The Biggest Mother of Them All

This ain't your first time at the rodeo; some of you recognized our latest Mystery Guest as full frontal Faye Dunaway! The mask was made for the film adaptation of Christina Crawford's poisonous memoirs, Mommie Dearest (1981), which effectively killed off two careers: Joan Crawford's, and Dunaway's. In spite of its critical drubbing, unintentional hilarity, and general ineptitude, the film's bizarre, fascinating hold on the public's imagination ensured that Crawford's regal reputation would go into a tailspin from which it still hasn't fully recovered; and that Dunaway would spiral from Oscar-winning superstar to straight-to-video industry joke almost overnight. Thirty years later, the names of both Joan Crawford and Faye Dunaway are still inextricably connected with Mommie Dearest.

"I really hate talking about Mommie Dearest! It is like an obsession with people! Why do people need to focus so much on one film I made over 20 years ago? It was not a great time in my life and the film was not an experience I want to think about. Period!"

In all fairness, even before the biggest mother of them all came along, Dunaway's career was marked by wild inconsistency. Her one-two knockout punch of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) was followed by the disastrous A Place for Lovers and The Arrangement (both 1969); the brilliant Chinatown (1974) and Dunaway's Oscar-winning turn in Network (1976) were bookends for such glossy, all-star pap as The Three Musketeers (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974), and Voyage of the Damned (1976). But Mommie Dearest really ensured that Hollywood was Dunaway with Faye; her next film was the costume flop The Wicked Lady (1983), and such was Dunaway's infamy at this point, it was decided to not show her face in the advertising!

One can only imagine Dunaway thumbing through the script for her next picture, Supergirl (1984), and thinking to herself, "Why not? They want camp -- I'll give 'em camp!" Perhaps looking for a silver lining in the Mommie cloud, Dunaway decided to send up her over-the-top image by purposely camping up a storm as the villainess, Selena. Unfortunately, intentional camp almost always falls flat, and Supergirl was a super-flop.


Since then, Dunaway has had the occasional minor success -- a Golden Globe nomination for her downbeat, deglamorized performance in Barfly (1987); an Emmy win for a guest appearance on Columbo (1993) -- and very public disasters of epic proportions. Dunaway's own, highly-touted sitcom, It Had to Be You, premiered in 1993, and was yanked after only four, critically-reviled episodes. The following year, Dunaway was set to make her musical theater debut in what promised to be her best role in years: Norma Desmond in the Los Angeles production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard. Dunaway was to take over the role from Glenn Close, who had triumphed as Norma on Broadway. It never happened; Lloyd Webber abruptly decided to shutter the musical after Close's final performance, rather than possibly subject Dunaway to "great embarrassment," due to what he deemed her inadequate musical chops. Ouch.


An oddly static ad campaign for Norell fragrances in 1998 introduced the beginnings of some seriously wonky plastic surgery to Dunaway's public; within a decade, her once-fabulous face had become virtually unrecognizable. Another high-profile misfire was The Starlet (2005), a short-lived reality competition show about young Hollywood hopefuls. Faye was the bitchy celebrity judge, a la Janice Dickinson; her would-be catch phrase was "Don't call us; we'll call you." Unfortunately, Dunaway's own phone wasn't exactly ringing off the hook.


Today, Dunaway continues to make small films which no one ever seems to see (Say it in Russian? The Seduction of Dr. Fugazzi?), as well as the occasional television spot. And in spite of the spectre of Mommie Dearest which continues to loom, Dunaway just can't seem to stay away from other complicated, highly-strung, iconic women: her next role is playing no less a diva than Maria Callas in the long-awaited film version of Terrence McNally's Master Class, which Dunaway successfully toured with in 1997.



The enigmatic Klee was the first to recognize the lifelike visage of Miss Dunaway; we are caught without a proper prize, but hey -- we never promised you a rose garden!


We love that you seem to get into these Mystery Guest segments; if you have any photos of potential future guests that you think might stump the panel, please send them to us. As always, thanks for playing, darlings!

The Hostess with the Mostess

One of our all time favorite tomes is How to Do It, or The Lively Art of Entertaining, by the indefatigable Miss Elsa Maxwell. Miss Maxwell was, in her own words, "...a short, fat, homely piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, with no money or background, [who] decided to become a legend and did just that." Yet for all her unloveliness and lack of Social Register standing, through her ingenious flair for ingratiating herself with the "right" people, Maxwell became society's premiere party giver, hobnobbing with the eclectic likes of Maria Callas, Bernard Baruch, Prince Aly Khan, the Duke of Alba, and practically every other Hollywood and Broadway celebrity, blue blood, and bona fide royal of the last mid-century. Truly, by the 1950's, when How to Do It was first published, Maxwell was every bit as famous (if not more so) than the people she gave parties for and wrote about in her syndicated gossip column.





