December :: 2011 :: Beverley Jackson

Let’s Talk Paris Instead of New Year’s

by Beverley

December 28th, 2011

Mother wanted drama for her new Rolleiflex camera. Paris 1953.

Well it’s just about upon us and I imagine most of you have big party plans. I have to confess New Year’s Eve is not a favorite holiday of mine. I gave up accepting ALL New Year’s eve parties some years ago. I prefer to stay in comfort of my own home with my dog planning for the coming year and having a glass of vintage Pol Roger at 9:00 as we watch the ball descend in Time Square. And I go back so far it was Guy Lombardo I heard play Auld lang Syne as I sipped my champagne. Sometimes when I’m cozy in bed with Rennie my wire hair daschund snuggling close in the dark I play my IPod and do a bit of looking back as it plays I Left My Heart in San Francisco, Spanish Eyes, Autumn in New York, April in Paris and At the Balalika, Then to sleep to start a new year filled with enthusiasm for the future.

So what can I blog about New Year’s? Well since a trip to Paris is on the books for the coming year, let’s talk Paris past that comes alive as I play the music of Aznavour, Trenet, Montand, Gainsbourg, Piaf, Chevalier. I’ll just turn on my IPod to them and tell you a story or two.

Charles Aznavour the night I was taken back stage to meet him after his marvelous performance at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara

Paris has actually been very much on my mind having just seen Midnight in Paris for the second time. When I first saw the film I thought of writing to Air France and suggesting they put a kiosk for booking flights to Paris in the lobby of every theatre playing the film.

The people may sometimes infuriate me but I, like so many others, have a love affair with the beautiful city. My first trip to Paris was in 1953 with my parents. Taxis were old broken down Citroen with drivers who wore black beret and all had a burning Gauloise cigarette hanging out of the corner of their mouths. And frequently a dog sitting in the passenger seat up front. They never understood my French directions, or if they did they pretended they didn’t. Oh yes and they all tooted their horns loudly and constantly.

Paris 1953. One of my favorite photographs in any of the albums.

There were public bathrooms for men on every other corner called pissoir and if you left your date to go to the ladies room in a bistro you’d probably run into him coming through another door into the area you were entering for women because they were one and the same. And the bathroom facilities in some places were really only a couple of steps ahead of the kind I find in remote areas of China.

Look at the 1953 souvenir pissoir I brought back from Paris I’ve just located hidden away on a top shelf in a back closet. American customs agents didn’t know what to make of it when I came back into the country. I remember just the shop on the Rue de Rivoli where I bought it. They sell mainly tee shirts now! But in 1953 a ceramic pissoir that held cigarettes was a big deal.

Mother was carried away with her new Rolliflex camera and insisted daddy pose at a pissoir.

There were great cabarets. That first trip in 1953 my friend David Morgan flew to Paris to show me the Paris he knew when he’d lived there. That meant magical night clubs like L’Elephant Blanc or Les Ambassadeurs where 20 violinists would serenade at your table, Russian cabarets with gypsy violinists and Cossack clad waiters rushed around with flaming shish kebob on swords. The influence of old Russian was there. Then late at night we’d go to some of the popular Black Jazz places for great music. And as night eased into day it would be hot onion soup in the bustling market Les Halles where Paris was preparing another day. It was all very romantic. Yes, I’ve been madly in love with Paris and in Paris. The latter once in my youth and once in middle age. Now I’m only in love with Paris.

So many memories come back to me as I sit here in Santa Barbara at my computer. One thing the film has done is send me to the bookshelves to find the late Art Buchwald‘s I’ll Always Have Paris and when I finish that I’ll find Janet Flanner. Art came to Santa Barbara once to lecture and I decided to call the Santa Barbara Biltmore where I knew he was staying and leave a message asking for an interview for my column By The Way. Margaret, the switchboard operator whom I knew well put me on hold and next thing I knew I heard a gruff voice, male, saying “Hello!” I stammered “Is this Mr. Buchwald?” “Well that’s who you called isn’t it?” “Well I didn’t want to talk to you,” I mumbled. “Then why the hell did you call me?” “I meant to just leave a message.” “Well you got me!”

At that point I pulled myself together and asked if I could interview him. “Yeah, come right over to the Biltmore and have dinner with me. I don’t like eating alone!” he ordered. “Well I have a young daughter here I can’t leave and it’s too short notice to get a sitter.” “I’ve got a young daughter too. Bring her along.” And he hung up. So we got out of our blue jeans as we called them then, dressed up and went off to a wonderful evening with Art Buchwald!

