The BFFs who ruled silent Hollywood

I absolutely LOVED writing THIS history of the lifelong friendship between Mary Pickford and Frances Marion for Atlas Obscura. These two brilliant, ball busting and innovative minds helped transform the movie industry into the most powerful medium of the 20th century.  More importantly, they never stopped loving and supporting each other, even when life got tough and the industry they helped create passed them by.

Atlas Obscura Gold Coast Tour

I am so excited to be leading THIS tour for Atlas Obscura on Dec. 13th:

In the 1920s and 30s, Palisades Beach Road in Santa Monica was one of America's most exclusive and fabled streets.

Dubbed by various wags "the American Riviera," "Rolls Royce Row," and the "Gold Coast," this low stretch of oceanfront below the craggy Palisades featured 30 or so eclectically-styled summer homes. Many of these "cottages" were designed by California's most noted architects: Richard Neutra, Wallace Neff, Julia Morgan, John Byers, Paul Williams, and Webber and Spaulding.

But the reason for this neighborhood's international fame had nothing to do with its innovative architecture and everything to do with its residents, who included the most powerful men and women in the movie business. Stars like Cary Grant, Mae West, Peter Lawford, Orson Welles, Harold Lloyd, David Niven, Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, and Anita Loos frolicked in the surf after long days at the studio. Most famous of all was Marion Davies' gargantuan"Beach House," where epic, star-studded parties lasted all day and night.

Join me as we take a beachfront walking tour of the Gold Coast. We will view the exteriors of the remaining homes of heavyweights like Mary Pickford and Norma Talmadge, and recount tales from the storied coast's scandalous past. At the end of the excursion, we will take a docent led tour through the lovely Marion Davies Guest House, designed by Julia Morgan, the legendary architect of San Simeon.

Maria Rasputin

Since I was a little girl, I have been absolutely obsessed with the four beautiful martyred daughters of the last Tsar of Russia. All these years later it was a pleasure to write THIS story for Atlas Obscura about their kick-ass friend, who survived and thrived after a devastating revolution that many say her own manipulative father helped cause...

Sowden House

While I am writing this note, I have Unsolved Mysteries on in the background. Appropriate, since in THIS story for Curbed LA, I take a look at the infamous Sowden House in Los Feliz. Was the Black Dahlia murdered there? I don't know. But it is certain that for a few years in the 1940s, the famed Lloyd Wright fortress was an absolute "house of evil."