Original Sins

by Kim Krizan

  •“Red-and-black Grecian dress”

  •“A white evening dress, a red carnation, Molyneux ‘Fete’ perfume”

  •“Turquoise Grecian cape and dress and black hat ... an accroche coeur [literally, a hearthooker] on my forehead”

  •“Jade green cape”

  •“A red-and-white sheer chiffon dress without sleeves”

  •“An indescribable green dress made by the Russian woman according to my design, a subtle, insidious dress, revealing and concealing the figure at the same time, Oriental in essence, complex in its embroidery, entirely unintelligible ...”

  •“Black turban”

  •“Yellow Spanish dress”

  •“Black underwear, my black velvet dress, coral earrings and bracelet, Egyptian perfume, my black hat and fur coat”

  •“Green dress and gold slippers”

  •“Vaporous turquoise dress and cape and hat, hair made black with water, eyelashes heavy with paint, eyelids painted green (as per suggestion of Natasha) and, oh, very crimson lips and tinkling bracelets, and all the cheap seductions (except for the perfume, because it is not cheap enough)”

  •“Sky blue dress and blue linen hat ... cretonne bag and cretonne umbrella”

  •“Long amethyst chiffon dress and sandals”

  •“Beautiful Chinese pyjamas from the Biarritz”

  •“Chinese red-and-black silk coat”

  •“Asiatic-Russian old rose costume, as for a Byzantine opera”

  •“A pair of lace gloves, a red picture hat, a little red jacket, a Robertson clan plaid skirt, a turquoise cape dyed black, several evening dresses lengthened, new petticoats made out of artificial silk”

  And finally, she writes:

  •“I have time to re-dye my black gloves with India ink. They were worn and turning white.”

  Everyday Fatalism

  Her Scandalous Home Life

  “If you want the girl next door, go next door.”

  —Joan Crawford

  Whether it be a lavish, high-ceilinged mansion, a dumpy little motel room, a seemingly innocent suburban ranch house, a one-bedroom apartment, or a trailer on the edge of town, the femme fatale’s lair is where her schemes and dreams incubate—and often where her true self really shows. There may be a slightly transient feel to the Fatale’s home, as if she may pick up and take off at any moment. Certainly she is always looking for something more in life and isn’t wed to mere material possessions.

  Unlike the bombshell (who is known for being a bit of a mess in the domestic arena) or the diva (who is weighed down by entitlement issues and relies helplessly on staff), the femme fatale is driven and resourceful and therefore quite capable of being a spectacular homemaker. At some point she will create a beautiful home, become a rather good cook, and have a few adored pets so she knows at least someone in the world really likes her. Though not simplistic or materialistic enough to become truly domestic—living out her frustrations by buying everything in sight or achieving genuine fulfillment making cupcakes the way so many girls-next-door do—the Fatale enjoys expressing herself creatively on the home front. So whether she ends up in a palace or a double-wide (Pola Negri’s home in “One Arabian Night” was a wagon also occupied by an old hag and a hunchback), she can turn it into her little corner of beauty.

  Lairs We Have Known

  According to the dictionary, a “lair” is “the resting or living place of a wild animal.” Exactly! It’s also defined as “a refuge or place for hiding.” Absolutely! Even Fatales find the need put down roots—if only temporarily.

  Anaïs: The Martha Stewart of Fatales

  Anaïs Nin was one of the most deft lair-builders of all time. As an idealistic newlywed living in a New York bungalow in 1924, she kept scrapbooks of ideas for interior decoration and lavished her home with attention, painting her dining room blue and her bedroom rose and gray. She even went so far as to paint her husband’s hairbrushes to match the room. When she and her husband moved to Paris and found a flat on the Left Bank, Ms. Nin decorated it in a “modernization of the Oriental style,” complete with a “Moorish bed” she found in an antique shop. She hung Oriental lamps, draped shawls over furniture, and created each room as if she were setting the stage for a romantic drama. After her business-smart American husband received a raise from his appreciative Parisian employers, Anaïs filled her apartment with gothic furniture and hired a maid.

