Hollywood Valentines

Wishing you all a truly spectacular Valentines Day with love and kisses galore. Here’s something you can do together.  See if you can name all these loved up couples and the films these photos came from.

A Film Noir Saga

She waited alone on the doorstep.  A tattered suitcase her only friend.

Just waited for someone to blame.

He came toward her from out of the dark and somehow she knew his name.

She knew that he was on the run.

But that he did not care who knew.

She also knew she loved another and he was running too.

But this one had a wife just as lovely as she.

Maybe this other woman had the other key …..

Or maybe the man in the dark, the man with the name …

had called in yet another dame …

She glammed herself up, put a smirk on her face…

Then simply vanished without a trace.

 

A tribute to Lizabeth Scott, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lanchaster and Ava Garner.  Film stills from ‘Dark City’, ‘Dead Reckoning’, ‘To Have and To Have Not’ and  ‘The Killers’

Story teaser by Wanda Way Awrf

© Renee Dallow

 

 

‘The Past Tense Of Youth’ on ‘Blurb’

Yes I have written a novel. What is it about? Well it is, of course, set in another era.  The glamorous era of the 1930s to be exact.  Dinner parties, glamorous gowns and glamorous locations.

The story begins in the courtyard  of an ancient palace with a young bride being lured back in time by a mysterious song.  then moves back to the Hydro Majestic Hotel in ‘Medlow Bath ‘Blue Mountains’ Australia where she first met the man she would marry.

 A beautiful setting for two beautiful people from different cultural backgrounds to fall in love.  The couple   married on the grounds of the bride’s stately home in Cumbria England and are in the third week of their honeymoon in a distant land.  The land where the groom was born.  Istanbul Turkey.

The palace is ‘Topkapi Palace’ the seat of the Ottoman Empire and the young bride has just left a guided tour in order to explore the harem quarters which are off limits to tourists.  It is here that the story begins to twist and turn as the reader is taken back to 1908 into the days of concubines and favourites in the last days of the Ottoman Empire and then involved in a  scurrilous love affair between a gypsy and handsome soldier who looks remarkably like the groom who is still on a tour of Topkapi Palace. While he is trying to find his wife she is trying to find out why the gypsy has lured her back in time and why her husband  does not recognise her.  This is actually only the first half and if you would like to find out what happens you can purchase the novel from ‘Blurb Books’.  Just google the title and you’ll find it. Apart from being a romance my novel is also a mystery.  I have tried to evoke a film noir style of writing.  Happy Reading.

© Renee Dallow ( Author. )

Fred and Ginger: Total perfection

All one needs is short dose of Fred and Ginger to learn what real dancing is all about.  As a viewer of the t.v. phenomenon ‘Dancing With The Stars’ I think it’s a good idea to get myself a small dose of real ‘reality’.  Let’s face it none of these so called ‘Stars’ are anywhere near the calibre of Fred and Ginger or can ever hope to be.  Even the great Michael Baryshnikov was a Fred Astaire lover.  I don’t know , however, if Baryshnikov ever had a partner to equal Ginger.  A superb comedienne Ginger was a major talent all on her own and a brilliant foil for Fred  It was said that he gave her class and she gave him sex. Their movies were really just fantasy romance and the plots were quite ridiculous but their dancing …. oh such dancing …. was sublime.