Rereading I’ll Always Have Paris after many years I was amused with what Buchwald wrote about a visit to Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s chateau in Pauillac where I have spent so much time in years past. Speaking of Alix Lichine, wine writer and vintner, Art writes:

“Lichine briefed me on wine-tasting in his own cellars. ‘Always swish the wine around in your mouth clockwise for Bordeaux, counter-clockwise for Burgundy. Never swallow it; spit it out.

“We went to the Chateau Margaux and the Chateau Latour, and I spat. Lichine was pleased with his pupil. Our last stop was Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, owned by Baron Philippe de Rothschild. Baron Rothschild, a charming host, showed us through his caves and then invited us to an elegantly furnished glass salon overlooking all his vineyards. One of many priceless items in the room was an 18th century rug. A servant came by and handed me a glass of champagne. I swirled it around in my mouth. Lichine looked at me in horror, and screamed, ‘NO!’ It was too late. I spat it on the carpet.”

Now instead of words let’s look at pictures of Paris 1953, more than 50 years ago:

David Morgan hosted a party in an Arab cabaret. Can’t remember the couple in the middle but that is my mother on the left with a sort of “yes I’m the chaperon” look on her face.	Mother and I went to Longchamps Race Track for the important Arc d’Triomphe
Mother, Dad and me by the Seine 1953

There were many trips back to Paris after 1953. Here is photo from one in 1965 when I took “a certain seven year old” to Paris for the first time. This Christmas Eve Jamie Constance and Robbie Woodward reminded me that is how I referred to my daughter (on the right) through the 22 years I wrote my column for the Santa Barbara News-Press. Of course it changed after each birthday and the years passed quickly by…

Paris 1965

Artists Danya and Bruce Bomberger, interior designer Bill Cornfield and I were all in Paris one trip and we took a driving trip together through Normandy and Britanny. Danya and Bill wanted to stop at every Brocante (a low quality antique store) we passed and we passed a lot of them! Bruce would get out his sketch pad while they shopped and I’d take off to investigate markets and food stores. And once Bill reminds me they couldn’t find me. I’d followed a wonderful fragrance and found it beyond an open window of a kitchen. The Breton responsible for that heavenly fragrance, a delicious veal stew, laughed at me sticking my head through the window to his kitchen inhaling deeply and smiling a blissful smile and invited me in to try some. Bill says they located me by my laughter and there I was sitting at the kitchen table eating and laughing and having a lovely time. 1977

That’s enough looking back for now even though I only look back to happy occasions. I’ve got to get ready for the New Year and so it’s time to start planning for the next trip to Paris! Happy New Year wishes to all of you. Look up, look ahead, don’t look back to old sadness but glory in happy memories and move on searching for what is good is my wish for everyone.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories My Life

Embroidering The Wings Of Angels With Silver Beads

by Beverley

December 27th, 2011

L’Eglise Saint-Roch was filled with floral tributes from all the important names connected with Paris haute couture. The priest, Rev. Christian Lancrey-Javel said, as he helped lay a black lace shroud on the coffin, “The indefatigable Francois Lesage might be up there now busily embroidering the wings of angels.

I would never turn down an invitation to lunch with a very attractive Frenchman so when Francois Lesage invited me to lunch with him at Bistro Gardens in Beverly Hills in 1989 I accepted with great pleasure. And lunch naturally turned into a Santa Barbara News-Press column for me.

Francois Lesage & Beverley Jackson at I. Magnins

Following luncheon I went with him to the I. Magnin‘s department store, now also departed, in Beverly Hills to see the new House of Lesage collection of jewelry being sold there. Well it turned into quite an expensive luncheon because I could not resist a lovely coral and pearl bracelet I spotted.

Lesage coral bracelet

Now sadly I read in London obituaries that Francois Lesage has died at the age of 82 after a long illness. He was a truly charming gentleman with fine sense of humor and he was in a business that absolutely and totally fascinated me. In 1924 Albert and Marie Louise Lesage, his parents, purchased an embroidery firm Michonet which had once been embroiderers to Napoleon III. In 1925 they changed the name and it became the House of Lesage, an embroidery business specializing in a technique that enables a greater range of shades in beads or thread within one color and a wider range of different colors. Their technique was first put to use by the famous designer of the period Madeleine Vionnet.