  The stock market took a dramatic tumble a few years later and the couple was forced to take more modest accommodations in the Parisian suburb of Louveciennes, so they rented a crumbling two-hundred year old cottage (the yard of which was said to have been the landing spot of Madame DuBarry’s guillotined head). Nin immediately set to work, painting each room to inspire certain moods. She hung “yards and yards of turquoise green velvet for the studio window,” affixed a mosaic of blue stones to her fireplace, and bought an elaborately beautiful aquarium of glass fish to sit on the mantle place. She described this house as bringing a world of excitement to her.

  After World War II broke out and Nin was forced to flee France, she turned on a dime and created a modern New York apartment, but had her friends paint the many windows to look like a pagan cathedral of stained glass. Then when she began an alternate life on the West coast with her second husband, they lived in a Japanese-inspired abode designed by Eric Lloyd Wright and built in a hilly area of Los Angeles that on clear days had a view of the ocean. Anaïs saw to it that this, her final home, was minimalistically pure, spacious, and filled with light. It had an indoor sand garden, walls decorated with avant-garde artwork, a fireplace that Nin thought looked like it belonged in a castle, and a black swimming pool surrounded by willowy trees. Nin’s second husband, Rupert Pole, claimed that after she died and her ashes were scattered in the sea, the tree that had obscured their view of the ocean inexplicably died and allowed him to see his beloved Fatale’s final resting place.

  Dona Sol’s Hacienda

  Dona Sol, played by a young Rita Hayworth in “Blood and Sand,” possessed the kind of crib for which femme fatales are famous. She lived in Spain (though her lavish home looked suspiciously like a Fox sound stage). No matter, the place was nothing less than magnificent: a vast palace with ceilings so high as to seem nonexistent, gleaming pale blue floors and pale blue walls, as well as very ornate cream-colored furniture, a cream brocade couch, and a fabulous chandelier. Dona Sol owned paintings by famed Spanish painter Diego Velazquez and had a humongous courtyard with a fountain. Like a jewel in her setting, she sat at her dinner table dressed in a long white gown and diamonds, then sent her guests and servants away so that she might entertain her new toy: a handsome matador.

  Ava’s House

  The glamorous femme fatale might also quench her romantic craving for a simple home, as did Ava Gardner after her marriage to Artie Shaw went kaput. She hunted for months before finally buying a quaint pink house on a hill surrounded by a white picket fence. She went right to work, planting yellow rose bushes herself and decorating room by room to create a homey, cozy ambiance, though her blackout curtains (which she installed so she could sleep during the day after long nights listening to jazz in smoky clubs) tended to give away her Fatale nature.

  She eventually inherited what had been MGM studio queen Norma Shearer’s old dressing room, a three-room suite with a long expanse of mirror surrounded by lightbulbs, a boudoir, a bathroom, and a kitchen. She decorated the walls with photographs of herself with studio head L. B. Mayer, writer George Bernard Shaw, and Clark Gable.

  Her lovely home in Palm Springs was a simple affair and conveniently located right next to the airport. It had a swimming pool and patio with a broiler outside. She loved to whip up vast meals while entertaining guests and, though the rest of the house was extremely tidy, the kitchen was always a hell of a mess from Ava’s non-stop cooking of Californian, Southern, Italian, and Chinese feasts.

  While living in Spain, Ava’s home was a red brick number named La Bruja b
ecause it was topped with a weathervane in the shape of a witch riding a broomstick. She spent quite a lot of time hunting for the right items for this abode and placed a Spanish four-poster bed in one of the bedrooms.

  In her later life, Ava’s London apartment was full of good paintings and real eighteenth and nineteenth century antiques, including a canopied Chippendale bed. There were said to be framed photographs of relatives and friends, but absolutely no homage to her Hollywood career, which she valued very little.

  M.D. (Doctor of Fatale) and Her “Laboratory”

  In the early 1930s Marlene Dietrich’s self-decorated Beverly Hills home was a dramatic extension of her exotic, sensual image: an avant-garde den, all black and white and extremely modern with a huge white couch. It was sexy and strange with its graphic zebra prints and shiny black throw pillows, its mirrored bathroom and mirrored vanity table laden with beautiful bottles and jars, as well as its lush shag carpet. Dietrich needed only stand in her living room, cigarette in hand, to seem ensconced in ambient drama.

