Very bad of me to get the wrong spelling of her name, I know it very well, and there's a picture and story of Gladyce and David on this blog if you keep scrolling.......it's possble, by way of excuse, that in thinking of Rose Tobias Shaw I was reminded of a wonderful lady called Gladys, who shared an identical New York accent and ran the switchboard and indeed the whole office of theater producer Gilbert Miller, housed above the Henry Miller Theater, where I enjoyed my hilarious Broadway theater production experiences in 1964. It included a rather mediocre play with divine Geraldine Page, whose husband Rip Torn was always around, nutty and charming, and a tough assignment as the assistant of director, Hank Kaplan. Also the great Helen Hayes in a play about the First Ladies in the White House. And Gladys who got me comp tickets to every show in town. She and I kept in touch for years, with her letters full of Broadway gossip, she knew everything about everybody. I can still hear her yelling "I gave already!" to many phone calls for donations. Once a year when I watch the Tony Awards I get a big whiff of New York nostalgia.
The Acid King
- Review of "The Acid King""I loved The Acid King. Your powers of description, characters and dialogue are full of imagination and surprise. You really have the art of telling a story well! You completely surprised me with your skill and writing ability. You always had the gift of the gab but you can add writing to your list of skills!! It's something I've always wanted to do myself but I never seem to have the concentration to sit down and do it. I really admire you for pulling it off. I know you took the Reading bust as the kick-off point, but it feels like a real story, full of surprise and original characters. I am so proud and pleased for you." Sandy Lieberson - Producer of "Performance"
It's 1984, and a fast-moving week in the lives of four long-estranged friends from London's Swinging Sixties kicks off when Madeleine, the recovered victim of an infamous drug bust seventeen years ago, accidentally discovers the mystery man who called himself the Acid King and set up the sting which sent her rock star lover Pete and his bandmate Barry to jail.
Pete got a lucky break after years of miserable failure and is now a rich legendary rocker, but Barry is a desperate couch potato, getting by with anti-depression pills and constant hatred of the charismatic American who tricked them.
With his new persona, Griffin, the man they had long blamed for sending their once beautiful lives into a downward spiral, has set himself up as a drug guru and video producer in the hyped-up 80s LA punk rock club scene. He's a playful popular clown but his uncertainty about whether or not he has safely escaped those who want vengeance makes him paranoid and dangerous.
Madeleine can't resist teasing Pete with the news, without telling him where to find Griffin nor his undercover name and Pete appears indifferent, but Barry's reaction sets off a hunt which triggers a signal to yet another angry victim from Griffin's past, an FBI agent called Cortez, who has deadly retribution on his mind.
When they all converge on Griffin's hideout in Los Angeles, they get some surprising revelations, and their intentions are unexpectedly turned upside down.
"Wit, anger and bittersweet nostalgia make this a lively read."
November 30, 2012
November 29, 2012
San Francisco - The Honeymoon Tour
Following my marriage to Douglas Rae, my fellow agent at Creative Management Associates in London, our bosses David Begelman and Freddie Fields treated us, due to the esteemed value of our duo at the agency, to a wonderful full blown tour of the USA.
We started in New York of course, where David and his then estranged lady Gladys made a special arrangement to be together to take us to dinner, which resulted in them deciding they had to stay together - and they got married. David loved telling me this story, very romantic.
We had an eventful time in Los Angeles, with another special - a Sue Mengers dinner.
In San Francisco, here I am on the boat of director Elliot Silverstein, director of Cat Ballou. He and the writer, Frank Pierson, became life long friends when we worked together on a Peter O'Toole movie we were booted off because of that old friend, 'creative differences'.
"Total Recoil" - My Memoir
Still working on the years of memories to complete this endless book - registered at The Library of Congress with a title I decided on a long time ago from my old friend Rose Tobias Shaw, who remarked at my incredible memory by saying "Hey, you got total recoil....." in her New York accent.
