Michael Davidow's Blog: The Henry Bell Project - Posts Tagged "edie-sedgwick"
As Seen on TV
He took his practical place on the sidewalk with flocks of kids in Levi jeans and pea coats, pinch-faced women in brown or tan, carrying shabby shopping bags with small clutching hands, sour-faced men in navy-blue overcoats, cops, hustlers, housewives, teamsters; he was just passing through these parts, and he never pretended otherwise…
Pity Matthew Weiner. All he has done is successfully entertain millions of people for the past five years, by making a show that has launched careers, sold clothing, and driven one guy from New Hampshire up the wall. But he apparently botched his take on St. Mark’s Place in his show’s new season, so people are criticizing him. He apparently showed it as being dangerous, back in the day, when it was not.
It looks like he was riffing on a well-known murder that took place in that area, a few blocks to the east. And in making a minor geographical adjustment to that story (perhaps out of respect for the actual event), he deviated too much from reality.
Now I tried hard to keep Henry Bell’s Manhattan (and his Los Angeles, and his Washington) as real as possible. I am sure I also messed up, though, and more than once. So I sympathize with my imaginary friend on this score.
When Henry and Pooch and Walton are cruising Times Square, for instance, “the stars above them stayed invisible in the smoky autumn sky, the sidewalks underneath them providing better constellations, foil wrappers, and hidden mica; mica set into the pavement like ice cubes floating in scotch. Flashing neon above their heads somersaulted downwards, too, reflecting in every taxicab’s windshield, and streams of light electrified the onyx rows they traveled through…”
Maybe Times Square really wasn’t like that in 1972; maybe there really weren’t “cars and cops to keep him company, and tense teenaged hookers; needles of neon at the corners of his spectacle lenses, and shallow oil rainbows in the gutters by the street…” I hope those things existed. Otherwise I’ll get panned.
As for St. Mark’s Place itself, it shows up just one time in SPLIT THIRTY: it’s where Selma Kahn decided to bleach her hair and cut it short. Only makes sense if you know this extra fact: Andy Warhol ran the Exploding Plastic Inevitable at a dance hall called the Dom, in St. Mark’s Place, in 1966. Edie must have been there.
Pity Matthew Weiner. All he has done is successfully entertain millions of people for the past five years, by making a show that has launched careers, sold clothing, and driven one guy from New Hampshire up the wall. But he apparently botched his take on St. Mark’s Place in his show’s new season, so people are criticizing him. He apparently showed it as being dangerous, back in the day, when it was not.
It looks like he was riffing on a well-known murder that took place in that area, a few blocks to the east. And in making a minor geographical adjustment to that story (perhaps out of respect for the actual event), he deviated too much from reality.
Now I tried hard to keep Henry Bell’s Manhattan (and his Los Angeles, and his Washington) as real as possible. I am sure I also messed up, though, and more than once. So I sympathize with my imaginary friend on this score.
When Henry and Pooch and Walton are cruising Times Square, for instance, “the stars above them stayed invisible in the smoky autumn sky, the sidewalks underneath them providing better constellations, foil wrappers, and hidden mica; mica set into the pavement like ice cubes floating in scotch. Flashing neon above their heads somersaulted downwards, too, reflecting in every taxicab’s windshield, and streams of light electrified the onyx rows they traveled through…”
Maybe Times Square really wasn’t like that in 1972; maybe there really weren’t “cars and cops to keep him company, and tense teenaged hookers; needles of neon at the corners of his spectacle lenses, and shallow oil rainbows in the gutters by the street…” I hope those things existed. Otherwise I’ll get panned.
As for St. Mark’s Place itself, it shows up just one time in SPLIT THIRTY: it’s where Selma Kahn decided to bleach her hair and cut it short. Only makes sense if you know this extra fact: Andy Warhol ran the Exploding Plastic Inevitable at a dance hall called the Dom, in St. Mark’s Place, in 1966. Edie must have been there.
Cutting it Short
He also stopped by the pool to watch a swimmer take laps, and he stared at her mutely when she surfaced and climbed to the patio. Wet footprints on dry cement that faded to nothing, step by step; and shorn hair like a beaver’s pelt, easy for skimming the water from.
We think of the early seventies as a time when women had long hair. That was certainly the most popular style. But it makes no sense to take that style and apply it across the board, as if every female alive in 1972 would have rushed out to conform (and to look the part). Then, as now, many women would have kept whatever had worked for them in the past (Henry, remembering Paula: “When she ran her hands through her dark bouffant, shiny red stones peeked out like accidental garnet…”). And a few would have struck out on their own. The result being a patchwork quilt at street level: styles from the past thirty years, out and about.
Selma Kahn, of course, both stuck with something she liked, and struck out on her own. And while her immediate inspiration may have been Edie Sedgwick, she probably had Mia Farrow in mind as well; not to mention Twiggy; and not to mention Jean Seberg.
But it didn’t even start with Seberg. Shirley MacLaine claimed the gamine cut for her own, all the way back to fifties, while Leslie Caron and Elizabeth Taylor showed some moxie, too.
This is all to say that my research into the Mad Men phenomenon has disappointed me in at least one respect: that show seems to believe that everyone alive in 1965 (or whenever) automatically wore whatever seemed fashionable in 1965, and you can make people believe it’s 1965, by wearing that stuff.
The styles of SPLIT THIRTY are timeless. They’re also a total mess.
We think of the early seventies as a time when women had long hair. That was certainly the most popular style. But it makes no sense to take that style and apply it across the board, as if every female alive in 1972 would have rushed out to conform (and to look the part). Then, as now, many women would have kept whatever had worked for them in the past (Henry, remembering Paula: “When she ran her hands through her dark bouffant, shiny red stones peeked out like accidental garnet…”). And a few would have struck out on their own. The result being a patchwork quilt at street level: styles from the past thirty years, out and about.
Selma Kahn, of course, both stuck with something she liked, and struck out on her own. And while her immediate inspiration may have been Edie Sedgwick, she probably had Mia Farrow in mind as well; not to mention Twiggy; and not to mention Jean Seberg.
But it didn’t even start with Seberg. Shirley MacLaine claimed the gamine cut for her own, all the way back to fifties, while Leslie Caron and Elizabeth Taylor showed some moxie, too.
This is all to say that my research into the Mad Men phenomenon has disappointed me in at least one respect: that show seems to believe that everyone alive in 1965 (or whenever) automatically wore whatever seemed fashionable in 1965, and you can make people believe it’s 1965, by wearing that stuff.
The styles of SPLIT THIRTY are timeless. They’re also a total mess.