At the age of 18 Marie Louise and Albert’s son Francoise left Paris and went to Hollywood to learn contemporary costume decoration from the famous studio designers including Edith Head, Irene, Adrian and especially my adored friend the late Jean Louis. One of the most famous dresses in the 20th century was the great gown Jean designed for Marlene Dietrich to wear in one of her Los Vegas performances and that gown was beaded by Lesage in Paris. To see the great Dietrich in this incredible gown, covered on entrance by the most glamorous luxurious white fox coat with train ever made, was a never to be forgotten experience. The beading was done on transparent silk and there was great debate about whether you could really see through it or not. I couldn’t tell when I sat up close for a performance in Las Vegas and Jean never confided the truth to me! He could be a real pixie!

Before Albert Lesage died in 1949 Francoise Lesage did well in Hollywood. He had ultimately opened his own boutique on the Sunset Strip where all the big stars were his customers. But it was goodbye Hollywood and all its glamour when Albert died. Back to Paris to take over the family firm.

However he went back to other stars, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, Balmain, Dior, Givency… The beading that Lesage created for the great haute couture gowns can probably never be accomplished again in the future. The artisans who executed the designs are dying out, although looking ahead Francois set up am embroidery school in 1992 connected with his workshops for young people to learn the great techniques of embroidery and beading past. Chanel who bought the House of Lesage in 2002, following his example, have I understand recently purchased a famous Parisan feathermaker Andre Lemarie so that another ancient art can be passed on to future generations.

The two items I have ever most coveted in western design (we’re not counting imperial Chinese robes here!) were beaded by Lesage. One was a jacket for Saint Laurent solidly beaded on a design of Van Gogh sunflowers. The beading was done in layers to display the thick areas of paint in Van Gogh’s work. And the price of the jacket was in a range with a small Van Gogh painting of the time. And worth it. More than 600 hours of work went into each jacket. Speaking of value of work, the wedding dress Lesage beaded for King Khaled of Saudi Arabia’s daughter is said to have cost 60 million French francs, approximately 11 million U.S. dollars at the time. That’s a lot of beads, sequins and pearls! Or maybe real gems?

Luckily for me one of new things Francois ultimately did was go into a line of jewelry and beaded accessories created by Gerard Tremolet for Lesage in 1987. Lucky for me because I could finally afford Lesage — the bracelet and a pair of earrings!

The other piece I coveted was a Christian Dior ball gown from the collection of 1949. I won’t try to describe it but here is a picture. It was perfection! Several of them were sold. I saw one close up in an exhibition of Dior in New York at the Metropolitan Museum years ago. That gown had been made for Mrs. Byron Foy who had donated it to the museum. The other time I saw it was at the marvelous “Hommage a Christian Dior 1947-1957” exhibition in Paris in 1988. This exhibition also displayed framed “samples” of the great beading used on the gowns which were prepared for designers to chose from. For every collection, spring, fall, winter, summer from 250 to 300 samples were made by Lesage for their customers to chose from. One sample represents 40 to 60 hours of work and about 100,000 stitches. Each year Lesage uses 750 pounds of pearls keeping a lot of oysters busy! And 100 million sequins are used.

page from the book “The Master Touch of Lesage”

Brown Jacket with Lesage beading

Lesage beading does indeed deserve to be framed. Or preserved somehow. A very old Galanos dress that could never fit again but had great Lesage beading found a second life as part of a brown velvet jacket my clever dressmaker and friend Quy created. Quy was fascinated working on it as there was some cutting and piecing needed and the Lesage work was so finely done not one single bead came loose in the process. I found an original design for beaded work in “The Master Touch of Lesage” by Palmer White that was created originally for Karl Lagerfeld in 1986. Comparing it with my embroidery, Jimmy Galanos might have been influenced by that design for Lagerfeld, eliminating a very elaborate border of a supposed ruby and diamond Cartier necklace and going heavy on tiny yellow, orange, red and white sequins. If I’d found this earlier in life I could have tried to verified it. Galanos was a close friend of the late Maggie and Jean Louis and we were together at their New Year’s eve parties in Montecito most years. This comes to mind as New Year’s eve is upon us now.

Francois Lesage, working with his skilled beaders and embroiderers, produced great beauty during his lifetime. In my opinion he deserves to be considered a great artist. And as I said originally, a very charming man.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Editorial, My Life

A Christmas Story Unlike Others

by Beverley

December 18th, 2011

Paper the cookies were wrapped in…

It seems to me there is nothing more to write about Christmas but everyone is trying. Well I can’t just let it pass so I’ll tell you a story. I always have one of those!

Two years ago I got an email from someone with DE at end of their email address which I thought to be Denmark but it wasn’t it was Germany. It was a very polite note from a man named Georg Gebhard who it turned out lived in Cologne with his wife Christel.

