by Gigi Anders Where is my tricycle? I’ve been waiting for Fidel Castro to fall since one of his guerrillas tried to seize my beautiful new red trike on Tuesday, Nov. 15, l960. Can you believe that? No, really, every Cuban-American’s been waiting that long. And ever since, despite constant rumors of his demise — [...]

by Gigi Anders I’m an all American rebel Makin’ my big getaway … All I need’s a fast machine … Like Steve McQueen – from “Steve McQueen” by Sheryl Crow There’s this New Yorker cartoon by Liza Donnelly: Two women are looking at a movie marquee that says GUNS AND CAR CHASES. One woman says [...]

by Gigi Anders Hud Bannon: You’re half native already. I’ve never seen you in shoes. Alma Brown: I wore ’em once. To get married in. White satin pumps. I don’t have ’em any more. Or the man, either. That is the amoral rancher Paul Newman and his world-weary housekeeper Patricia Neal in Hud, 1963’s dazzling [...]

by Gigi Anders “To be young and beautiful for a long time,” Zelda Fitzgerald once said. “That’s what I want.” And that’s what she got. The Montgomery, Alabama, native died on March 10, 1948, in a fire at a North Carolina mental hospital when she was relatively young — 48 — if not perfectly beautiful. [...]

by Gigi Anders Do you remember the first Law & Order? Of course you don’t. It aired 20 years ago, on Sept. 13, 1990. Titled “Prescription for Death,” the NBC pilot episode was — in a way that seemed so fresh back then, when the first George Bush was president — ripped from the headlines. [...]

by Gigi Anders It was her audacity. The impatient kind that does not suffer long or suffer fools. The bitchy kind that beguiles gays and jolts the rest. The professional kind that makes every victory a hard-won struggle engendering wealth, power, enemies, a hard shell, and abiding loneliness. Bette Davis was surrounded by so many [...]

by Gigi Anders It isn’t easy upstaging Charlize Theron. In a commercial for Dior’s J’Adore perfume, the actress walks seductively toward the camera, shedding first jewelry and then clothing; her perfume is what matters. But what sets the mood, what captures that moment of released sensuality, is the music behind her, the sultry, supple voice [...]

by Gigi Anders “People associate me with a time when movies were pleasant,” Audrey Hepburn once said, “when women wore pretty dresses in films and you heard beautiful music.” Whenever Hepburn wore a pretty dress (and she was pretty in everything), whenever she spoke, you seemed to hear beautiful music. In her time, Hepburn epitomized [...]

by Gigi Anders Who was Helen Keller? Though she couldn’t see or hear, she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe. She was a publicity machine who used her assets to get what she wanted. She was a saint who suffered alone in her dark silence. She had a lover; she was asexual. She spent her long [...]

by Gigi Anders Grief. I’ve been experiencing it and thinking about it ever since my father died in June of 2006. Not just grief over my dad, but grief over some of the behavior of people at his funeral. Almost two years went by and I could not shake my disappointment. So I called my [...]

by Gigi Anders First the camera, now the film. The Polaroid Corporation, which stopped making consumer cameras last year, decided in early February to discontinue making its magical instant film, too. There’s just enough to last through 2009; after that they’re hoping to license it out to other manufacturers for diehard instant lovers like the [...]

by Gigi Anders Late last year, when Italian haute couturier Valentino Garavani announced he was retiring in January, after 45 years, the fashion world took notice. Maybe the whole world. After all, this is the man who designed iconic clothes for Jackie Kennedy ” the black ensembles in which she mourned President Kennedy and the [...]

by Gigi Anders The first time I saw Suzanne Pleshette was in The Birds in 1963. I was just a little kid. My mom took me to see the Hitchcock movie, and afterward I asked her, “Why did Mitch [Rod Taylor] like Melanie [Tippi Hedren] more than Annie [Suzanne Pleshette]?” My mom said, “Because Melanie’s [...]