Category Archives: Chanel Bonfire

Bombshells & Bombs

Bombshells and bombs...

Carroll Baker replaced this iconic Hollywood actress as Treasure in Las Flores del Vicio.  Shelly Winters was fired after falsely phoning in her measurements, and not being able to fit in to the wardrobe for the part.  My mom, Georgann Rea, another species of bombshell altogether was in Spain for the shoot.  Carroll Baker sings one of her songs as she dies in a fountain.  It’s hard to say which was more debauched, the shoot or the film.

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Posted by Wendy Lawless  bombs, bombshells, Carroll Baker, Chanel Bonfire, Dennis Hopper, Georgann Rea, Las Flores del Vicio, Shelly Winters, Spain, Wendy Lawless

London Ladies Who Lunch — Chanel Bonfire

Here’s to the ladies who lunch!

Marian Montgomery in the headscarf, next to Mary Broomfield in pale yellow with hands clasped. Cigarettes, cold white wine and maybe a chicken salad for those who were hungry…

Behind that wall, the IRA bomb went off.  Mother wrote songs with Marian who recorded them and sang one of them “The Summerhouse” on the BBC.  I’ll post a digital version when I can find it.

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Posted by Wendy Lawless  70s London, Chanel Bonfire, Georgann Rea, IRA bombing, ladies who lunch, London, Marian Montgomery, Sloane Square, Wendy Lawless

Fatal Glamour

The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Designed by Ralph Rapson and completed in 1963 with one of the first thrust stages in America, designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch. 


Peter Zeisler, Sir Tyrone Guthrie and Oliver Rea — founders of the theater.

“Oliver Rea was a successful Broadway producer who, disenchanted with the New York theater scene, had moved his family to Minneapolis to found the Guthrie Theater, where he and Sir Tyrone Guthrie, a scion of the English stage, planned to produce serious classical theater….He wasn’t handsome but had a craggy allure and an air of mystery that mother found fatally glamorous.”  — Chanel Bonfire

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Posted by Wendy Lawless  Chanel Bonfire, Georgann Rea, Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, modern architecture, Oliver Rea, Peter Zeisler, Ralph Rapson, Regional Theater, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, stage design, Tanya Moiseiwitsch, Wendy Lawless

Hotel Sydney Opera in Paris

The Hotel Sydney Opera in Paris!  Now a spiffy Best Western.  

With the much-cleaned air-shaft — location of the infamous Henry VIII chicken bone scene in Chanel Bonfire.

“Despite that our school French hadn’t included so much cursing, we were able to decipher that our window opened onto the air shaft where the hotel dried its clean linen.  We ran to the window and looked down to see white sheets stained with grease and strewn with chicken bones.” — Chanel Bonfire

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Posted by Wendy Lawless  Chanel Bonfire, Georgann Rea, Henry VIII, Hotel Sydney Opera, Oliver Rea, Paris, Robin Lawless, Wendy Lawless

Crazy double exposure picture of mother, on the landing strip in Morocco right before we left in a private plane to cross the Zagora desert, to Ouarzate. Love the English gent behind her…

Once the movie camera in her hands turned on in her purse.  It made for a very funny movie of her lipstick and compact in the dark interspersed with glimpses of the bright sky when she opened the purse.  Wish I had it but, as we know, there were very few survivors.

<a href=”http://www.hypersmash.com”>Hypersmash.com</a>
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Posted by Wendy Lawless  airstrip, Chanel Bonfire, double exposure, Georgann Rea, Morocco, Oliver Rea, private plane, Quarzate, Wendy Lawless, Zagora Desert

Robbie and me in our playclothes from Dayton’s…

Every summer our dad would meet our plane at the Minneapolis Airport.  He’d take one look at our Florence Eiseman dresses and polished Mary Janes and take us straight to Dayton’s Department store (where Mary Tyler Moore tosses her hat in the air) to buy Garanimals, Keds and dungarees that we could get dirty and muddy and wet and be kids in.

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Posted by Wendy Lawless  Chanel Bonfire, children of divorce, Dayton's, Florence Eiseman, Garanimals, Guthrie Theatre, James Lawless, Keds, Mary Janes, Mary Tyler Moore, Minneapolis