Becoming Jane

Recently on a Saturday night, I watched Jane Fonda receive the AFI Life Achievement on TNT.  She’d been off the grid for a few years, but recently in the past seven or eight years, she’s slowly been making a comeback in not only film but theater as well ( I had the chance to see her in 33 Variations on Broadway a few years back).  Not bad for a woman who will celebrate her 77^th birthday this coming December.  I had forgotten how much I've enjoyed her performances over the years. There is a direct link between the tough but tender women portrayed by Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford to Jane Fonda.  Gloria In They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Bree Daniels in Klute, Lillian Hellman in Julia. There would be no Angelina Jolie if Jane Fonda hadn't paved the way.  What other actress could go from Barbarella to winning an Academy Award in just a few short years? It was heartwarming to hear actress such as Sally Field and Meryl Streep acknowledge the debt that they owe her.

Watching the clips of her movies and hearing her story once again, it brought home to me just how many times she has reinvented herself over the years.  There was ingénue Jane, Barbarella Jane, serious actress Jane, the infamous Hanoi Jane, workout Jane, and trophy wife Jane.  Now she’s in her third or maybe fifth act? A born again Christian, an activist for women and children, and once again a serious actress.  She’s shed personas the way a snake sheds skins, all the while searching for the real Jane Fonda. There are more than three faces of Jane Fonda.

I haven’t read Fonda’s biography but I did recently finish reading Patricia Bosworth’s excellent biography.  Friends since their Actor’s Studio days, Bosworth seems to have been the ideal person to write Fonda’s biography. What I mean by that is that she has no ax to grind, no agenda, other than telling Fonda’s story as honestly as possible.  It’s kind of refreshing no?  Back in my acting days, I used to devour biographies and autobiographies of actors, as if they had some secret that I could divine between their pages.  So Jane Fonda’s story was somewhat familiar to me before I started reading the biography. 

So many people focus on her political activism during the 1970’s, in particular her infamous trip to North Vietnam.  Recently, I think it was Michelle Obama, said that they admired Jane Fonda and the vitriol that was spewed on Facebook was unbelievable.  People still haven’t forgiven her for visiting ‘the enemy’ and taking a photo sitting on stop of a gun.  No many how many times, she’s apologized and blamed her actions of being politically naïve, there are people who still believe that she’s some kind of communist plant.  They believe that she betrayed the POW’s that she met, despite the fact that those men claimed it never happened. For me that was the most fascinating aspect of her story.  We’re so used to actors being political nowadays, that it’s hard to remember a time when it was still a new thing for actors to express a political opinion.  It was one thing to march for civil rights, but the opposition to the Vietnam War is a whole other animal.

And it wasn't just her anti-war stance; she was also a big supporter of the Black Panther party, and fought for Native American rights, not very popular causes in the 1970’s.  She faced endless harassment by the FBI for over a decade, was accused of smuggling drugs when in reality she was just carrying bottles of vitamins, and arrested repeatedly.  Not many actors were so committed to their causes that they spent all their money bankrolling them!

I used to be really hard on Fonda for being willing to change herself so completely for the men in her life.  Her decisions took an incredible toll on her kids.  At one point in the book, Fonda asks her daughter Vanessa for help putting together a video of her life for her 60^th birthday.  Her daughter told her ‘why don’t you just get a chameleon and let him crawl across the screen.” Harsh but true.  I now have more sympathy for Fonda.  It can’t have been easy not only growing up as the daughter of a screen legend, but Jane also had to deal with a mother who was mentally ill.  

She was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda in 1937. Her mother Frances Seymour Brokaw always claimed that they were related to Edward Seymour and his family.  While her mother could claim aristocratic roots, Fonda’s family originally came to this country from Italy.  From the beginning, Jane was a daddy’s girl, she wanted to be like him, dress like him, talk like him.  Her father, however, was uncomfortable with expressing emotion. He had that Midwestern stoicism that was great for characters like Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath, not so much at home.  Her mother on the hand favored Jane’s little brother Peter.  She’d had a daughter from her first marriage, and was less keen on having a second. A great deal of Jane’s subsequent actions can be seen as trying to get her father’s attention.  If being good didn't work, then she’d do the exact opposite to gain his attention.  Still despite their tortured relationship, Jane found On Golden Pond and produced it, believing that this film would finally garner her father the Academy Award that she felt that he so richly deserved. And it did!  I wept reading the parts of the book where both Jane and her brother Peter went out of their way towards the end of his life to repeatedly tell him that they loved him, even if he couldn't quite say it back.

Her mother had also been diagnosed as suffering from manic depression, what we now call bipolar disease.  The preferred treatment in the 1940’s was electroshock therapy.  When Jane was 11, her mother committed suicide while an in-patient at a sanatorium.  She and her brother were told that her mother had actually died of a heart attack.  Jane didn’t find out the truth until she saw it in a movie magazine that a friend was reading while at boarding school. She was not only devastated but there was also the worry that perhaps she had inherited her mother’s mental instability. To the outside world, Jane and her brother Peter lived a life of privilege, boarding schools (Emma Willard for Jane) and elite colleges (Jane went to Vassar for two years).  The reality was far different.

Even before her mother committed suicide, her father had fallen in love with a much younger woman whom he eventually married.  Two other marriages would eventually follow.  Jane suffered from bulimia; she would gorge herself with food and then purge it.  Instead of eating, she would take tons of vitamins to replace the nutrients she was throwing up. When she wasn’t bingeing and purging, she was exercising compulsively. Her work-out empire can be seen as a direct result of her bulimia, although by the time she opened the first Jane Fonda Work-Out studio, she had gone cold-turkey with her bulimia.

Jane has admitted that the men she fell in love with were all variations of her father, cold, remote, and dismissive.  Ted Turner even shared the same illness that her mother did, and his father had committed suicide like her mother.  It was nice to see that even she had reservations about dating him, although he put on the full court press.  I imagine even I would find it hard to turn down a man who not only has a private jet but 27 different ranches! Out of all her husbands Ted Turner was the only one who was as famous as she was, and even he had to deal with being treated like ‘Mr. Fonda’ at times during their relationship. It’s to Fonda’s credit that she managed to have cordial relationships with all her exes (Apparently Ted Turner’s 3 mistresses call her up for her advice on how to deal with the Mouth from the South).

