Dave Ford: May 2011

   I dare you to listen to the Kinks' song "Celluloid Heroes," from their 1972 album Everybody's in Show-Biz, and not hang your head and cry. In its aching chorus, singer Ray Davies plaintively outlines the pains of fame and its failures:

You can see all the stars as you walk along Hollywood Boulevard
Some that you recognize, some that you've hardly even heard of
People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame
Some who succeeded and some who struggled in vain.

   It's true. On the Saturday of our whirlwind Memorial Day weekend L.A. jaunt, Jared and I took in the Boulevard, which was its usual tourist-clotted mess. Outside Grauman's Chinese Theater, people matched hand sizes with the stars' cement prints. Pros, dressed up as movie characters, posed for photos. Young African-American men attempted to interest passers-by in their home-produced hip-hop CDs.
   And, oh, the rockin' fashions:

Work that shizznit, bizzles!

   We visited the always-fabulous Larry Edmunds Bookshop, where I picked up John Waters' riotous and touching Role Models. Jared bought a long out-of-date movie magazine featuring his latest obsession, the silent film star Clara Bow--the "It Girl" sex symbol of roarin' 1920s America.
   But for Jared, a Clara Bow magazine, no matter how precious, was mere foreplay. Decked out in a green t-shirt emblazoned with Ms. Bow's likeness, he led the hunt for her Hollywood star. We found it right where a website or two told us we might: on Vine Street south of the Boulevard. Jared squealed upon seeing it, as any fan worth her salt would do.
   We were equally appalled and amused to note that the star sat directly in the path of cars exiting a parking lot. That made for a bit of a challenge to get The Pic, but after a few minutes and a break in the traffic, we did:

Miss Clara Bow?! Haaaaaaayyyyyy!

   Jared remained unfazed that cars drive over the lovely Ms. Bow's star, like, eighty million times a day.
   "She's tougher than that!" he cried, echoing the sentiment in one of the "Celluloid Heroes" verses:

If you covered him with garbage
George Sanders [whose star we saw] would still have style
And if you stamped on Mickey Rooney [ditto]
He'd still turn 'round and smile
But please don't tread on dearest Marilyn [double ditto]
Cuz she's not very tough
She should have been made of iron or steel
But she was only made of flesh and blood.

   Clara Bow flew under Ray Davies' radar; unlike Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis and Bela Lugosi, she missed out on claiming a place in rock's finest paean to Hollywood's lost mid-20th century glory and glamour.
   But I'm sure she doesn't mind. As the song's last line says, "Celluloid heroes never feel any pain/And celluloid heroes never really die."
   So you shine on, sparkling sister.