Dr. Gebhard explained they had my book Kingfisher Blue and they collected kingfisher feather jewelry and they were going to Tuscon, Arizona (I assumed for some warm weather in March). He said if I would allow them to come and see my collection they would travel via Los Angeles instead of New York.

I discussed it with friends at dinner that night. “How do you know they aren’t burglars?” one friend said. “Or serial murderers,” someone else interjected. “You can’t do that, invite total strangers from internet in!” another cautioned.

Well, I didn’t listen and the end of February Christel and Georg arrived to see me. We had the most wonderful visit. I found out they weren’t serial murders or international jewel thieves, they were famous mineralogists. And they weren’t going to Tuscon for the weather but as featured lecturers at the great Tuscon International Gem Fair. And they were taking some of their famous collection of rare minerals to display at the Fair. Not only that, I discovered the mineral Christelite was discovered by Christel and is named for her.

And most amazingly they had brought my book to be signed and informed me they had paid $400 for the out of print copy. I nearly fainted. This was a $50 book I made $4.70 a copy on. Georg then urged me to go to my computer and look up the book on Amazon. That’s when I really nearly fainted. There were two used copies for $1,350 each and those two soon sold as I followed them closely. I immediately called my publisher and asked if I was dead and didn’t know it! Incidentally the book can now be found for about $300 as seeing that amazing $1,350 price people started parting with their own used copies.

But back to my visitors. A lovely friendship grew out of my gamble on a polite note from Germany. The Gebhards have urged me two years in a row to go to Tuscon for the gem fair with them and oh I wanted to. But lingering Shingles horror prevented it. I’ve been to the event once but just saw the tourist things really. Going with them I’d be in the inner circle seeing the great gems and minerals. And they are such fun to be with. I’ve mentioned their name to people like my old friends Carol and Mike Ridding who have internationally famous Silverhorn Jewelers headquartered in Santa Barbara and they looked at me with new respect! I was a friend of the Gebhards.

The enchanting Christmas card from Christel and Georg Gebhard that accompanied the cookies. And there are the most delightful sparkles on the tree lights, kitchen utensils and angel wings.

Alright, you asking what does all this have to do with Christmas. Well it has to do with a wonderful package that arrived today, filled with Minerals? NO! Filled with marvelous Christel-made Christmas cookies just like I’ve had at Christmas fairs in Baden Baden and Munich at Christmas time long ago. I could actually smell the heavenly aroma through the thick box. The aroma that takes me once again to some of those enchanting Christmas street fairs in Germany. I’m writing this well enough ahead so I don’t have to share the cookies because they’ll all be gone by the time Kathleen Fetner gets this post up. Well, I guess I’ll have to share some with Kathleen because she does such wonderful things with my blog, finding the incredible videos and all the techie stuff I can’t do for myself. And I should add the card accompanying the cookies was the dearest card ever. Kathleen will be posting it so you can see for yourselves.

So I’ll just end with merry Christmas and happy holidays whatever it is you celebrate.

And now I’ll pack some cookies for Kathleen and eat some more myself! I think I’ll start with the hazel nut ones. I REALLY like those!

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories My Life

A Colorful But Rather Self Indulgent Life

by Beverley

December 14th, 2011

It was bigger news in Paris and London than in Santa Barbara, California but I read with interest the obits in the European papers about the recent death of la Baronne de Cabrol. Born Marguerite d’Harcourt the daughter

of Etienne, Marquis d’Harcourt, she was known throughout her life as Daisy. Reading these obits la Baronne emerges as one of the very last of an era of French aristocratic society who swirled in a seemingly glamorous whirl in living their lives. I met her only once, casually, when a group of us shared a chartered plane to fly from Paris to Bordeaux for a Rothschild wedding in the 1980’s. She was part of a very colorful group of fellow passengers including the wife of the President of France, Mme. Jacques Chirac, designer Pierre Cardin, the glamorous Vicomtesse de Ribe among others. But I’ve read quite a bit about Daisy Cabrol through the years.

It appears her years of marriage to Baron Fred de Cabrol de Moute were happy years, colorful years. Her late husband was a talented amateur artist and interior designer who not only did work for homes and chateaux for many of their group but also for such places as the Hotel George V in Paris. He was particularly known for intriguing scrapbooks he kept of photographs, newspaper clippings and his own delightful water colors that visually documented their world.

