Bob Dylan's Vernacular, Jim Morrison's Vision

Andrea Pitzer, addressing possibly copied verbiage in Dylan’s recent Nobel Lecture in Literature, writes at Slate, “Theft in the name of art is an ancient tradition, and Dylan has been a magpie since the 1960s.” Pitzer and a few other observers have combed through that knotty Nobel lecture Dylan delivered last week and found a number of phrases resembling ones found on SparkNotes, the literary summary site that helps students write essays. The whale Moby Dick is “the embodiment of evil” in Dylan’s speech and on SparkNotes, but not in Herman Melville’s prose. Dylan says Captain Boomer “can’t accept Ahab’s lust for vengeance,” SparkNotes says he “cannot understand Ahab’s lust for vengeance,” and Melville says neither. The writer Ben Greenman points out that Dylan attributed a direct quote to Moby Dick that is not actually in the book—but might have been derived from the online synopsis. In total, the Associated Press has verified 21 instances of possible SparkNotes influences, “no verbatim sentences, only identical phrases and similar phrasing.” Dylan has not commented yet.

Dylan has also made various dubious biographical claims—of being a heroin addict, a prostitute, etc. The Joni Mitchells of the world see this collage aesthetic as evidence of him being a contemptible fraud. Dylan fans reply he is instead the consummate folk entertainer: recombining the past in inspired ways and crafting a persona to delight and mystify. In a weird way, though, the SparkNotes episode might also fit with Dylan’s deeper message about literature—a statement about the way art defies description and summary, its essence slippery and irreducible. Dylan says Moby Dick has had a deep influence on his own work, and yet he can’t answer the question of “what it all means”—and he suspects Melville couldn’t, either. The lecture itself is similarly difficult to pin down, a sum greater than it parts. The provenance of any individual phrase arguably doesn’t have much bearing on the fact that his speech stands as something new, between lecture and song, that can’t be fully appreciated without hearing the jazzy piano behind his words and the musicality in his recitation. Dylan’s lecture talks about how the singer mastered the “vernacular” of American song traditions, and his diction throughout is notably simple, conversational. Source: www.theatlantic.com

During the press tour for his 1998 memoir “Light My Fire,” Ray Manzarek continued to criticize Oliver Stone for his highly inaccurate biopic on The Doors. Stone’s film uses creative license to depict an iconic rock group, as well as that of the whole late 1960s counterculture nostalgia of the time. Shouldn’t Stone have just done a fully fictional movie inspired by The Doors, like Todd Haynes would later do with David Bowie for Velvet Goldmine? Unfortunately, most of Haynes’s genius approaches to biopics, which would include the multi-portrayal of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There, didn’t exist yet. Funnily enough, in a BBC interview, Haynes actually admitted to being a fan of Stone's films, picking Nixon as his favourite one. 

The Doors (1991) is more of a folk tale of a poetic legend, a rock god, and it’s also about an era. It’s pretty much a fabrication, a music video jukebox musical mistaken for a conventional biopic. That doesn’t make it not a biopic. And in its defense, it doesn’t play too loose with hard facts that truly matter. But it is confused for more of a biographical work than it is. The young Morrison is glimpsed as a beatific Peter Pan smiling at his lady love from a tree, exemplifying the romantic hippie spirit, just as much as he later becomes the calm philosopher/poet he may have always wanted to be. People even think Kilmer looks just like Morrison, which is absurd if you view them side by side. Morrison had a more slender face with more pronounced jaw bones. Source: filmschoolrejects.com

Oliver Stone appears to see Jim Morrison as a classic American antihero. He uses the singer's troubled and troubling career as the vehicle for an ambitious journey through the "youth culture" of the '60s, painting a reasonably complex portrait of a turbulent and complicated time while at the same time revealing how tragically Morrison's life was veering out of control. As a film stylist, Stone shares Morrison's interest in breaking away from convention, and at times he frees his movie from the usual Hollywood formulas, gliding through time and space with exhilarating, psychedelic ease. Stone is less inventive at scene-by-scene storytelling, though. Pamela Courson is depicted as saying hostile things to Patricia Kennealy, when by all reports their interactions were polite. John Densmore is also portrayed as hating Morrison as The Lizard King's problems begin to dominate his behavior. In truth, Densmore never directly confronted Morrison about his behavior. Densmore said of the movie: "A third of it's fiction. I told Oliver Stone I wish there had been all those naked girls jumping up on to the stage when we played, but I certainly never saw one." Source: www.csmonitor.com

Stone stages Jim Morrison with Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd as a descent into the underworld, where West Coast hallucinogenic inspiration sours under the influence of New York decadence and hard drugs. Morrison nervously pleads with his bandmates not to be left alone to face Warhol, as if he senses an oncoming ordeal he can’t face, but swiftly gives into temptations, as Nico (Kristina Fulton) goes down on him in an elevator before Pamela’s stoned disbelief. Photographer Gloria Stavers (Mimi Rogers) takes iconic snaps of Morrison and repeats the siren call of stand-alone stardom. A press conference alternates between Morrison’s fantasy image of himself reproducing Bob Dylan’s shaded, combative cool and his slightly bleating, defensive actuality, and hooking up with an inquisitive journalist, Patricia Kennealy (Kathleen Quinlan). Morrison’s relationship with Pamela spins into increasingly fraught and mutually wounding territory, counterpointing level-headed Manzarek’s union with his wife Dorothy. 

Pamela (Meg Ryan) has her own sense of humour, introducing herself to a customs man as “Pamela Morrison, ornament,” but shares her husband’s appetites far too much to counterbalance his collective of enablers, including Warhol actor Tom Baker (Michael Madsen) and other omnivorous ratbags. What Stone found particularly compelling about Morrison emerges through such a motif as he studies his hero as doomed not just by internal failings, but also by the specific flaws of his society and as a classic overreacher. Just as much as Nixon represented to Stone both the beauty of America in his capacity to rise from straitened youth to national captaincy—and its dark flipside in his resentment and paranoia—Morrison likewise represents a spiritual America doomed to be tortured by a materialistic age where hedonism is offered as substitute for liberty. Source: www.ferdyonfilms.com

Nowhere did the best and worst of the 60's collide as messily as they did in Jim Morrison, the Doors' resident sex symbol and bete noire. In the film's opening episodes, Jim is seen courting Pam under a glorious night sky with poetry and existential small talk ("I feel most alive experiencing death, confronting pain"). Meg Ryan plays Pamela in a cute, dizzy fashion that will not further Mr. Stone's reputation as a director who understands women. John Densmore, in his memoir about the band, writes of beginning to feel that Morrison was "headed straight for a sad death in a gutter." What ruined Jim Morrison? The film, at times, dares to make the outrageous suggestion that he died for his audience's sins, but it is possible to be haunted by "The Doors" without subscribing to that idea. One of Mr. Stone's most effective tricks is to fade out the sound entirely at one crucial moment, as Morrison becomes fatally out of touch with his audience. The final stage of Morrison's life was never easy. Source: www.nytimes.com

Deleted Scenes on The Doors DVD — These extended scenes are introduced by Oliver Stone who regrets removing some of them from the final cut: Pamela and Jim are on a plane to New York talking about how they would like to die. Another scene showing Ray and Dorothy Manzarek's wedding, followed by Pamela and Jim shopping for their dinner. Also, Morrison in a motel room crying in company of a groupie.

