Joey, Joey...Joey?

We all have a little Heatherton in us. 

CrazySexyCool

JOAQUIN PHOENIX
October 28, 1974

Happy Birthday to Joaquin Phoenix, the latest in a distinguished history of Hollywood beauties who have made crazy the new black.

Saint Jean

JEAN SEBERG
November 13, 1938 - September 8, 1979

The capsule biography of beautiful, doomed Jean Seberg reads like an improbable potboiler: a stunningly beautiful unknown is plucked from obscurity by legendary director Otto Preminger to star in his production of Saint Joan (1957); the film and untrained star are pilloried by critics, but she gains cult status as the heroine of New Wave cinema in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1959).

Seberg spends the next decade wavering between edgy foreign films and Hollywood hokum like Airport (1970); all the while, she is dogged by controversy surrounding her outspoken liberal politics, and even tapped by the FBI. Her (not unjustified) paranoia reaches macabre heights when a story is planted that the father of her unborn child is not her second husband, but a member of the Black Panthers; the stress leads Seberg to go into labor prematurely, resulting in a stillborn birth. A bereaved Seberg presents photos of the fetus to the press, to prove that her child was not of mixed race.

Now suicidally depressed, Seberg lives out a walking death wish for most of the 1970's; she even hurls herself under a Paris Metro train in an unsuccessful attempt at suicide. Blackballed from Hollywood and dependent on pills and alcohol, Seberg's agonizingly protracted self-destruction finally ends in 1979, when she is discovered dead in her car from an overdose, a suicide note clutched in her hand. Adding to her already operatic tale, conspiracy theories abound, with whispers of foul play and a cover up.

In stills and film, however, Seberg's mesmerizing grace and beauty still shine through; at times, she's a more pixieish Catherine Deneuve, at others an elegant Joey Heatherton, but always, distinctively, Jean Seberg. We hope that she's found peace. Viva Saint Jean!

Meet the Artist

Our friend, Stephen B. Whatley, is a phenomenal artist. He does lovely abstracts, portraits, landscapes and still life; but of course, we best love his whimsical, affectionate, glamorous cartoon tributes to the leading ladies of bygone Hollywood. This is his Classic Ladies in the 1970's, featuring everyone from The Gabors to Virginia Mayo -- click to enlarge and fully enjoy. You can see more of Steven's beautiful art here.

Worth a Thousand Words

Thanks to the absolutely marvelous Cinebeats blog, we are now utterly obsessed in eventually viewing two more impossible-to-find 60's flicks, based entirely and solely on these two stills:


JEAN SEBERG WEARING A PERFECT YSL SUIT IN MOMENT BY MOMENT (1965)


ELIZABETH TAYLOR DRESSED DOWN IN BOOM (1968)

Poor Butterflies

JEAN SEBERG (1938 - 1979)


FRANCES FARMER (1913 - 1970)


SHARON TATE (1943 - 1969)


INGER STEVENS (1934 - 1970)


JOI LANSING (1929 - 1972)


NATALIE WOOD (1938 - 1981)


DOROTHY DANDRIDGE (1922 - 1965)


PIER ANGELI (1932 - 1971)