1950s Life & Times of the Rich and Famous in Los Angeles
April 3, 2023 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger, Writing tagged as 1950s, hard-boiled mysteries, history, Hollywood, The Skylar Drake Murder Mystery Series
While researching the 1950s, we came across memoirs of Los Angeles. Since our Private Eye character, Skylar Drake, moonlights as a stuntman for the movie industry, the Hollywood scene during that time is an intricate part of each book.
The regular family life of the rich and famous was not at all typical of everyday life. In fact, it was pretty exhausting! The executives were in constant fear of making the wrong decisions and losing their position (lots of backbiting). There were endless days of being “on” for the public. They were forever giving lunches, dinners, and cocktail parties at their homes for celebrities or visiting dignitaries. Their dinners were lavish and beautiful, as were their homes. Entertaining was constant with little private time.
The regular family life of the rich and famous was not at all typical of everyday life. In fact, it was pretty exhaustin
g! The executives were in constant fear of making the wrong decisions and losing their position (lots of backbiting). There were endless days of being “on” for the public. They were forever giving lunches, dinners and cocktail parties at their homes for celebrities or visiting dignitaries. Their dinners were lavish and beautiful, as well as their homes. Entertaining was constant with little private time.
I found stories of lunch with Barbara Hutton (heiress of the Woolworth’s chain) at the lavish garden of Merle Oberon, or a candle light dinner at the home of Edie Goetz, (daughter of Louis B. Mayer, co-founder of MGM.) And don’t forget entertaining royalty, moguls, and titans of the day. You couldn’t just throw hamburgers on the BBQ, 
whip up a potato salad and lounge by the pool!Tent parties in which the pool was covered to create a dance floor were a regular Saturday night event in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. On Sundays,
Tent parties in which the pool was covered to create a dance floor were a regular Saturday night event in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. On Sundays, church was not like your typical worship services. The Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills was nicknamed Our Lady of the Cadillacs du
e to the expensive cars that filled the parking lot for 10 am Mass.
Incorporating Skylar Drake’s assigned visits by his agent or the studio or working security into the stories has been fun. We’ve enjoyed dressing the characters, describing the gardens and homes, and the food served by the rich and famous of Los Angeles, 1950s.
The Skylar Drake Series
Scandal
March 3, 2023 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Book Research, Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as Hollywood, Scandals, Twilight Zone, Vic Morrow
Safety Working Conditions in the Hollywood Film industry
The civil and criminal actions lawsuit that came after the accident, during the filming of Twilight Zone, was the result of negligence. It was scandalous as the film’s director, John Landis, was charged and tried for manslaughter, along with other members of the film crew. They were eventually acquitted in terms of criminal liability, but civil penalties were assessed. Landis continued his career with little negative impact, but he found several of his long-term friendships with other filmmakers ended as a result of his “condescending attitude” towards the accident.
Millions of dollars were awarded to the families of the victims, mostly paid by insurance companies. Landis deflected the blame for the accident, claiming that the cause of the accident had been in part a special effects fireball detonated by error.
The television series The Twilight Zone was a popular weekly program from 1959 to 1964, the brainchild of writer and director Rod Serling. Its popularity resulted in a demand for reruns for years, and eventually was adapted as a full-length motion picture.
During the filming of the motion picture verson, an accident involving a helicopter killed actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, with multiple injuries to the helicopter crew and film personnel onboard. Morrow and one of the children were decapitated by the helicopter’s rotor; the other child was crushed. The accident brought to light unsafe working safety, particularly for children on film sets, and years of litigation which kept the story on the front pages for a decade.
On July 23, 1982, Morrow, 53, and two child actors, seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le and six-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were filming on location in California, in an area that was known as Indian Dunes, near Santa Clarita. They were performing in a scene for the Vietnam sequence, in which their characters attempt to escape from a deserted Vietnamese village from a pursuing U.S. army helicopter. The helicopter was hovering at approximately 24 feet above them when the heat from special effect pyrotechnic explosions delaminated the rotor blades (the blade material fractures into layers) causing the helicopter to plummet and crash on top of them, killing all three instantly.
Special-effects explosions on the set caused the pilot of the low-flying craft to lose control and crash into the three victims. The accident took place on the film’s last scheduled day of shooting.