  At another point in the ’30s Dietrich rented the home of Countess di Frasso, which was decorated in a modernization of the Japanese style, complete with elaborate, stylized wallpaper and the ubiquitous shag rug, as well as dramatic black and white chairs. Meanwhile, M.D.’s dressing room on Paramount’s famed Stars Dressing Room Row was extremely modern for the era and she adorned it with her favorite good luck dolls, including the cute African bushman doll that went with her everywhere.

  In the ’50s Dietrich had a tryst with pop singer and teen heartthrob Eddie Fisher (who was to become the husband and ex-husband of polar opposites Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor). He was twenty-five to Dietrich’s fifty-five, but he described their first date in his book Eddie: My Life and Loves:

  I went to her Park Avenue apartment, which was furnished in perfect taste … . We were alone and Marlene was dressed in a beautiful and very revealing beige gown. She asked me to open a bottle of wine, we drank, and then she disappeared into the kitchen to prepare supper. She served it herself and I was the inexperienced boy, just like in one of her own movies, and I was both excited and a little scared. But Marlene knew how to make me feel like a man. After dinner she sat at my feet and we talked about our lives, about love. The ceiling of her bedroom was mirrored, which was also a surprise. And that night I discovered the aura of glamour and mystery that always surrounded Marlene was not a trick or illusion. Her beauty, her charm, her humor, her generosity were real.

  In another autobiography about his love life, charmingly titled Been There, Done That, Fisher returns to the memory of the mirrored ceiling, specifying that it was carved.

  Dietrich’s film characters also seemed to call for the most cutting-edge settings Hollywood had to offer. Interestingly, her fictional settings were either minimalistic or ornate in the extreme. In the film “Desire,” her character (a glamorous jewel thief) resides in an all-white hotel and encounters a Parisian shrink (attired in formal morning coat) whose office is stunningly modern, spacious, and all white.

  Garbo’s Place

  When Garbo first came to America in the ’20s, she tried to create a peaceful refuge from the superficiality that was Hollywood. Her home was not lavish by Hollywood standards and she had her Japanese gardener help her install a hammock in her back yard, as well as a table and chairs in her garden. Friend Mercedes De Acosta reported that Garbo’s early Hollywood bedroom was like “a man’s room.”

  Years later, Garbo bought a luxury apartment in New York City from which she emerged on a regular basis for her constitutionals. It was said to have been spacious, beautiful, romantic, and traditional. Furniture was in the style of the Louises XV and XVI, and she was a fan of lush velvets and opulent fringe. She was a devotee of lovely paintings, some by Renoir and Modigliani, though she tended to buy whatever caught her eye. She proclaimed her allegiance to the use of dusty pinks, crimsons, buff, and rose in decorating.

  Visitors have said the ambiance was surprisingly feminine, though her friend Cecil Beaton strenuously objected to her taste, writing in his famed diary that he particularly hated one candelabra and her use of the color lavender in her bedroom. He said her apartment did not reflect her true unconventionality and simplicity. Ironically, Beaton probably failed to grasp Garbo’s true nature: one of extreme romanticism and drama, which could be reflected in both the austere and the opulent.

  Theda’s Den

  During her years as Hollywood’s first vamp Theda Bara lived in a large “pseudo-Tudor” house in Los Angeles, a style that was all the rage in the early 20th century. She filled her home with “tiger skin rugs, crystal balls and skulls”—clearly setting a standard for baby vamps to come. Visitors said that she used velvet ottomans, beaded curtains, incense, and exotic prints to dramatic effect and, in keeping with her image, kept exotic pets.

  Mata’s Lair

  The real Mata Hari, who lived for a time in Java, took stylistic elements of the exotic Eastern world and used them to create an image of mystery and sensuality. Entering the realm of fictional abodes, Mata Hari’s dressing room in the 1931 film starring Greta Garbo is a den of sensuality: tall ceilings, lush flowers, folding screens, satin-covered chairs, flowing champagne. Her home is even more stunning: a low bed swathed in satin with a statue of Shiva at its head, lavish curtains and canopies, rugs, and potted plants.