Keeping to the ethic of See no Evil, Speak no Evil, Hear no Evil.....but straying somewhat while recalling some situations, like life at Columbia Pictures and movie talk with David Bowie.. But many affectionate stories about my client and friend Mick Jagger.
December 31, 2011
February 13, 2011
Egypt - I Fell In Love with Cairo
......but the camel drover fell in love with me, must have been my red hair, I had a big 'beehive' of it back there. Lamyi Ibrahim Ghoneim (I still have his business card) said he had room for another wife, insisted I see his house with the wonderful view of the Pyramids, so we all trekked over. He was right about the view, but not the vacancy, and I liked his enterprise, his card carried the witty caption "Kanada Dray".
The Cairo atmosphere was all-embracingly warm and fragrant, even around the horses and camels. I felt I could live there, loved the people who gave us such a welcome, our gang of ship's passengers from an Italian Liner on our way back to London from Australia in 1962. My boyfriend Max on the left, my still best friend Pamela (whose b.f. Gerard took the picture) on the camel, and our eccentric poet mascot, Robert. We didn't all arrive in London intact, jumped ship in Naples, spent nearly two years in Rome.....that was the sixties.
The Cairo Museum was sheer heaven for me, I couldn't get enough of Tutankhamen's tomb relics, so when the tour group left for a picnic on the Nile bank, I hid behind a mummy case and lingered alone over the golden treasures for a long time, then rushed around outside looking for my friends, who seemed to have vanished. Stranded in Cairo! For an exciting few moments I liked the idea. I've felt very close to the city and the people during these last few weeks. They deserve the happy future they are claiming.
Egypt - Pyramids Post!
This is the business card given to me by my ardent suitor who drove us up to visit the Pyramids. He was an excellent guide who gave us a very good time with terrific stories about the ancient past. I just love this card, it shows what an enterprising man he was, full of character and verve.
The fact that I still have this small but very sweet memento is illustrated by another story: I was having a legal battle with a former associate in Los Angeles a few years ago, who was denying various episodes of conflict, and in the final moments my lawyer said to his lawyer, "Look, it's like this, Larry, my client is a woman who keeps everything. She has cards here handwritten by your client admitting and apologizing for all these things she's claiming - and they came with Orchids!"
Egypt - Boat Arrest In The Suez Canal!
The time was 1956, four years since Egypt came under the military control of Colonel Nasser, with angry exchanges growing stronger between him and England's Prime Minister Anthony Eden, and others. My adorably nutty young husband, James Abbott, decided to sell the country garage he'd bought just to service his racing car, and get the hell off to Australia where he'd spent his teenage years in glorious freedom from public schools. It sold in the nick of time, just before the oil crisis, petrol rationing and the Middle East political time bomb in the making.
His other brilliant idea was to book us on a tiny British-India cargo ship, with our new scarlet Jaguar XK120 in the hold and our precious Afghan Hound, Miss Julie (both on the left with the young Mrs. Maggie Abbott) in a large cage tied down on a covered deck. We'd already shipped our other two equally well-bred Afghans, Jo and Moti, to Australia so they could be out of quarantine when we arrived. For good measure, just in case, James tucked a shotgun with a supply of ammo into a suitcase. Nobody inspected luggage in those days.
Well, who knew, as they say. After dawdling along via stops for cargo in Marseilles and Genoa, we arrived in the Mediterranean sea at the entrance to the Suez Canal just in time for imminent outbreak of War, and at first denied entry, being British and the enemy. We bobbed around for a couple of days whilst the ship's captain negotiated and eventually our little ship, which was too small to navigate the alternative route, around the whole of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope in the South, also dealing with a slight list from an imbalance in the cargo hold, was allowed to join the single-file convoy traveling down the Suez Canal on condition that we were under 'boat arrest' with armed Egyptian soldiers on guard all over the ship. They were quite nice and friendly, except for a moment when one of them admired Miss Julie too closely through the bars of her cage and almost lost his finger. There were only 12 civilian passengers on the ship, mostly older folk who stayed in their cabins, but James and I waved cheerily to the less friendly populace on the banks of the Canal, who jeered us on, shouting out things we were happy not to understand. It was exciting, once we got through the Canal, to know we were passing Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia. A fascinating area of our world we know mostly for the wrong reasons.
