Welcome to the website for Tara Hanks, author of The Mmm Girl and Wicked Baby.
My review of Andrew O’Hagan’s comic novel, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, is featured in the Issue 15 of the UK fan-club magazine, Mad About Marilyn, as well as coverage of the summer auctions, a profile of photographer Bob Beerman and a 1961 article by Louella Parsons.
Posted in Books, Magazines, Marilyn Monroe | Tagged Marilyn Monroe, Mad About Marilyn, Maf the Dog, Andrew O'Hagan | Leave a Comment »
As recently as 2008, Lady Gaga was a little-known songwriter and burlesque artist from New York. Her debut single, ‘Just Dance’, was released in the US that spring and spent five months in the Billboard Top 100, peaking at No 2 that summer. An album, The Fame, was released that autumn, finally reaching the UK in January 2009.
Since then, Lady Gaga’s rise to global stardom has proceeded at breakneck pace. The Fame is one of the most successful pop releases in years, winning a Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album and spawning an extended deluxe edition (The Fame Monster), the Fame Ball and Monster Ball tours, and a remix collection.
‘The Fame is about how anyone can feel famous,’ Gaga explains on her website. ‘Pop culture is art. It doesn’t make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame. But, it’s a shareable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle.’ Continue Reading »
Posted in Lady Gaga, Music | Tagged Lady Gaga, The Fame | Leave a Comment »
Earlier this month I took a holiday in the North-West of England, where I first lived as a student nearly twenty years ago. The trip was partly a sentimental journey, and partly for research as the novel I’m currently writing is set in the area. One of the places I always wanted to visit while at university was the Brontё Parsonage Museum, but I never got round to it.
Over the last year I’ve been digging out all my Brontё novels and re-reading the biographies, so finally decided it was time to make the journey to Haworth, the Yorkshire village where this extraordinarily gifted family created some of the masterpieces of English literature.
Among the treasures I picked up was Charlotte Brontё’s Corset, a pamphlet from the parsonage’s current (actually, first) writer in resident, the poet Katrina Naomi. Continue Reading »
Posted in Books, Poetry | Tagged Bronte, Brontё, Katrina Naomi | 2 Comments »
David L. Wolper was born in New York City, 1928. After studying cinema and journalism at University of South California, Wolper set up a television distribution company in 1949, selling old movie serials to the small screen, then in its infancy. In 1955, Wolper moved into production with his documentary, The Race for Space, featuring unseen Russian footage. It was finally broadcast in 1960, earning an Oscar nomination.
By 1963, Wolper had been dubbed ‘Mr Documentary’ by Time, and had produced many more programs, including the Emmy award-winning Making of the President 1960. When Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, Wolper sent a team of cameramen to her funeral. He was one of the first to propose a documentary about her life, though initially most networks were uninterested.
The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, produced in 1964, is still available on DVD today and remains one of the pioneering biographical works on the actress. Speaking in the 1990s, Wolper said that he believed the authentic quality of the documentary came from it having been made so soon after Monroe’s death, when the people close to her were still alive and their memories fresh. Continue Reading »
Posted in Film, Marilyn Monroe | Tagged Marilyn Monroe, David L. Wolper, Documentaries, Moviola, Garson Kanin | 1 Comment »
Say Goodbye to the President: Marilyn Monroe and the Lawfords, a new article by me for the ‘Twilight’ section at Immortal Marilyn, has been posted to mark the 48th anniversary of her passing.
(The picture above shows Marilyn with Peter Lawford at Frank Sinatra’s Cal-Neva Lodge, a week before her death. It is one of the last photographs ever taken of the actress.)
Posted in History, Marilyn Monroe | Tagged Cal-Neva Lodge, Frank Sinatra, Immortal Marilyn, Kennedys, Lake Tahoe, Marilyn Monroe, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Peter Lawford, Rat Pack | Leave a Comment »
Wicked Enchantments: A History of the Pendle Witches and Their Magic by Joyce Froome
With its 400th anniversary approaching, the Pendle witch trial of 1612 is once again the focus of historical discussion. What was the largest investigation of its kind in England (until the Matthew Hopkins purges in East Anglia some thirty years later) is now, ironically, a mainstay of the East Lancashire tourist industry.
In 2007, John C. Clayton’s The Lancashire Witch Conspiracy brought a new focus on local history and genealogy to the now legendary case. This year, Joyce Froome, an assistant curator at the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, Cornwall, has brought her own knowledge of magic to the table. Continue Reading »
Posted in Books, History, Witchcraft | Tagged Early Modern History, Joyce Froome, Lancashire, Museum of Witchcraft, Pendle Witches, Wicked Enchantments, Witchcraft | Leave a Comment »
I’ve recently set up yet another blog, this time on Tumblr – an informal affair, where I post snippets of the words, pictures and music that inspire me on a daily basis. This morning I was thrilled to discover this rare photograph of Christine Keeler in The Guardian, part of an exhibition dedicated to the iconic British model, opening in London later this year.
Regular readers of this blog will know that Keeler’s adventurous life was the inspiration for my own debut novella, Wicked Baby.
All updates from ‘Rambling Rose’ will be posted to my Twitter account, which you can also read to the right of any page on here, my main website. And loyal subscribers please note, two new articles will be posted very soon, ahead of my long-awaited jaunt in the Northwest next month.
Happy holidays, here’s to a long hot summer!
Posted in Profumo Affair, Updates, Websites, Wicked Baby | Tagged Wicked Baby, Christine Keeler, Tumblr, Rambling Rose, Profumo | Leave a Comment »
'The Misfits', 1960 - producer Frank Taylor at far left
Nan Taylor Abell, formerly married to Frank E. Taylor, producer of The Misfits, has died in Greenwich, Connecticut, aged 94.
Born in Minnesota, Nan was the daughter of a mine engineer. After graduating, she moved to the New York and became a children’s radio host. She gave up her career on marrying Frank Taylor, who was then a publisher and editor to the playwright Arthur Miller.
In the late 1940s, the Taylors moved to Hollywood with hopes of bringing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, Tender is the Night, to the big screen. However, this project failed to get off the ground, and by 1952 they had returned east with their four sons.
After Taylor’s client, Arthur Miller, married Marilyn Monroe in 1956, he bought a farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, close to the Taylors’ home at Belle Haven, Old Greenwich. In his 1969 biography, Norma Jean: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe, author Fred Lawrence Guiles remarked that ‘to Marilyn, the Taylors were by far the liveliest and most convivial of Miller’s married friends. She came in time to confide in both Frank and Nan Taylor…’ Continue Reading »
Posted in Film, Marilyn Monroe | Tagged Marilyn Monroe, Nan Taylor Abell, The Misfits | 3 Comments »
My profile of photographer Ed Feingersh is featured on the Immortal Marilyn website
Posted in Art and Photography, Marilyn Monroe, Updates, Websites | Tagged Ed Feingersh, Immortal Marilyn, Marilyn Monroe, Tara Hanks | Leave a Comment »
One night last week, I celebrated my birthday at the Volks Tavern, a small club on the colonnade at Madeira Drive, near Brighton Pier. It is named after the light railway that runs nearby, and is one of the most laidback, intimate venues in the city.
One of my oldest friends, Stephen Silverwood, founded Refugee Radio in 2008. I’ve listened to a few of their weekly broadcasts on the local and online Brighton station, Radio Reverb, interviewing refugees and asylum seekers living in the area. Continue Reading »
Posted in Brighton, Music | Tagged Bakk Lamp Fall, Brighton, Refugee Radio, The Cornerstones, Volks Club | Leave a Comment »
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http://tarahanks.com by Tara Hanks/marina72 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
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