Paige Young in Los Angeles1971-1973 #1. John Huston & Wives Ricki Soma & Celeste Shane. St. Clerans in Ireland. Hollywood Publicist Bill Gardner. LAT writer Jack Smith sees Huston, Hefner and “Unidentified Sex Object” at Trendy Backgammon Club. Westwood. Modeling. Celebrity Connections Update 5/13/2025. Long. SOME NSFW.
Posted on April 7, 2023
1972
Paige Young appears in the 1972 edition of Gowland’s Guide to Glamour PhotographY, Cover Below.
The photos were obviously taken during the Ridgid Calendar shoot, 4 years earlier.
. Peter Gowland is well-known to a niche audience.
The B&W photo from Gowland’s Guide to Glamour, is from the same photo session as the color one, used in the 69/70 Ridgid Tool calendar. So Paige wouldn’t be paid of course, for the ’72 appearance in the newly published book.
1971
Around this time, Paige moved into a carriage house in Westwood. It is still standing near UCLA and the Playboy Mansion.
1972/73 cont…
According to the Daily Mail report of 2014, Paige complains to neighbor Melanie, about famed film director John Huston.
“She (Paige) said she had an affair with John Huston, and that he had done things to her, abused her. I remember one incident in which John hid her shoes to make her think she had gone crazy. It was a small thing, but she was really bothered by it.”
Daily Mail Dec. 2014
In case you don’t know, John Huston directed several classic movies including The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, African Queen, The Man Who Would Be King, The Misfits, Prizzi’s Honor, to mention only a few.
Despite his fame, few know that John Huston’s oeuvre as a director, actor, writer and narrator is vast.
“I know she dated Huston for a while and had just gotten back from a trip to Ireland with him.”
The “trip to Ireland” Melanie mentions, happened during the time that John Huston was married to Celeste Shane Huston.
Background
John Huston did live in ireland on an estate named St. Clerans, near Galway.
He lived there as often as possible from 1953 to 1975, when he wasn’t traveling around the world directing films.
Huston’s 4th wife Ricki Soma, located the estate and The couple moved in with their two young children, Anjelica and Tony.
Huston’s daughter, Oscar winning actress and director Anjelica, lived at St. Clerans as a child. She wrote about coming of age in Ireland as essentially Irish in culture, with two American parents.
Huston identified with being an Irishman and even became a citizen January of 1964.
He had long been disgusted with the investigations by the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during what is known as the “Communist witch hunts” era. Begining in 1947 and continuing throughout the 1950s.
From my source biography: Courage and Art by Jefferey Meyers.
Memoir about St.Clerans childhood.
Anjelica Huston’s memoir, describes her famous father and her relationship with him and his larger than life personality.
And her beautiful and artistic mother whose life ended tragically young.
A little background on Celeste Shane Huston.
John Huston marries Celeste Shane in 1972.
“Cici” grew up in a wealthy Beverly Hills family with three brothers. Her father owned a successful car leasing companies and rented out his yacht to celebrities like Frank Sinatra. (See chapter: The Shanes of Beverly Hills for more details.)
There are many stories about step-mother Cici in Anjelica Huston’s 2nd memoir Watch Me.
(Basically they got along.)
This was Huston’s 5th marriage and “CiCi’s” 2nd.
LAT June 22, 1958 Before John Huston and Wally Green, Celeste had a short lived marriage to Gene Shacove. Shacove was a prominent Hollywood hair stylist. He was an inspiration for the character of George in Shampoo, the classic Warren Beatty 1970s movie. I’ve also read Jay Sebring
The chapter “The Shanes of Beverly Hills” has more information about Celeste Shane Huston. It also explores her brother David Shane, a key player in Paige’s story.
After a Sexully-charged Courtship And honeymoon phase, John and CiCi’s marriage became strained in Ireland. 1972 continued.
Cici spent time living (visiting really) St. Clerans at the beginning of her short marriage to Huston.
She brought along her son Collin and his caregiver Maricela, who also acted as Cici’s “maid.”
Dad Wally Green also visited his son at the Irish estate during this time span.
Cici was as out of place at St. Clerans as anyone could possibly be,” said John Huston remembering those days.