Drug laws were used to persecute Timothy Leary and other counterculture leaders. An example of this type of harassment came to light in federal court when Jack Martin, a musician who'd been busted on a dope rap, testified that he was asked to turn informant and assist the Federal Narcotics Bureau in framing Allen Ginsberg on a marijuana charge. The FBI and the CIA kept tabs on Ginsberg's activities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A number of big-name rock musicians were also targeted for surveillance by the FBI. Hoover's men shadowed John Lennon (Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" became the anthem of the antiwar movement). In addition the FBI kept tabs on Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and other rock stars who were prosecuted on drug charges. The harassment of rock musicians was part of a crusade against the emerging counterculture and alternative lifestyles. Some rock groups took explicitly political stands, and their music received wide airplay despite halfhearted attempts at government censorship. While rock music certainly did not politicize its entire audience, it reinforced a pervasive anti-authoritarianism and provided an audacious soundtrack to the hopes of the younger generation. —"Acid Dreams The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond" (1985) by Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain

Maggie Phillips had heard in the hallways of George Washington High that Jim Morrison was going to be reciting poetry at Coffee ‘n’ Confusion and she remembered making the journey to the basement club on K Street with a close friend to see Jim in action. After Jim Morrison’s epic poetry recital at Coffee ‘n’ Confusion (one of his favoite haunts), he went on to graduate from George Washington High School in June 1961 and then left Alexandria at the end of that summer to attend St. Petersburg Junior College in Florida (he would later attend Florida State University and eventually earned a bachelor of arts in theater arts from UCLA in June 1965). Morrison never actually sang with a rock and roll band during his teen years in Alexandria. 

Michael McClure: Jim and I met because of his interest in my play The Beard, a confrontation between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow in a blue velvet eternity. We disliked each other at first sight and began sullenly drinking Johnny Walker, which quickly turned to talk about poetry and Elizabethan theater. When Jim and I were in London, in the late 1960s, working together on a screenplay from my novel The Adept, he showed me the manuscript of his first poems, The New Creatures. The manuscript was perfectly edited by his wife, Pam.  It is hard to believe that there was a better poet than Jim, at his age. I urged Jim to publish it and when he demurred because of his concern that it would be read as rock-star poetry, I persuaded him to do a private publication, and helped him distribute it. Jim and I were close friends. Often he visited San Francisco and stayed with my family, sometimes I stayed with Jim and Pam when I was in LA. Strange as it sounds, Jim had a fear of reading his poetry to an audience without a band backing him. The true visionary is not harmed by commodization. The poem “Hail Thee Who Play!” (1968) is dedicated to James Douglas Morrison. Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

On stage Jim Morrison was like Dean Moriarty, Mr. Mojo Risin, Jimbo. He was hip and wild. At home with Pam he wanted to be Sal Paradise a.k.a. James Douglas Morrison, poet–and get it down on paper. Hell, he wanted to write the next great American novel. The novel about the sixties; the novel which would define a generation–his. There was, however, the personality split–The outsider, estranged from himself and society, couldn't experience himself/other people as ‘real’. The disintegration of his real self keeps pace with the growing unreality of his false self until, in the extremes of schizophrenic breakdown, the whole personality disintegrates. Maybe Morrison was an outsider who concocted a story in which to live his reality; spinning unreality like a classic storyteller, he lived a schizophrenic existence. Jim had Pamela call his parents in Washington to let them know that Jim was “in fine shape and he was taking care of himself” in Paris. Pamela let them know that she and Jim were looking forward to seeing them as soon as they got back to the States. Using Pamela as an intermediary, Jim was taking the first difficult steps in order to move on to the future. For the first time, he began talking about having children.

Everyone knew the magic Morrison, the face at the edge of the cliff, grinning before he jumped. But he would also be wallowing in his own self-doubt and self-pity. Pam knew his demons. The things that came for him in the dark. The fear of rejection, the pain of his family background and his own doubts about his poetry. Pamela Courson was much more than a moll or a groupie, she was like Alice in Wonderland. Morrison had feared he could never control Pam, and now he was beginning to ruin his looks to push other women away. When Pam had denounced Jim's infidelities, his usual excuse was those girls coming on to him so hard. Jim and Pam loved each other, but there was this weird competition they had, a test to see who loved the other one the most. Jim couldn't use his mind tricks with Pam, she was immune because she had also freed her mind. Jim loved Pam for her love of freedom. But he played with the rest of people's minds, reflecting back at them precisely what they wanted to see. Like Mary Shelley, Jim Morrison created his own monster, alone in the dark. Morrison had cut up the pieces of other people, philosophers, poets, subculture idealists, novelists, artists and dramatists, then stitched them together to create a new god. Suddenly he’s alone in the dark with all those demons. —"Mr. Mojo Risin' Ain't Dead" (2011) by Ron Clooney.

She looked like Edie Sedgwick, that femme-fatale, might’ve-just-overdosed-on-heroin-and-been-brought-back-to-life-by-adrenaline look. By the time I’d reached the end of the hallway, some of the acid had washed away. She’d hurt me? While I sat there, that root canal pain sparking through my body, phrases like 'I wish I’d never met her' and 'I wish she’d never kissed me' started to cascade through my thoughts. I might’ve—had it been a viable option at that moment—gone all Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on her. Bleached her out of my memory. Ripped her from where she’d stitched herself into the lining of my soul. But I thought that something must first be shattered for it to be put back together in a way that made it more beautiful than before. I thought of how I liked broken things, things that were blemished or dented or cracked, and why that was probably why I fell for her in the first place. She was a broken thing in human form, and now—because of her—I was too. She might always be broken, but I hoped that all my shattered pieces could be glued back together and mended with gold seams. That the tears in my heart would heal into scars that would glisten. The sunlight caught her irises and made them almost crystal clear and my heart trembled at how achingly beautiful she was and how much I hated her for not being mine, the ethereal creature that now existed only in photographs and half-remembered fantasies. Love is scientific, just a chemical reaction in the brain. Sometimes that reaction lasts a lifetime, repeating itself over and over again. Sometimes it goes supernova and then starts to fade. We’re all just chemical hearts. I remembered anxiety, stress, pain, sadness, the acid from my stomach eating away at my lungs. I remembered loving her, desperately. There was the night we walked home together from the movies, hand in hand, when I’d been sure I was going to marry her. —"Our Chemical Hearts" (2016) by Krystal Sutherland 

R.I.P. Anita Pallenberg (Her life with Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones)

R.I.P. Anita Pallenberg (6 April 1944 – 13 June 2017): the model and actress best known for her relationships with members of the Rolling Stones, has died at the age of 73. Her death was made public by Stella Schnabel, daughter of painter and film director Julian, who said she had "never met a woman quite like" her. Keith Richards just shared in Twitter: "RIP Anita. Always in my heart." Pallenberg was the girlfriend of Brian Jones but left him for fellow Rolling Stone Keith Richards. 

