“One must allow that a certain amount of carelessness in one's nature often accomplishes what the will is incapable of doing” 
 
Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies

Image Credit: The Luminous Years, Portraits at Mid Century by Karl Bissinger

Note: Gore Vidal's copy of The Luminous Years, with his ex libris stamp and for which he wrote the introduction, is available via the Nick Harvill Libraries store. 

“Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.”
 
George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma

Image Credit: LaChapelle Land

Note: The copy of LaChapelle Land warmly inscribed by David LaChapelle to Kim Basinger, who is featured in the book, is available via the Nick Harvill Libraries store. 

Oona O’Neill, the daughter of the playwright Eugene O’Neill, was a Hollywood ingénue when society photographer Jerome Zerbe snapped this photo. The story goes that about this time, she was dating Orson Welles. Upon reading her palm, the young Orson prognosticated her love line led elsewhere—to a much older man. And, he knew the name of this man: genius filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, thirty-six years Oona’s senior.

Oona had yet to meet Chaplin, but she did soon after. Incredibly, Orson Welles’ unlikely prediction came true. Naysayers noted Chaplin’s penchant for robbing the cradle and his previous failed marriages. They predicted the May/December union would quickly self-destruct. Time proved them wrong and Orson Welles. Oona and Charlie went on to produce a brood of eight children, and they were separated only by his 1977 death.
 
Oona was fiercely loyal and stood by Charlie when he was persecuted by Senator Joseph McCarthy, who accused him being a Communist sympathizer. Richard Nixon, for political gain, was among those fanning the flames. Chaplin was barred from the United States in 1952 and not permitted to re-enter until 1972, when, as an old man, he returned with great fanfare to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Academy Awards.  Nixon—by this time, President Nixon--shunned Chaplin, refusing an invitation to appear at a Lincoln Center gala saluting to him.
 
Oona O’Neill Chaplin ultimately exacted revenge on President Richard Nixon. What did she do?

• Encouraged Katharine Graham to pursue the Watergate story.
• Refused her son’s request to marry Nixon’s daughter.
• Purchased a New York City penthouse apartment that Nixon had tried to buy but couldn't when rejected by the co-op board.  
• Asked her friend Gloria Vanderbilt to socially ostracize the Nixons when the former first couple relocated from California to New York.

The answer is after the JUMP.

“French women reveal their age quite freely, and because they are not obsessed by the thought of looking miraculously young, they often do.”
 
Kennedy Fraser, The Fashionable Mind, Reflections on Fashion, 1970-1981

Image Credit: Horst Portraits: Paris, London, New York

“Davis was possibly the most highly stylized leading actress in the history of movie stardom. It began with the brisk way she clipped her words, and the singular pauses she took between syllables. Nobody took command of the language the way she did, bending it to her inner rhythms, rather than submitting to its tyranny.”
 
Richard Schickel, Bette Davis: Larger Than Life

Image Credit: Double Exposure: Take Two

"Fair play is like a jewel, but so many people can't afford jewelry."

Noah Lott, The Silly Syclopedia

Image Credit: Le Bon Ton, 1910-1950, Mode, Theater, und Gesellschaft

"At Night, New York wears all its jewelry."

Harold Acton, More Memoirs of an Aesthete

Image Credit: Le Bon Ton, 1910-1950, Mode, Theater, und Gesellschaft

“I played Jimmy Stewart's wife so often that Dick Powell once rose at a banquet and introduced him as 'My wife's husband.'”
 
June Allyson [Mrs. Dick Powell], Jimmy Stewart, A Biography

“That true happiness does not depend upon outward circumstances. I find this an odd attitude, really. It assumes such a godlike independence of environment.”

Brian Howard, Brian Howard, Portrait of a Failure

Image Credit: Society in Vogue

“He who does not move with the times is a dead man.”
 
Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel

See also: Time Is on Its Own Side