Daisy loved parties and society columns were filled with pictures of her during the era of great balls in Paris, during the 1950’s in particular. She especially liked costume balls and hosted many herself. It should be explained that these extravaganza galas were not the parties we call balls in this country which are generally glorified dinner dances. They were great events with the most famous haute couture designers in Paris doing the costumes, entertainment produced by famous name entertainers or the entire troop of the Ballet Russe or the Cuevas Ballet performing, and on occasion complete dramatic temporary buildings were built to stage the galas.

As the obits go the London Telegraph gets into the sexier part of Daisy Cabrol’s life more than the parties. British papers are prone to do that! They bring up the story that in 1945 the British Ambassador to France, Duff Cooper, (the paper calls him the Lothario Ambassador to Paris!) took an interest in Daisy which upset his then mistress Louise de Vilmorin to the point that his wife Lady Diana Cooper had to console de Vilmirin and assure her that Duff really loved her. The British and French are inclined to be more understanding in such situations than Americans. Cooper, in writing about the incident in his fascinating letters now out in book form edited by his son the Viscount Norwich. described her as “sweet but not very clever girl. She is very proud of being the only one in Paris who is faithful to her husband and says she intends to remain so. I really don’t mind.” Fred de Cabrol died in 1997 and I haven’t been able to verify if she kept her word on this!

I have found one incidence of her not being very clever. That is when she attended a 1951 ball with theme of costumes of 1900, hosted by Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles, dressed as an armless and legless woman! This in my mind brought the theatrical self indulgent way of life for many in her group to a new low. La Baronne’s life wasn’t really a life that contributed much to her fellow man but it has given those of us who are ancient enough to remember and/or read books about the European world following WWII some amusing reading. Speaking of which I’m deep into a new British book West End Front by Matthew Sweet on what went on during World War II in London’s grand Hotels such as the Ritz, Dorchester, and Claridge’s where many of the famous and infamous took refuge during the Nazi bombings of London. Fascinating to read of leading political figures, movie stars, courtesans, Nazi spies, sharing limited space in underground shelters beneath the hotels during bombing raids and living down the halls from each other on a full time basis. And most interesting to me I’m reading incidents involving people I actually knew, in a few cases quite well. So there is bound to be a blog forthcoming on this book eventually!

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Editorial, My Life

Thank Heavens for Julia Child and Trader Joe’s

by Beverley

December 8th, 2011

Have you ever had that experience of walking into the kitchen one sunny morning and it’s suddenly very obvious that it has been 20 years since you’d repainted and it shows? Well maybe you haven’t, your home is probably newer than mine. But it can happen. Yes, it has happened to me. “Okay ” I said to myself and Rennie (my spoiled miniature wirehair daschund). “We get it painted.” I called a perfectionist friend and secured the name of marvelous painters and I’m going going to have a clean neat kitchen. “We’ll be there at 8:00 promptly,” they said happily. Not my best time of day but I didn’t say a word. “And please have everything cleared out.”

Cleared out started with seven different bottles of assorted soy sauces, four kinds of vinegars, three olive oils, bottles of sherry, Madeira, Marsala wine, and all the “use them all the time spices” taking up the whole right side of the stove top. I cook basically salt free now but out in case salt is needed there is regular salt, Lawry’s seasoning salt, salt in a cute grinder, Himilayan and Dead Sea rock salt with a miniature grater as well as grinder jars of plain black pepper, five color pepper, lemon pepper and white pepper. Hanging above to be removed is my collection of antique copper pots and in the other corner waiting to be carted to card tables in the dining room my blender, Cuisinart, toaster oven, electric tea pot, coffee grinder for golden flax, big bag of dog food, bowls of lemons, limes, and bananas. Potassium you know, bananas that is. And tucked in very back a brown paper bag with avocados ripening in it. On the shelf over the sink there is the cute wooden mushroom shaped thing and round of wood I use for crushing garlic, a bunch of lemons ripening, pomegranites my neighbors brought from their ranch and a 10 year old jar of honey in case of burns. The fire extinguisher is on the floor but leaning against a wall to be painted so that has to be schlepped into the dining room as well. And can’t forget the items on top of the refrigerator — Chinese bamboo steamers and lids of every size from 4″ diameter to 14″ with one lid you wouldn’t believe. Customs insisted it was a hat as I came through on one trip en route home from remote parts of China. “It’s a lid for my bamboo steamer!” I’d argued. They listed it as a taxable hat.