She was also alleged to have had an affair with Sir Mick Jagger while they were making 1970 film Performance, though she always denied it. Born in Rome in 1944 to German and Italian parents, Pallenberg began her career as a model and spent time in the 1960s at Andy Warhol's famous Factory. She met Jones in 1965 but left him two years later for Richards. Jones went on to leave the band and died shortly afterwards. In his autobiography, Life, Richards described Pallenberg as a "very strong" woman who was "extremely bright" and "a great beauty". The couple had three children together, one of whom died as an infant, before they finally separated in 1980. Pallenberg sang backing vocals on classic Stones track Sympathy for the Devil and was said to have had a "profound" influence on the band. 

She had roles in films including 1969's Barbarella and 2007's Mister Lonely, and made a cameo appearance in BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous in 2001. Known for her colourful lifestyle and fascination with black magic, Pallenberg sought help for her addictions in 1987 and went on to study fashion at Central St Martins in London. Source: www.bbc.com

Chapter Five ("Life" by Keith Richards, 2010): The Stones’ first tour of the USA. Meeting Bobby Keys at the San Antonio State Fair. Chess Records, Chicago. I hook up with the future Ronnie Spector and go to the Apollo in Harlem. Fleet Street (and Andrew Oldham) provide our new popular image: long-haired, obnoxious and dirty. We go to LA and record with Jack Nitzsche at RCA. I write “Satisfaction” in my sleep, and we have our first number one. Allen Klein becomes our manager. Linda Keith breaks my heart. Brian begins to melt down—and meets Anita Pallenberg. Acid came into his picture around the same time.

Chapter Six ("Life" by Keith Richards): Mick and I had gotten incredibly nasty to Brian Jones when he became a joke, when he effectively gave up his position in the band. There had been tension way before Brian started becoming an asshole. But I was trying to mend fences at the end of 1966. I was footloose and fancy-free, having ended my affair with Linda Keith. Brian always had to have an imaginary enemy, and around this time he’d decided it was Mick Jagger who had grossly mistreated and offended him. In those days on Courtfield Road (Gloucester) I had nothing to do with Anita, strictly speaking. I was fascinated by her from what I thought was a safe distance. I thought certainly that Brian had got very lucky. I could never figure out how he got his hands on her. 

My first impression was of a woman who was very strong. Also an extremely bright woman, that’s one of the reasons she sparked me. Let alone that she was so entertaining and such a great beauty to look at. One of the prime women in the world. I loved her spirit, even though she would instigate and turn the screw and manipulate. She wouldn’t let you off the hook for a minute. If I said, “That’s nice… ,” she would say, “Nice? I hate that word. Oh, stop being so fucking bourgeois.” We’re going to fight about the word “nice”? How would you know? Her English was still a bit patchy, so she would break out in German occasionally when she really meant something. “Excuse me. I’ll have that translated.” Anita and I would look at each other. The idea of stealing a band member’s woman was not on my agenda. The truth was I’m looking at Anita and I’m thinking, there’s nothing I can do about this. I’m going to have to be with her. I’m going to have her or she’s going to have me. One way or another. 

I have never put the make on a girl in my life. I just don’t know how to do it. My instincts are always to leave it to the woman. Which is kind of weird, but I can’t pull the come-on bit: “Hey, baby, how you doing? Come on, let’s get it on” and all of that. I’m tongue-tied. I suppose every woman I’ve been with, they’ve had to put the make on me. Meanwhile I’m putting the make on in another way—by creating an aura of insufferable tension. So Anita made the first move. I just could not put the make on my friend’s girl. It’s the Sir Galahad in me. And we got closer and closer and then suddenly, without her old man, she had the balls to break the ice and say fuck it. In the back of the Bentley, somewhere in Spain between Barcelona and Valencia, Anita and I looked at each other. The tension broke then. And suddenly we’re together. When you get laid with Anita Pallenberg for the first time, you remember things. We stopped in Valencia overnight and checked in as Count and Countess Zigenpuss, and that was the first time I made love to Anita. And from Algeciras, where we checked in as Count and Countess Castiglione, we took the ferry and the car over to Tangier to the El Minzah Hotel. There, in Tangier, were Robert Fraser; Bill Burroughs; Brion Gysin, Burroughs’s friend and fellow cutup artist—another of the hip public schoolboys—and Bill Willis, decorator of exiles’ palaces. We were greeted by a bundle of telegrams from Brian ordering Anita to come back and collect him. It was obvious that Brian and Anita had come to the end of their tether. They’d beaten the shit out of each other. There was no point in it. 

Anita and I got back to my little pad in St. John’s Wood, which I’d hardly used since I’d moved into it with Linda Keith. It was quite a difference for Anita after Courtfield Gardens. We were hiding out from Brian there, and that took a while. Brian and I still had to work together, and Brian made desperate attempts to get Anita back. There was no chance of that happening. Once Anita makes up her mind, she makes up her mind. It’s said that I stole her. But my take on it is that I rescued her. Brian went to Paris and fell onto Anita’s agent—howling that everyone had left him, fucked off and left him. He never forgave me. I don’t blame him. On acid, at night in the full moon at the Villa Medici, it was just utterly beautiful. I remember Anita’s smile. I mean, her wonderful smile in those days, which promised everything. When she was having a good time, she was so full of promise. She gave this incredible smile, which was quite frightening too, all those teeth. Like a wolf, like a cat that got the cream. She was gorgeous because she was so beautifully dressed, always in the perfect costume. Anita had a huge influence on the style of the times. She could put anything together and look good. She certainly made a man out of me. 

Chapter Seven ("Life" by Keith Richards): You’ve got an old lady like Anita Pallenberg and expect other guys not to hit on her? I heard rumors, and I thought, if she’s going to be making a move with Mick, good luck to him; he can only take that one once. Anyway, she had no fun with the tiny todger. It didn’t surprise me. In a way I kind of expected it. Anita’s a piece of work. She probably nearly broke his back! It probably put a bigger gap between me and Mick than anything else. And probably forever. I gave no reaction at all to Mick about Anita. And decided to see how things would pan out from there. It wasn’t the first time we’d been in competition for a woman. It was like two alphas fighting. But it’s hardly the basis for a good relationship, right? I could have given Anita shit for it, but what was the point? We were together. I was on the road. At the same time, Anita and I had drifted into heroin. We just snorted it for a year or two, along with pure cocaine. Speedballs. And they’re giving us these pure ups. Every junkie’s rent was made out of selling off their coke. Very few were interested at all in cocaine, and if they were, they kept a bit back to give them a boost. That was the golden era. at least until ’73, ’74. After that, they knocked it on the head and it was methadone, which is worse, or certainly no better. Synthetic. One day the junkies woke up and they only got half their script in pure heroin and half in methadone. And then that turned it into a bit more of a market, the era of the all-night drugstore in Piccadilly. 

