romanticaugogo

Carol Marcus, Oona O’Neill and Gloria Vanderbilt once ruled New York as the It girls of the 1940s. This trio, dark-lipped, long glossy hair waved over one eye Veronica Lake-style, danced their way through club land, breaking hearts, starring in gossip columns, pursued by powerful men. Three girls with the world at their feet. Their beauty and dry-as-vermouth one-liners were the inspiration for Holly Golightly, the immortal heroine of the novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s, ‘Darling,’ Truman said to Carol before beginning his book, ‘you and I are going to have to spend every night together for the next few months.’ Recalling those nights, she adds: ‘I think Truman wanted to climb inside our heads, to understand how girls thought, their dreams and their reactions to whatever life threw at them.’ - NOREEN TAYLOR

[Gloria and Oona] both had wonderful minds, though utterly different. They both could have been anything, but more than making decisions about how they wanted their lives to go, their lives showed up. I think that is true of a whole generation of women.    Oona O'Neill was born with a broken heart. Knowing that, it was wonderful to make her laugh. When she laughed, she sounded like a very soft little bell ringing. Then, too, there was that marvelous bawdy side of her, which was funny and always accurate. In all the years of knowing each other we never once had an argument. I used to wonder why. I know, now, why. She could understand eight sides of every situation. She was two girls - the waif and the princess. Oona was brave. But she could not put an end to the deep mourning in which she lived until her death. Oona Chaplin died of a broken heart.   Gloria has made more choices than Oona or I. In a way, she has lived more. She has tried more. She has been interested in more. Gloria is very brave. She is even surviving the ultimate tragedy, the death of her son. She knows that while she cannot really survive it, she's healng that part of her that she can save for her other children. It is possible that she may lead a whole new life, be a whole different person, and start again. Oona could not do that. I don't know if I could. Gloria dares. We were really children when we met. We remained children. All those unlived years, those early years. We knew each other in the dark. We had an unbreakable tie: the desire and the need for the only thing we cared about — love. We gave that to each other. And now, one of us has died. The tie is still unbreakable. - CAROL MATTHAU, AMONG THE PORCUPINES

Oil on canvas,  146 x 97 cm.

Agnès Varda :: ‘Sofia Loren in Portugal’, Póvoa de Varzim, 1956