While reading this book I lamented the roles that Jane Fonda didn’t play, either because she turned them down or in the case of The Music Box the director thought she was too old.  You guys, she didn’t make a movie for like 15 years and when she finally did, it was Monster-in-Law with Jennifer Lopez, all because freaking Ted Turner hated to be alone, and if she’d left him to make a movie, he’d have moved like 8 mistresses into his various houses.  She even admitted that she did Monster-in-Law on purpose because she hoped people would see the movie because of JLo but come out of it thinking about Jane Fonda. Which I totally did by the way. That ain't no lie.

I hurt for this one woman who had such low self-esteem that she agreed to threesomes with her husband Roger Vadim just to keep him. The woman who poured bazillions of dollars into her second husband Tom Hayden’s political campaigns and projects, even though he basically treated her like dirt. The woman who decorated all of Ted Turner’s 27 ranches, treated his kids like they were her own, and drank heavily to deal with his infidelities.  I have to give her credit because each time, she thought the relationship was going to last forever, and she certainly gave it the old college try.  These weren't fly-by-night relationships (6 years married to Vadim, 15 to Tom Hayden and 9 to Ted Turner which is like 81 years for normal people).

I was gratified to read at the end of the book that she had finally learned to stop compromising herself for a man, that she’s made family a priority (she’s even still close to Turner’s kids), as well as her career.  I loved seeing her on stage in 33 Variations. It made me realize that life doesn't stop until you are well into the ground.  That it’s important to keep engaged, informed, connected to not just places but people as well. And to have a sense of humor about yourself and your past mistakes and to forgive yourself for them. 

Scandalous Royal Romance: King Carol II of Romania and Magda Lupescu

The story of how King Edward VIII of Great Britain abdicated the throne for the ‘Woman I Love,’ the thrice-divorced Wallis Warfield Simpson is well known.  Countless books have been written; TV and miniseries have been produced about what many people consider to be one of the greatest and most scandalous royal love affairs in history.  While the love story of King Carol of Romania and his mistress Magda Lupescu is nothing more than a footnote to history.  Like Edward, Carol refused to give up his flame-haired Pompadour.  However, unlike King Edward VIII, Carol actually managed to regain his throne, ruling for almost ten years before the coming war and his own autocratic style forced him into exile.

 

He was born on October 15, 1893 in Peles Castle to Crown Princess Marie (born Princess Marie of Edinburgh) and Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania. Soon after Carol was born, his care and education was taken over by Queen Elisabeth and King Carol.  Marie was allowed no say in the education of her children, and her husband did little to support her against the King and Queen. Marie was an adoring but ineffectual parent. She found it difficult to even scold them at times, thus failing to properly supervise them. Consequently, Carol grew up wilful, spoilt by everyone.  He was convinced that he knew right about everything. Finally he was sent to Potsdam, to his father’s old regiment. Outwardly his behavior improved. The discipline and regimen of the army suited his love of rules and protocol.

The prince grew into a striking young man, over 6 feet tall, with blond hair and blue eyes. Once he became of age, his parents cast around for a suitable bride for him, finally settling on the Grand Duchess Olga of Russia.  While the couple met, there was no interest on either side.  Prince Carol had already cast his eyes elsewhere.  The object of his desire was a young Romanian woman named Zizi Lambrino.  Although Zizi was related by marriage to an aristocrat, she was both Romanian and a commoner and it was an unspoken rule that members of the royal family could not marry commoners.  As a film director famously once said, ‘the heart wants what the heart wants,’ and Carol was determined to marry Zizi.  The couple eloped in the fall of 1918.

Because he had deserted his post, Carol faced the possibility of being court-martialed. His parents were understandably upset at his actions. Marie, in particular, considered Zizi to be nothing more than an adventuress.   Carol was sentenced to 75 days in prison for desertion and pressure was put on him to have the marriage annulled.  Although they were no longer married, the affair continued, leading to the birth of Carol and Zizi’s son Mircea in 1920. Hoping to take his mind off of his love life, his parents decided to send him on 8 month tour around the world. Although he continued to write to Zizi, his feelings eventually petered out.

His parents breathed a sigh of relief when Carol eventually proposed to Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark. Finally their son had made an appropriate match. Known as ‘Sitta’ Helen was tall, fine-boned and slim.  Her father, King Constantine I, gave his consent only after he was assured the affair with Zizi was over.  The royal couple was married on March 10, 1921 in Athens.  The couple honeymooned at Tatoi before sailing for Bucharest to start their married life.The marriage was at first happy, but soon soured. After the first euphoria, they realized that they had very little in common.  Carol was intellectually curious, while Helen preferred shopping and interior design.  He spent hours on his stamp collection, hating it when Helen would interrupt by sitting on this lap.  

On 25 October 1921, Helen and Carol's first and only child Mihai (Romanian for Michael) was born. There were complications and for a while neither mother nor child were expected to pull through. The baby was rumored to have been born premature (he was born only seven and a half months after his parents' wedding), but the fact that he weighed nine pounds at birth fueled speculation that Helen had become pregnant before the wedding.  To recover her strength, Helen took her baby son and went to stay with her parents in Athens for four months. By the time that Helen fully recovered from the difficult birth, her husband had moved on.  He had met the second woman who would shape and some say destroy his life.  Her name was Elena Lupescu.  She has been called an adventuress, a home wrecker, a femme fatale, and one of Europe’s last great courtesans.  Even her date of birth is shrouded in mystery.  

She was born in either 1896 or 1899, in Moldavia.  Both of her parents, although born Jewish, had converted to Christianity. Her father changed the family name from Grunberg to the less Semitic Lupescu.  Even how she received her nickname is up for grabs.  She herself said that she was given the nickname by an Italian journalist but there are others who say that ‘Magda’ was Bucharest slang for prostitute.  There were rumors when the family moved to port town of Sulina on the Black Sea, Elena’s mother ‘entertained’ the naval officers nearby while her father played cards.