I have no clear recollection of the first time I had heroin. It was probably slipped in with a line of coke, in a speedball —a mixture of coke and smack. They don’t call it “heroin” for nothing. It’s a seductress. It was never in the front of my mind until I was truly hooked. It’s a subtle thing. It grabs you slowly. But I’ve never mainlined. No, the whole delicacy of mainlining was never for me. I was never looking for that flash; If you do it in the vein, you get an incredible flash, but then you want more in about two hours. And also you have tracks, which I couldn’t afford to show off. Furthermore, I could never find a vein. My veins are tight; even doctors can’t find them. So I used to shoot it up in the muscles. I could slap a needle in and not feel a thing. That was a very productive and creative period, Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed—some good songs were written, but I never thought drugs per se had very much to do. Mick chose flattery, which is very like junk—a departure from reality. I chose junk. And also I was with my old lady Anita, who was as avid as I was. I think we just wanted to explore that avenue. And when we did, we only meant to explore the first few blocks, but we explored it to the end. 

Chapters Nine and Ten ("Life" by Keith Richards): Anita had cleaned up when she was pregnant, but the minute she had the baby, she was straight back on it. Anita was beginning to act in unpredictable ways; she began to suffer from paranoia, and during my absence on tour began to collect a lot of people who took her hospitality for granted—a bad combination. I still loved her and she was the mother of my kids. I don’t let go; I have to be kicked out. But Anita and I were starting to be no good together. She had become delusional, very paranoid. It was one of her darkest periods and it developed with the dope. I remember once I took her in the car and told her to concentrate on the number plates, something mundane to try and calm her, connect her to reality. We made a pact, at her request, that I would never take her to the nuthouse. Anita was a Valkyrie who decided who dies in battle, she went right off the rails and became lethal. Anita had rage whether there was dope or not, but if there was no dope she’d go crazy. Marlon and I used to live in fear of her sometimes, of what she would do to herself, let alone to us. You’d come back to the house, and the walls were covered in blood or wine. We would be there just hoping that she’d stay asleep and not wake up in one of her screaming fits, raging at the top of the stairs like Bette Davis, throwing glass objects at you. 

She was a tough bitch. No, there wasn’t a lot of fun for a while with Anita in the middle ’70s. I loved her dearly. I don’t get that involved with women if I don’t love them dearly. I always feel it’s my failure if it doesn’t work, if I can’t pull it together and make it all right. But with Anita I couldn’t make it right. She was unstoppable. She was like Hitler; she wanted to take everything down with her. I tried to clean up loads of times, but not Anita. She would go the other way. Any suggestion of it and she would go into rebellion mode and if anything take more. Domestic duties, at this point, were not something she took on gladly. I said, what the fuck am I doing? OK, she’s the mother of my children. I loved the woman; I’d do anything. She’s got a problem? I’ll take over. I’ll help out. “Unscrupulous” is not a bad word for her. I don’t mind flinging it in her face right now, and she knows it. It’s up to her to live with. I just did what I had to do. Anita will still have to wonder how the hell she screwed up. I’d still be with her right now! I’m never one to change, especially with the kids. Anita and I can now sit around at Christmastime with our grandchildren and give each other a bemused smile; hey, how you doing? She’s become a benign spirit. She’s a marvelous granny. She’s survived. But things could have been better, baby. —"Life" (2010) by Keith Richards 

Lana Turner: Bed of Roses and Thorns

Happy Anniversary, Tay Garnett! On the set of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) directed by Tay Garnett, based on the novel by James M. Cain, starring Lana Turner and John Garfield.

From this modest beginning, Lana Turner became America’s “Sweater Girl,” a pinup of World War II, and ultimately, the movie star goddess of the Silver Screen, a femme fatale linked to scandal and sex. No role she ever played, from The Postman Always Rings Twice to The Bad and the Beautiful and Peyton Place, ever matched the soap opera of her real life. In satins and white fox furs, she carved a trail through the boudoirs of Hollywood, collecting diamond rings from seven husbands. She seduced two future U.S. Presidents (Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy), and a host of Hollywood hunks, often her leading men: Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, John Garfield, Richard Burton, and Frank Sinatra. Her great love was Tyrone Power, “Hollywood’s handsomest matinee idol.”

Robert Taylor said, “Lana Turner virtually invented the Hollywood blonde bombshell, and was the inspiration for Marilyn Monroe.” She expressed her sentiment about Tinseltown as she was dying in the 1990s: “Once upon a time, there really was a Hollywood. It was called the Dream Factory. It’s gone today, but let it be known that for one moment long ago, I was its dream girl.” Christmas of 1937 was approaching, and Lana was busy. She wasn’t emoting before the camera, but selling lingerie at a fast pace in the shop where she worked on Hollywood Boulevard. Except for a day’s work on A Star is Born (1937), no other job had surfaced. Although a photographer had approached her about posing for some nudes. She turned him down, although the blonde who would later “replace” her, Marilyn Monroe, would eventually say “yes” to an equivalent request.

Lana may not have heard of Mervyn LeRoy, but ninety percent of Hollywood had. LeRoy was known at Warner Brothers for making mostly taut, punchy, and socially critical films such as Little Caesar (1930), starring Edward G. Robinson and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) starring Paul Muni. LeRoy had helped launch the careers of a young Ginger Rogers and Loretta Young. He also produced The Wizard of Oz (1939), starring Judy Garland. LeRoy would direct Lana Turner in They Won’t Forget (1937) and in the sophisticated film noir Johnny Eager (1941) alongside Robert Taylor.

Lana looked like the girl next door—that is, if you lived next door to the winner of the Miss California beauty pageant. During her nightly prowls, whenever she made an entrance into a chic club, she was always a show-stopper. She could party all night and still emerge from makeup the next morning at 5AM looking fresh, young, and glamorous. After They Won’t Forget (1937) until as late as 1941, she had no more particularly memorable movie roles. But she was learning her trade, building up a name in Hollywood. Frances Wyndham, in The London Times, summed up her status at this time: “Wearing sweater and skirt, insolently hunched over an ice cream soda, Lana Turner exuded a homespun glamour in the late 1930s that was particularly American. Both frail and tough, she appealed to the masculine protective instinct at the same time she promised danger.”

For some bizarre reason known only to himself, her agent, Henry Willson, hooked Lana up with George Raft for a date. Raft had been born in 1895 in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Lana had seen only two of his films, Night After Night (1932) with Mae West, and Scarface (1932) with Paul Muni. Lana didn’t know what to expect when Raft showed up on her doorstep. He was the best dressed man she’d ever seen, with a tight-fitting tailored black suit, black shirt, and white tie. He’d slicked back his hair with Vaseline, and he wore a pearl gray Fedora pulled down over one eye. He arrived in a black Packard with a driver to take her to the Cocoanut Grove. Although Raft tried to seduce her, Lana ended their romance one night at the Trocadero. Months after Raft stopped dating Lana, she agreed to star with him in the radio dramatization of his 1941 film, They Drive by Night. The film had starred truck-driving brothers, Raft and Humphrey Bogart, with Ida Lupino and Ann Sheridan. Since both actresses were not available for the radio broadcast, Lana and Lucille Ball assumed their roles.