When Cici was asked she said “I wasn’t prepared for the eleven servants, the mistresses, Betty O’Kelly, Gladys.”
Ending Credits to Gladys Hill on the John Huston film Fat City 1972. Location filming in Stockton, California. Star Stacy Keach on street.
Gladys Hill was an assistant on several Huston films, a co-writer on some, including Reflections in a Golden Eye.
Hill acted in 3 Huston films, the most famous being Night of the Iguana.
Cici said of Gladys, “ I loved Gladys and hated her at the same time. She had too many people inside her. One day she’d get drunk and tell me everything and the next day she’d be awful..”
Betty O’Kelly was a close family friend and manager of the St. Clerans estate.
Tony Huston referred to her as “Dad’s hot water bottle.”
Cici said of Betty: “Betty O’Kelly was a terrible woman. She looked like an old leather shoe, a prune face, hard, nasty piece of work. But she was very loyal to John; she was in love with him.”
Both Betty and Gladys were completely devoted to John Huston for decades. They supported him in the running of his life.
Cici said while at St. Clerans, she observed several of the employees’ behavior and took a peek at the financial books. She concluded many were taking advantage of Huston by overcharging him.
….”she was horrified by the seething sexual history of the estate and the rampant theft by the Irish staff…” from Huston biography Courage and Art by Jeffrey Myers.
Huston had often been absent over the years, busy directing films all over the globe. Money matters did not interest him.
He had a lax attitude about what his employees and assistants were doing with his money.
Cici wanted most of the staff fired but Huston refused.
Of the horse’s caretaker Cici said, “I caught him with quadruple charges for horseshoeing. I know about horses. He couldn’t screw me around.”
CiCi encouraged Huston to sell St. Clerans to help cut down on his expenses.
This all created a lot of tension.
ZOE SALLIS
Another drama at St. Clerans was Cici’s anger about the visit of her husband’s young ex-and sometimes current mistress, Zoe Sallis.
The visit was ostensibly about bringing her young son fathered by John Huston: Danny.
Huston was still married to Ricki Soma at the time Danny was born.
Angelica Huston was about 11 years and said in her memoirs how it devastated her when she learned the news.
She quickly grew to love Danny.
Cici resented the monthly allowance (and breakfast in bed) afforded to Zoe.
Zoe Sallis said that Cici forbade Huston to cast her in the movie “The Man Who Would Be King,” filmed in 1975.
The part went to Shakira Caine, whose husband was co-leading man with Sean Connery.
Michael Caine and wife Shakira are seen on the set in Morocco. >>>>>>>>>>>
Zoe felt then, and still does, that this was a major missed opportunity for her potential career as an actress. (Sallis has a youtube channel)
Her blame on Cici is understandable but misplaced.
Huston could have pushed the issue to cast Zoe. I don’t think it was worth it to him, in that moment, to upset Cici and have her around when she was in a pissy, bitchy and jealous mood.
That’s how little he cared.
By 1975 the marriage was at its’ end.
John has the women around for amusement. Zoe is back to ‘see her boy.’ Ha ha. She is here to ask “Big Daddy’ whether she should turn Jewish…THANK GOD I’m not madly in love or I would be destroyed by him as he’s done to these three I mentioned (Gladys, Betty and Zoe). Also, Eloise is another wreck of John’s, as well as the Italian countess (Valerica Alberti) and Tony’s poor mother! I can see it so clearly! He is the devil!”
It seems Eloise (another girlfriend) and you have been screwing each other for years and that you are a wonderful ‘ball.’ I am fucking bored with hearing about who you fucked and especially since you put me with all you ‘OLD’ bangs.
In a letter from CiCi to her parents from Courage and Art, Jeffrey Meyers.
According to biographer Meyers, Huston enjoyed women fighting over him. (as did Hugh Hefner)
insightful review of Courage & Art
by Todd McCarthy.