Elena was well-educated, sent to a Roman Catholic convent in Bucharest run by German nuns, learning to speak fluent French and German.  What they called a ‘pocket Venus’, Elena was striking rather than beautiful with pale skin, flaming red hair, green eyes, and an hour glass figure.  She was flirtatious, possessing a bawdy sense of humor, which made her a great favorite with soldiers.  After Bucharest was invaded by German troops during WWI, Elena decamped to the new capital of Jassy where she would join the crowd of young people who paraded up and down the main street.  None of her flirtations were serious until she met an army officer named Ion Tampeanu. Obsessed with her, he pursued her relentlessly until she eventually capitulated and agreed to marry him in 1916. But it was a misalliance from the beginning. Elena had no intention of changing her ways now that she was married.  She grew bored with garrison life, and indulged in several affairs. When her husband could no longer keep in her in the luxurious lifestyle that she wanted, she left him after four years of marriage.

The couple met at a charity gala that Elena had finagled an invitation to.  Bold as brass, she arranged a seat within his sightlines, and spent the entire evening gazing at Carol without once averting her gaze.  The Prince was curious to meet this woman who stared at him so boldly.  Finding out her name, Crown Prince Carol persuaded a friend to throw a party and invite her along. At the party, Elena changed tactics. Wearing a virginal white dress, she let the Prince do all the talking, while she stared at him with limpid eyes.  At the end of the party, he offered to drive her home, but she demurred claiming that it wouldn’t do for her to be seen with a married Prince. The Prince’s friend, Captain Tautu, became alarmed at what was going on. He knew Elena and may even have been one of her mother’s special friends.   When he called her a ‘dirty whore’, Elena asked if there was anyone who would defend her against such slander.  The Prince gallantly came to her aid, sweeping her out of the party but into his life.

Soon after meeting Elena, Carol stopped sleeping with his wife completely, and barely saw his toddler son.  He told his friends that his wife’s slim frame repulsed him compared to more voluptuous body of his mistress. Still he kept the affair a secret for two years, until he finally told his parents that he loathed Helen. His parents were incredibly disappointed, this was the second their son had failed in what they considered his royal duty.  And this time it involved a royal princess, the mother of the heir to the throne, not a commoner who could be bought off with an annuity. Helen, of course, was devastated. Although his parents tried to convince him to give up Elena, he refused.  Not only did she make him feel independent and more like a man, but she also mothered him at the same time. His relationship with his parents became increasingly strained.  His father famously compared to him to Swiss cheese.  His mother tried to use her influence to try and get rid of her.

The affair came to light when Elena met the Prince in Paris after his trip to England for Queen Alexandra’s funeral.  The couple then traveled openly together to Italy. For the first time the affair was reported in the Romanian press.  Although the Prince was ordered to come home, he refused. Instead, he offered to fake his own death, so that he could disappear without a trace.  He was now given a choice, either give up Elena or renounce his right to the throne.  He chose the latter course.  He was no longer Crown Prince Carol of Romania but plain Mr. Carol Caraiman, condemned to permanent exile.  His son, Michael, was now proclaimed the heir apparent.  Like Wallis Simpson after her, Elena claimed that she had nothing to do with Carol’s decision. While that might be true, he would never have taken the course of action if he hadn’t met her. Soon after Carol signed the papers, he began to regret his decision.

Although not broke, Carol no longer was able to afford the luxurious lifestyle that he was used too. He had a legacy from his Great-Uncle which would support the couple, but there would be no royal palaces. Instead they settled into a modest 10 bedroom villa in Neuilly, just outside of Paris.  They lived a very frugal if indolent lifestyle. Carol spent his time to his hobby of stamp-collecting (like his cousin George V), playing bridge with friends, talking walks in the Bois de Boulogne, and going to the cinema.  Magda prided herself on being an efficient housekeeper, although they had a hard time keeping any staff.

In 1927, his father King Ferdinand died, and Carol’s son Michael was crowned King of Romania.  Carol chafed to be back in his home country occupying the throne that he felt was rightfully his.  It took him 3 years, and one aborted coup, before he set foot back in Romania. In the intervening years, Carol and Helen were divorced. Things in Romania were turning in Carol’s favor, his son was still a minor, and the regency was proving ineffective. Carol was so desperate to return that he agreed to give up Elena, let his son keep the crown, and try and repair his marriage to Helen.

 

Once he returned to Romania, he reneged on all his promises.  First up, he deposed his son.  He then tried to convince Helen to reconcile but she was having none of it. Since the reconciliation with his ex-wife was a no-go, Carol told his Prime Minister that he couldn't live without Elena.  Elena meanwhile slipped anonymously into the country.  During the 10 years of King Carol II’s reign, they were amazingly discreet about their relationship. She never accompanied him to official functions, and she lived in a house on her own, although she visited the King at the palace nightly. However, she didn't exactly keep a low profile.  Elena threw raucous all-night parties that attracted bohemians and sycophants. Carol and his wife began a tug of war over their son Michael.  While the King hoped that his son would soon accept Elena, Helen tried to turn her son against her.  In the end, the King banished her from Romania.  She moved to Italy where her son was allowed to visit her twice a month.

Carol became increasingly autocratic and paranoid.  He spied on everything, including his mother Queen Marie. He alienated members of his family, who refused to obey his edict that they have nothing to do with his ex-wife. For the next decade he sought to influence the course of Romanian political life, first through manipulation of the rival Peasant and Liberal parties and anti-Semitic factions, and subsequently with a constitution reserving ultimate power to the Crown. Of course, every miss-step that he made was blamed on Elena. As if he were incapable of making stupid decisions on his own.  She was a convenient scapegoat for his enemies who delighted in his every misstep and his supporters who couldn't believe he could make so many mistakes.  People couldn't understand the attraction.  Elena often treated Carol with contempt, and it was clear, that he was cowed by her violent temper.   Slowly those who had supported Carol turned against him. First the aristocracy, who were turned off by the people he surrounded himself with. Then there was the Iron Guard, the Romanian equivalent of the Nazi party or the Italian fascists. Although Carol gave the impression that he approved of their policies, he knew that they were financed by the Nazis who thought that he was weak.

Carol tried to steer a neutral path between Hitler and Stalin. The two regimes threatened the territories that Romania had gained after World War I.  Carol threw the leader of the Iron Guard and his top henchman into prison, promising to ensure their safety, in return for Germany support in the event of another world war.  Unfortunately for Carol, the men were killed under suspicious circumstances and the King was thought to be behind their deaths.  To appease Hitler, Carol appointed a pro-German, anti-Semitic Prime Minister named Ion Antonescu.  Instead of supporting the King, he tried to strip him of his executive powers.  Carol refused, and the Prime Minister pressured him to abdicate.  Carol abdicated a day later in favor of his 18 year old son Michael.