Lana Turner’s days at Warner Brothers were numbered, as were Mervyn LeRoy’s. Under personal contract to the director, Lana was said to view him as a father/mentor figure: “I turned to him for guidance in my career. He taught me how to act, even how to dress.” During her brief stint at Warners, Lana met the studio mogul, Jack Warner. He was used to working with such icons as Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and George Raft. Warner was not impressed with Lana, and predicted no future for her in movies.

It would be at MGM that Lana Turner set out on the road to worldwide fame and glory. It would be from a base within MGM that she’d become a benchmark for Hollywood glamor during the war years when American GIs made her one of their most desired pin-up girls. During her first week as an MGM starlet, she met the studio’s greatest star, Greta Garbo, at an afternoon tea hosted at the home of Mervyn LeRoy. In 1938 Lana dated Mickey Rooney (her co-star in Love Finds Andy Hardy) who would remember her fondly: "When I first saw her at the malt shop on Highland Avenue—I thought, Here is a woman. My fantasies about her soon came true. When I asked her to go out with me, she said yes. And I soon found out that she was as oversexed as I was, warm, passionate, soft. You may wonder what she saw in me. I don’t know. You’d have to ask her. I do know that on a dance floor I could make her breathless."

Following her divorce from Shaw, Lana would continue the pattern she’d previously established of late-night club-going. Her daughter, Cheryl Crane, called the post-Artie Shaw period as “Lana’s Boys in the Band” era. “Mother was a bit infatuated with all of the incredible musicians whose talent thrilled her,” Cheryl said. “She loved being in on their late-night jam sessions, and they loved having her present. There were a number of big band names whom she dated… all young and talented.” Lana met Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, and would date Tommy Dorsey, one of the most famous band-leaders of the Big Band era. Other famous singers who also dated Lana were Tony Martin and Frank Sinatra. In October 1946, Sinatra took Lana to a duplex apartment in Hollywood that he’d just had furnished with $30,000 worth of antiques and furniture simply for the purpose of entertaining her there. However, Lana wasn’t impressed. In fact, when she walked into Sinatra’s new love nest, she took one look around and said, “Who needs this dump!” “You’re right, it is a dump,” said Frank, anxious to placate her. He took her to the upscale Beverly Hills Hotel. On the morning of October 6, Frank told George Evans he intended to marry Lana “as soon as Nancy gives me a divorce.”

The Saturday Evening Post asked Lana who her favorite character had been in all the films she’d ever shot. She chose Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice. “Playing a wicked woman makes the audience more aware of you as an actress. The role gave me something to work with. Cora was not the usual heroine. I thought I understood the odd, twisted reasoning that made her yearn for a small piece of property out in the hills—for what she considered respectability and security—and yet, at the same time, led her to do things which ruined her chance of getting what she wanted.”

Lana Turner reflected on her life and career: with these words: "I wouldn't have survived without my sense of humor, and thank God I have always been able to laugh at myself. The thing about happiness is that it doesn't help you to grow; only unhappiness does that. So I'm grateful that my bed of roses was made up equally of blossoms and thorns." Superficially and in hindsight, the life of Lana Turner resonates with a faint air of the perverse and utterly tragic – that is, until one stops to reconsider that Lana Turner never regarded herself as such. In fact, she lived her own life on her own selfish terms.  She enjoyed herself immensely while riding the tidal wave of stardom to its inevitable end. “MGM prepared us for stardom,” Lana once said: “They didn’t prepare us for life.” Lana Turner was left behind. She was and remains one of cinema’s most elusive, surreal and enduring screen goddesses. -"The Stormy Life of Lana Turner" (2008) by  Nick Zegarac

Wild at Heart, Jim Morrison's snakeskin jacket

David Lynch's best movies: #1 Eraserhead and #2 Wild at Heart #3 Blue Velvet #4 Mulholland Drive #5 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. In Wild At Heart (1990) a pair of violent, disturbed twenty-something lovers, played fearlessly by Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, hit the road into the wild blue yonder, emphasis on the “wild” bit. On their tale are assassins hired by Dern’s Lula’s mother (Diane Ladd), who wants Cage’s Sailor dead for refusing to fuck her in a bathroom stall. It’s also one of Lynch’s most straightforward films, though there’s never once a feeling of compromised vision. The focus again is on the corrosive power of repression, but Lynch’s pacing picks up here and the ecstatic expressiveness of his performers brings an electrifying element of physical presence and energy to some of Lynch’s most memorable sequences. Wild at Heart's disarming directness reveals an often eclipsed side of Lynch as an unhinged romantic. Most of Lynch’s movies are dreams, by his own admission and virtue of their rabbit-hole logic. Wild At Heart is his nightmare pastiche of road movies, outlaw crime pictures, lovers-on-the-lam thrillers, small-town noirs, and old Elvis vehicles: Lynch’s own skip down the yellow brick road of movie history. Source: collider.com

When we see Sailor and Lula have sex for the first time includes a close-up of a flame lighting a cigarette. This image, repeated later in the film, points toward the extreme enjoyment that they seem to experience. At other times, fire illustrates the enjoyment that characters experience during acts of violence. Marietta organizes the fiery deaths of both Uncle Pooch (Marvin Kaplan) and her husband Clyde, and how she receives enjoyment from their violent deaths. Lynch explicitly links Marietta's excessive enjoyment to the excesses that are ravaging the planet. Lula tells Sailor, "That ozone layer is disappearing. One of these mornings the sun is going to come up and burn a hole clear through the planet like an electrical x-ray." Michel Chion called Wild at Heart "the most beautiful love ballad which the cinema has ever whispered into the night" and contrasts this relationship with the threatening external world.

The relationship between Sailor and Lula provides respite from the unpleasant life existing outside of it. It is harmonious, pure, and innocent, while the surrounding world is degraded, violent, and perverse. Wild at Heart breaks down the distinction between the merely private fantasy and the external world, allowing us to see how private fantasies work to shape me external world. Wild at Heart depicts a threat to this romance in the form of Bobby Ray Lemon and Marietta (who hired him to kill Sailor). Lynch concludes one of Wild at Heart’s sexual montages with a lyrical flourish that evokes the 1950s culture he adores: "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways... there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were headed for a disastrous future."