It was an extraordinary experience. We stopped for fuel, watching those huge pipes on floats placed around us, pumping away, followed by a sojourn in the Red Sea when we swapped places with the convoy of ships traveling north into the Canal, climbing shipside down ladders for a swim. I was dead scared down there looking up at the ship, but the water was really buoyant and we could see Egyptian soldiers doing the same thing nearby. It was surreal.
What was utterly real was the sound of explosions which started the day we left the Red Sea and entered the Indian Ocean. The area where we'd been sailing in our little "Chandara" was now being heavily bombed. That drama was over for us, but it was a political and historical disaster for many others, especially those Egyptian people who had to suffer Fifty-Five more hard years of a military dictatorship until this week!
February 07, 2011
The King's Message
Yesterday, February 6th was the anniversary of the death in 1952 of King George VI, who was loved and admired by the whole nation, shocked at such a tragedy, still recovering from a really dark period of post World War II depression, austerity and 'bread units' - although the Festival of Britain had succeeded in cheering us up a bit.
"The King's Speech" has brilliantly conveyed how His Majesty spoke to the people at the outbreak of the war, and here is the letter he sent to every child in the country to celebrate the end of the war. It reveals the King's genuine devotion to his people and the comforting role he played in our lives.
December 30, 2010
The Acid King - People Are Talking
With the publication of Keith Richards' infectiously written book called "LIFE", and what else could he name it, came more talk in the British papers again about Mr. X, the dealer with the promise of best-ever acid, the cool bloke who was everywhere in the easy-going social life of swinging London for a while back in 1967 - the seductive interloper who coerced the inside group of rock and roll friends to invite him down to Keith's country house, Redlands, for a fun acid-tripping weekend. Security wasn't the norm, so nobody questioned him, this David Schneiderman, as Keith knew him - he was goodlooking, with clever charm and confidence - called himself The Acid King, that's how he eased himself into the trap that sent Keith and Mick to jail for a brief but unpleasant stay after the court case. Then when the bust had taken place, a bunch of coppers knocking on Keith's front door, with Fleet Street all excited, and the papers full of the stories - he was gone, and never heard from again. Except - wouldn't you know - by me, Maggie Abbott, bored in Hollywood and charmed by the same tricks, only sixteen years later. He was now David Jove, a lively sparked-up video director of punk bands and still the court jester, only the royals were a different crowd. It was almost two years before I got the shock, from Marianne Faithfull, taking her over to his den late one night when everywhere else was closed. He broke his years of underground cover by telling her his real name, must have been his ego, too hard to resist seeing her shock too. He was a volatile and dangerous sod, and a gun-carrying trickster, so when I later decided to write the story, I put it into fiction, and kept the name, The Acid King, for the novel. I think it would be a good movie and I wish people would buy it and find out. Click on the cover in the left hand column or go to Amazon. It's a fun read.
October 23, 2010
Ken Russell Reunion
The Academy paid tribute to Ken Russell on the 35th anniversary of his movie Tommy, and a superb follow-up lunch party was hosted by my old friend Si Litvinoff, legendary producer since the sixties of such great movies as Walkabout, Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and in the opinion of myself and connoisseurs of movies, the most intelligent, well-read and classy film maker in the industry, where these qualities are more rare than is good for all of us.
Si is also acclaimed for giving the most enjoyable parties, every year for his birthday in April for many years, and for other memorable occasions like this one for his group of long- time friends and creative associates of Ken's. What's most unique about Si's parties is they're never for political or press-hungry reasons, always include his genuine friends from far and wide, and he doesn't pander to passing fads, so they're happy events with great conversation, lots of wine and the best home cooked food, the social action flowing casually through his canyon house garden and indoor art gallery.