Carol and Elena fled, first to Yugoslavia and then to Portugal.  Their belongings filled 9 railway carriages. They grabbed everything they could of value, including several El Greco paintings and allegedly the crown jewels.  The couple didn’t stay long in Portugal.  Fearing for their lives in Europe, they set sail for Cuba and then Mexico where they spent several years.  However, the climate didn’t agree with Elena. They tried South America where Elena took to her sickbed, suffering from what turned out to be anemia.  Fearful that his companion of 24 years might die, Carol married Elena in a civil ceremony at their hotel in Rio in 1947. She was now Her Royal Highness Princess Elena von Hohenzollern.

Now that the war in Europe was over, Carol and Elena returned to Europe, settling down once again in Portugal. The couple lived relatively quietly, spending their time going to the movies.  Carol puttered around in his garden, and worked on his stamp collections.  Elena still treated her husband like dirt, embarrassing him in public.  He would accuse her of overspending, threatening divorce.  Still, he proved his devotion to her by marrying her a second time in the church. In 1953, King Carol II died of a heart attack  in Portugal.  His wife outlived him by 24 years, finally passing away in 1977.  In 2003, their remains were brought back to Romania at the request and expense of the government. They were interred in the Curtea de Argeş Monastery complex, the traditional burial ground of Romanian royalty; but, not being of royal blood, Elena was buried in the monastery’s cemetery, rather than in the Royal Chapel.

To this day, people wonder if Elena Lupescu was the adventuress she was painted to be or if she really loved the King. 

Review: Diana (2013)

Cast

Diana, Princess of Wales:  Naomi Watts

Dr. Hasnat Khan:  Naveen Andrews

Dodi Fayed: Cas Anvar

Laurence Belcher as Prince William of Wales

Harry Holland as Prince Harry of Wales

Douglas Hodge as Paul Burrell

Geraldine James as Oonagh Toffolo

Charles Edwards as Patrick Jephson

I swore when this movie premiered that I would never watch this film. Does the world really need another movie about Diana, Princess of Wales? Well, never say never.  The film popped up on my Netflix front page as a recommended film.  Since I had nothing else to watch after the second season of HOUSE OF CARDS, I clicked on the poster and waited as the film downloaded to my NOOK.  Sort of like a palate cleanser after the Machiavellian shenanigans that went on in HOUSE OF CARDs.

I wish I could tell you that the film turned out to be better than I imagined, given my low expectations, but that would be a lie.  Seriously, it was like a Lifetime TV movie but with higher priced talent, and a bigger budget.  There is a reason that it only had like 8% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is based on Kate Snell's 2001 book Diana: Her Last Love about her relationship with the Pakistani heart surgeon, Dr. Hasnat Khan (which I haven’t read) and it plays like the worst kind of Harlequin romance novel.  The ones written in the early seventies.  The film opens with Diana getting into the elevator at the Ritz Hotel just before the car accident that takes her life.  It then flashes back to two years earlier with Diana (Naomi Watts) returning home from a royal engagement.  She quickly dismisses her staff for the evening, chucks off her shoes and turns on the radio.  After wandering aimlessly around Kensington Palace, she makes herself some beans on toast, and settles down to read her diary, practicing her lines for her interview with Martin Bashir.

Diana has a session with Oonagh Toffolo, an Irish acupuncturist, where she complains about her life.  When Oonagh’s husband has a heart attack; Diana rushes to the hospital to be with her.  Of course, she has a meet cute with Dr. Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews), the heart surgeon on the case.  Diana is all downcast eyes and blushes; the film implies that it is love at first sight for the Princess.  She quickly comes up with all sorts of reasons to see him again. Hasnat is smitten as well but he’s much more realistic about the whole situation.  We are next treated to adorable scenes of Diana smuggling Hasnat into Kensington Palace in the trunk (or boot if you’re English) of her car, and sneaking off to meet him wearing a long, dark wig.  Since Hasnat digs jazz, so they spend an evening at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in the West End.  The loved up couple don’t share anything of significance in the film, no revelations about their pasts, what they are looking for in a relationship.  You know the little things that most couples talk about in the early stages of their relationship.

No in this celluloid romance, the biggest problem is that Diana has the baggage of well, you know, being the most famous woman in the world.   There are plenty of scenes of Hasnat not being able to deal with her celebrity, watching the Panorama interview at his local pub.  When the news leaks about their relationship, Diana calls a journalist she trusts, and refutes the story which ticks of Hasnat.  Diana, however, is determined to make the relationship work.  She flies to Pakistan solely to meet Hasnat’s family (without Hasnat), his mother gives Diana a crash course in the history of Pakistan, including Mountbatten’s role in it. As if Diana is personally responsible for the partition because she was married to Mountbatten’s great-nephew.   Art Malik shows up briefly to sit in a car with Hasnat while giving him advice. Later on, while on a trip to Italy, she meets up with renowned heart surgeon Dr. Christian Barnaard, and hits him up for a job for Hasnat in Boston.  Of course, Hasnat is upset that she would go behind his back, without even asking him.

  

In between sweet scenes of Diana and Hasnat being loved up, we have are given scenes of Diana doing her humanitarian work,  walking through fields dotted with land minds, breast-feeding an orphaned baby (okay, I made that one up), and finally offering her dresses up for charity. Angry at Hasnat for not paying enough attention to her, she flies off to take a cruise with Dodi Fayed.  Poor Dodi Fayed, he’s barely in this movie.  We never really know whether Diana was playing him to make Hasnat jealous, whether or not she really cared for him.  We are treated to her tipping off journalists to take photos of her on the yacht. In the end, she dramatically breaks it off with Hasnat before jetting off once again to spend time with Dodi. But her heart is still with her heart surgeon (according to the film), the film intimates that Diana tried to call Hasnat from Paris. 