   This past Memorial Day weekend my friend Jared and I sped from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where we did what any self-respecting gay man does when visiting Hollywoodland: we genuflected at historical homosexual holy sites.
   Haaaaaaay!
   You can keep your Wailing Wall and your Vatican; our first shrine was the house, located at 172 South McCadden Place, in Hancock Park, which provided the setting for the demented 1962 Bette Davis-Joan Crawford film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.
   The movie limns jealousies between one-time child singing star and present-day alcoholic Jane Hudson (Davis) and her wheelchair-bound sister, Blanche (Crawford). That's all I'll say. See it. Really. It's so sick it makes Black Swan seem like a children's tale
   Hancock Park, we discovered, is a pleasant neighborhood with tree-lined streets, enormous and well-kempt houses, and nannies pushing around twins. And I mean really pushing them around: knocking them to the ground, putting the boot in, screaming obscenities at them, etc.
   Just kidding. (The Baby Jane spirit has annexed my better side.)
   We saw one nanny pushing her charges in an expensive-looking all-black stroller. That's a color you don't immediately associate with the ecstasy of new life. But there was a sensibility at work. The woman--tall, thin, severe--was dressed in gray and black, and she wore shades. Color-coordinated nannies: what's not to love about L.A.? It's just too bad the babies weren't gray and black, too, or at least gay and black.
  The woman's austerity may have masked a nervous temperament, because although Jared and I appeared unassuming and were well-behaved, she crossed the street when she saw us coming. No one in Los Angeles is accustomed to encountering pedestrians. Angelenos don't walk. That includes Hancock Parkinos,unless they happen to be traversing the space between their Lexus SUVs and the ornately-carved front doors of their mock-Tudor or Southern Plantation-style homes.
   Maybe I'm biased, but the Baby Jane house is a first among equals. It has been painted a lovely peach (see photos). Or maybe it's beige. Yellow? Yellowish? Don't ask me--I didn't get the decorating gene when God made me homosexual. But, as a gay man, what I lack in color savvy I more than make up for in my ability to--wait. My mom is likely to read this post.
   Anyway, Jared and I amused ourselves by photographing each other in front of the house. At one point I picked up a small gold band sitting on the driveway. It appeared to be some kind of ring. Was it real gold? I'll find out; I pocketed it and plan to take it to a jeweler now that I'm home.
   Kidding again.
   I dropped the ring back onto the driveway just as an old Mercedes rolled down the street and slowed near us. The home's owners?
   "Oh, shit," Jared said.
   "Typical," I added.
   But it turned out to be a woman who lived next door, whose house also was used in the movie.
   As she got out of the car--carrying flowers! Just like Mrs. Bates, the Hudsons' neighbor!--she said, "What are you doing?"
   Now, I am a man of 54, with all of the independence, self-confidence and salt-and-pepper hair that number implies. But when a woman of a certain age-- especially one wearing a straw hat and sensibly seasonal white slacks--barks, "What are you doing?," suddenly I am a third-grader whom the teacher has caught eating library paste (yum!) and getting high off the the smell of freshly mimeographed paper.
   Sheepishly, I waved my arms in a general southerly direction and said, "Well, uh, it's the Bette Davis house!"
   I think that, unconsciously, I meant for the comment to convey the following: 1. I am gay, and therefore am no threat to life's more or less orderly rhythms; 2.) I am well-bred, if just a little bit insane; and 3.) If you're willing to tell us stories about the house, Jared and I will SERIOUSLY be your new BFFs; we will cook and clean and do your hair, even though neither of us can actually do any of those things in real life.
   The woman turned out to be kind and chatty. I won't mention her name, primarily because she never told us what it is. But she did tell us that she and her husband have lived in the neighborhood for thirty-seven years. She remembered when the 1991 Baby Jane TV movie--starring Vannessa Redgrave as Blanche, and her sister, Lynne, as Jane--was filmed next door.
   "Vanessa Redgrave used our phone, and all that," she said with a nonchalant wave of the hand that made us swoon.
   We asked if pilgrims often showed up to worship the Baby Jane mansion.
   "Oh, cars come by all the time and stop in the middle of the street," she said, betraying just a hint of irritation.
   We immediately felt superior to those stupid queens; we had gotten out of our rented Chevy Impala and had walked to the house. I'm not saying that we prostrated ourselves in front of it, but we could have if we'd wanted to. Sure, we might have been arrested for unlawful worship of a screamingly fabulous and homosexually historical home, but that's the kind of risk Bette Davis obsessives, like Jared, and their fog-brained sidekicks, like me, are willing to take.
   Before heading inside, the woman casually mentioned that a house at the end of the block once belonged to Judy Garland. Jared immediately fainted. He was rushed via Medi-Vac helicopter to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, where he communed with the recently minted ghost of Liz Taylor. She/it counseled him to get his bitch shit together and get right back down to McCadden Street.
   He did, and we walked to the corner. Sure enough, there sat a beautiful--by which I mean creepy--bungalow: Judy Garland's little hobbit home.
   It seemed the perfect place in which to gobble fistfuls of pills and stagger around tipping over furniture and screaming at Liza that if she didn't stop dancing like that she'd one day wind up enduring hip replacement surgery.
   All in all it was a blessed afternoon, and if you think we would have missed it for anything in this world or the next, then you'll no doubt believe me when I tell you that the Pope is gay and that I am he.

The Baby Jane house, 172 South McCadden Place, Hancock Park, Los Angeles. Genuflect now, bitch!

The gate where, in the movie, the large, old Hudson car smashes into Blanche. Or does it? Like all things cinematic, it's smaller in real life than onscreen. The garage, in the rear, housed the car, in which at one point a paranoid Jane Hudson hid the body of her dead sister. And you can just see the window of Blanche's room in the house. Also, note the security camera above the gate. How many fucking queens has it recorded weeping, moaning, praying and screaming out lines from the film? Do the home's owners get a land-tax break based on the cruel and unusual punishment of living in a homosexual holy site?

I did my best Baby Jane Hudson impression. And it was really bad. But maybe I wasn't drunk enough.

Jared, the lamp, the roses--and that house. (That's 1920s silent film star Clara Bow on his shirt. More about her in another post.)

Speaking of "that house," here's the little cottage where Judy Garland once lived. Follow the red brick road....

And here's Jared, seemingly levitating eight feet off the ground with glee. That we simply happened upon the house is more than adequate proof that God exists.