Would I lie to you about Hollywood? Well, I’d certainly fictionalize things…...
As you know, I’ve been in Palm Springs. Which I have a kind of atavistic love for… The architecture and the terrain: The coupling of cacti and swimming pools… What I forgot about the desert was the...
View ArticleInterview: Vickie Lester and Why “It’s in His Kiss”
Vickie Lester:It’s a dreary gray day in Southern California, and then I remembered this interview with one of my favorite bloggers and I thought I’d dust it off and put it front and center… Three...
View ArticleMy Fiction Reading During National Poetry Month
Vickie Lester:This is turning out to be a WOW day! Many thanks to author Luanne Castle! Originally posted on Writer Site: Although it’s poetry month, I’ve been reading fiction lately as a little break...
View ArticleMarilyn Monroe in Palm Springs and a cool salad for a hot day
Sliced avocado, arugula, slivers of red onion, segments of orange, luscious green olives, sea salt, black pepper, fennel seeds, lemon juice, olive oil… Salad. “I restore myself when I’m alone. A career...
View ArticleDIRTY LITTLE SINS ~ It’s In His Kiss by Vickie Lester | SCENTS MEMORY
From Lanier Smith, who weaves enchantment wherever he goes… In the movies murder is clean and easy. They never show the scum and the blood. But when it happens in tensile town it’s about a cheap and...
View ArticleQuoth I, Vickie Lester, in days of yore we knew not sunblock…
Which yore? Judging from the attire and upturned color I’d say it was the early 1980s. I’m pretending to be my glamorous fashionista aunt, no doubt, chin up, hips turned slightly for the camera. Too...
View Article“Like two-hundred and fifty kids out of their minds on X at Coachella?”...
5.0 out of 5 stars Art Director By Bob Schulenberg on August 16, 2014 Format: Paperback “Ms. Lester” certainly knows the ins of Hollywood! Let doubters doubt no more, she takes you there, shows you...
View ArticleIn which we sing the praises of: Julius Shulman, © Pleasurephoto, and Palm...
If you drop in this morning, stateside, in the early evening in Europe, in the wee small hours of the morning in Australia and New Zealand… you get my drift… the point is I will start reading you a...
View ArticleThis is the one who slapped a cop…
When I was a kid the Gabors roamed Palm Springs. Zsa Zsa, pictured here, Eva, of television fame, Magda, who married well and often. Their mama, Jolie was a jewelry designer (I think) and I know she...
View ArticleIf Audrey Hepburn had a potty mouth, she might have written It’s in His Kiss
Pouf Honey! Before we begin, I said to the Mister recently that if his current Herr Direktör didn’t let him go home early, I would go down to the set with a pair of pinking shears with which I’d cut...
View ArticleI think there was more sex in those old films than in all that thrashing...
She may have talking about romance, and I shudder to think what she would have thought of the Internet .“I try to live sensibly. I sleep well, eat well, and have only one drink a day. I have managed to...
View ArticleOh lookie! I spared you another reading, but you’re not getting away from my...
*** An excerpt from “It’s In His Kiss”… in which our heroine arrives in Palm Springs. by Vickie Lester While her father ran a media conglomerate, Uncle Manny (once a medical student whose aspirations...
View ArticleIf you work on a film set this is not how you wake up in the morning. I don’t...
Does anyone wake up like this, even on a Sunday morning? With a fresh cup of coffee in a china cup and the paper in disarray on the sheets? Join me in the fantasy… Why, I believe she must be reading...
View ArticleWay before Leonardo DC, Cary Grant made his winter home in Palm Springs – the...
This my angels, is Cary Grant’s Palm Springs estate in the early 1930s before it was Cary Grant’s (I can’t remember the story entirely, but I think it was built originally for a lady fitness...
View ArticleI think dim sum Sunday just turned into free association Sunday…
Usually when I wake on Sunday mornings I have dim sum palaces on my mind: piles of jade green vegetables sauteed with shards of garlic, barbecued duck and scallions rolled in delicate pancakes,...
