Reblog: "Poor Little Rich Girl" Barbara Hutton

Yesterday I was having a lively Instagram chat with fashion designer, Peter Jensen (- shrug-, you know) about how great Barbara Hutton's bio, "Poor Little Rich Girl" is. 


I included this trash and dish back in 2011 as part of the ever growing "It Can't All Be Dior" book club, but like Jensen, I feel it is due for a re-read, honey 

But still so, so good. This is a summer beach read for every year! 

Original post: http://itcantallbedior.blogspot.com/2011/09/book-club-poor-little-rich-girl.html

Book Club: Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star"

Man, it's been a long time since I book clubbed. Since my last entry I have covertly read books about "The New Jim Crow", The Mayan Empire and Tuesday Weld (yup, that's the mix in my head. Don't be jealous.) 


Well now I wanna share with you this little gem of a memoir from notorious and glorious porn star turned accused (but acquitted!) assaulter Jenna Jameson 


And while no one 'round these parts is advocating a life of porn,  this self-made woman sure has some really good career advice no matter what your path (Pick a goal, focus on it, always be on time and professional, make friends with the behind the scenes people, be nice to everyone no matter how "small" a role they seem to play, etc) 

Oh yeah, and sex. There's sex advice too

I hear that! 

(Jenna Jameson "How to Make Love like a Porn Star" hardcover, $23 at Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/Make-Love-Like-Porn-Star/dp/0060539097/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1367515900&sr=8-1)

Book Club: It's All About the Dress

(Photo: Kathy Yl Chan)

That shit storm of a Liz Taylor Lifetime movie with the once actress Lindsay Lohan touches down this Thanksgiving weekend, but if you really wanna know all about La Liz and Richard Burton, well "Furious Love" is really the go-to. But as Liz's longtime wardrobe go-to and wife of her personal make up artist, Ron Berkeley, Vicky Tiel had insider, entourage level scoop. And she dishes in her memoirs, "It's All About the Dress". But this isn't backstabbing tell-all, this is the kinda secret sharing you get from a bestie. 

However, that said, tales come out about other celebs like Faye Dunaway, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, Martha Stewart, and more. 

And boy does she have something to say about designers like Yves Saint Laurent,Mary Quant, DVF and Louis Feraud, the former three she claims all stole from her! According to "Dress", Vicky invented the mini skirt, the wrap dress and designers posing nude in ads, amongst many other boasts. 

Yes, Ms. Tiel is one of those Janice Dickinson types trying to undercut others who claim they were the first. 

This is the perfect side dish this week for a full plate of trash TV and turkeys. 

Book Club: Brave New World

(This is the cover of mine, except I lost the cover. Sad.) 

Summer is meant for lazy reading either of the escapist trash variety or a re-read. This time I'm doing a little latter.

Now '1984' is my favorite book and with its future dystopian society, Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' always gets compared to Orwell's masterpiece. Which is unfortunate.


A: the books are nothing alike.

B: 'BNW' has its own merits, which upon reading as an angsty teen, I wouldn't examine without a "well it's no 1984". Now I can appreciate its own brand of future dystopia.


And never has been the mollifying a whole generation been more relevant as we're in the age of coddling. Mr Huxley must have been looking into his crystal ball at the self esteem and everyone gets an award entitled generation that breaks down at any tiny inconvenience. Perhaps we're all on Soma Holiday right now?

Book Club?

Spotted at Brooklyn Museum: This "Too Many Kisses" book with button for smoochin' sound effect

Mr Taurus totally empathized! 

Book Club: It's Like Torture

Yet another thing I'm going to miss about Stately Grand Street Manor is the unlimited library of nonsense at my fingertips, like this tome on the rack and human frying pans (no lie!)

Learning about mankind's inventive ways to inflict pain on one another to obtain secrets and false confessions is quite informative and entertaining and inspiring. I'm inspired to craft just as diverse and intriguing library of my own in Park Slope.

Look Who's a Fan of Our Book Club!

I loved and read this romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton back in July. Glad to see Lindsay took my recommendation. Now if only, she'd heed some of my other words of advice...

Book: http://itcantallbedior.blogspot.com/2011/07/book-club-furious-love.html

Broad: http://itcantallbedior.blogspot.com/2011/01/unsolicited-advice-for-lindsays-2011.html

First Book Club of 2012: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Man it's been four score and seven years ago since I sank my teeth into a good book!


Technically I started reading this in November, but that's a horrible time to begin a book. Holiday madness ensued and book got dusty.

Now, reality's back and so is my groove.


After his BOOM success reigniting interest in tired old Jane Austen via zombies, Mr. Grahame-Smith slaps a vampire varnish on our favorite $5 bill. Part history, part True Blood, "ALVH" exposes the real reason Abe got so passionate about slavery and politics: vampires. Vamps were using slaves as fast food and whites were profiting, unaware that they were next on the menu. Valiant (or traitorous, depending on your view here) vamp, Henry, hires on Abe to slaughter his mean old brethren and Lincoln's manifest destiny begins.