But this was just the beginning. The book shelves of cook books lay waiting. Two shelves of Chinese, one shelf each for Italian, French, and “assorted countries” — not sure Charlie Trotter would like his five very good cook books thrown into other assorted countries but then Charlie isn’t French, Italian or Chinese now is he. But its the very top shelf that got to me — first with an allergy attack because dust had been gathering up there for at least 30 years. The other way it got to me was what was there, mainly sort of ancient pamphlets and booklets given out by various companies with recipes. You know, Jello Company on how to make 20 kinds of fruit jello molds. I realized that pre-Julia Child we actually used those things.

Before my EBay seller gets them I’ll go into a bit of detail for you:

True Grits Cookbook

True Grits by Rosa Tusa and Sam C. Rawls is a book for “Yankees who don’t know a ‘Limping Susan’ from a ‘Hopping John’, and for Southerners too, who always wanted to know but were afraid to ask.” I wanted to know how to make a Hopping John? I can’t believe it. Even at my youngest most unsophisticated I could never have wanted to make a Hopping John. But he’s been up there waiting for me. One pound dried black-eyed peas, 1/2 pound salt pork sliced, 1 teaspoon Tabasco….No I don’t think so.

The Best of Kahlua has some stains on it and I can see why. Kahlua Chocolate Pralines, Black Russian Brownies, Kahlua Eggnog Pie. Yes, this one might have a second life with me. Rennie of course being a little dog can’t have chocolate — not that she hasn’t tried.

"Well if I can't have chocolate a girl's got to have some fun!"

The James River Plantations Cookbook: A Glimpse Into the Homes and Kitchens of Old Virginia. Berkeley Pecan Pie served with Shirley Sauce: 1/2 pound butter, 10 tablespoons brown sugar, yolks of 2 eggs, 10 wineglasses of wine, 1 glass brandy. I think not. I like my guests able to carry on some sort of conversation with dessert not pass out from the sauce. Aunt Lucy’s Fat Pie is even worse for you than Shirley’s sauce. But the riverside homes are lovely.

Shirley Plantation color photo: On the mahogany sideboard in the dining room of Shirley rests the silver saucepan in which the Wine Sauce always was made.

James River Plantations Cookbook

Crepes and Other Flaming Desserts: Reminds me of night long ago when my best friend, the late Consuelo Courtright La Cava’s father Hernando Courtright was opening a very fancy new dining room at the Beverly Hills Hotel he called the Persian Room. I think he was influenced by the cabaret of the same name in the old Plaza Hotel where a singer named Hildegard offered dramatic love songs nightly while she peeled off her opera length gloves and waved a huge silk handkerchief. We had been through course after course of flaming soup, flaming shish kebab, cherries jubilee made at our tables, when I looked up and saw a waiter rushing by with a dish we hadn’t been served. I stopped the waiter and said, “We haven’t had one of those!” He called back over his shoulder as he dashed on, “You don’t want it. The bread tray caught fire!”

A dusty little book The Big Spread – an Encylopedia of Hors d’oeuvres and Canapes by Ruth Chier Rosen. First page I turned to was Chopped Liver Pineapple. No I think I’ll pass. Thousand Island Dip? No. Bacon wrapped around Watermelon pickles.

Next booklet…

The Seven day Milk Diet for Women doesn’t even specify non-fat? Next…

The Zodiac Diet Cook Book 1970. Okay I’m Scorpio. Scorpio – You are the most passionate of any othe zodiacal sign… Alright but what should I eat on my diet? Tomato Aspic. I thought that went out with dinosaurs. But in fairness looking back it was kind of good.

Wick and Lick – A Gazette of Chafing Dish Specialties; This was probably a necessity considering when I got married in 1956 Sterling silver chafing dishes were a gift of choice. I got nine of them and two copper. Well there’s a recipe for Cherries Jubilee. I do have three of the chafing dishes packed away somewhere. Maybe worth a try. Oh but last chapter is Menu for Safety and that cautions more than 1/3 of injuries from home accidents occur in the kitchen. One more thing good about Trader Joe’s pop ’em in the oven and heat as opposed to flaming in a chafing dish.

Here’s one Cointreau – The Slow Glow: Well not so slow if they use Shirley’s Sauce proportions.

A collection of Choice Recipes by St. Jude Hospital Guild 1963-1964; Even a children’s hospital guild can’t get off the alcohol kick. Grasshoppers for Eight takes 1 quart vanilla ice cream, 1 cup green Creme de Menthe, 2 cups milk, 1 cup Vodka. But I have to admit I used to drink things like that long ago. Oh those late late nights when the night clubs on the Sunset Strip closed and we gathered at a small place on lower La Cienega to hear a wonderful young Afro-American pianist and singer name Bobby Short. We’d sit at the piano bar enraptured drinking things like Pink Squirrels. I get nauseaus even writing the name now.