View ArticleFor now we dish about Hollywood, and later… Would you like me to read you a...
There was a time in late 1980 through to early 2000, when I would get sent on pitch meetings. It was also the era when spec scripts boomed and people were getting millions for three page treatments and...
View ArticlePalm Springs: will be sleeping in a bed the size of a tennis court, won’t be...
Linda stopped the Fleetwood convertible in front of the house without turning into the driveway. She leaned back and looked at the house and then looked at me. “It’s a new section of the Springs,...
View Article30 years ago I worked on a movie, didn’t sleep, met my husband, fell in love,...
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View ArticleThe travel itinerary from the Paramount Pictures specified her arrival in...
To say Anne was stunned when she was summoned to the winter home of Becky Nelson—head of production at a very well-known studio—would be an understatement. Becky had cut her teeth working for Anne’s...
View ArticleThe movie colony, an old area of town right under the hills, once home to...
Dutifully, Anne navigated her hired Prius through a terrain at once dusty and opulent; Palm Springs is, after all, an exorbitantly irrigated pile of sand. Her destination was a taupe Mid-Century...
View ArticleAll of these individuals were in the film business or married to it…
In contrast, the other guests glistened in tanning oil. There they were, half-naked, with implausibly buoyant bosoms and supplemented bums and biceps, radiating a carefully constructed beauty; all of...
View ArticleThe novel, in which I spill the beans, let loose, tell all, well, all that I...
Neither did it have to do with the Easter Bunny, or any various and sundry muses, unless you switch out muses for informants, and then you might get a better idea how I got the inside skinny on many...
View ArticleJoan Collins, in the words of Mr. Lester, “Zowie!”
“Have you met my significant other?” Anne shook her head, expecting him to introduce a strapping young man, possibly, most likely, in the acting profession. Instead he blew a kiss to a taught, angular...
View ArticleInterview: Vickie Lester and Why “It’s in His Kiss” | It Rains… You Get Wet.
This is Miss Marilyn Monroe at the Racquet Club in Palm Springs. She was never shy in front of the camera, but I always have been…so I say: one million thanks to Michael for the Q & A—it was a...
View ArticleNeo-Noir! If you can’t get to Hollywood, Beverly Hills or Palm Springs get...
Just started Vickie Lester’s It’s In His Kiss yesterday. Some 40 pages in, ‘the crime’ that would become the centerpiece of the plot was discovered. But oddly enough, if it hadn’t occurred, and never...
View ArticleReprise: I have a Pavlovian response, and when I’m feeling peaked I have to...
When I was a youngster we didn’t spend much time there. My mother spoke of it disdainfully saying, “It’s fine if you’re a Republican or play golf,” neither the party or the sport interested her. I...
View ArticleReprise: in Palm Springs, the dog ate my sandals and flung them in the pool
I’m lucky they didn’t fling me in the pool. My aunt and uncle, besides the venerable parrot, favored large dogs (I mean dogs that outweighed me) who my uncle trained in German as to foil evil doers, I...
View ArticleReprise: Palm Springs stands in for Shangri-La during the filming of Lost...
For a beautifully researched post on Art Director Stephen Goosson please turn to Steve Vaught’s VASTLY interesting blog: Shangri-La has been found! It’s in Denver! | Paradise Leased. You’ve probably...
View Article“Computers are always logical and consistent, and you see how often they get...
“Another problem you’ll have when you read my advice is that you may get mixed up, because I’m not so logical or consistent. But then love is not logical and consistent. And I’m certainly not logical...
View ArticleMID-CENTURY ROMANCE – THE HOME OF LUCILLE BALL AND DESI ARNAZ
In 1954, Ball and Arnaz moved their family into the informal ranch home Williams designed for them. The house, on a lot Desi reputedly won in a poker game, was located near the 17th fairway of the...
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