Unfortunately, Maxwell also had a self-destructive streak which may have found its perfect outlet in the rise and advent of television. As a "name," Maxwell was a frequent guest on the various talk, chat and news programs of the day. The medium gave Maxwell the largest possible audience to whom she could dispense her views and opinions; but it also put into sharp focus the real woman beneath the Patou and Jean Desses gowns. While Maxwell's columns and books had presented her as a basically benign, starstruck name-dropper extraordinaire, Maxwell's television appearances showed a loud, garrulous, inelegant woman with, conflictingly, an intense dislike and distrust for anything outside of her very small realm of "right" society. Armchair psychologists might suggest that Maxwell's loud protestations against those she considered "bores" and "vulgarians" was, in some way, self-flagellation for her own less-than-pristine roots. Widely considered among her friends and enemies as a lesbian, Maxwell also railed vehemently and viciously against homosexuality - which certainly must have been an interesting topic of conversation when she palled around with Noel, Cole and Cecil. (For more on this subject, we direct you to our friend Brooks' fascinating site, An Open Book.)


When Maxwell died in 1963, there were only a dozen mourners at her funeral; she had alienated many of her true friends, and those fair-weather acquaintances who had only wanted a coveted Maxwell party invitation had long outgrown their use for a woman who had become an anachronism by that point. Hindsight being 20/20, though, we can be kind to Elsa Maxwell. She was, after all, "a short, fat, homely piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, with no money or background," and most likely a lesbian, to boot. One can only imagine, given the times and the crowd she desperately wanted to be a part of, how that affected her psychologically, and the obvious conflict it caused within her. With another half-century's worth of perspective behind us, let's simply celebrate the fact that a short, fat, homely piano player could find herself, albeit temporarily, at the very pinnacle of fame and glamour. So throw a party today, for no reason at all, and raise your glass to Miss Maxwell on her birthday. We'll even give you a menu from some of her favorite recipes for the event.

ELSA MAXWELL
May 24, 1881 - November 1, 1963

AN ELSA MAXWELL BIRTHDAY MENU

Mrs. T. Reed (Diana) Vreeland's Consommé Vert-Pré
Mrs. Edgar Leonard's Trout
Valerian Rybar's Artichokes a la Greque
Clare Boothe Luce's Cumberland House Orange Pancakes

Consommé Vert-Pré

Make a very good rich bouillon. Add enough spinach juice to color it green, and just before serving, add finely chopped fines herbes. Serve hot or iced.

Trout

Put juice of 1 lemon in ice cold water. Dip trout into this, then dry with a cloth rubbed in garlic. Salt and pepper the trout inside and dust lightly with flour outside. Saute trout in butter, shaking pan to prevent sticking. Cook about 3 minutes on each side. Remove trout from pan and keep warm. Add more butter to pan and saute 1 medium onion, thinly sliced, until onion is transparent but not brown. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice, salt and pepper, 1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar, 4 or 5 tablespoons white wine, 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh herbs. Pour sauce over the trout.

Artichokes a la Greque

Clean 6 choice, large artichokes, and snip off the tip of each leaf. Mix 1/2 cup of bread crumbs with salt, pepper, 1/2 clove of finely chopped garlic, and 2 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley. Then stuff each leaf. Place the artichokes in a pan and 1/2 cup of water, taking care not to spill any on the artichokes. Pour 3 tablespoons of pure olive oil over each artichoke. Salt and pepper lightly, and let simmer for 2 hours, replenishing water when necessary. Serve lukewarm.

Cumberland House Orange Pancakes

Cream 1/4 pound sweet butter with 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar. Gradually beat in the juice and grated rind of 2 oranges. Turn this orange hard sauce into a jar and let it harden in refrigerator. Beat 3 egg yolks lightly, and add a pinch of salt and 1 cup milk. Stir in gradually 3/4 cup sifted flour, and continue to stir until batter is smooth. Finally fold in 3 egg whites, stiffly beaten. In heavy iron skillet heat a generous amount of sweet butter over a low fire. When butter foams, pour in 1/2 cup of pancake batter. When the pancake sets, loosen it carefully with a turner and keep it afloat in the butter until the underside is golden. Turn the pancake, add more butter, and keep pancake loose by shaking the skillet constantly until the pancake is crisp and brown on both sides. (Keep fire low or the butter will burn.) Repeat until all batter is used. Drain the pancakes on absorbent paper, then fold each quickly around 1 tablespoonful of the cold orange hard sauce., and serve them on a piping hot fireproof dish - so hot the butter sizzles. A dash of Cointreau added at the table enhances the flavor.

The Loves of Carmen

The Company She Keeps

WITH LESLIE HOWARD, NORMA SHEARER, GARY COOPER & LIONEL BARRYMORE


WITH RENATA TEBALDI


WITH LEONARD BERNSTEIN


WITH MARILYN MONROE


WITH COLE PORTER


WITH MARIA CALLAS & ARISTOTLE ONASSIS

The Hostess with the Mostess, Miss Elsa Maxwell.

* We have just been informed by one of our eagle-eyed readers that the gentleman in the second-to-last photograph is NOT, in fact, Cole Porter. Since gettyimages.com, from whence we stole, identifies him as such, we call upon any informed guesses as to who it might actually be!

The Seven Deadly Sins

LUST


GLUTTONY


GREED


SLOTH


WRATH


ENVY


PRIDE

Somehow, it always begins with Mickey Rooney, and ends with Joan Crawford.

How Did I Miss These Parties?