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Episode 35. You made it! The last chapter of Hollywood & Mine

I’ve been tossing about as much stardust as I can muster right now. That’s it, this novel is done. I think the podcast of the book runs a bit over 10 hours in its entirety. Let me know if you’d like to hear another Hollywood novel podcast — remember it will take me some time to write it — if you think I should independently publish what you’ve heard, or, if you just want to chat the comments are…

[beguilinghollywood]

Hello! Is that you?

Hello! Is that you?

Honey, you’re looking great. What an ordeal this has been. Four years culminating in… Hold on. We’ve made it this far. Let’s step into the light. In a few short days things will start to change. My aim in podcasting my novel has been to entertain until that change comes. The change won’t be rapid but it will save lives, and god willing, open hearts. The final episode of Hollywood & Mine will be…

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Episode 34. Life is the past, the present, and the perhaps.

“Do you know the Mayo Clinic lists menopause under diseases and conditions? What do you think of that?” “Well, I know it’s not contagious.” He sat down beside me. “Jesus, this is hard on my knees.” “Sorry about that, old-timer. Cooper, I am not pissed off.” “Then what’s with the face?” “This old thing?” He laughed. “Did I ever tell you about when I was nineteen? When I was working for the…

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Knitting is supposed to be soothing?

Knitting is supposed to be soothing?

My angels I’ve been clacking those needles so much since Wednesday that I’ve strained the muscle that runs along my collar bone. Seriously, I started with a sweater and as the news rolled in I was on track to complete a three piece suit. Apologies for not posting today’s chapter. Tomorrow the second to last episode of Hollywood & Mine will be up on the Beguiling Hollywood podcast..  

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Episode 33. Hollywood is very pretty, but people grow old here — not outside, but inside.

There were heaps — accumulated reminders of a life — all around. Everything that served as an archival asset, or a teaching aid for future filmmakers, I boxed and hauled over to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Clothes, I donated. Books, I culled down to the essentials and gave the balance to the library. I avoided looking at my computer for days, ignored my constantly vibrating…

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Bye-bye 2020!

I’m not going to enter into the year that was conversation. I think it’s too early. I will say one thing that kept me going this year was being able to read to you in a podcast. In my isolation it was one way I could contribute, if only to help pass the time. My sister in-law, a very nice, very acerbic Connecticut lady listens to the novel while knitting. She told me the day after Christmas as I…

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Episode 32. It’s said in Hollywood that you should always forgive your enemies — because you never know when you’ll have to work with them.

Episode 32. It’s said in Hollywood that you should always forgive your enemies — because you never know when you’ll have to work with them.

All through life, instinctively or intellectually, we adapt to survive. Even insects have some boss strategies, for example, the formation of a chitinous exoskeleton, which is the somewhat see-through shell that encapsulates and protects a shrimp or a spider. I have a theory about directors who succeed in the movie industry; they have see-through shells. The shell can be the ability to tune 100…

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Episode 31. I always say that if a woman will tell you her age, she will tell you anything.

Episode 31. I always say that if a woman will tell you her age, she will tell you anything.

Life is a series of metamorphoses. Some of them get more airtime than others. I remember once waiting in a gynecologist’s office to see the doctor. There was his desk, on the walls family pictures, on the shelves, some weighty texts. I was curious about hot flashes, so I pulled one of the volumes and flipped to the index. There was a single page referenced, and on the page one paragraph. It said,…

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I will not be looking for Santa in my lingerie this Christmas Eve, though, knowing me...

I will not be looking for Santa in my lingerie this Christmas Eve, though, knowing me…

Tonight I may be wearing something similar to pajamas when the sun sets. I’m thinking some polar fleece when I climb on the roof — there’s a flat bit, don’t worry — to behold the Christmas Star on the winter solstice. The heavens will be putting on a show last seen about 800 years ago. Jupiter and Saturn will join in the sky to appear as a wondrous bright shining object. Look quickly when the sun…

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Episode 30. Every star I know in Hollywood acknowledges the same fact. With luck you can climb. Without it, your brakes don’t work even when you coast.

Episode 30. Every star I know in Hollywood acknowledges the same fact. With luck you can climb. Without it, your brakes don’t work even when you coast.

For a few short days after Antoine’s crisis I was more aware of the rhythms and mechanisms of filmmaking and its twitchy straitlaced cousin finance than I had ever been. Much like how time can seem to slow when you fall, leaving you able to see everything around you with crystal clarity before you crash into the ground, I found myself hyperaware of all the moving pieces of movie creation, as…

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Episode 29. Never admit anything to anybody. Honesty is not the best policy.

Episode 29. Never admit anything to anybody. Honesty is not the best policy.

Lethal stress can come at you no matter whether you’re onscreen or off. Actors in Hollywood have committed suicide by swallowing ant paste, Nembutal, or barbiturates. George Sanders (check out his performance in All About Eve) swallowed five bottles of pills in Barcelona and left two suicides notes. One in Spanish instructing the local authorities to notify his sister of his death, and the other…

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Episode 28. I used to slip down to the beach and hold my head under the water just long enough to decide to come back up again…it seemed so ironical to feel like that, just when I was made a star.

Clara Bow wasn’t the only one who found Hollywood depressing. On a chilly, unusually clouded over, February afternoon in 2009 when I was 48, after the fourth week of shooting on the revived franchise, I received a call. It was Antoine. He told me he couldn’t make it to set on Monday. One could say that was unusual to the nth degree. Directors never miss work unless they’re stricken, for example,…

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Episode 27 is introduced by Mabel Normand, who said, "Acting in the movies is like a cold — you get used to both after a while."

Episode 27 is introduced by Mabel Normand, who said, “Acting in the movies is like a cold — you get used to both after a while.”

Gifted with a glib tongue he moved quickly from never-featured actor, to production assistant, to assistant director, and rapidly ascended the dating scale (as he saw it) from the cute craft service gal who brought cucumber sushi snacks to camera at four in the afternoon, to the daughter of a producer. Everything was meteoric with Antoine — his love life, his career, his quick adaptation to style…

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All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year. Episode 26 In the words of Dorothy Gale, there’s no place like home. The light here is what made filmmakers move to California.

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Even in the dark there are roses...and orchids...and lilies

A friend of mine who lives far away told me she was having a hard time, and then reaching out (beautiful heart) she said she was worried about me in lockdown Los Angeles. I was about to tell her not to worry and then I changed my mind and said this:

I would say, please don’t worry, but that’s a form of denial. We worry together — the whole world — that’s an odd kind of companionship. But it’s…

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Old gal reads own novel online!

Hi everybody,

Some of my friends and readers have been asking me, “What gives?” Especially in regard to the blog, which is a direct result of the pandemic. I explain all in the video here and I would like to add by recording this book I had a blast. I thought of how I read out loud years ago and I did accents, funny voices, and hammed it up. Because my technical abilities are not great if I…

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Now we come to episode 25 of the novel, in the words of Katharine Hepburn — life is hard, after all, it kills you.

The streets of Beverly Hills, unlike the streets of the Hollywood Hills, were nearly empty. One morning I saw a woman of about seventy, with the poise and stance of a dancer, shining long silver hair side-parted like Veronica Lake — probably just as it had been when she was a teenager in the forties — wearing surfing jams, Vans, and a moth eaten angora sweater; walking her very large, very…