I'm really diggin' this book for its play with history and dramatic encounters with the blood thirsty undead. Abe uses his trusty axe to promote peace and honor his dead mother who fell prey to a bloodsucker. Chopping heads never toed the line between diplomacy and straight out revenge so well.


And even though things are picking up into full speed cuckoo at work, I remain optimistic that I shall complete the first entry in 2012's Book Club by Lincoln's Birthday. Or at least President's Day....

(Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Paperback 352 Pages, New Condition, $9.99 plus free shipping at The Book Depository, http://www.bookdepository.com)

Book Club: Shock Value

Hey, you got your horror movies in my biography!

That's right two great tastes that taste great together: my love of slasher flicks and trashy bios. Here New York Times writer, Jason Zinoman fleshes out the creepy, oozy secrets of how landmark horror was made on the cheap by men with ideas. 

Some classic scares visual valentines to the genre (In Halloween, John Carpenter cast horror icon Janet Leigh's daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis in the role of babysitter stalked in the suburbs by an evil anonymous force that felt universally relatable) 

(Hollywood royalty)

Sometimes horror was a gateway to turn the profits into capital for their real movies. George Romero only made Night of the Living Dead so he could funnel the low-budge horror profits into a serious drama. Instead, with social implications he swears kinda just fell into place, the Dead became a huge hit of the 60's and redefined horror in its wake. No longer were the lines of  good versus evil so clearly defined. And no longer was the hero guaranteed to live

                                               



Wes Craven was just a boy with a domineering religious mother who needed to show the everyday horrors people can justify. His debut, Last House on the Left, turned the tables. Within a flash, sweet, everyday parents find their inner maniac and violently murder their daughter's attackers

(Don't know who Joe is, but I know Craven's one hell of a salesman!)

"Shock Value" also explores the political in-fighting between these close-knit directors, writers and producers. There's so much backstabbing, idea stealing, betrayal and intrigue in this great group of masterful thinkers. Juicy! Like a big breasted teenage slut taking a shortcut home

("Doo, doo, doo... just walkin' through the woods...")

(Shock Value by Jason Zinoman, $12.99 hardcover at Barnes & Nobles, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/)

Book Club: Poor Little Rich Girl

When I was first reading that Oleg Casinni memoir a spell back, I realized I need to get to know better this Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton, he casually mentions throughout

Heiress to the 5 and dime fortune (worth $2 billion in today's money. Paris Hilton she is not!), she was dubbed "poor little rich girl" by the gossip columns because despite all her money (or perhpas because?), she suffered with depression and a series of failed marriages to a whole deck's worth of princes and knaves more interested in her pocketbook than her heart

And like all good mid-century divas, she married frequently making sure to throw a fagela in the mix for flava

And a Hollywood star

(Before there was Ben-nifer, the press sharply labelled these two "Cash and Cary")

And then spent her twilight years with young men folk. (Oh Barbara! What would the lunch counter say!)

Barbara ended up giving away so much of her vast fortune that when she died $3,500 was all that was reportedly left in her account. That bitch knew how to live! 

("What?! Can't take it with you.")

Or at least I think that's how her life petered out according to Wikipedia. I never got to finish this out of print book because on a recent drinking marathon with Miss JB, I have a cloudy, cloudy recollection of a tirade on illiteracy. During said tirade I was slamming this book in my palm because nothing proves your point like a trashy biography. 

I've never seen that book since. 

If found please return to It Can't All Be Dior headquarters. You ll know it cuz it's bright yellow and the San Giuseppe festival is going on right outside my door. 

Thanks!

Book Club Contender?

Confession: I've never read no "Pride and Prejudice" casting it off into the 'girl's stuff' pile along side "Wuthering Heights" 


I remember in 2009 when the parody "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" came out in the peak of zombie mania (although maybe we're still in it!) and I waffled

Zombies? yes please! But there's still that whiny white girl desperate to be married and I get enough of that daily, thanks. Don't need it in my book escapes.

This week's Entertainment Weekly however has an article on the YouTube promos for the book and its prequel that may have pushed me into must read territory






I mean go on Bennet bitches! Murder! Death! Kill! Hopefully Mr. Darcy gets it good for toying with Elizabeth's feelings.

Oh jeez....

Book Club: Furious Love

Ooh we haven't checked into our book club in a wee moment, have we? Well we chase the name dropping tome of Oleg Cassini with this little highly recommended treasure (both Mr. G and Miss L.N. have been pushing this biography's addition to the club for months)

A history of one of Hollywood's most sensational love affairs, Furious shows the trajectory of blossoming, forbidden romance to lavish marrieds on a yacht to the inevitable crash and burn. Along the way Tennessee Williams, Noël Coward, Eddie Fisher, Mia Farrow, Montgomery Clift, Robert Mitchum, Warren Beatty, Rex Harrison and a bevy of "Bluebeard" beauties get caught in the web that was Liz and Dick

(No one would blame you, Noël, for being a coward against that fearful headpiece! Yikes!)