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s first screenplay was based on 1950s icon Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn and Elvis were the Queen and King of Lynch’s fantasyland, and he would honor their spirits in his film version of Barry Gifford’s novel Wild at Heart. Lynch is said to own the rippling piece of red velvet on which Monroe posed for her career-launching nude calendar photo, the cloth emanating the ruddy glow that suffused millions of lustful dreams. The connection in the director’s mind between eroticism and velvet may have triggered the archetype of the crimson curtains draped throughout his work. Lynch and Frost wrote a script called Venus Descending (adapted from Anthony Summers’s biography Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe) which detailed the last months of Monroe’s life. Lynch and Frost consciously honored the spirit of this abandoned project in Twin Peaks, for in both works an outsider-investigator enters a community to delve into the mysterious final days of a beautiful dead blonde female icon (the sleuths of both scripts use miniature tape recorders in their quests). And Marilyn’s poignantly sad descent haunted Lynch for years: In 1990 he characterized her as “this movie actress who was falling,” words that were like a blueprint for his protagonist Diane Selwyn in 2001’s Mulholland Drive.

Lynch reacted strongly against Gifford's ending, given the heat of Sailor and Lula’s feelings for each other. The director felt Gifford’s ending “didn’t seem one bit real,” and he told Sam Goldwyn, whose company would distribute the film, “I’m going to change it, doggone it!” For Lynch, there must be life after death; and for Gifford too: He resurrected Sailor and Lula’s relationship in future stories. Sailor needs to get wise to the universal supremacy of love and resynchronize with Lula’s and his Wizard of Oz dream, and Lynch uses both masculine violence and feminine wisdom to effect his hero’s transformation. Sailor has a vision of The Wizard of Oz’s Good Witch. She floats inside her pink bubble, with her ballooning pink dress and magic wand, against an urban backdrop of run-down buildings, concrete bridges, and telephone wires, in a resonant Lynchian image that conflates the miraculous and the mundane.

She is one of Lynch’s delivering angels who float in the air, and she’s played by Sheryl Lee, who the world knows as Twin Peaks’ iconic Laura Palmer. Six years after Wild at Heart, Lynch spoke of low points in his own life in terms that Sailor would recognize: “When you’re down, when you’ve been kicked down the street, and then kicked a few more times till you’re really bleeding and some teeth are out, then you really have only up to go.” The director’s abiding optimism suffuses the final moments of his film, as the Good Witch brushes aside Sailor’s wrong-headed notion that he’s unworthy of enjoying happiness with Lula because he’s a “robber and a manslaughter” and is “wild at heart.” Both Gifford and Lynch have Lula use the words “wild at heart” to sum up and characterize all the pain, fear, madness, and danger that plague the world. Lynch, not Gifford, is the one who has Sailor call himself 'wild at heart', and there could be no stronger form of self-condemnation than using his Lula’s world-damning words against himself. When Sailor despairingly calls himself “a robber and a manslaughter” who’s “wild at heart” he’s letting Marietta’s Wicked Witch point-of-view define him. But now, with the Good Witch’s pronouncements, the essence of his being has been blessed by the high deity of Lula and his Wizard of Oz religion, and Lynch has again confirmed his radiant belief in the spirituality of the imaginations’ dreams and visions. 

But still, no matter how wild the world is, and all that will be known and not known, Sailor surmounts the chaos of cars and pulls Lula up to join him on the hood of her Pontiac: the earthly position that’s as close as they can get to heaven. Their bodies standing against the same blue sky in which Sailor saw the Good Witch floating, thus reaffirming their mutual dream of Oz. Then he does what he earlier told her that he will only do for the woman who will be his wife, he sings “Love Me Tender” to her in his sweetly ardent Elvis voice. The embracing Sailor and Lula have prevailed over all the external and internal forces that might tear them apart. Though the concept might have confounded Einstein, Lynch believes, and Sailor sings, that he and Lula have the strength and faith to make love last “till the end of time.” Free from the restraints of Twin Peaks’ TV censors, Lynch wandered more of his country than he’d ever put on film before, compiling a Walt Whitmanesque inventory of everything he feared and loved about America. The French critics felt that Lynch was making a serious political statement against American violence, whereas the director said he was offering “some kind of strange cinema,” a subjective, genre-melding portrait of his homeland that was part romance, road movie, musical, and comedy. Watching Wild at Heart, we’re charmed by Sailor’s exuberance when he clothes himself with a snakeskin jacket. The snake is an ancient symbol of the primal cosmic force. His snakeskin jacket represents a symbol of Sailor's individuality, and belief in personal freedom." —"David Lynch: Beautiful Dark" (2008) by Greg Olson

Jim Morrison typically wore leather suits and snakeskin jackets as part of his Lizard King's image. This custom-made brown jacket was bought by Jim Morrison in 1966 (probably the first snakeskin jacket he bought). Morrison later gave it to his girlfriend Pamela Courson. Pamela wore the jacket throughout the late 1960’s then she gave it to her friend Diane Gardiner after Jim’s death. This jacket was on exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame from 2004 to 2012, where the jacket was featured in the “Jim Morrison 40 Years Later” exhibit.

I've known a lot of people in rock, and of them all, Jim was the only person I knew who would sit at the table with you, and break out into a song, like maybe a Frank Sinatra tune or an Elvis song. Jim was always making up songs in the studio. I had read a magazine piece about Jim that interested me. He was discussing the concept of evil in a way that made me feel we shared some insights. Mitchell Hamilburg, the literary agent, got us together while my play The Beard was playing in New York. Jim and I talked poetry while The Beard was running in L.A. He was interested in writing a play himself, and he liked mine. I found Jim's poetry manuscript. I sat down and read it and thought, holy smoke, this is fantastic. Later, when the book had been published and the first copies arrived by mail in L.A., I found Jim in his room, crying, holding the book, and he said, "This is the first time I haven't been fucked." He said that a couple of times, and I guess he felt that that was the first time he'd come through as himself... Jim started off like a heavyweight. My wife liked him, and we both liked Pam. We all grew very close. I liked Jim's complexity, his brilliance. I think he was one of the finest, clearest spirits of our times. I learned of Jim's death from Pam. Jim never said they weren't married. The fact is, she and Jim were living together before Jim started working at the Whisky. I remember Pam recalling the first time the Doors got a job. Jim came home with a check - I think it was for $17 - and they thought they'd hit the big time. —Michael McClure Recalls an Old Friend (August 5, 1971)

Sometimes Jim Morrison called Pamela his 'little woman' sarcastically after her epic shopping binges on Rodeo Drive, spending like a drunken sailor, buying fancy clothes at YSL boutiques. “You know,” Jim said, “you really do understand me better than anyone. You are the only person with whom I can be myself.” “That’s why you love me,” Pamela laughed. “One of many reasons,” said Jim. Pamela could almost feel her heart melt at those words. She knew Jim loved her of course, but it was always nice to hear him say it. She sat up slowly, and leaned in to kiss him. He responded immediately, and his kiss was soft and slow, and so incredibly passionate that she had to grab onto him to keep from collapsing onto the bed. Pam was unable to shake the feeling that she was floating on air. "I'm m not cheating on you. Not really," said Jim: "I just want to see what other women are like." "Either way," he added: "you are my girl. I want you with me." All the poems have wolves in them. All but one. The most beautiful one of all. She dances in a ring of fire. And throws off the challenge with a shrug. —She Dances in a Ring of Fire (Realms of Bliss on Wattpad.com)

Opioids Crisis in USA, Jim Morrison's possible OD

Overdoses are now the leading cause of death of Americans under the age of 50. According to preliminary data compiled by The New York Times, deaths last year likely topped 59,000 (19% more than the year before). More than 30% of Americans have some form of acute or chronic pain. Among older adults, the prevalence of chronic pain is over 40%. In 2014 alone, U.S. retail pharmacies dispensed 245 million prescriptions for opioid pain relievers. Of these prescriptions, 65% were for short-term therapy. More than a third (37%) of the 44,000 drug-overdose deaths that were reported in 2013 were attributable to pharmaceutical opioids; heroin accounted for an additional 19%. At the same time, there has been a parallel increase in the rate of opioid addiction, affecting approximately 2.5 million adults in 2014.

