The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower
by Robert Graysmith
C2010 Berkeley Publishing - a Penguin Group
Marli Renfro, a nudist, and early Playboy Playmate, was the BODY DOUBLE not the STAND IN for Janet Leigh in Hitchcock's Psycho. The murder scene, filmed for days in a shower set, and then cut cut cut to build fear in the audience and get past the censors. Despite the black and white film - or perhaps because of it - the innovative flashes of pictures went so quick it was almost subliminal and the audiences' tension in watching the film exploded. Hitchcock's attention to detail was unprecedented and the scene was part of movie making history.
The author, true crime author Robert Graysmith, has long had a thing for this model, Marli Renfro, that spurred him on to detail a life gone bitterly ironic when she was murdered, but it turns out that the press had reported erroneously, because the reporters didn't know the difference between a Body Double and the Stand In. Turns out Marli never was murdered and has lived an OK life defined by outdoorsy activities.
Within this book Graysmith not only takes us on the behind the scenes making of a Hitchcock movie, but also the history of Playboy magazine and Clubs and the players in the early hours of the sexual revolution in the early 1960's.
Is it awful to reveal that I felt kind of wrongly lead on that Marli Renfro had not been murdered? I wish only that Graysmith had, at the point of revealing this to us readers, gone on to tell the story of the woman who had been, the Stand In!
All and all a fascinating tale and one that made me think of the days I worked as a movie extra.
C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.
2/22/11
THOMAS JEFFERSON's BOOKS FOUND AT WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN SAINT LOUIS
"Dozens of Thomas Jefferson's books, some including handwritten notes from the nation's third president, have been found in the rare books collection at Washington University in St. Louis...
"The books were among about 3,000 that were donated to the school in 1880 after the death of Jefferson's granddaughter, Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge, and her husband, Joseph Coolidge.
There was no indication at the time that any of them had belonged to Jefferson. But it turns out that 2 1/2 years after Jefferson's 1826 death, his library of 1,600 books was sold to settle debts...
LINK TO THE FULL YAHOO NEWS STORY ABOVE!
"The books were among about 3,000 that were donated to the school in 1880 after the death of Jefferson's granddaughter, Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge, and her husband, Joseph Coolidge.
There was no indication at the time that any of them had belonged to Jefferson. But it turns out that 2 1/2 years after Jefferson's 1826 death, his library of 1,600 books was sold to settle debts...
LINK TO THE FULL YAHOO NEWS STORY ABOVE!
2/20/11
MARGARET ATWOOD Quote
"All writers are double, for the simple reason that you can never actually meet the author of the book you have just read. Too much time has elapsed between composition and publication and the person who wrote the book is now a different person."
- Margaret Atwood
2/17/11
POSTING FROM SKIRBALL CULTURAL CENTER : THE 1000 JOURNAL PROJECT ONE MORE WEEK!
"The Journals have traveled by air, sea, and land throughout forty countries and all fifty states. They've been the subject of treasure hunts, hidden in remote caves, abandoned at airports, left in the lost and found, and stolen at gunpoint. If you're local you have one more week to go in and add some art, poetry, or other writing to a journal page... I did today... LINK TO THE FULL STORY - 1000 JOURNALS TRAVELI(NG! - and Skirball Information.
2/7/11
BABY NAME BOOKS ARE INSPIRATIONAL FOR CHARACTERS
I love BABY NAME BOOKS! I like to browse through them - collect them ! That's because I'm inspired by names to develop characters.
Get this: In college I wrote a long story in which I made up a name for a character. It was an unusual name but felt right to me. In fact, it was as if this character, who I came to know well, was telling me what their name was, the way you hear some babies, before birth, whisper their name to their mothers or commuicate it silently as newborns. So I went with this character name. But in critique sessions in my writing workshop the professor and a couple students told me that the name was too unusual, that they got stuck on it while reading. Not good!
I tried, I really did, to find another name for this character. I questioned my motivations for naming this character something unusual. But then again, she was hardly an ordinary person. I was grateful that I could find and replace, using the computer, when the time came to change the name, but simply I never did find another name for the character and the manuscript remains in storage at this time.
Then recently I was looking through a baby name book and there it was - for the first time I had ever seen it in print - this unusual name I had used for the character!
C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights
Get this: In college I wrote a long story in which I made up a name for a character. It was an unusual name but felt right to me. In fact, it was as if this character, who I came to know well, was telling me what their name was, the way you hear some babies, before birth, whisper their name to their mothers or commuicate it silently as newborns. So I went with this character name. But in critique sessions in my writing workshop the professor and a couple students told me that the name was too unusual, that they got stuck on it while reading. Not good!
I tried, I really did, to find another name for this character. I questioned my motivations for naming this character something unusual. But then again, she was hardly an ordinary person. I was grateful that I could find and replace, using the computer, when the time came to change the name, but simply I never did find another name for the character and the manuscript remains in storage at this time.
Then recently I was looking through a baby name book and there it was - for the first time I had ever seen it in print - this unusual name I had used for the character!
C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights
2/1/11
JOAN SLOAN Quotation
"Though a living cannot be made at art, art makes life worth living. It makes starving, living. It makes worry, it makes trouble, it makes a life that would be barren of everything - living. It brings life to life." - Joan Sloan
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