It is, in fact, one of "Bluebeard"s b****s that is the catalyst for the (first) divorce when Burton beds Nathalie Delon, then wife of famous French actor, Alain Delon

(Satin sheets are very romantic, especially when accompanied by a green tunic. Grrr...)

I have about two chapters left; just the ideal amount for my 3 hour bus trip to Maryland today! Yay, homeward bound! 

Book Club: Oleg Cassini's Memoirs

Masterfully melding my two loves, history and fashion, Oleg Cassini's autobiography, "In My Own Fashion" also showcases a skillful dose of trash talk, financial ups and downs, whirlwind romances (he's straight and he married Gene Tierney and romanced many, many others), jet setting, adversaries (right now he's met his match in Edith Head) and name dropping.



And wild audacious claims like this one

"Producer Arthur Hornblow... asked me to work on 'I Wanted Wings', an aeronautical big-budget mishap, noteworthy only for the debut of a young starlet named Veronica Lake, whose blonde peekaboo hairstyle created a sensation across the country. With all due modesty, I must admit: I created that look..."

And I'm only on page 103. The book is full of these grandiose claims and I haven't even made it to his 60's heyday of being the on call couturier for Jackie Kennedy

(It's good to be king... of the pill box hat)

In 36 hours I'll be on a plane bound for Spain for a week long celebration. Thank you, Mr. Cassini, for the ultimate in vacation reads.

Book Club: Eyes of Laura Mars

Timing perfectly with Fashion Week, I'm devouring the novel version of "Eyes of Laura Mars", an admitted 'late nite drunken Ebay purchase' by Mr. G. 

Now if you haven't seen this amazing movie that the book is based on (yes, you heard that right: the book is based on the movie!) well why do you even read my blog??? 

(The movie poster in French. Maybe if I watched it in another language it wouldn't be 

so bad?)

Faye Dunaway plays photographer Laura Mars obsessed with producing slick commercial images of violence against stunning women, a not at all hidden homage to Helmut Newton.

Well, wouldn't you know it, even with all her work commitments piling up, all of sudden Ms. Mars starts witnessing first hand though a killer's eyes, attacks on her co-workers

(Pop them peepers!)

The movie makes no effort to make any damn sense of why or how, but they tried to flesh it out a bit with a tacked on history of E.S.P. storyline for Laura, but again, none of that matters. What's remarkable to me about the book is how they managed to nail Dunaway's cadence on the printed page. You can practically hear her beat these sentences out of her perfect pout

(oh yeah, there's a midget and a sorta Lady Day-esque outfit too... someone tell me what the Hell is going on in this movie???)

Hopefully the book ends differently than the movie, cuz that "twist ending" was pretty clunky and obvious.

Until then, here's a fun little video I found on YouTube that actually makes the movie look artsy. Enjoy. 

Book Club: The Book of Vice

I might be an old married man now, but jeez even I feel dirtier than this pedantic chronicle of strip clubs, swapping parties and gluttonous meals. But I guess NPR ain't really known for throw down partying...

Second D.O.A. book in a row. At least this one cost $5 in the clearance section of Barnes and Nobles. 

-sigh- 

Totally open to book suggestions, people! Let me know: what should I be reading?

Book Club: The Mole People

Miss AG had told me about the Mole People during her visit to my Uptown apartment way back in the Summer of 2006, but I just recently picked up the vociferous book. 

Jennifer Toth's first hand account exposes the lifestyle and survivalist ways a collection of homeless live in tunnels under the New York subway system

It's a fascinating read on the cunning and determination of the human spirit and I highly recommend it especially for New Yorkers as a reminder that high rents, pricey drinks and fancy clothes is only how one half live

Book Club: The Bad Seed

Ooh child

Today's postings so far have an unintentional child theme to them, true, but it's anything but innocent as The Bad Seed delves into whether someone is predisposed to evil and whether a parent can sway the child over to the light side of the force

Mr G introduced me to the film, but made in 1956, the movie was forced to bring the murdering, lying wicked little girl to justice. Rumor has it the book don't play out that way but I haven't finished it yet and wouldn't rob anyone a shocking denouement. 

Especially not Mr G who has dibs on the book after me. 

Book Club All Star: 1984

When asked 1984 is always my favorite book. But since I haven't read it in awhile, a well-worn copy has once again recaptured my attention. I can't get over how a work of fiction I was forced to read in high school actually has merit still and is rich with entertainment value as well as common conversational reference. Can one say that about The Most Dangerous Game?

Granted the concepts of being a number, social stratification, "playing the game" and working to death for a system I don't understand is even more relevant to the older version of me reading it now. 

Congrats, 1984, you continue to hold the gold medal in my Book Club Olympics. 

Book Club Contender?

And really, Pigeon, who can blame you?

Book Club: Little Richard's Biography

Awop-Bop-A-Loo-Mop Alop-Bam-Boom!

Little Richard's bio is one giant study of the history of rock and roll and the study of the ego of the man who claims to have inspired everyone.

At the same time, Little Richard struggles with finding God while flashing his garish ways. I hear that! Where does the balance strike?