Opioid medications exert their analgesic effects predominantly by binding to mu-opioid receptors. Mu-opioid receptors are densely concentrated in brain regions that regulate pain perception (periaqueductal gray, thalamus, cingulate cortex, and insula), including pain-induced emotional responses (amygdala), and in brain reward regions (ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens) that underlie the perception of pleasure and well-being. This explains why opioid medications can produce both analgesia and euphoria. Mu-opioid receptors in other brain regions and in peripheral organs account for other common opioid effects. In particular, mu-opioid receptors in the brain stem are mainly responsible for the respiratory depression associated with opioid-overdose incidents and deaths. Opioids not only directly activate these brain analgesia and reward regions but also concurrently mediate a learned association between receipt of the drug and the physiological and perceptual effects of the drug — a type of Pavlovian conditioning.

Opioid medications vary with respect to their affinity and selectivity for the mu-opioid receptor, since some also bind to kappa- or delta-opioid receptors or to other neurotransmitter receptors and transporters. There is also considerable variation among the drugs with respect to their pharmacokinetics and bioavailability. When combined, these pharmacologic properties affect the rapidity of onset, potency, and duration of both the analgesic and pleasurable effects of opioids. The effects of opioids—particularly their rewarding effects—are accentuated most when the drugs are delivered rapidly into the brain. The rate of death from opioid overdose has quadrupled during the past 15 years in the United States. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated that 28,647 drug overdose deaths (61%) in 2014 in the United States involved some type of opioid, including heroin. Source: www.nejm.org

On August 3, 1966, the comedian Lenny Bruce overdosed on heroin in his Sunset Plaza Drive apartment. Bruce had been the cutting edge of American comedy in the posthipster, prehippie early sixties. He was an acerbic, shpritzing social critic who had been persecuted for the alleged profanity in his act. Bruce had been convicted of public obscenity in New York two years previously. Since then, Bruce had obsessively recounted his legal problems in his act and in print, becoming a gadfly critic of outmoded bourgeois morality. The cops hated him, and gleefully gave their grisly photographs of the death scene—Bruce had collapsed on the toilet, with his arm tied off—to the press. Lenny Bruce’s death bothered Jim Morrison.

Nico's 1967 album Chelsea Girl includes a track entitled "Eulogy to Lenny Bruce", composed by folk songwriter Tim Hardin. In it Nico describes her sorrow and anger at Bruce's death. Tim Hardin would die of a heroin overdose in 1980. Hardin had occasionally shooted heroin at Jim Morrison's bathroom in Alta Cienega Motel (Room 32).

Nico seemed to be forever "closing in on death," to borrow Lou Reed's phrase from "Heroin," the best song on The Velvet Underground album. She died of head injuries on the island of Ibiza in 1988, after falling off her bicycle en route to buy some hashish. Lou Reed was a ground-breaking artist; he liked to play off his sexuality as being “bisexual” or “homosexual”, but the truth of the matter is that Lou Reed was straight as a ruler. He used “alternative sexuality” as a marketing scheme, just a sign of the times when sexual identity was often manipulated for art and profit (David Bowie, New York Dolls, etc). With poetic brilliance, Reed just learned that you can 'tap the vein' without the drug. Nico was famous as a tragic beauty, the junkie Dietrich. She grew up as a rootless cosmopolitan - her passport read "ohne festen Wohnsitz", meaning no fixed address. Creem's Richard Cromelin memorably wrote: "If Morrison sang The End as a lizard, Nico is a sightless bird, lost but ever so calm, somehow knowing the right direction. She is the pure, dead marble of a ruined Acropolis, a crumbling column on the subterranean bank of Morrison's River Styx." 

At the end of an interview for Los Angeles Free Press, Jim Morrison gave his then definitive attitude towards narcotics. “There seem to be a lot of people shooting smack and speed now. Alcohol and heroin and downers – these are painkillers. Alcohol for me, cause it’s traditional. Also, I hate scoring. I hate the kind of sleazy sexual connotations of scoring from people, so I never do that. I like alcohol; you can go down to any corner store or bar and it’s right across the table.” In L.A. Woman Morrison had written for Pamela: “Hills are filled with fire. If they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar.” Shortly before her death Pamela Courson was awarded Jim Morrison’s share of The Doors’ publishing rights. In November 1971, Pamela had declared: “I declare that from the 30th September 1967 onwards I have always considered myself as being married to James Douglas Morrison, to all effects I was his wife and Jim used either the name Pam Morrison or 'my wife' when he introduced me to his various friends and acquaintances. All my bills for medical care, clothes or entertainment were made out to Mrs Morrison or Pamela Morrison. Both Jim and I made known to our relatives that we had contracted marriage in Colorado, explaining the nature of the Common Law Marriage that is law in that State. He always treated me as his wife; he has always taken care of me and I of him, just like a married couple. I swear this to be the truth.” Source: www.doorscollectors.com

Babe Hill, Jim’s closest friend and confidante between 1969-1971 said to Frank Lisciandro in Jim Morrison - Friends Gathered Together: "Pam could be a bitch to everybody, a little harridan. Was she trying to protect Jim or was she jealous? On the face of it she was an opportunist. She used Jim and his resources for her own ends, for whatever she wanted. But let’s face it, none us knew what went on behind that closed door between them two. It was a stormy love relationship, full of everything: acrimony, making up, the whole deal. When you come right down to it: they loved each other. And he definitely didn’t love another woman anywhere near as much. There was no one but Pam, and history bears it out: he was with her from the beginning to the end." Jim Morrison had briefly dated Nico but in a telephone conversation with his former UCLA colleague Dennis C. Jakob, Morrison confessed that Nico—despite her great beauty—wasn't really his type and he had found her very pretentious. Jakob remarked in his memoir Summer with Morrison: "I got the sense that what Jim found in Pam was a woman even more dependent than he himself had ever been. He had always had this strange dependency on women. Now he had found a woman who depended on him." 

