Thursday, February 28, 2013

Video starring my brother Rod McCarey, Fun isn't it?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqIZa3PTX6c]

Grey Poupon "The Lost Footage"


Starring my brother Rod McCarey

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Jane Russell & Marilyn Monroe at Grauman's Chinese Theatre

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="640"]Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell This is a picture of Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell the night of the premiere of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." Taken at the Gramaun's Cihnese Theatre on June 26th, 1953.[/caption]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a_p9M6WKt8]

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Barnaby Conrad Jr. dies at 90; bullfighter, artist, saloonkeeper founded Santa Barbara Writers Conference

[caption id="attachment_323" align="aligncenter" width="600"]Barnaby Conrad Jr He was connected to me in getting me started writing novels. It has been a great experience, I was lucky to run into a man like him with his knowledge and it sure has treated me well. I just wanted you all to know him, he has written over 37 books so look him up.
-William Louis Grandner[/caption]

When Barnaby Conrad was nearly killed in a 1958 bullfight, his celebrity pals were buzzing about it at Sardi's in New York.

"Did you hear about poor Barnaby?" Eva Gabor asked Noel Coward in her thick Hungarian accent. "He was terribly gored in Spain."

"Oh, thank heavens," he sighed. "I thought you said he was bored."

That would have been a surprise.

Barnaby Conrad Jr. — bullfighter, bon vivant, portrait artist, saloonkeeper to the stars, author of 36 books, and founder of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, led a life that was anything but boring. Ninety years old, he died Tuesday in his Carpinteria home after a battle with congestive heart disease.

"He wasn't necessarily the world's best novelist or the best bullfighter or best artist or best piano player or best nightclub owner, but he was very good at all of them," said his son Barnaby Conrad III. "He was like a pentathlete."

Conrad's last work of fiction, a novel about presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth, was published when he was 88. Months later, he came out with his last work of nonfiction: "101 Best Sex Scenes Ever Written: An Erotic Romp through Literature for Writers and Readers."

While most of his work was nonfiction, Conrad was best known for his 1952 novel "Matador," one of the many books that were generated by his love of bullfighting. He knew the greatest bullfighters of his day and fought bulls himself as "El Nino de California" — the California Kid — at 47 corridas in Spain, Mexico and Peru.

Born into a wealthy family in San Francisco on March 27, 1922, Conrad attended the Taft School in Connecticut and studied art at Yale, where he graduated in 1943. His charcoal portraits of literary friends like Truman Capote and James Michener hang in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. He also painted Sinclair Lewis, the novelist he briefly served as a personal assistant after World War II.

Taking art classes one summer in Mexico City, Conrad was swept away by the lure of bullfighting.

"Fueled on youth and tequila, he jumped into the bullring one afternoon and caped the bull with his Brooks Brothers raincoat," his son said. "He was lucky he didn't get himself killed."

Instructed by seasoned bullfighters, Conrad kept at it and was gashed so severely in his right leg that he was declared unfit for military service. Instead, he joined the State Department and was named vice consul in Seville, Spain. The job gave him the chance to write and chase bulls — a good combination in an era when Ernest Hemingway set the tone for young men who wanted to write.

Conrad's first novel, "The Innocent Villa," published in 1948, drew little notice. His second novel, "Matador," a fictional account of the last day in the life of the legendary Spanish bullfighter Manolete, sold 3 million copies and was translated into 28 languages.



At 30, Conrad was flying high and opened a glitzy San Francisco nightspot he named after his best-seller. Herb Caen, the San Francisco Chronicle columnist, said it was fortunate that Conrad's publisher had made him change the original title.

"Who'd ever go to eat at a restaurant called Day of Fear?" Caen asked.

Night after night, El Matador drew A-list patrons: Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, William Randolph Hearst. Conrad, who wrote that he played "what might generously be called fraternity piano," sometimes entertained but more often simply mingled.

Even as a club owner, Conrad continued to write. Years later, he received a fan letter from crime writer Elmore Leonard, who told Conrad that the opening sentence of "La Fiesta Brava" was the best he'd ever read.

It was about the death of Manolete: "On August 27, 1947, a multimillionaire and a bull killed each other in Linares, Spain, and plunged an entire nation into deep mourning."