There's plentiful history and white hair in this picture, with Malcolm McDowall and Ken Russell, and his vivacious blonde wife Lisi, in the foreground and me in the background, perfectly in synch with my role in setting up the Tommy movie back when I was an agent at CMA in London, Ken was a client and I arranged for us to have lunch with Pete Townsend and The Who's manager, Chris Stamp to see if there was a connection. There was......
The Bimbo Syndicate
- A Review of the Novel by Mary Keil"Maggie Abbott's "The Bimbo Syndicate" drew me further and further in until I couldn't put the book down. The plot is original and imaginative with enough twists and turns to keep the reader on her toes. She creates characters from different worlds who believably articulate their culture. The characters are well drawn to the point where I felt I knew each one well. Not only does Ms. Abbott keep adding believable dimensions to their personalities, she keeps introducing new characters with special skills that I know are just like people out there in the so-called real world doing their peculiar thing. This is obviously a well-read, well-travelled, life-experienced author who has synthesized a large amount of knowledge about the world and how it functions. Taking on the global currency of oil was brilliant, and the concept of oil supplies moving subterraneously is beyond clever. It rings quite true. Ms. Abbott may have her pulse frighteningly accurately on the not-too-distant future. This book deserves mass-market publication, as its topic is extremely current and prescient. Every time I get into my car, I ponder how many years will we still be using this damaging mode of transportation. Having written about women and friendship, I was also struck by how Abbott envisions women, their deep friendships, their integrity and loyalties and how, when working together, they can accomplish great things, yet still remain true to their hearts. Even the seemingly coldest-hearted in the book finds love and redemption. Men may seem like they are pulling the strings, but it's another of the illusions Abbott exposes with humor and intelligence. Her women are truly unstoppable. In addition, Ms. Abboott cleverly weaves into her story many snippets of her accumulated wisdom about the universe. This is not a book that could have been written by a young writer. It covers too many subjects and displays too much depth of knowledge about them. And, while she doesn't keep spirituality in our faces, it is obvious Ms. Abbott has a deep belief in a Higher Power who is clearly in charge of even those who mistakenly believe they have power. I applaud Ms. Abbott's imagination and heartily recommend "The Bimbo Syndicate". May she keep writing for years to come. Mary Keil is the Executive Producer/Writer of "Swing" and co-author of "Come Rain Or Shine:Friendships Between Women" H
Saxon, Lu and Heba, glamorous girlfriends of three ruthless political brokers in the international oil industry, meet by chance and become instant conspirators in the ladies' room of a Paris hotel during an OPEC conference.
They don't realize they've been set up nor that they're being stalked by American exile, Iris (undercover name I.Beam), a sexy young assassin on the payroll of Lu's Chinese banker, Ling Cho Pi.
He's competing with Saxon's Washington lobbyist, Lester Heiligenberger, and Heba's Prince Abul for the grand prize. Who will control the future supplies of Oil?
Rumors abound that their precious Light Sweet Crude is running out, and only Doctor Hilda Lobinksi, a reclusive paleontologist, knows the truth. While the oil companies have been greedily draining away the world's known oil resources, Hilda has been using her scientific and environmental skills to investigate the location of new ones.
The men don't know where Doctor Lobinski is hiding nor how she's concealed her research data, but they are desperate to get their hands on it, and after some murder, kidnapping and other cunning maneuvers have failed, they now plan to use the women to find Hilda and win her confidence.
Pulling all their strings from his lonely exile in an Australian safehouse is Jack O'Rourke, a former White House insider with his eyes on the money and a cunning plan to grab it all, including a trap to lure Hilda's favorite rock band to his private beach house.
It's summer of 2000, the atmosphere is heating up with pre-election dirty tricks, the excitement of shifting powers and some sinister unrest in the desert, something being engineered by Prince Abdul on his computer.
The Bimbo Syndicate seizes the opportunity to get involved.
"It's a comic book -- over the top, larger than life villains, beautiful bold women, a new kind of James Bond thriller."