One night Jim had a heated argument with Pamela at the Bag O'Nails nightclub after having known of Pam's affair with actor Christopher Jones. Pam said she wasn’t coming back with Jim unless he quit the Doors. He got drunk, insulted her, and apologetically started crying. She threw her drink in his face—a few people applauded—and stormed out. When some mutual friends reproached she had left him alone crying, Pamela replied nonchalantly: “Let him cry. He likes it.” According to Danny Sugerman, Pamela Courson told him that Morrison had died of an accidental heroin overdose, snorting it thinking it was cocaine. “Occasionally Pam used heroin but she wasn’t a regular consumer”, said Sugerman: “she used it when she was depressed, but she wasn’t a heroin maniac–she preferred barbiturates and tranquillisers.” After Morrison's death, however, “she lived in an imaginary fantasy world,” Sugerman adds: “she continuously flirted with death, carried on living her life in a risky manner.” James Douglas Morrison’s final notebook in Paris contained the harrowing message: ‘Last words. Out’. Also a chilling self-assessment: ‘Regret for wasted nights & wasted years–I pissed all it away–American Music’. Source: teamrock.com

Bonnie & Clyde (50th Anniversary), 1967-Summer of Love (Jim Morrison)

The New York Times panned it, and studio chief Jack Warner thought the movie was a bomb, but “Bonnie and Clyde” was a game-changer during the summer of 1967. The Hollywood revolution the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway vehicle began would be bolstered by another sleeper hit released at the end of 1967 — “The Graduate.” Within two years, the major studios would start rolling out a new breed of frankly adult films that would include “Midnight Cowboy,” “Easy Rider” and “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” “Bonnie and Clyde” had a rocky reception at first. The Warner Brothers studio leadership viewed the 1930s-era bank robbers tale as a B-picture that might be best suited to drive-in theaters in the South. 

It was only due to the intense lobbying of Warren Beatty — who was making his debut as a producer, as well as starring in the movie — that the film was opened in New York City and Los Angeles to see if it might stir up enough interest to warrant a national release. The film’s treatment of sudden violence shocked many of those early moviegoers, with the quick changes from comedy to horror upsetting audiences whose idea of a fun night out was the new Doris Day picture, “The Ballad of Josie.” The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther was so upset by “Bonnie and Clyde” that he attacked it before and after it opened in Manhattan on Aug. 13, calling the film “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cut-ups in ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie.’”

Time magazine’s Alan Rich called the film “a strange and purposeless mingling of fact and claptrap.” (After the movie took off at the box office, the same magazine ran a cover story on the impact “Bonnie and Clyde” was having on Hollywood, with the tagline “The New Cinema: Violence ... Sex ... Art.) The treatment of violence and the presentation of bank-robbing killers as characters worthy of sympathy disconcerted even sophisticated reviewers like Joseph Morgenstern of Newsweek (now a critic at the Wall Street Journal), who first panned “Bonnie and Clyde” and then retracted that review a week later after giving the movie a second look. Source: www.ctpost.com

In 1987 Julie Christie would say her decision not to marry Warren Beatty “is certainly not a regret. It’s all been a choice I’ve made for myself.” A close friend of Beatty, production designer Richard Sylbert, remarked: “Warren told me he was dumped in all of his relationships,” partings that were extremely difficult for Beatty, who had always had a tender heart and who confessed his dependency on love: “It was always accompanied by a tremendous amount of separation anxiety and sadness,” Beatty said in his fifties. “Well, I hope it wasn’t as bad on the other side, but it was always bad with me.” Beatty had rejected a screenplay for PT 109, a Warner Brothers film based on President John F. Kennedy’s youthful wartime experiences. 

Kennedy had seen Beatty in Splendor in the Grass, “and he wanted me to play him.” “I remember,” confirmed Senator Edward M. Kennedy, “my brother thought he would be terrific in the part.” Beatty’s rejection of a personal request from the president of the United States caused a minor scandal. According to Beatty and to Kennedy’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger, Beatty told Salinger that the script was badly written, a concern reinforced by a negative meeting he had with Jack Warner and the producer, Bryan Foy. “Jack Warner kicked me off the lot,” recalled Beatty, “because I told Kennedy I didn’t think he should allow the movie to be made. I said I didn’t think it was very good.” Before Warner threw Beatty out, he asked him to fly to Washington to meet the president and reconsider. “I couldn’t say no to the part after I’d already met the President and discussed it with him,” reasoned Beatty, “so I said I wouldn’t fly to Washington. Someone in the office said, ‘Why not fly the President to Hollywood?’”

Without a doubt it was Arthur Penn, and not Warren Beatty, who expressed interest in casting Faye Dunaway for Bonnie. After a meeting at the Plaza, the director asked her to fly to Los Angeles, so she could pass the scrutiny of Beatty and meet the writers. Faye Dunaway would say later that she and Beatty had a “tacit understanding” during filming to remain platonic friends, because “both of us felt that any kind of romance would be distracting.” Although the writers wanted to hint at Clyde's bisexual inclinations, Beatty refused to accept any 'fag' reference, so he would play some impotence scenes instead.

The climactic scene was the “ballet of violence” in which the Barrow gang is ambushed in a slow motion storm of gunshots. According to editor Dede Allen, the scene was intended to evoke the Zapruder footage of President John F. Kennedy’s murder in Dallas, Beatty’s and Penn’s social comment on the increasing violence of the sixties. “Arthur shot the ending like Kennedy’s assassination.” If, as Beatty later was to say, his personal life could be defined as “Before Annette [Bening]” and “With Annette [Bening],” his career would be considered pre–Bonnie and Clyde and post–Bonnie and Clyde, as the historic events of 1967 would demonstrate.  —"Warren Beatty: A Private Man" (2005) by Suzanne Finstad

Warren Beatty met casually Jim Morrison at a party in Santa Monica Canyon held at screenwriter Gavin Lambert's home. Other attendants were Andy Warhol, Tuesday Weld (whom Warhol was dying to meet), Julie Christie, Janis Joplin, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. Beatty was a big fan of The Doors, especially of their frontman.

Linda Ashcroft offers an intimate memoir of Jim Morrison at the height of his career. This vivid portrait is based on her diaries from the four-year period when she knew Morrison. Wild Child (1999) is a passionate account of what life was like with the legendary Doors singer. Before flying to Paris, Morrison told Linda: "It may have been in bits and pieces, but I gave you the best of me." Linda Ashcroft was 15 and a runaway in San Francisco during the Summer of Love when she encountered Morrison alone in a coffee bar. Over the next four years, until his death in 1971, their relationship deepened and developed. Wild Child is surely too detailed to be a work of the imagination, from her hand-written diaries annotated by Morrison to a tearful meeting with the promoter Bill Graham, who visited her after the singer's death. Not a single photograph of the two of them together can be traced. One is said to have been taken by the actor Dennis Hopper, who spent some time together with the couple in 1969. It was buried somewhere in boxes of Hopper's personal archives. Ashcroft says she is prepared for people to be sceptical. "Jim compartmentalised his life," she offers by way of explanation. Her account does not fall into the category of a star-struck groupie, although it had a sexual dimension. After their first meeting she went home to her parents in the small town of Stockton, about two hours east of San Francisco. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk