the ugly earring

more here

Lou Tellegen started performing on the Amsterdam stage in 1903 and by 1909; he was the toast of Paris as a leading man to Sarah Bernhardt. The two toured North America together in 1910. An extremely handsome man, Tellegen starred in 26 movies during the 1920′s. Despite all his early success and large fan base, by the 1930′s, his career was in shambles. He starred in only three movies between 1931 and 1935.

By late 1934, Tellegen was ill, having had his face burned and being diagnosed with cancer. He was also despondent over his debt and had to claim bankruptcy. He decided there was only one solution to his problem. As a guest in the Cudahy mansion near Hollywood and Vine, with posters and photographs of his glory days nearby, Lou Tellegen walked into the bathroom, shaved and powdered his face, stared into the mirror and taking a pair of gold scissors (engraved with his name), he stabbed himself in the heart seven times. (more here).

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 He was married to Geraldine Farrar from 1916 to 1923. When asked to comment on her ex-husband’s death, she responded, “Why should that interest me?”

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Lou Tellegen was burned to ashes which, as a last theatrical gesture, he ordered sprinkled on the waves of the Pacific. Newspapers gave him gaudy obituaries,* told how at 15 he ran off with his father’s mistress, how he specialized in love-making while he was successively a baker’s assistant, a trapeze artist, a model for Auguste Rodin (“Eternal Springtime”), how he first arrived in the U. S. as Sarah Bernhardt’s leading man. The final Hollywood picture was of a broken, hollow-eyed matinee idol who kept having his face lifted. (more here).

“It was a voice that made her The Queen of Queens in all of singing. Ponselle, almost more than any other singer, had the unique combination of voice and musical profundity to advance operatic interpretation by decades, simply by the sheer genius of her artistry…She is also among the most copied of any singer in history…She is an ideal, an almost mythical figure in opera singing. Whenever young singers ask whom they should pattern their singing after, I always respond, ‘Make a sincere study of the recordings of Rosa Ponselle.’ To every young singer in any age–ours, or some distant one–this will always be excellent advice.”

–LUCIANO PAVAROTTI

(from here)

Jean Seberg was known to have supported the Black Panther Party. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered her a threat and in 1970, when she was seven months pregnant, created a story [1] to leak to the media that the child she was carrying was not fathered by her second husband, Romain Gary, but by a black civil rights activist. The story was reported by Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times newspaper, and Newsweek magazine. She miscarried shortly thereafter. In a press conference after the miscarriage she presented the press with a picture of her fetus to demonstrate that the child did not have a father of African heritage. Seberg stated that the trauma of this event brought on premature labor and her child was stillborn. The child was named Nina Gary; the baby was actually fathered by Carlos Navarra. According to her husband, after the loss of their child she suffered from a deep depression and became suicidal.

She became dependent on alcohol and prescription drugs. She made several attempts to take her own life (each year on the day of her child’s death), including throwing herself under a train on the Paris Métro.

In August 1979, she went missing, and was found dead 11 days later in the back seat of her car in a Paris suburb. The police report stated that she had taken a massive overdose of barbiturates and alcohol (8g per litre). A suicide note (“Forgive me. I can no longer live with my nerves”) was found in her hand, and suicide was ultimately ruled the official cause of death. However, it is often questioned how she could have driven to the address in the 16th arrondissement with that amount of alcohol in her body, and without the distance glasses she always maintained she absolutely needed for driving.

(wikipedia…)

(Cindy Sherman-Mystery Actress Side View)

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies…. It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.

-Albert Einstein

even in paris, it appeared! (from facehunter).

a pretty serious infestation hit phoenix last summer.

and, its following was so strong it even got editorial, read here.

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so are we ready to talk about the proenza schouler (for target) boy blue bustier top?

are you willing to take your chances?

if yes,  read this.

white, sienna brown and purple earrings. NICE!

(from prada and meatballs)

(via face hunter)

B+.

i’m not sold on the silk scarf.

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. “

                                                                      –oscar wilde