One could construct several categories for the women in Huston’s life. There were the quick conquests; as Celeste says, “John would screw anything that wasn’t nailed down.” Some of these were actresses, including Zita Johann, Mary Astor, Ava Gardner and Eiko Ando. He also had five wives: first sweetheart Dorothy Harvey, aristocratic Irish beauty Lesley Black, actress Evelyn Keyes and model/ballerina Ricki Soma (Anjelica’s mother) and then the wealthy, self-possessed Celeste. He was faithful to none of them and generally tired of them after a while, which runs contrary to his pattern with the women who make up a third category, the long-standing mistresses. With de Havilland, the refined and sophisticated Marietta FitzGerald Tree, French actress Suzanne Flon and Zoe Sallis, the mother of his son Danny, to name four of the most important of his long-term lovers, Huston conducted affairs that continued, on and off, across many years and marriages. He sired three children.
Illuminating this hitherto unexplored but obviously central aspect of Huston’s life helps Meyers round out a fuller portrait of the man than has previously been offered; he clearly conveys his subject’s allure, cruelty, intellectual thirst, game-playing, paradoxical emotional intensity and distance, callousness and egoism. Meyers does not mention it, but I always loved Orson Welles’ remark to the effect that his friend excelled at playing Mephistopheles to his own Faust. He was, indisputably, a complex figure, and Meyers catches that while also writing with evident haste.
From the Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy. Nov. 2011
John and Cici left Ireland and returned to Cici’s house in the Pacific Palisades, at some point in 1973.
In this last full year of Paige Young’s life, I believe she continued her friendship with the Hustons.
John stayed on long enough in Ireland to film The Makintosh Man with Paul Newman, partly filmed in Ireland. (The duo had filmed Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean two years earlier.)
Huston cast a young Victoria Principal in a small role in Judge Roy Bean. She posed for Playboy during this time due to some contractual obligation as part of promoting the film. As I recall the photo spread is non-explicit.
John Huston finally threw in the towel over St. Clerans when he realized he could not afford the upkeep, large staff, Danny and Zoe, Allegra and Gladys.
The St. Clerans estate was sold sometime in 1973/4. John Huston did not completely vacate it until 1977, according to Celeste Shane Huston in an online response to me.
Given what Melanie’s story says in the Daily Mail and the sale of St. Clerans, Paige’s visit must have necessarily been in 1972 or 1973.
Their divorce was finalized in 1977.
John Huston and Paige were both painters besides being horse lovers. These factors may have played a role in their “connection,” whatever it was.
Paige, John and Cici were all horse lovers and riders.
From what I’ve read in these bios, Huston had a mean-streak in his personality.
And when he unleashed the mean-streak, it was mostly aimed at the ones most likely to become upset over it.
In the Daily Mail article, Melanie tells of Huston hiding Paige’s shoes. “It really bothered her,” even though she knew “it was a little thing.”
I wrote that Cici Huston and Paige both boarded horses at Sepulveda Stables in Sherman Oaks. This I know because there was information and photos of on an alum website, no longer found.
Celeste facebook messaged me once that she was the one who introduced Paige to Sepulveda Stables. (No I do not have the emails saved, they were lost. Take my word for it or not.)
I had already learned that Paige boarded her horses at the stables located at Sepulveda Blvd. & Hatteras, in Sherman Oaks, by the time I read Cici’s message.
Paige had boarded a horse at the stables since grade school age when she was known as Diana Cotterell. (See related chapters)
“Diana Cotterell,” gave 2 school photos to the owners of the stables. These photos were published on a website about Sepulveda Stables.
Diana definitely looks grade school age in them.
Diana Cotterell lived close to Sepulveda Stables as did several of her classmates, like Joan Edwards.
That would mean Cici knew Paige as Diana in grade school.
I find this unlikely. She gave no sign she ever knew her as a child named Diana.
Diana changed her name sometime between the ages of 16-18, to Paige Young.
Paige was tight-lipped about her past I have been told by 3 sources.
She was also quiet about any future plans. She was “more focused on the present moment,” said to me by her good friend Veronica.
Richard Sample to me, said Paige never talked about her past or childhood.
Cici, in the early 1960s, along with actresses Donna Reed and the aforementioned Jill St. John, boarded horses at Sepulveda Stables according to the website.
(Maybe Paige and CiCi met in the early 1960s, but not before.)
Cici in a facebook message exchage with me
denied that Huston and Paige had an “affair.”
And that she and John Huston “we were only trying to help Paige” (Presumably, due to Paige’s emotional troubles that resulted in a suicide.)