In the end, the film is all smoke and mirrors signifying nothing.  Naomi Watts gives a valiant performance as Diana, clearly better than the film deserves.  She nails the shy glances, the breathy voice, and the steel beneath the fragile exterior.  This Diana is slightly manipulative and needy but not to any great extent. Watts plays the role as part Marilyn Monroe, part Mother Theresa but we never really feel Diana’s pain.  Several biographers have suggested that Diana had a deep emotional hole, that she never truly felt loved, by her parents, by her husband, nor by James Hewitt.  We also never get to see her interact with Prince Charles, the young Princes, or indeed anyone of her family. Even Paul Burrell is just a bystander (so much for being her rock. Not in this film). It’s like this Diana exists in a bubble.  Naveen Andrews does his best with what I call the ‘magical brown person’ role.  His Hasnat Khan never seems to have any strong emotions, about Diana, about marrying her, about the press.  He’s just there, pretty much a cipher.  He shows the most emotion when he discovers that Diana tried to get him a job in Boston behind his back.

I believe that there is a film or a miniseries just waiting to be made about Diana, taking her from a young bride to the end of her life (preferably based on Tina Brown’s book) but this is not it. There are scenes in this film that make no sense.  For example, Diana shows up at the opera house, looking incredibly glamorous, with the paparazzi snapping photos.  Later we see her inside the opera house talking on the phone to Prince William but there is no one there. Did the call take place after the opera was over? Has no one else arrived yet? Then later on, there are scenes when Diana is traveling in Australia, where Paul Burrell is seen shepherding her through paparazzi. Umm, why would her butler be traveling with her? Even Prince Charles doesn't take his butler with him when he travels. 

If the movie comes on television, or you see it at the library, and you have nothing else to do, then take a quick glance. Otherwise, don't bother.

Helena Rubinstein: The Woman Who Invented Beauty

As a blogger, I receive books in the mail from publishers and publicists all the time, to review.  Unfortunately, I don't have time to review them all, not if I want to have time to pursue my own writing! However, I received a book last week that made sit up and take notice.  Helena Rubinstein: The Woman who Invented Beauty by French author Michele Fitoussi. The book was published by a new publisher in the UK called Gallic Books who are dedicated to publishing the best of French in English.  I've long been fascinated by women entrepreneurs in the beauty biz, women such as Elizabeth Arden, Mary Kay, Madame C.J. Walker, Harriet Hubbard Ayers, Estee Lauder, and the grande dame of them all Helena Rubinstein. These women essentially created the beauty business, their success proved to men that there was money to be made in lipsticks, nail polish, and facial cream.

Helena was born Chaya Rubinstein in Krakow in Poland on December 25, 1872. Like most women, before the advent of Wikipedia, she fudged her birth date as the years went by. Rubinstein was the oldest of 8 daughters born to a Jewish couple, her father Horace was a not very successful shopkeeper in Krakow.  From the very beginning, Helena dreamed of being rich and successful. She had no interest in learning the housewifely arts from her mother, instead she spent time with her father in his shop, dealing with the customers and doing the bookkeeping. When  she came of age, she infuriated her parents by refusing every suitor who offered marriage. Not that her father had managed to save any money for dowries for her and her siblings! Helena had no intention of spending her life stuck in Krakow. Fortunately for her she had sympathetic relatives who lived in Vienna and Australia where she eventually ended up at the age of 24.

It was her mother who introduced her to the beauty regiment that Helena would use to make her fortune. A local chemist had created a skin cream that her mother applied to her daughter's skin every night from childhood. Every few months she would buy a jar which she would then parcel out into little jars to make the cream last as long as possible. She impressed upon her daughters the value of washing ones skin thoroughly and giving ones hair a hundred strokes with a brush every night. In Australia, Helena discovered that the women suffered terribly from the hot Australian sun. She wrote to her mother to send her jars of the face cream which Helena then sold. When that ran out, and because it took months to get the cream from Poland, she tried to recreate for herself. Luckily there were plenty of sheep around to provide the lanolin that she needed for the cream!

Helena was also lucky because she had made some valuable contacts on the boat out to Australia, including the wife of the Premier. After working as a governess, Helena moved to Melbourne where she worked in a tearoom. There she met an admirer who was willing to put up the funds for her first beauty cream that she called Valaze (Hungarian for 'gift from heaven'). Even though the cream was inexpensive to make, Helena realized instinctively that she needed to sell the cream at a pretty price, because women would buy it if they thought it was expensive and exclusive. As she put it, "Women won't buy anything cheap. They need to have the impression they're treating themselves to something exceptional." Even the ingredients were considered exotic.  Helena claimed that they were made from rare plants from the 'Carpathian mountains.' Before long the small jars were flying off the shelves.  From the beginning, Rubinstein seemed to have a sixth sense about what would sell and how to market it. She had put a great deal of thought into the packaging and the decor of her salon.

While Rubinstein wasn't beautiful, she knew how to make the most of what she was given. Her personal mantra was 'There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.' She dressed extremely well, even when she had very little money. Although she was under five feet tall, she made up for it with her personality. Men were always drawn to her, but Helena had little interest in getting married.  Her business was her life, expanding it from Melbourne to Sydney and then eventually to London. She was now in her thirties and had never been kissed by a man. Eventually she met Edward Titus, a Polish-American journalist who she had met in Australia. He was worldly, witty, charming and sophisticated, but they also shared similar background.  In her After a long courtship, he finally convinced her to marry him in 1908. Edward was a huge help in her business, he had a knack for advertising.

Edward wanted children, so Helena dutifully provided two sons, Roy (born in 1909) and Horace (in 1912). Helena was ecstatic to have boys, after growing up with 7 other women, and she'd always gotten along better with men. But Helena was not particularly maternal, the boys were raised mainly by nannies and tutors. And the marriage was not happy, Edward was a womanizer.  The couple fought constantly, breaking up and making up. Each infidelity increased her jewelry collection, as she would buy a new piece to assuage her unhappiness. Edward also hated that he was dependent upon her for money. He dreamed of being a publisher (he eventually published D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover). Helena belittled his dreams, she would withhold money from on a whim before finally giving in.  Her business was her life, before long she'd expanded the business to Paris, and then during WWI to New York.

