Thanks to MB for the fabou portrait of Aunt Hannah today.  I just LOVE Aunt Hannah!  DS needed more characters like her! Alexalique thinks she's so damn smart, but Hannah clearly showed just who wore the BLING at Collinwood.

Hannah was such a fascinating character, and she actually had a LOT more on the ball in terms of Magick than did Alexalique.  I was very sorry that the character was written out when Grayson came back because I would have died for scenes of Hannah and Hoffman together!  There are two wonderful interviews on the DVDs with Paula Laurence in which she talks about her friendship with Sam & Grayson.

G.

I love that photo of Cassandra, Barn, Nicholas and Adam from '68.  It really evokes the feel and taste of that Summer for me.

Too bad Lara Parker herself has no memory of even playing Cassandra...

G.

Best luck and warmest wishes for improved times for all of you soon...

Sincerely,

G.

Fans,

I don't know whether it is appropriate to quote this here, but I know the Grayson fans will appreciate it.  It is a review of RJ Jamison's book by one of the Amazon Top 100 Reviewers, Kevin Killian, and was posted to Amazon in January of this year.  Killian's review reads in part:

I didn't like NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, and as for DARK SHADOWS, I haven't seen many episodes, only the two films. I went into this book not knowing much about Grayson Hall except that all of my friends love her. As the story continued, I realized it was one I had read about already, to other actresses and women who grew up in a certain time. In fact, a lot of what happened to Grayson Hall (or Shirley Grossman) already had happened to Jacqueline Susann, the same sorts of trials and sorrows, especially in a theatrical world in which a certain kind of beauty was celebrated and those who lacked it had to use other sorts of skills to get ahead.

R. J. Jamison's research is pretty amazing, even though some of the gaps remain startling. Years go by without Jamison being able to account for what Grayson Hall was doing. But at a certain point in the late 1950s, we see all the disparate parts of her character come together and a star is born, sort of; she was a late bloomer and paid the price late bloomers do, all of a sudden producers look at you and you're playing Madwoman of Chaillot roles. It came to me that I had seen Grayson Hall on stage in the early 1970s, when I was just a boy, and I attended the legendary premiers of Genet's play THE SCREENS in an experimental production at the Chelsea Theater Center at the BAM. It was a scary show, and I didn't understand a word of it, and it seemed there were more people up on the stage than there were in the audience, but Grayson Hall made an impression on me; she frightened me with her deadbeat madness and her cigarette voice, like a man in drag. She was not on the side of the revolution--or was she? A committed actress, she didn't seek identification or sympathy from her audiences. Jamison's biography makes me want to seek out more of her work, even the SATAN IN HIGH HEELS Hall denied she'd ever made. <snip>

I'm envious of Killian's having seen her in that play!  This is the one where she spent much of the time on stage wearing bared fake breasts made of styrofoam into which knitting needles had been inserted.  Her makeup and wig for the role came out of some bizarre acid-laced space that takes up where kabuki leaves off...

G.

I heard a shockingly loud noise just a few moments ago and felt the Earth quaking beneath my feet--came over here and realized it was the sound of women and men all over America hitting the ground with a volcanic THUD as their senses left them from the onslaught of sheer, manly, unbridled, unexcelled, unexampled hardcore seven-oils-and-seasonings STUDLINESS that IS Quentin Collins in today's Photo.  Mercy Miss Percy!

This is the kind of thing that, in days of old, used to have "Weredoggie" writing long, passionate screeds about "chew-toys" and loud, forceful baying at the moon--and no wonder.

I am fanning myself as best I am able in the suddenly TORRID atmosphere in here--it's HOT! and so is he.

G.

The expression on her face!  Priceless indeed.

Custards, eh?  NOT tapioca.  That would be somebody else's bailiwick.

G.

Three cheers for tapioca!  *imagines debate on whether tapioca is best creamy and slightly runny, or thick and chunky; decides not to go there*

cackling provocatively,

G.  (with extra huzzahs once more for a most Mysterious Day!)