She wrote that “2 prominent lawyers.” connected to show business purchased Paige’s ticket to Ireland for the visit. Paul Caruso was one.
Bill Gardner
A visitor to St. Clerans during these few months of John and Cici’s Ireland honeymoon was Bill Gardner.
Here is a photo of Bill and Cici posted by Bill to his Instagram account.
- William Louis Gardner and #CelesteHuston on some of the #horses in #StClarens #Manor in #Ireland, back when #JohnHuston owned the estate. #Hollywood #1950s #1960s #vintage. (from Bill’s social media.)
This is the same Bill Gardner from the Pasadena Art Museum chapter.
Another connection with Celeste Huston to Paige Young. And he was another horse lover.
The following paragraph is what Bill wrote for his author page on Amazon. Numerous celebrities are mentioned.
William Louis Gardner started his career getting a diploma from the Pasadena Play House in the fifties. The US Air sent him to Pasadena, California to learn film and television production. During his education at the Playhouse he was sent to do on-the-job-training at ABC, CBS and NBC. He spent time on the on the sets of Colgate Comedy Hour studying, observing and watching the process of television variety type shows. Bill became acquainted with the Martin & Lewis show, Jimmy Durante Show, Danny Thomas Show, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Milton Berle Shows. After William left Hollywood he joined his squadron and wrote and produced films for the US Air Force. When he was discharged from the Air Force he returned to Hollywood and went to work for Mickey Rooney as his assistant and manager for ten years. After he joined Jonathan Winters as his manager. In 1965 William moved to Ireland and joined director, John Huston, as his assistant. He worked on John’s films in England and Morocco. John sent Bill to East Africa to do pre-production for a film Bill had written called “The Games End”. The film has yet to be made. William, left the industry in 1972 and came back to California and moved to Montecito and became a real estate broker. He formed a Real Estate office in Santa Barbara and retired thirty five years later to write a novel “Confession of a Hollywood Agent” and numerous screenplays. His novel “The End of the Game” struggles with Africanization, intrigue and murder to save the elephant. Present, Bill keeps on writing.
scribd.com
Gardner is quoted twice in the Jeffrey Meyers biography of John Huston, identified as a publicist/ friend.
Notice that Gardner mentions Jonathan Winters and John Huston, both linked to Paige Young.
Cici Huston wrote a nice compliment on Gardner’s Amazon author page.
Legendary LAT columnist Jack Smith sees Huston and Hefner and an “unidentified sex object,” possibly Paige Young, present at a backgammon tournament in 1972. The observation by Smith happened around the time Cici and Huston tied the knot.
The group partly inspires the title of the column:
Allegedly the cast and crew of the film Chinatown spent some off-set time at the Playboy mansion.
The cast, of course, includes Huston and director Roman Polanski
This time frame coincides with the years that Paige was hanging out at the Playboy mansion “scene,” on an occasional, if not regular basis.
Paige was seen at the Playboy mansion near the end of her life. In fact, weeks away from. This is recounted by neighbor Melanie Myers, who herself was invited to and attended a party the Mansion. Melanie talks about this in Secrets of Playboy documentary, episode 8 and to me personally.
Paige attended with BJ Royale, neighbor in Westwood.
More about John Huston ahead.
Chinatown was a major hit movie and an instant classic. It was released June 20, 1974 about 2 1/2 months after Paige Young’s suicide
NSFW
It looks like Paige was still modeling in the early 1970s.
However it’s the only modeling I’ve found since the Playboy years.
She appears in some Electrochemical Company photographs, credited to Peter Gowland,probably taken in 1972 or 73.
Maybe used in gift calendars for clients? I’m not certain.
They are rare.
I suspect Gowland had Paige in mind at once, for this assignment.
He knew Paige needed the paycheck and that she would be willing to pose topless or nude.
Obviously quite tame by today’s standards but still NSFW.
There is an association between Electrochemical Company and the Ridgid Tool Company, Gowland’s long time clients. Paige appears in the 69/70 Ridgid calendar shown at the top of this chapter.
Paige was one model of a few featured in this series, possibly a gift for special clients. Ann Cushing and starlet Brook Mills, two Gowland favorites, are the others. Plus one I don’t recognize.