Tired of the surging sleaze in San Francisco — symbolized for Conrad by a topless shoeshine stand down the street from his club — he and his family moved to the Santa Barbara area in the early 1970s.

By then, his machismo was so established that Times columnist Jack Smith wrote of meeting him: "I was pleased to see he was growing bald. It eased the envy."

"But a boyish charm remained," Smith wrote with tongue in cheek. "A very bad man, one might guess, for women and bulls."

In 1972, Conrad founded the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, an annual extravaganza bringing together agents, writers, publishers and, over the years, literary legends such as William Styron, Joan Didion and William F. Buckley Jr. Conrad sold the conference in 2004, but it continues today.

Conrad wrote what he knew. In the 1980s, he chronicled his battle with alcoholism in a book called "Time Is All We Have."

Over decades, he settled into a daily routine of painting and writing — in longhand. Triple-bypass surgery in 2010 improved his health but, his son said, he started declining last year.

Bedridden but still sharp, he was reading a book when his doctor told him he had just three or four weeks to live.

"I guess I'd better read faster," he said.

He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Mary Nobles Conrad of Carpinteria; four children, author Barnaby III of San Francisco, artist Cayetana Conrad of Carpinteria, author Winston S. Conrad of Kamuela, Hawaii, and fashion designer Kendall Conrad Cameron of Montecito; two stepsons, William A. Slater of Los Angeles and Michael Slater of Ventura; eight grandchildren; and five step-grandchildren.

Source

Monday, February 18, 2013

Public outcry over Hughes’ bra

I knew Jane Russell well she said, " I met Mr. Hughes in 1941 it was Lords's accidents I was a"teetotaler, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow, Conservative, Christian bigot, but not racist.
William Louis Gardner

A Day With Mickey and Judy

Friday, February 15, 2013

Public outcry over Hughes’ bra

[caption id="attachment_308" align="alignright" width="583"]Jane Russell The bra that Howard Hughes supposedly created for Jane was fake, in reality she would place Kleenex's over her boobs and everybody thought it was a classic. -From Insider William Louis Gardner, author of "Confessions of a Hollywood Agent"[/caption]

In 1941, Director Howard Hughes, while filming the movie The Outlaw, felt that the camera did not do justice to Jane Russell's large bust. He employed his engineering skills to design an underwired, cantilevered bra to emphasise her assets. Hughes added rods of curved structural steel that were sewn into the brassiere below each breast. The rods were connected to the bra's shoulder straps. The arrangement allowed the breasts to be pulled upward and made it possible to move the shoulder straps away from the neck. The design allowed for any amount of bosom to be freely exposed.


Regardless, the emphasis on her breasts proved too much for the Hollywood Production Code Administration, which ordered cuts to the film. To obtain the Boards' required Seal of Approval, Hughes reluctantly removed about 40 feet, or a half-minute, of footage that featured Jane Russell's bosom. He still had problems getting the film distributed, so Hughes schemed to create a public outcry for his film to be banned. The resulting controversy generated enough interest to get The Outlaw into the theatres for one week in 1943, before being withdrawn due to objections by the Code censors. When the film was finally released in 1950, it was a box office hit.

Russell later asserted that she never wore Hughes' bra, and that Hughes never knew. This story is now considered to be an urban myth. -Xtimeline

The bra that Howard Hughes supposedly created for Jane was fake, in reality she would place Kleenex's over her boobs and everybody thought it was a classic. -From Insider William Louis Gardner, author of "Confessions of a Hollywood Agent"

Jane Russell calls Putin a Jerk

[caption id="attachment_307" align="aligncenter" width="251"]Jane Russell Poster Jane Russell movie star under contract to Howard Hughes for 20 years![/caption]

Jane Russell was responsible for bringing 51,000 orphans to live in the USA during 50's. Jane had the class Putin  is a jerk and classless, agree? Jane also put together in Hollywood a huge Charity called WAIF [World Adoption International Fund]. It had great success, all the stars at that time became members. Jane also had a lot of influence over the Generals in Washington, that's how she was able to get those children here into the U.S.


 -From Insider William Louis Gardner, author of “Confessions of a Hollywood Agent“