just like that: simply, self-evidently, like a drop of water forming on a drinking tap on a landing, like six socks soaking in a pink plastic bowl, like a fly or a mollusc, like a tree, like a rat.
Brigitte Bardot and Marcello Mastroianni in Vie Privée (1962)
“Out there all I find are ghosts,” says Joan Crawford, asked by Roy Newquist if she wouldn’t be more comfortable living in Los Angeles, the city of her legacy.
“What do you mean by ‘ghosts’?” Newquist presses.
“Exactly that. Say you’re driving through Beverly Hills and you spot a house where you’ve been entertained or where close friends lived—you can’t stop there, now, because those friends are dead or they’ve moved and some rock star lives there now.
The studios are virtually deserted—my God, I couldn’t go near Metro—it would kill me!
All the Roberts, most of them, anyway, are dead, and there’s no more Clark, no more Spencer. No more Adrian.
Oh, hell. I was going to say ‘No more me’ because that would be true, in a way. Because a lot of the ghosts would be me—as I was, at one time or another, in one picture or another, with a specific husband, my kids at certain ages. A particular party that was fun, a party that was pulled off well. Clark’s bounce and grin when he was 25, his sad eyes when he was 45.
If I went back to the house—and I never, never will—I’d hear Franchot yelling, the kids laughing…”