The models all go uncredited including Paige, her “Playmate” status is not indicated anywhere. She is portrayed in this series, like the others, as an anonymous model or “girl.”
I recognized Paige and informed the seller.
Los Angeles Mormon Temple with Angel Moroni lording over the Westwood neighborhood where Paige Young lived and died. Her friend Veronika remembered this landmark statue near Paige’s carriage house.
END
What is the connection with Desmond Guinness (see related chapters) and John Huston?
Paige Young was acquainted with both men, and she was friends with Huston’s 5th wife Celeste Shane Huston.
A renowned socialite, party animal and generous host, Guinness entertained the international jet set at his home, Leixlip Castle. Those who visited included British royalty Princess Margaret, her husband Lord Snowdon, and Lord Mountbatten, A-listers such as Jacqueline Kennedy, film director John Huston, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, and his stepfather the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, his mother Diana Mitford’s husband.
.
Desmond Guinness Obituary in The Irish Times August 29, 2020.
Did Paige Young meet Desmond Guinness when she stayed with John and Celeste Huston at St. Clerans in 72-73 ish? Possibly.
Desmond always had a place to stay with eager hosts when he visited Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.
John Huston in his bedroom St. Clerans, his Georgian Mansion.
More on Anjelica Huston’s mother Ricki Soma.
Enrica Soma was the 4th wife of director John Huston and mother of actress Anjelica. Here she appears on the cover of Life Magazine by Philippe Halsman.
Because of the attention Ricki received from the Life Magazine cover, she was pondering a possible movie career.
was photographed with Marilyn Monroe and others starlets as “up and coming” actresses.
John Huston came into her life and pretty quickly she abandoned that idea. I’ve read it was after see her Life cover.
Ricki married Huston and had 2 children. She devoted her life to John, Anjelica, and Tony.
She earned a reputation for her naturally exquisite taste in decorating and was collecting unusual antiques and wearing exotic “bohemian” clothing years before it was the popular thing to do.
Basically, she was a trend setter who didn’t get much recognition for it when she was alive. (Much like Brooke Hayward Hopper, and Marina Guinness)
Ricki became a “Wife #1“at St. Clerans when Huston invited his mistresses or girlfriends for a visit. Or they dropped in unannounced.
She tolerated it for a long time.
But Huston’s girlfriends and his lack of interest in her, finally pushed Ricki past her limit. She moved to London in 1960.
Ricki gave birth to a baby girl in 1964 named Allegra whose father is John Julius Cooper, an Englishman who inherited the title Viscount Norwich upon his father’s death in 1954.
Ricki remained married to John Huston from 1950 until her untimely death in a car accident in 1969.
John Huston adopted Allegra after this tragedy and financially supported her for a long time. I have read that John Julius Cooper and his wife were willing to raise Allegra despite the social scandal and gossip it would cause. (But I’m not sure.)
And I’m not sure Huston was any more attentive to Allegra as a child than he was to Angelica and Tony.
I need to research this aspect more deeply.
Allegra wrote a memoir: Love Child.
Anjelica and half-sister Allegra are very close as are Anjelica and half-brother Danny Huston. I don’t know about Tony Huston.
Anjelica wrote in her memoirs that she and “full” brother Tony were very different from each other and not close siblings growing up.
Paige Young in Los Angeles
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1970/1 Paige At Pasadena Art Museum With Warhol Wearing A Rudi Gernreich Dress. Meet Paige’s Date Bill Gardner & Artist DeWain Valentine. Venice Beach Studio. Art Scene LA.(Long) *Updated* 3/8/25
Posted on July 21, 2020
Around May 15, 1970, An appearance by Paige Young at the Pasadena Art Museum (PAM) was recorded by Marvene Jones of the Los Angeles Evening News, and her photographer. Jones’ column, The Social Butterfly, Focused on hip happenings of the LA social set.
The occasion at PAM was a gala opening for the new Andy Warhol exhibit.
Warhol himself makes an appearance, obviously a big deal.
Los Angeles Evening Citizen 5/16/1970
Rudi Gernreich is famous for his aesthetic contributions to fashion in the 1960s.
