Rachel Shukert's Blog

If you couldn’t be at my NYC event for LOVE ME at McNally Jackson, you can read the amazing Estelle at Rather Be Reading’s recap of it! She is a dream.

hellogiggles:

‘GOSSIP GIRL’ IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD: ‘LOVE ME’ BY RACHEL SHUKERT

by Kerry Winfrey

http://ift.tt/NK8rO5

SUCH A HAPPY REVIEW FROM THE LOVELY KERRY WINFREY. I love it.

Pretty amazing, although I would have included Joan Crawford’s peignoir/negligee ensemble, suitable for accepting your Oscar in bed. Also, people take this so seriously now, compared to the old days. Look at Bette Davis’s simple little suit!

fuckyeahstephensondheim:

On the third day of Perpetual Anticipation, we received the blessing of The Lord to go forth and celebrate Sondheimas in its fullness.

"PLEASE SEND MY HOLY GREETINGS TO MS. SHUKERT."

Sometimes in life, there are no words.

I HAVE NOT COLLAPSED!

POEM (LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED)

by Frank O'Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see a headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

POEM (LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED)

by Frank O’Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly

it started raining and snowing

and you said it was hailing

but hailing hits you on the head

hard so it was really snowing and

raining and I was in such a hurry

to meet you but the traffic

was acting exactly like the sky

and suddenly I see a headline

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Black Book loves Starstruck. I love this incredible photo.

bbook:

But in a more general sense, I think the ’30s are my favorite era. You can kind of see most of the 20th century as series of reactions to various disasters. The frivolity and the decadence of the ’20s was a direct reaction to World War I and the Spanish flu and all this death and destruction; it was like, honey badgers no longer gave a shit. And then you can also look at the kind of proscribed suburbanism and conformity of the ’50s and early ’60s as this direct response to the horrors of World War II, where the world looked straight into the heart of darkness and responded by regressing into this weird, repressed, idealized kind of childhood where nothing bad could ever happen again as long as you had the right vacuum cleaner and Mother didn’t work and everybody forgot that sexual intercourse of any sort existed (or at least never acknowledged so verbally.) But in the ’30s, everyone was dealing with the Depression, and just didn’t have the time for self-delusion, so everything was very self-consciously sophisticated and witty and cynical and hard-boiled. There was a frankness in the culture that appeals to me. Unless, of course, you were one of the increasing number of people seeking refuge in one of the ascendant ‘isms’—you know, like fascism. Which is also one of my favorite things about this period, as you know, and as I’ve written about. I never get tired of Nazi stuff. Hollywood and Hitler were my two favorite things to read about/think about when I was a kid. They remain so to this day. I don’t think the fact that they were both ascendant at the same time is exactly incidental to my interest in either. 

Rachel Shukert’s Blissful ‘Starstruck’ Brings Back the Golden Age of Hollywood

punkryuki:

no one twerks like gaston

makes it work like gaston

no one drops down dat booty and jerks like gaston

He be up in the club with that ass gyrating,

My, he so fly, dat Gaston

This speaks to me on a personal level.

Name the fictional Italian New Wave film this is a still from. Via Bob Morris.