Helena wasn't prepared to rest on her laurels and just coast.  She worked tirelessly with chemists to create new products, kept abreast of new skin treatments, traveling widely to Europe to meet with doctors. She had her own factory in both Paris and New York to create her products. Helena was one of the first to come up with waterproof mascara and sunscreen. Ahead of the crowd, Helena also introduced the concept of 'problem' skin types, dry, oily and combination. Realizing the value of celebrity endorsements, she persuaded Margot Asquith, wife of the Prime Minister, to allow Helena to show her how to highlight her features with cosmetics. When Asquith when out in public wearing cosmetics, society ladies flocked to copy her. Like a ripple effect, soon ordinary women wanted to look like their betters, and they were soon wearing make-up!

Soon Helena Rubinstein had a rival in Elizabeth Arden.  Although the two women never met, they were fierce rivals, keeping a close eye on what the other one was doing and then trying to outdo the other one. They cultivated the same beauty editors, went to the same gala events in New York. By 1923, Rubinstein had over 70 products on the market. There were also business setbacks.  Just before the Great Depression, Helena sold her American business to Lehman Brothers for $7.3 million dollars (the equivalent of over $80 million dollars in today's money) but it was clear that they had no idea what to do with her company. When the stock market crashed, Helena bought the company back for less than $1 million dollars, making her a profit of $6 million!

Michele Fitoussi's book is a gold-mine of information about the early days of the cosmetic industry and the remarkable rise of this self-made millionaire.  You can't help but admire Helena's chutzpah even as you cringe at the mistakes that she made in her personal life.  On the one hand, she gave employment to many of her sisters and relatives, which gave them a life that would have been impossible otherwise.  On the other hand, she also treated them like dirt sometimes, playing them off against each other. She favored her youngest son Horace over her eldest Roy but undermined them both at work.  Her sons spent years in therapy trying to deal with their 'mommy' issues. While Roy became an alcoholic, Horace became a reckless driver, eventually dying in a car crash at the age of 47. Having divorced her first husband in 1938 after 30 years of marriage, she married Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia.  He was 23 years younger than his bride. Helena adored being a princess, plus it meant that she had one-upped Elizabeth Arden!

 Rubinstein was also a compulsive shopper.  Having grown up poor, Helena bought art, clothes, jewelry, real estate like it was going out of style. She had a good eye, however, and bought many artists before they became famous.  She was particularly fascinated with African and fine art. Self-educated, Helena was fascinated with what was new and interesting. Only later in life, when she got older, did her enormous energy flag and the business began to suffer. After years of being at the forefront of the beauty business, she seemed content to let men like Charles Revson and companies like Maybelline take the lion's share of the market. Anyway, Madame had always been about luxury, selling her products at her salons and at upscale department stores.  She had no interest in having her products in Woolworth's and drugstores.

Rubinstein died in 1965 at the age of 95.  Her heirs sold the company first to Colgate-Palmolive in 1973. The company is now owned by L'Oreal who still sell Helena Rubinstein products mainly in Europe and the Far East.

I highly recommend Michele Fitoussi's book if you are interested in either the early days of the cosmetics business or in reading about a woman who wasn't content to settle for the status quo or what was expected of her but had ambition to burn.  There were a few typos or things that were just not checked properly. For example, Fitoussi writes that Rubinstein found a space on 49th Avenue for her salon in New York which is somewhere in Queens.  I'm pretty sure that Rubinstein probably never set foot in Queens until she was buried there. At another point, she states that Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow were huge movie stars during the war. Garbo stopped making movies in 1941 and Jean Harlow died in 1937.  People might have still liked their old movies but they certainly weren't top box office!

In the end, while I admired Helena Rubinstein, I'm not sure that I liked her very much as a person.  As a business woman though, she was phenomenal. Without her or Elizabeth Arden, people like Bobbi Brown, Estee Lauder or Laura Mercier wouldn't exist. She showed the world that beauty was big business, and brought cosmetics into the mainstream, when previously only worn by prostitutes or actresses.  She made make-up respectable.

The First Georgians The German Kings Who Made Britain Episode 1 BBC do...

As any one who reads this blog knows, I have a bit of a girl crush on Lucy Worsley,Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, in London (the best job ever in my opinion!  I've been lucky enough, thanks to YouTube, to watch several of the programmes that she's presented including A Very British Murder, Harlots Housewives and Heroines, and my personal favorite Elegance and Decadence.  Since 2014 marks the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian ascension to the British throne, all sorts of exhibitions are going on at all the royal palaces.  And Lucy is presenting a 3 part series on the First Georgians for BB4.  You can watch the first episode below, and catch the rest of the episodes at YouTube.  I would also suggest picking up a copy of her book The Courtiers which gives a great overview of life at the court of the Georges.

Review: Belle (2014)

I’ve long been fascinated with the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle ever since I read a blog post by author Janet Mullany at the History Hoydens blog several years ago.  For a while I even contemplated trying to fictionalize the story.  So I was very excited when I heard that she was going to be the subject of a major motion picture.  This film opened in the US in limited release last Friday, and since delayed gratification isn’t really my thing, I went to see the film on Sunday at one of the only two movie theatres showing it in the city.

However, before seeing the film, I picked up a copy of Paula Byrne’s new book entitled Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice.  Although Belle’s name is in the title, the book is more about her great uncle Lord Mansfield and the era in which she lived than it is an actual biography.  The reason being that very little is known about Belle.  

The simple facts are these:  She was born sometime in 1761 to Sir John Lindsay, nephew of Lord Mansfield and a slave named Maria.  At some point, her father brought her to Kenwood to be raised alongside her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray.  The assumption is made that Belle’s mother died at some point, we don’t know when.  We do know that it was highly unusual for a man of Sir John Lindsay’s standing to want his illegitimate daughter (white or black) to be brought up by his family.   The book details the Zong case which is a key plot point in the film, a brief history of the abolitionist movement in England, as well as information about what life was like for London’s black residents.  Apparently at the time that Belle lived, there were 15,000 blacks living in the UK.  Some were slaves, but most were free.  Interracial marriage was unusual but not unheard and not illegal as long as the couple was of equal status.  So for example, a black footman could marry a maid, but not a cook, because the cook would have been of higher status.