Did Paige get the dress directly from Rudi? I think so. Paige Young and Rudi Gernreich lived or hung around Venice Beach at the time. Both were guests at Venice Beach artists’ openings. Rudi Gernreich was and is known for his innovative, modern, risque and gender-bending clothing. He is celebrated to this day for his impact on 1960s fashion and way beyond..
At the end of the article, Marvene Jones gossips that Paige removed her Gernreich dress in the VIP area, later in the evening.
Who is Bill Gardner? pictured with Paige.
From his own website:
William Louis Gardner
William Louis Gardner was born in Minnesota and finished school there. He
Bill Gardner’s website
joined the US Air Force and worked at the Pentagon in the Target Library of the world. Went on to the Pasadena Playhouse to learn television and movie making. He got a job with actress Marion Davies at her home. There He met a movie agent and started a career in Hollywood. William Louis Gardner has worked in Hollywood as the agent, personal secretary, PR advisor and manager for for Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Jill St.John, Bobby Van and director, John Huston. William Gardner is the author of two books, “Confessions of a Hollywood Agent,” and “The Games End.”
According to the Jones article column 2, Paige Young and Andy Warhol discuss a role for Paige in an upcoming Andy Warhol film.
It’s not something that ever happened. I think the two were making flirty small talk. Ironically, Paige mentions Warhol and the Pop Art scene in an interview with Playboy magazine.
She said about Pop Art “it gives me a headache.” And
“I wouldn’t waste my paint on it.”
Marvene Jones also says that Mr. and Mrs. DeWain Valentine made up a foursome that evening with Paige and Bill Gardner. Valentine had an exhibit showing some of his large cast polyester resin pieces at the Pasadena Art Museum. It was being shown along with the Warhol exhibit.
PAM has been called the Norton Simon Museum since October 1975. (An interesting LA story itself.) Classic Hollywood actress and widow of producer David Selznick, Jennifer Jones married Norton Simon, a very wealthy man. He took over the museum in the mid-1970s.
DeWain Valentine, sculptor from Colorado, was a young and rising artist in the 1960s Venice Beach art scene.
Los Angeles Time March 10, 1968.
Valentine is considered one of the innovators of the “Light and Space” art movement. The others include Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, John McCracken, Fred Eversley, and Doug Wheeler.
Many of these artists lived or rented a studio in Venice Beach due to the cheap rent. This was continuing a practice already established by this point in time.
brief Background of the Venice Beach Art scene:
Before the
Light and Space artists emerged in the 1960s, there was the Ferus Group. Named so because they exhibited at the Ferus Gallery, which opened in 1957.
The Ferus Group includes California based artists: Ed Keinholz (original part-owner of the Gallery), Wally Berman, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Craig Kauffman, Ken Price and John Altoon.
Artists Jay DeFeo and Sonia Gechtoff from San Francisco.
Ferus Gallery included New York artists in their exhibits: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella.
The curators and owners of the Ferus Gallery who helped bring them to renown are Walter Hopps and Irving Blum.
Hopps had the eye for cutting edge art. Irving Blum was good at selling it.
Many of southern California artists lived in Venice Beach.
The Ferus Gallery gang interacted with Andy Warhol during his well documented stay in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. Warhol drove with actor Taylor Mead, assistant Gerard Malanga and painter Wynn Chamberlain from NYC to LA.
It was Warhol’s very first trip to LA.
The trip plan was to catch opening night for Warhol’s 2nd exhibit at Ferus. His Campbell’s soup can collection has already shown there to jeers and laughter.
The Southern California artists were allowed to live and create far away from the competitive and critical Art world.
They found freedom to creativity outside of New York City.
Ed Moses once said “No one cared what we were doing.”
Alongside this growing art scene in Venice Beach in the 1950s and early 1960s, the “Beatnik Scene” was happening.
Author Lawrence Lipton documented and helped popularize Beats and Beatniks into a popular culture trope.
Lipton lived and observed the culture of people dropping out of the work-a-day world of post-war affluence.
They were moving away from the promotion of the so-called American Dream culture. This shift was noticeable in places like Venice West, California, North Beach, San Francisco, and Greenwich Village, NYC.
Lawrence Lipton wrote about the real life characters of the beatnik culture in his book Holy Barbarians.