Co-director John Landis and four other men working on the film, including the special-effects coordinator and the helicopter pilot, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. It was the first time a film director faced criminal charges for events that occurred while making a movie. During the trial, the defense maintained the crash was an accident that could not have been predicted while the prosecution claimed Landis and his crew had been reckless and violated laws regarding child actors, including regulations about their working conditions and hours. The trial lasted ten-months with the jury acquitted all five defendants in 1987. The families of the three victims filed lawsuits against Landis, Warner Brothers, and Twilight Zone co-director and producer Steven Spielberg who settled for undisclosed amounts. Twilight Zone: The Movie was released in the summer of 1983. The film received mixed reviews.
Click here for the news report of the accident.
Janet and Will’s Skylar Drake Mystery Series
Writing with Hollywood in Mind by Kitty Bucholtz
July 10, 2020 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as conferences, Hollywood, Kitty Bucholtz, learning, One-day Workshop, Online Classes, TeachingMy original plan this year before the pandemic was to host a live writers conference here in Malmö, Sweden, in October. I had speakers and everything all lined up – and then I had to cancel it all, of course.
But my main speaker, Jennifer Dornbush, was still excited to do some teaching with me, so we made a pivot in our plans and decided to host a 1-day virtual writers conference called Writing with Hollywood in Mind on July 25, 2020. To give people a taste of what the conference will be like, we are hosting two free webinars of the same name. The next one is Saturday, July 18. Click the link – I’d love to see you there!
Movies
December 6, 2018 by Linda O. Johnston in category Pets, Romance & Lots of Suspense by Linda O. Johnston tagged as Hollywood, ideas, Linda O Johnston, movies, Plotting, writing
Movies
I’ve been going to a lot of movies lately. Why? Well, my husband and I now subscribe to one of those movie packages where you pay a monthly fee, and can then attend several movies a week for no additional charge. Although we’re allowed to see three, we’re mostly seeing two, and occasionally just one.
As a writer, I find that fun. I try to analyze each plot, note which ones I like and which ones I don’t. Most of them aren’t documentaries, so even if they’re supposed to be based on a true story they’re generally at least somewhat fiction.
Sometimes we just pick a show that sounds vaguely interesting, but we always hope to jump onto one that sounds a whole lot more—fun, exciting, inspirational, whatever.
And sometimes I get new ideas for my own writing from them. I’ve begun a proposal for a new mystery series which might not go anywhere, but, yes, I was inspired by movies!
I suppose that the fact I live in the Hollywood area also gives me ideas involving films, both novels and, occasionally screenplays—that I never write myself, although I’ve taken classes.
I’m wondering if the theater chains and companies that offer these multiple movies are actually making money. I hope they’re doing well enough to keep it up.
Do you go to movies? Do they inspire you to read or write?
And Happy Holidays to all of you! I’ll have a post here in early 2019. (Wow, that sounds as if it shouldn’t be happening so soon!) And when I do, I’m hoping to have some writing news to convey.
0 0 Read moreHow TV Changed Hollywood
July 3, 2017 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as 1950s, Hollywood, Janet Lynn, Will Zeilinger
Researching our stories which are set in the mid 1950s led us to discover the huge changes that came to Hollywood. Television was stealing customers from theaters and color TV was coming into the mainstream. So what did the big studios do?
The movie screens got wider, the color got more vivid, and they even tried 3-D! Drive-in theaters were going strong, but the fact you could stay home and watch a variety of different programs for FREE made competition for customers fierce.
Many actors who had staked their careers in the big screen movies were, at first leery of the little box with the small screen. Some thought it was only for game shows and low brow comedy. It didn’t take long to see that was where steady work and the money was.
What about books? Books were doing great, and many stories were adapted to both movies and television. Take Perry Mason for instance. Erle Stanley Gardner was a well known mystery writer, but when his stories came to television, he became rich!
Will
SLIVERS OF GLASS
Southern California 1955: the summer Disneyland opened, but even "The Happiest Place on Earth" couldn't hide the smell of dirty cops, corruption and murder.
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Published authors Will Zeilinger and Janet Lynn had been writing individually until they got together and wrote the Skylar Drake Mystery Series. These hard-boiled tales are based in old Hollywood of 1955. Janet has published seven mystery novels and Will has three plus a couple of short stories. Their world travels have sparked several ideas for murder and crime stories. This creative couple is married and live in Southern California.
http://www.willzeilingerauthor.com/
www.themarriedauthors.blogspot.com
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