinn

Glinn — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:51:49 -0800

Huge Cary Grant fan and learned a few things. Very entertaining!

By: Ber

Ber — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:11:29 -0800

Back in the earlier days of the Interwebs, there was a site called the A List that had one or two line descriptions of a few hundred celebs with the most devastating dirt on each, supposedly from a Hollywood insider. My wife used to attend to it with a seriousness worthy of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

By: LooseFilter

LooseFilter — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:15:42 -0800

These are fantastic and I can't quit reading them. Such good writing with a casual, off-the-cuff delivery, wonderful.

By: grrarrgh00

grrarrgh00 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:16:02 -0800

A friend of mine turned me on to these back in the spring. I spent almost one full night getting caught up. I dearly love these.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:27:01 -0800

By: ovvl

ovvl — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:41:49 -0800

Kenneth Anger peddled libel and sensation ..and made his own odd experimental films, and venerated Aleister Crowley, and had a sense of dark humour..

By: LooseFilter

LooseFilter — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:53:39 -0800

There are at least three or four gems per piece, like this one from the Paul Newman essay:

Butch Cassidy also forever yoked Newman with Redford in the public eye — an association reinforced by The Sting and the impossible truth that both men only continued to get better looking with age. If Tumblrs were around in the 1980s, there'd be one called FuckYeahCraggyDudes, exclusively devoted to mid-career Newman and Redford.

By: MikeMc

MikeMc — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:09:48 -0800

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:10:24 -0800

MEANIE!

By: kettleoffish

kettleoffish — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:05:55 -0800

Wow the Marilyn Monroe one was amazing. I was expecting to find a hagiography or a bemoaning of a poor little girl's tragic demise. Apparently she was flat out AWESOME. This is the first retelling of her life I've read that actually has the texture of a real life story.

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:08:41 -0800

It must be a generational and gender thing, but I appreciate these for the info (much of which I was already vaguely familiar with) despite the writing style, not because of it. Obviously YMMV.

By: showbiz_liz

showbiz_liz — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 05:53:39 -0800

It must be a generational and gender thing, but I appreciate these for the info (much of which I was already vaguely familiar with) despite the writing style, not because of it. Obviously YMMV. Can you elaborate on why you don't like it? To me, it's a very well done mix of dense information and colloquial style, which makes it easy to absorb the information and identify with the subject. I'm not picking on you, I'm actually totally curious.

By: h00py

h00py — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:03:07 -0800

I'm here for the Gary Cooper backstory. I'll get around to the rest, for sure.

By: misha

misha — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 08:02:16 -0800

I'm a forever fan of Cary Grant (Archibald Leach), and this one line floored me: At age nine, Leach's father put his mother in a mental institution. He soon remarried, abandoning young Archie to the care of the state. I just cannot imagine what that would do to a kid. Yet this man epitomized casual elegance, and his grace and style on screen are unmatched to this day. Grant acted being comfortable in his own skin so well that it's easy to overlook how hard his young life must have been. Cary Grant often said he reinvented himself when he changed his name from Archibald Leach, and after reading about his childhood, I can certainly see why he needed to. It's even more impressive when you consider Grant's relationship with Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress. Her own mother committed suicide when she was just five, and Barbara discovered her body, so she must have had her own demons. The press dubbed her "poor little rich girl" (Ugh, imagine going around with that title over your head). When she and Grant married, he signed a prenup to show he had not interest in her money, and, knowing what it was like for a boy to be abandoned by his father, he made a point of taking in and mentoring Hutton's son. Even though they ended up divorcing, they were friends for their rest of their lives. Ironically, Hutton's former husband was pretty much the opposite of Grant's Dad. After she and Grant divorced, he pretty much kidnapped the boy, taking him to Canada with him. Apparently their son never really forgave his Mother for allowing that to happen, either. These beautiful people sure endured a lot of ugliness in their lives.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 08:04:14 -0800

I hope she does a proper Lupe Valez post cause just separating out the Crazy Shit People Said She Did from the Actual Crazy Shit She Did would eat up a thousand words alone.

By: rewil

rewil — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 08:58:54 -0800

By: zombieflanders

zombieflanders — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:51:53 -0800

Am I missing something here re: the A List? Because MikeMc's link just comes right back to this thread.

By: Optamystic

Optamystic — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 10:11:14 -0800

Here it is. It's been about 10 years since the last update. Still pretty fun to read, though.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 10:22:25 -0800

also it's like a thousand percent unverified but who cares.

By: zombieflanders

zombieflanders — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 10:25:19 -0800

Thanks. I enjoyed this one:

Connery, Sean. Arrogant and self-satisfied sexist. Abuser of women. Never graduated from high school. Wears a toupee. Notorious tightwad. Requires a penis pump to function with women. Linked with Ursula Andress, Brigitte Bardot, Kim Basinger, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gena Rowlands, Lana Turner, Shelley Winters, Lana Wood, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who impressed him with her oral skills.

I can't tell if this is inspired by the SNL parody or the parody was inspired by the real thing, but either way I chuckled.

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 17:55:43 -0800

Can you elaborate on why you don't like it? I agree that the information is good; that's why I kept reading. (Like I said, I usually already knew the general outlines, but the additional details were interesting.) It's the style that bugs me, like some knowledgeable teenager talking to another who knows absolutely nothing, and so continually resorts to comparisons with "famous" modern analogs (e.g., apparently her audience knows who Jessica Simpson's hairdresser is). And it's too colloquial; I feel like I'm eavesdropping on a monologue from the one teen to the other. Which is a few decades too late for me. I wasn't going to go into detail, because a) it makes me sound like grumpy old man and b) I'm not sure who that website's audience is, but I'm fairly positive that they don't intend it for me. But you asked. I wasn't (and still am not) trying to imply that it was unworthy of posting, but all the praise for its style was perplexing me.

By: suburbanbeatnik

suburbanbeatnik — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:23:37 -0800

I wonder if I am between generations on the writing style. I can see why it would appeal, but I can also see why pmurray63 is not digging it. The writing is very mannered, like a hyper-aware grad student on Tumblr impressing her teenage followers with her knowledge. I can write like this to a certain degree, but I (usually) try to restrain myself.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:48:52 -0800

I find the discussion on writing voice super interesting cause the articles read like a gold plated, excellent example of Internet Voice, which I've always associated with " slangy, fannish intimacy" case remember, the Internet used to be about directly commicating with the kinds f people who coud get a decent connection together. The code switching stuff iPods down to the bone.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:24:55 -0800

OR- they're written like the best gChat conversation you've ever had, with supporting links and source documents.

By: h00py

h00py — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 04:59:35 -0800

Gary Cooper is the most handsome man who ever lived. Errol Flynn came close (I know he was an arsehole but oh, so good looking) and there a few contenders around now do you hear me Chris Hemsworth? but GC was just the hottest. I like this writer's voice. I'm going to read them all.

By: h00py

h00py — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 05:22:54 -0800

missed the edit window - same as it ever was

By: Blasdelb

Blasdelb — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 16:02:10 -0800

Wait, so what you're trying to tell me is that my generation didn't invent sex or sexythings?

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 16:02:57 -0800

in the past people reproduced via mitosis, that's why everyone looks alike in old photos