Valley Times. November 7, 1959. The year that Holy Barbarians was published. Beatniks became a fad into the early 1960s and permanently after that..
The hotspots for Beats and Beatnik culture:
Venice Beach and Hermosa Beach communities in LA, North Beach in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in NYC.
Carolyn Keith on Pinterest.
Trope of a Beatnik Girl from the 1950s.
Here is an image of a Beatnik girl with many the cliches of Beatnik images in popular culture.
She has wine, cigarettes, a black beret, and black clothing.
Movies:
1959 Mr. Tucker, proprietor of a Los Angeles coffee house, hires three down-on-their-luck classic beatnik patrons. They are out-of-work actor John Mapes, struggling writer Ray Miller, and George Leland. George is the wayward son of movie star Rita Leland. They agree to participate in an armored car robbery. This occurs during a four-hour stopover in Chicago on the trio’s train trip from Los Angeles to New York. Mapes’ worried wife Jeanne joins him on the train, concerned about his not having had a job in more than a year. (wikipedia)
Disappointingly, The Rebel Set is not about Beatnik culture.
The film begins in a Beatnik coffeehouse with Beatnik patrons. Two of the patrons are struggling actors. They are recruited to join in an armored car heist in Chicago.
The group of Ferus artists were organizing as a Cultural force at the same time the Beatniks were becoming a pop culture force.
Over the next couple of years, Ruscha fell in with the artists orbiting the Ferus Gallery, which opened in 1957 on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood. Founded by the curator Walter Hopps, his wife Shirley Hopps, and the artist Edward Kienholz, Ferus quickly became the ground zero of Los Angeles art, hosting exhibitions by Kienholz and a roster of talents that included John Altoon, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, John McCracken, and Ed Moses, as well as Ruscha. Stylistically they were a diverse lot whose efforts ranged across figuration, Expressionism and Minimalist abstraction and this was no less true of Ruscha’s output, which ran the gamut from Pop Art to conceptualism. ART NEWS Nov. 2, 2023. Article about Ed Ruscha by Howard Halle.
The Ferus ‘Studs’ the new generation of artists, young abstract painters, ceramicists and assemblage makers who had been flying under the wire now were the featured artists at the Ferus Gallery. The Gallery was ripe for the adventurous artists who would set the new bar in contemporary styles. The Ferus Gallery had belief in the performance of their work and was one of the first galleries to support it.
Ferusgallery.com
END
The Light and Space or Finish Fetish art movement was born in the mid-1960s.
DeWain Valentine was a key player along with Larry Bell, Doug Wheeler and Robert Irwin, Helen Pashigan, Peter Alexander and more.
Originally from Ft. Collins, Colorado, Valentine developed a type of polyester resin material. This material allowed him to make large scale pieces like the one shown below.
Previously, the material would crack when making a piece this size: approx: 17 1/4x 17/4 x 7/8.
Valentine was a newcomer to Venice Beach compared to the others artists, he arrived with his wife Darlene and sons in 1965.
He had been hired to teach a course on plastics at the UCLA Extension program.
From my reading, he experienced a rapid success on the West Coast.
For much more detail on these art movements which established the Los Angeles art scene as one on par with New York City or even Europe, watch the documentary “The Cool School, ” available on Netflix.
Richard Sample
Told me that after he moved to a studio-home in Venice (late 1960s), he invited Paige to live with him.
Richard’s father is artist and western jewelry maker, Charlie Sample. He was able to get Richard the studio space in Venice Beach.
I asked Richard the location and he said he could not remember it, but that it was quite close to the ocean and his artist neighbors and friends were, DeWain Valentine and Larry Bell. (See chapter: Interview with Richard Sample)
Paige refers to her “new Venice art studio” and discusses the art scene there in several interviews with Playboy magazine and US newspapers in 1969 and 1970. (See chapter: Most Public Year 1969)
Richard Sample and Paige Young joined the community of Venice artists. They were “not working with the new materials,” to quote Paige in an interview. She was referring to her neighbors and friends, Valentine, Bell, Irwin, etc.
De Wain Valentine, Concave Circle Blue Green, 1968–2017. Cast polyester resin, 23 1/2 x 23 1/2 x 9 7/8 inches. © De Wain Valentine. Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech. Photo: Melissa Castro Duarte. Brooklyn Rail.