  Crystal’s Web

  Moving into the late 1930s, that “terrible mantrap” Crystal Allen was finally able to steal away Stephen Haines from sweet little Mary Haines in the original version of “The Women.” As a result, she moved into an upscale apartment and threw her weight around, getting the place up to snuff so she could spend long evenings lounging in her vast marble bathroom (a monstrosity which Stephen’s little daughter describes as “perfectly ridiculous”). It was here that she would take to her huge bath with pillow and cigarette at the ready and receive guests or take calls from her new on-the-sly boyfriend.

  Mrs. Dietrichson’s Pad

  Sliding into the noir ’40s, Phyllis Dietrichson’s Mediterranean-style home in “Double Indemnity” provides the benchmark for suburban fatalism. With a front door shrouded by palm trees, dust wafting through the air, stucco walls, dark tiles everywhere including the staircase, Spanish wrought iron railing, Oriental rugs, ornate wood furniture, Moorish lamps, floral-patterned upholstered furniture (with a gun under the cushion), a big vase on the floor filled with cattails, and a piano partially covered with a shawl … well, the place just of screams of dreams and frustrations. Finally, framed photographs of Phyllis’ hated husband and stepdaughter (though absolutely none of Phyllis) reveal that she is only passing through on her way to something better.

  Gilda’s Nest

  When Gilda marries into money in Buenos Aires, she becomes the Fatale of the house on a classy street. The interior is decorated in an ornate Spanish style, but in pale colors. Predominant are baroque and curving shapes, pillars, crystal chandeliers, and a huge curving marble staircase with wrought iron railing. Gilda’s glamorous boudoir, in which she plays jazzy music on her phonograph while getting dressed for dinner, has the all-important mirrors and a satin-skirted dressing table laden with cosmetics, combs, brushes, as well as gigantic perfume decanters. It also boasts a lush shag rug and brocade curtains—in short, a place fit for a Fatale.

  Amy North’s Apartment

  Psychology student Amy North in “Young Man with a Horn” lives in a vast, modern apartment interspersed here and there with romantic and rococo items such as candelabras and sculpture lamps. The centerpiece of her lair is a white cockatoo named Louise who Amy describes as her “best friend.” The apartment is in white and pale shades, though her grand piano is black. She plays Chopin’s “Nocturne” on it—the only song she knows. Everything about her pad is sleek, elegant, and imposing, and she lounges in it like a gorgeous piece of sculpture.

  Joan Collins’ Starlet Style

  In the 1950s, Joan Collins was a badass starlet at Fox Studios
and she co-starred with the likes of Richard Burton, Harry Belafonte, and Robert Wagner. She wasted no time having her way with all manner of cute boys and for her labors in the Fatale trenches she was thought to be quite a shocking girl, something she details in her autobiography, Past Imperfect. She describes her apartment thusly:

  I was fairly frugal. The apartment on Shoreham Drive—furnished in white-beige-and-pink Sears Roebuck starlet style—cost two hundred and fifty dollars a month. I either ate out or was on a diet so my fridge contained cottage cheese, a few bottles of white wine and little else. The freezer, however, was full of Will Wright’s ice cream in every different flavor for the odd afternoons when I threw caution to the wind and indulged in an ice-cream fit. I had a car befitting my starlet status. A flashy pink Thunderbird, which certainly got attention when I zipped along Sunset Boulevard well over the speed limit, with the radio blaring Latin American music. My closet contained a large selection of Saks and Magnin’s lowest-cut dresses, a white mink stole, a black mink coat, a white sheared-beaver coat and a blue fox hat which I had bought in an abandoned moment and had never worn. I was sartorially prepared for any eventuality. Of material possessions other than these I had none.

  Mrs. Robinson’s Room

  Cool, counter-culture femme fatale Mrs. Robinson lived in one of Los Angeles’ upscale suburban abodes in “The Graduate.” The fully-stocked bar and relaxing “sunporch” weren’t enough to pacify this frustrated artist. Her mainly white boudoir was the room most revealing of her true nature, what with its all-important skirted and glamorously-lit vanity table, large bed with mirrored headrest, and chandelier lamps over the bedside tables. The lavish pink, purple, and gold accents, the white shag carpet, and the ubiquitous white phone of ’60s-style glamour capped off the room’s Fatale splendor.