The film opens in 1769.  John Lindsay (Matthew Goode), who is in the Royal Navy, comes to a port city after learning of the death of Belle’s mother.  Since he spends so much time at sea, he decides to drop her off at Kenwood, the home of his uncle, William Murray, 1^st Earl of Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson), and his wife Elizabeth (Emily Watson).  The couple is initially reluctant to take her in, given that she is black. They worry about how it might look. However, they realize that she might make a good companion for their other great niece Elizabeth, who has been dropped off by her father after her mother’s death.  So Dido has a new home.

Years pass although we are not told how many have gone by.  Dido (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Elizabeth grow up to be besties, sharing a room, and studying together.  However, Dido is beginning to be aware that things are different for her because of the color of her skin.  When company comes, Dido has to eat in the lady’s parlor not with the guests, although she is allowed to have coffee in the drawing room.  Even the news that her father has died and left her £2,000 a year (a substantial sum) doesn’t change her status all that much.  

The film does an excellent job of portraying how few choices women had back in the 18^th century.  Marriage was still a transaction, although there were couples who did marry for love, but that wasn’t the overriding concern. Dido’s cousin, Elizabeth, has to marry well because she has no dowry but she also hopes to marry for love.  Their aunt Mary (Penelope Wilton) tells them about her own thwarted love affair with a man who had no fortune. For Lord and Lady Mansfield, Dido’s inheritance means that they don’t have to worry about what will happen to her after they are dead.  They are aware that Lord Stormont, the heir, will not be as open-minded about Dido living at Kenwood.  One of the saddest moments in the film is a scene where Lady Murray tells Elizabeth that she is to have a London season, while Dido is told by her uncle that upon their return from London she is to take over the role of housekeeper from her Aunt Mary.  There will be no London season for Dido despite her wealth.

The divide between the two girls is further illustrated when Lady Ashford (Miranda Richardson) and her two sons come for dinner.  The elder James (played by Tom Felton) is not only a snob but also a racist who is disgusted that his brother Simon finds Dido attractive.  Lady Ashford is prepared to overlook Dido’s color and her illegitimacy because of the money.  Dido, flattered by the attention, initially agrees to engagement with James but her growing interest in the Zong case and her attraction to a young law student John Davinier open her eyes to the world outside of Kenwood House.  There is an awkward moment when the family travels to London for the season.  One of the maids, Mabel, is black. Dido questions her uncle as to whether Mabel is a slave or a free woman.  Dido also feels uncomfortable around her because of the difference in their stations.

The film is sumptuously shot, the acting is impeccable and I admit that I teared up on more than one occasion during the film. It’s not often that I forgive a film for taking historical liberties but Belle was so moving in depicting the story of this young black woman stuck between two worlds, not really part of either one, that I’m giving it a pass.  Some critics have compared the film to Sense and Sensibility and the director admits that is feeling that she intended to invoke, particularly in the friendship between Elizabeth and Dido.  Dido is the more practical of the two, much more careful with her emotions, no doubt because of her status.  While Elizabeth, on the other hand, is all feeling.  She barely knows James Ashford yet she falls head over heels for him, and is devastated when she discovers that he is engaged to another woman.  An argument between Dido and Elizabeth echoes the argument that Eleanor and Marianne have in S&S about Eleanor hiding her feelings toward Edward Ferrers.  In Belle, Dido and Elizabeth argue about James Ashford.  Dido tries to warn Elizabeth that James is an asshole (he assaults Dido at a garden party) but Elizabeth refuses to hear her.

In the 21st century, it's rare to have a historical film about a black woman, written by a black woman (Misan Sagay) and directed by a black woman (Amma Asante). I highly recommend this film for anyone interested in seeing a different side of 18^th century England. 

Now for a little Fact vs. Fiction:

1      1) Dido was known as Dido Elizabeth Lindsay – Fiction.  Although in the film she uses her father’s last name Lindsay, in real life Dido was known as Dido Elizabeth Belle.  Since she was illegitimate, she would have had no right to use Lindsay.

 2)      Dido was left an inheritance by her father that made her an heiress-  Fiction - Dido’s father died when she was 27 years old.  When Dido's father died without legitimate heirs in 1788, he left £1000 to a son and £1000 to his other illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth Lindsay or Palmer (born c. 1765) who lived in Scotland, asking his wife Mary to take care of her.  Lord Mansfield did leave Dido a significant sum in his will £500 as an outright sum and a £100 annuity in his will, and officially confirmed her freedom. During her lifetime, she received an allowance of £30 a year, a considerable sum. 

      3) Dido married a lawyer named John Davinier – Fiction – While Dido did marry John Davinier, it was after her uncle’s death when she was in her thirties.  Davinier was a Frenchman, probably one of many who fled the revolution in France.  Historians don’t know what kind of servant he was. It is possible that he worked for Lord Mansfield’s nephew and heir, Lord Stormont.  What we do know is that they had two sons, and lived in Pimlico.  Dido died in 1804 when she was in her early forties.  Unfortunately her grave has been lost to us.

4     4)  The Zong massacre, which occurred in 1781, is a major plot point in the film.  The owners of the Zong claimed that they forced to kill several of the slaves because of inadequate water supplies. Dido tells John Davinier that the ship had plenty of chances to stop and replenish their water supply but didn’t.  However, that is not precisely what happened.  The reality is that the ships water supply was replenished because it had rained for several days, before the killing was finished.  Not all of the slaves on board were massacred.  Over two hundred slaves were still on board the ship when it finally arrived in Jamaica. People were worried that Lord Mansfield’s judgment might have been affected by his relationship with Dido, although as he makes clear in the film, he was always able to separate the personal from the professional.  For example, as a youth Mansfield had supported the Old Pretender James III.  This did not keep him from prosecuting the leaders of the Jacobite rebellion in 1745. 

The Lives and Loves of Frida Strindberg

“Life is a cruel banquet. You pay for food and board with your blood,” Frida Uhl Strindberg.

I was tweeting while watching the first episode of the new series Mr. Selfridge on PBS a few weeks, when Evangeline Holland from Edwardian Promenade mentioned that the character of Delphine Day might have been inspired by Frida Strindberg who opened the Cave of the Golden Calf in London in 1912.  I immediately looked Frida up on Wikipedia to see if she was one of the playwright August Strindberg’s wives. Bingo! So of course I went on a research binge to find out more about her. In the end, while I admired her courage and her intelligence, she must have been an incredibly difficult woman.  