A female friend does remember Paige talking about her Venice art studio. For the most part, I have confirmed that Paige’s Playboy publicity about her personal life mostly aligned with the truth of her real life.
She did live in Malibu as her Playmate feature and interviews state. However, technically it was the southern end of Topanga Canyon near the beach across the Pacific Coast Highway. So Topanga Beach?
Paige mentions Venice Beach as an “art colony,” where she now lives.
Philadelphia Inquirer Jun. 27, 1969
I found the location of this Venice studio:62-68 Market St.
Research and interviews show that artist Robert Irwin lived across the street from Valentine. His name was not mentioned by Richard Sample.
At one point I asked Richard if he “knew Ed Ruscha or Robert Irwin” and some others. He did not recognize those names, he was certain about Larry Bell and DeWain Valentine.
Richard Sample’s niece Ellen Sample remembers visiting her uncle and grandfather Charles Sample at the art studio/home in Venice Beach. Charles Sample was a jewelry maker and had a retail storefront in addition to his studio.
Ellen, a child at the time, remembers hearing frequent talk about a man named “Valentine.”
Richard and Ellen both recalled being able to see the beach from the studio. 62-68 Market St., a block from the ocean, is a large structure. Many artists rented their own studios according to Ellie. This is why the address lists a range of numbers.
Richard Sample is listed with an address of 63 Market St. Venice, in a newspaper marriage announcement, 1968.
Ellen texted me a story: she thinks her Uncle Richard sublet the Venice studio to Paige at one point.
Ellen recalls “tensions” about Paige among Ellen’s aunts.
These women were the wives of Charles Sample and his sons.
Ellen said her own mother was not bothered by Paige living at the studio. However, her mother did “go with her sister-in-laws to see what was going on at the studio.” Ellen says the most tense time was when Paige’s Playboy issue was current and shortly after. (This would have been November of 1968 and 1969. In 1969 Paige was frequently traveling all over the US to promote her photos published in a”current” issue of the magazine.
Richard Sample told me he was forced to ask Paige to leave the Venice studio because she never paid him rent. (See chapter Richard Sample interview)
I have learned that Paige was not a good manager of money.
I asked Ellen if it was a possibility that Richard felt pressured to ask Paige to leave due to the tension with the women in the family.
Ellen said she thought it was possible, but just didn’t know for certain.
DeWain Valentine has spoken about his Venice studio in several art magazine interviews and the influence it had on his art.
Mrs. Darlene Valentine told me in a telephone conversation that Paige was one of many women Valentine “slept with” or “dated” during those days.
She remembered the night at the Pasadena Art Museum, but not specifically that she double dated with Paige. She does remember that Warhol superstar Ultra Violet was along with Warhol.
She does not recall meeting Bill Gardner, Paige’s date of the evening.
DeWain Valentine fondly remembers the friendships with his many fellow artists. He had a special connection with Larry Bell and Robert Irwin. This was particularly true during the 1960s and early 70s.
DeWain Valentine above states that he lived in and eventually purchased the 62 -65 Market St.
61-65 is the address listed here.
And indeed, several records with his signature and name can be seen in public building archives from LA County. They are now available online.
DeWayne Valentine spent many years living and creating art in Hawaii after the 1970s.
When he moved back to LA from Hawaii, it was to a large studio and home in Gardena.
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From the Documentary “The Cool School.” Market St, where Valentine, Bell and Irwin, probably others, had art studios. Richard Sample and Paige Young made art and lived, briefly. Paige lived or rented the studio space for about one year. When she could not pay the rent for several months, Richard Sample “had no choice but to ask her to leave.” When he went to tell her this, Sample found her living on a houseboat in Marina del Rey.
From an 800-page + biography of Andy Warhol.
I have uploaded these paragraphs from the Warhol Biography describing the night Paige attended the Warhol opening at PAM, written up in the Social Butterfly column.
Notice the sentence “Specimen Days, a comedy about Walt Whitman’s time as a Civil War Nurse.”
<<<<<<<<<From the Marvene Jones column above. Andy’s new movie idea, Specimens of Man.
Paige Young in Los Angeles 