Miss Chief

Well behaved women rarely make history…

Fame is a by-product. Fame is something that should happen because you do work that speaks to people and people want to know about your work. Unfortunately the personality of people has taken over from the work and the artistry and it's this thing now that stands on its own. I don't think one should ever aspire to being famous.

Madonna (Q Magazine 2008)

Like a Virgin

Some would have us believe in the immaculate conception, and who are we to argue with so plausible an assumption. You couldn't make it up.

Virgin and Child Surrounded by Red and Blue Angels

The virgin above by Jean Fouquet, is a portrait of Agnès Sorel, the Dame de Beauté and a favourite mistress of King Charles VII of France. She bore him three daughters via traditional intercourse but her strong influence on the King earned her a number of powerful enemies at court. While pregnant with their fourth child in 1450, she suddenly became ill and died, just 28 years old. The reason for her untimely demise was originally thought to be dysentery but in 2005 French forensic scientist Philippe Charlier examined her remains and determined that the cause of death was mercury poisoning and the ancient plot thickened.

Kiki de Montparnasse

Long before Madonna Louise Ciccone went mononymous  and conquered the world as Madonna, fourteen year old Alice Ernestine Prin was in Paris, reinventing herself as simply Kiki, posing naked for the sculptors and painters of the city and taking her first baby steps to becoming Kiki de Montparnasse, Bohemian Icon, artist’s model, actress, singer, writer and painter… the Queen of liberated Parisian culture of the 1920’s and Man Ray’s lover, companion and muse to boot... Quite a girl...

Noire et blanche, featuring Kiki - Man Ray 1926

Kiki thrived on scandal and attention but her love of men resulted sometimes in a terrible blindness. Despite the fact that he beat her, she stayed with one particular lover because he was "simply too good-looking to leave." Her memoirs, created a sensation when they were first published in France in 1929... the book, it's introduction written by Ernest Hemingway, was banned in the USA until the late 1970’s.

Kiki by Kees Van Dongen

Kiki died in 1953 via the complications of alcohol and drug dependence... When the large cortège of artists, friends and fans followed the procession to her interment in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, it was said, that with Kiki, the glorious days of Montparnasse were buried forever.

Mata Hari

Paris…13 February, 1917, Mata Hari is arrested in her room in the Hotel Plaza Athénée, accused of espionage. Although the French and British intelligence  suspect  her of spying for Germany, neither  agency can actually produce definite evidence against her in court. Secret ink, discovered amongst her belongings becomes the only incriminating evidence, but it’s enough to find her guilty.

Later in the year on 15 October she stands in front of a firing squad… At this point we refer to British reporter, Henry Wales eyewitness account in all its tragic detail…

“She was not bound and refused a blindfold. After a volley of shots rang out… slowly, inertly, she settled to her knees, her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face. For the fraction of a second it seemed she tottered  there, on her knees, gazing directly  at those who had taken her life. Then she fell backward, bending at the waist, with her legs doubled up beneath her... She lay prone, motionless, with her face turned towards the sky, then a non-commissioned officer walked up to her body, pulled out his revolver, and shot her in the head to make sure she was dead.”

Only the Lonely...

Greta Garbo - 1905 - 1990

She is one of the most amazing, puzzling, most provocative characters of this extraordinary age. She definitely doesn't belong in the 20th century. She doesn't even belong in this world. Robert E Sherwood

She would make a secret of whether she had an egg for breakfast!
Cecil Beaton

In her heyday Garbo was the most luminous creature the screen had ever seen. Marlene Dietrich schemed just to meet her, Adolph Hitler wrote her fan letters and an Arab sheik once offered her fifty million dollars to attend a dinner party. She declined the Austrian painter and the sheik.

Her last interview was with the entertainment writer Paul Callan of the Daily Mail during the Cannes Film Festival. Meeting at the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc, Callan began the interview with, "I wonder..." Garbo cut in with "Why wonder?" and stalked off, making it possibly the shortest interview ever published.

Looking for girls who are boys who like boys to be girls

Who do boys like they're girls who do girls like they're boys…

Mercedes de Acosta

The Dyke At The Top Of The Stairs

I can get any woman from any man.

Mercedes de Acosta

Mercedes de Acosta, star fucker extraordinaire, socialite, poet, playwright and costume designer, was notorious for walking the streets of 1920's New York in macho suits, pointed buckle trimmed shoes, a tricorn hat and a velvet cape. With the palest of faces, her dark deep-set eyes, blood red lips and her slicked back, jet black hair had Tallulah Bankhead calling her the Countess Dracula.

Said to have seduced Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Isadora Duncan amongst many others… her heart was seemingly lost to Garbo, the love of her life. The revelations in her 1960 memoir, ‘Here Lies the Heart’ caused her to be abandoned by many of her famous friends, who preferred their sexuality remain a mystery... And Garbo, long gone from Mercedes by then, wasn't the type to let her best friend know who she'd had for breakfast...

Falling in love again...

Marlene Dietrich in Paris, 1933 - Photo by Mercedes de Acosta

At some point during her 12 year, on-off affair with Garbo, Mercedes seduced and fell for Marlene Dietrich who showered her with bouquets and wrote her countless love letters, always signing off with "I kiss your beautiful hands and your heart." One night when Dietrich knew she wouldn’t make it in time for a dinner Mercedes was hosting, Marlene wrote…

"My Love. . . . please do eat and go to bed and wait for me there.."

Goldfrapp  –  Satin Boys Flaming Chic

How do you know love is gone? If you said that you would be there at seven and you get there by nine, and he or she has not called the police yet - it's gone.
Marlene Dietrich

I am at heart a gentleman...
Marlene Dietrich

You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.
Billie Holiday

xxx