Her biographer, Monica Strauss, points out that Frida was ill-equipped for the life that she pursued. Higher education was not an option for her. While her father had set her up in a career in journalism, it was never meant to be a career. It was just a temporary measure until she eventually married and had children. He never realized that, in a sense, he’d opened Pandora ’s Box. Having tasted freedom and independence, Frida was reluctant to give it up. When Frida pursued the same sexual freedom as a man, she was condemned for it.

Frida Strindberg was born Frida Uhl on April 4th in 1872.  Her father, Friedrich Uhl, was the editor and drama critic of the Wiener Zeitung, one of the oldest, still published newspapers in the world, at the time it was the official government newspaper in Austria. Her father championed progressive ideas and writers, but not in his daughters. He expected them to live conventional, middle class lives, with no scandal. Frida came from a broken home. Her parents had an arranged marriage which broke up discretely when she was 7.  Her parents marriage had been an attempt to gloss over some of the more unsavory elements of their backgrounds. Although she converted when she got married, Friedrich’s mother was born Jewish. Frida’s mother Maria had been born illegitimate. 

After the separation her mother moved back to the country, while her father lived in his office at his newspaper.  While her older sister was off at convent school, Frida spent two years living alone with a governess in Mondsee outside Vienna.  Left to her devices, she spent hours in the library, devouring books, developing a mind of her own.  She saw very little of either of her parents during her childhood. After leaving school, Friedrich arranged for her to have a job reviewing books and theatre in Munich. Although Frida lived with a family friend, she had been given a taste of freedom. Although it probably wasn’t in his plans, her father gave Frida a great gift, the ability to fend for herself. This knowledge made her stubborn, it gave her confidence, and it made her life difficult.  Soon Frida was off to Berlin in pursuit of the married playwright her father had introduced to her the previous summer. It was the beginning of her life long obsession with difficult geniuses. Starved of affection by both parents, Frida would often find herself attracted to older men.

It was in Berlin, that she met Strindberg. The playwright was 43, recently divorced, with three children he hardly saw.  He was not only broke, but suffering from writer’s block and depression. He had published a semi-autobiographical novel about his first marriage that had caused a scandal in Sweden when excerpts were published in one of the newspapers. Not exactly son-in-law material. Frida was twenty, beautiful, headstrong and independent. While Frida had an ‘Electra’ complex; Strindberg’s issues were a bit more complex. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, he was a misogynistic bastard. Although he was attracted to strong, independent women, he also felt emasculated and threatened by them. He longed to find a woman like his mother who had died when he was a young boy.  When Frida tried to pay the check (she had invited him out to dinner), he freaked out.  He once told Frida’s sister that he didn’t think of her as a woman because she was clever. Clearly Frida and Strindberg were two people who should never have gotten married.

The marriage was immediately in trouble. On their wedding night, Strindberg tried to strangle Frida in his sleep, thinking she was his first wife. When Frida tried to help promote Strindberg’s career by writing articles about his work, he resented it.  He became verbally abusive, accusing her of being a whore. Then Frida discovered that she was pregnant. Given their precarious financial situation, Frida considered abortion which angered Strindberg. Since Strindberg didn’t want Frida to work, they had to move in with her grandparents. A move to Paris didn’t help mend the cracks in the marriage.  Strindberg wanted her to be a wife and mother.  Any ambition to be more would not be tolerated. The couple separated after 18 months and the marriage was eventually annulled. Strindberg would never see Frida or their daughter ever again.

Now 24, Frida moved back to Munich, determined to somehow make a living. Her daughter Kerstin was left behind in Austria with her mother.

On the rebound, Frida fell into the arms of another playwright Frank Wedekind, author of the controversial plays ‘Spring Awakening’ and the Lulu plays (Pandora’s Box).  His relationship with Frida was his first with a woman of his own class. That should have been her first warning. Just as she did in her relationship with Strindberg, Frida threw herself into promoting Wedekind’s career. As a thank you, Wedekind knocked her up.  So now Frida could add unwed mother to her resume.  When her son was born she named him Max Friedrich. Since he was conceived before her marriage to Strindberg was legally over, Frida could legally give him her husband’s last name. Although Frida meant well, this caused her son problems in later life.

Her affair with Wedekind now over, Frida dropped her son off with her mother, and continued her career in Munich. Freed from the shackles of marriage and motherhood, Frida pursued her new life with a vengeance.  Over the years, she constantly reinvented herself, from cultural impresario to art dealer to scenario writer.  With her lover, the poet Hanns Heinz Ewers, she started the first German cabaret in 1900. For a time, she was closely involved with several writers of the Young Vienna movement, such as the poet Peter Altenberg and the journalist Karl Kraus, whom she convinced to sponsor a reading of Wedekind's Pandora's Box.

There were more love affairs, but Frida was never able to find that one man who could truly understand her.  She would try to bind her lovers to her by making herself useful to them by promoting their work. But while they were happy to avail themselves of her help, in the long run, her difficult geniuses chose less complicated women.  Her affair with the writer Werner von Oesteren was a particularly stormy period in her life. On more than one occasion, she threatened him with a gun. In 1905, she sued him for harassing a detective that she had hired to follow him.  In London, she pursued the painter Augustus John relentlessly, until he brutally broke off the relationship.

She seems to have never really gotten over her marriage to Strindberg. Her discovery that her mother had interfered with their relationship behind her back seems to have softened her feelings towards him.  In her eyes, he almost became a saint after his death. From hating and resenting him, she created an idealized image of her ex-husband that little to do with reality. After his death in 1912, and her move to New York in 1914, Frida continued to promote his work, even directing a production of one of his plays. Later on, she wrote the memoir Marriage with Genius which was published in 1937.  Her relationships with her children were strained. Years would go by when Frida neither saw her children nor wrote to them. Years later, Frida tried to make up for the years of neglect, particularly with Kerstin but it was too late. She would never have a particularly close relationship with either of her children.

Returning to Austria after the First World War, Frida spent her last years in her family's summer residence at Mondsee and died there on June 28^th 1943 at the age of 71.

Further reading:

Monica Strauss, Cruel Banquet: The Life and Loves of Frida Strindberg, Harcourt Inc., 2000