Here’s an old yellowed booklet A Cook’s Tour – Plantation Recipes from the Bayou. The drawings of homes are enchanting. Oreilles de Cochon or Pigs Ears that starts with a heaping teaspoon of lard not so appealing. Rabbit Sauce Piquant which calls for 3 wild rabbits cut in serving pieces could be easily supplied in Santa Barbara the last couple of years. We’ve had rabbit epidemic but oh those tiny bunnies munching on our lawns and leaves are so adorable who could possibly…

Now here’s one I’ll hang on to because there is a blog brewing about a trip I took long before Castro to Cuba with my parents.

Cuna Del Daiquiri Cocktail – La Habana Cuba. You have to wait for that one. So does Ebay.

How to Dress, Ship and Cook Wild Game 1945 Remington Arms Company Inc. Didn’t expect to find them in the cookbook business! It covers everything from opossum, raccoon, woodchuck to mountain sheep, caribou, moose and elk. EBay gets that one.

The Hawaiian Homemaker’s Favorite Island Recipes 1956. But what’s an Hawaiian recipe booklet without a recipe for Poi. They have a Poi Cocktail that calls for 4 cups milk, sugar, salt, nutmeg, vanilla, rum and 2/3 cup poi. But how do you make poi? I never liked it really but Hawaii without poi? Ebay.

Well this gives you an idea. There are at least 50 more. In conclusion I’ll say one thing “Thank heavens for Julia Child… and Trader Joe’s!”

One of nights I was a participant in Julia's TV show that was filmed in a Hope Ranch home in Santa Barbara

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories My Life

What Svetlana Stalin and I had in Common

by Beverley

December 5th, 2011

A friend asked me, “Did you ever know Svetlana Stalin Peters who just died?” And my answer was “No, but I read her first book and I did have a one-evening indirect contact with her. “That indirect contact with her was I had her ex-husband, the late William Wesley Peters, as my dinner partner at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West on one occasion. His widow Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, a former Serb Montenegrin dancer, had learned my beau Dwight Hart was in Phoenix, Arizona where Taliesin West is located. Mrs. Wright had been quite attracted to Dwight during her stays at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco which he ran for Bob Odell who owned the Clift and the Santa Barbara Biltmore. So upon hearing he was visiting near her Taliesin West she immediately called and invited him to dine. Dwight informed her he could come if he was able to bring the friend he was traveling with and she said he could bring the friend.

Mrs. Wright, having expected a male friend was amazingly rude to me the entire evening. After being introduced she immediately turned me over to architect Wes Peters who had been married for 20 months to the daughter of Josef Stalin. A wedding Mrs. Wright had arranged. The handover to Peters was fine with me. Wes Peters proved to be a charming, very intelligent and amusing gentleman. He showed me some of the more hidden fascinating areas of Taliesin West before we went in to dine. Not surprisingly he turned out to be my dinner partner with my date Dwight far away at the end of the very long table next to the hostess. Dinner was good though uninspired. What surprised me was we were waited on by young men who were students at Taliesin West. All wore expensive perfectly fitted evening clothes. Dwight had been informed that dinner was black tie and fortunately I had packed a very pretty long gown for another event in Phoenix. I was told that the young future architects serving us paid at least $50,000 a year to study at Taliesin West in those days, study and wait table for Mrs. Wright! That was a great deal of money in the 1970’s! The other dinner guests were all male, basically the top men at Taliesin West. After Frank Lloyd Wright’s death it obviously was a male operation run by a matriarch.

Wes made a fascinating dinner partner. I plied him with questions about Falling Waters in Mill Run, PA, one of Wright’s most famous commissions, as well as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City which Wes also worked on. And I told him the saga of my mother deciding when I was about eight that I had a speaking voice that needed improving. I mumbled! She found a retired British Shakespearean actor named Guy Bates Post and once a week I was deposited at a fascinating Frank Lloyd Wright home in the Los Feliz area where he rented a room for teaching. The fascinating luxury home had been reduced to a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright boarding house! It wasn’t the huge Ennis House on the hill recently purchased by Ron Burkle, nor Wright’s famous Hollyhock House, but a small residence on Franklin Avenue basically unknown today in the shadow of the other two. To me it was rather Persian more than Mayan in concept and once inside there was a long narrow courtyard surrounded by the long narrow house. And there was a long narrow pool with water lilies just inside the courtyard. I remember it well because once I wasn’t paying attention and I fell into it. I don’t remember a lot about Mr. Post except he was very dramatic and smelled of alcohol most of the time. But I guess he did his job because my mother was very satisfied with my speaking voice when the lessons concluded, no more mumbling, and I ended up winning lots of debating contests in high school. I sometimes thought however that these were based more upon my speaking voice than my logic!!

