Lessons Learned

Note to self: Before starting next movie, have boyfriend (or at a minimum, boy toy) at my disposal for massage and other stress-relieving tasks.

I'm better today, but yesterday everything caught up with me and I was sore and exhausted from tip to toe. Last week I tackled the monumental task of ripping out my studio/frame shop down to the bare walls, painting every square inch of this 15 x 20 room including the painstakingly detailed trim (this entailed me sitting cross-legged in a deep windowsill for hours at a time), and reassembling it as my new office, or as I like to call it, my Movie Lair. It was well worth it, though. Now I have a bright, clean, huge, cheerful space to work in, and since I will be spending the greater part of the next six months in this room, it is highly beneficial that these surroundings are pleasant and comfortable. It has two 8-foot tables for my work space, a dining room table and chairs for meeting space, and of course, a Casting Couch ;)

It really did turn out great. The walls are a pale but sunny yellow, the trim a textured dark olive. That rug that I bought at Home Depot looks fantastic in here, the perfect colors. I arranged all my framed black & white movie star photos in a perfect balance around the room to watch over me while I work. These are the people from the movies I love most, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Jimmy Stewart, and of course, my absolute hero, Mae West. She is the only one in color in the room, a gigantic poster of her on a hot pink background wearing a black wide-brimmed go-to-hell hat.

In 1935, Mae West was the highest-paid woman in America. Some might say, "Yes, but not that many woman were in the work force in 1935." Well, that just makes it all the more impressive! She wrote most of the movies she starred in, and called all the shots regarding who she worked with. She hand-picked Cary Grant for her film, "I'm No Angel," (and often claimed to have "discovered" him, which he disputed). This is one of the rare (and it was the last) films where you can see Grant portrayed as the pursuer rather than the one being pursued. West, of course, gave herself all the best lines.

Having grown up in Vaudeville (she was known as "the Baby Vamp"), of course she had no college education, but she had savvy. She used all the natural weapons at her disposal, and combining her brains and her sexuality, who could have stopped her?

I think in a way she left herself behind to get ahead, and for all her groundbreaking success, she died in a rather lonely manner. But she was the first of her kind, and I don't think she can really be criticized for trying to uphold her own image of sexual and emotional independence. In those very early days of the industry, if she took her eye off the ball for a second, she might be at the mercy of the studios, as many actors (such as Grant) often found themselves, just to make ends meet and stay working. Can you imagine Mae West being reduced to playing a dumb blonde or a boss-chasing secretary? No way.

So here she is in my Movie Lair, smiling coyly over her shoulder, on a poster that bears her name OVER the movie title in letters four-and-a-half times the size (I measured) of Cary Grant's name BELOW the title.

In other words, "Get to work, Jeanie."