Well while I’m on this subject… A few years ago I was in Los Angeles with some time to spare and went exploring the Los Felix area where I grew up. And I swung by the Wright house where I learned not to mumble. The exterior looked the same. Some men were hauling out furniture that had been used inside for a just concluded photo shoot. I asked one of them if there was anyone in charge inside and he said the property manager. I went in and the very nice gentleman showed me around. Not much was changed except no sign of the pool. He told me that investigators had been curious about the house because the main suspect for the Black Dahlia murders, a doctor, had rented rooms there at one time. He told me it was suspected there might be other bodies buried somewhere. At that point I said had anyone checked where the original pool was. “What pool?” Well I’ve never heard if they checked but the Philip Marlow in me says that’s where the bodies are!!!

Now back to Taliesin West: Following dinner we all piled into golf carts to go from the dining room to the theatre for a movie. Dwight was whisked off first with our hostess and I went in another one with Wes. And Dwight and I were further separated by all possible distance in the theatre. However I couldn’t have been sent into Siberia for a total evening with a more delightful partner than the late William Wesley Peters, sadly known mainly for having been married for 20 months to dreaded dictator Josef Stalin’s daughter who has just died at the age of 85.

Incidentally what film did we see that night? Expecting something intellectual I was most surprised when the Beatles came on in “A Hard Day’s Night”. Dwight slept through the film to Mrs. Wright’s very obvious annoyance.

In one of the obits I’ve read Lana Peters, as Stalin’s daughter chose to be called in America, had one comment for the press when she divorced Wes Peters and left Taliesin West: “I came away less than glowingly impressed by the matriach and management of Taliesin.” So while I never met Stalin’s daughter, we really did have something in common!

And while I’m into to things Russian, the great Danish ballet dancer David Hallberg, who recently left New York Ballet to become a principle dancer in Moscow to dance with the famed Bolshoi company and particularly to partner Natalia Osipova, hasn’t gotten off to such a great start as you might or might not have read. Before they could dance together Osipova accepted a too tempting to turn down invitation to join the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg. And even worse, although his opening night reviews at the Bolshoi dancing Sleeping Beauty were greatest raves possible, it turns out he sprained his ankle near the very beginning of the performance. But the show of perfection went on! Interviewed a few days later he confessed he told no one of his accident until the performance was over. “Russians love that kind of drama in the theater. It would have been really dramatic, but nothing would have been accomplished. When stress sets in and pressure, I focus. Had it (sprained ankle) happened two days before it would have been a catastrophe because now I can’t dance. I can barely walk right now.”

Well from now on every time I wake up in the morning with aches and pains instead of complaining I’ll think of David Hallberg and the show going on achieving greatness in the world of dance.

Darci Kistler and Beverley Jackson at USCB Faculty Club. The interesting wood paneling behind us was part of a ceiling purchased for UCSB Faculty Club from William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon.

Speaking of great ballet dancers, beautiful sweet magnificent dancer Darci Kistler, now retired at age 47 from the New York City Ballet, was in Santa Barbara several weeks ago. And I had the great fortune to be one of a very small group invited to watch a Master Class she conducted with ballet students at University of California Santa Barbara. It was quite wonderful to watch her turn shy, frightened or untalented or both, students into glowing performers. Her kind encouraging words were there for all. “Beautiful!” she exclaimed when a step was finally performed correctly after some very bad mistakes. Again and again she instilled if not confidence at least momentary pride. Not all Master Classes are conducted so graciously.

Following the event Darci, Annette Caleel, Dilling Yang (wife of UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang) and several others and I enjoyed luncheon together in the Faculty Club. Darci confessed that when she was young she wanted to be a singer but she had no voice so she turned to dance. Good choice! And now her 15 year old daughter wants to sing. And she has a fine voice. Well two great dancers in a family are really enough. Darci is married to Peter Martins, Ballet Master in Chief of New York City Ballet where he danced from 1967 until he retired 1983. Maybe it is time for a singer in the Martins family…

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Editorial, My Life

Archive for December 2011

Let’s Talk Paris Instead of New Year’s

Embroidering The Wings Of Angels With Silver Beads

A Christmas Story Unlike Others

A Colorful But Rather Self Indulgent Life

Thank Heavens for Julia Child and Trader Joe’s

What Svetlana Stalin and I had in Common