Paige Young in Los Angeles.1974 #2. Paige. The Shanes Of Beverly Hills. Huston & Hefner.
Posted on August 12, 2020
Melanie from the Daily Mail article told me that the “brother of Cici Huston” had Paige’s “sex tape” in his possession and would not hand it over to Paige, despite her repeated requests.
And that Paige frequently expressed the serious mental anguish this was causing her.
The Daily Mail didn’t publish this as he “wasn’t a big enough name.”
…..fearful of a “sex tape” that “a relative of a major celebrity had made of her,” is how the Daily Mail phrased it.
CiCi Huston had three brothers.
One of the Shane brothers, David, is a major candidate as the one holding on to Paige’s sex tape; he was very active on the Sunset Strip social scene at the time: 1950s-1960-1970s. Shane owned businesses on the Strip and he was very attractive to women.
In a message to me, Celeste Huston seemed angry in her message to me that her brother David was sex partners with both Paige and Tamara Green.
He started a popular car rental agency, Hav -A -Kar, in the heart of the Sunset Strip. Hav-A-Kar was later sold to Thrifty, and David, as the property owner, saw the space become a Kenneth Cole store for many years before its current iteration, the Eveleigh restaurant. In the early 1960s David, who loved to cook, opened a burger joint called Alfie’s. It was a colorful fixture on the Strip and a veritable celebrity magnet. David decided to eventually lease the space in 1971 to the new owners who created Mirabelle, which remained steadfast on the Strip for over 40 years…… David was a jet setter and an avid outdoorsman. He attended USC for two years before transferring to the University of Mexico, in Mexico City, where he befriended painter Diego Rivera.
Bob Shane is the oldest brother, originally Myron Shane Jr. I know nothing about him but that he changed his first name.
The youngest Shane brother Stephan, not mentioned in the obituary above, moved out of Beverly Hills and lived further north in California. He married, divorced and died young, in the 1970s.
David and Celeste’s father was Myron Shane, already a wealthy business owner from Kansas City who moved his young family to Beverly Hills in the 1940s.
Myron Shane owned a yacht named the “Celeste.” He rented it out to wealthy celebrities including Frank Sinatra.
Myron Shane also used his yacht for charitable purposes.
Myron started Hav-A-Kar per newspaper articles and apparently signed it over to his son David L. Shane.
Melanie told the Daily Mail, and me personally, that Paige went out with several men.
Paige told Melanie that some of her boyfriends paid her living expenses including kitchen appliances and a dog run for her Akita.
( Don’t know what happened to Joshua the Weimaraner or Hamish the horse)
However much Paige expressed her distress over the Shane brother and his refusal to hand over the sex tape, ultimately she built a shrine of sorts about hatred and blame, towards Hugh Hefner.
From the Daily Mail:
“It was covered floor to ceiling with photos of Hugh Hefner, there were news clippings, magazine articles, everything you could think of. Written across it was something like ‘Hugh Hefner is the devil.” The whole wall was a shrine saying, ‘I hate Hugh Hefner,’ the crux of her anger was against him. That was the message she wanted to get across to me. She was pointing up at things, showing me around it. She’s put a lot of work into this, it must have taken her days.”
According to Melanie, Hefner and John Huston were mentioned in the suicide note as well.
“The cops had Paige’s suicide note and read some of it to me…the whole thing was about her anger towards the men who she believed had chewed her up and spat her out. The two men who got the most attention were Hugh Hefner and the director John Huston. I know she dated Huston for a while and had just gotten back from a trip to Ireland with him.”
“Paige also vented against other Hollywood stars who had used her, says Myers.”
This issue of People magazine was released at the end of 1974, 8 months after Paige’s suicide in LA and one month before Bobbie Arnstein’s in Chicago.
1970/1 Pasadena Art Museum With Warhol Wearing A Rudi Gernreich Dress. Artist DeWain Valentine. Venice Beach Studio. Art Scene LA. Updated 5/11/23
Posted on July 21, 2020
Around May 15, 1970, A Paige Young appearance at the Pasadena Art Museum was recorded by LA gossip columnist Marvene Jones and her photographer.
The occasion was a gala for the new Andy Warhol exhibit.
Warhol himself makes an appearance, obviously a big deal.
From the Los Angeles Evening Citizen 5/16/1970
More on Paige’s date Bill Gardner.
William Louis Gardner
United States
William Louis Gardner was born in Minnesota and finished school there. He
From 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 article, Paige Young and Andy Warhol discuss a role for Paige in an upcoming Andy Warhol film.
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 of his large size cast polyester resin pieces at the Pasadena Art Museum, right along with the Warhol exhibit which focused on Warhol’s use of repetitive images.
DeWain Valentine was a rapidly rising artist in the 1960s Venice art scene.
Valentine was a major player in the new “Light and Space” art movement, along with artists Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, John McCracken, Fred Eversley, Doug Wheeler and more.
Many of these artists lived in Venice Beach due to the cheap rent.
A brief Background of the Los Angeles Art scene:
Before the Light and Space artists emerged, the Cool School or Ferus Gallery artists, had already established themselves beginning in the early 1950s. Many of them lived in Venice Beach, a dilapidated beach town past its’ former glory, dotted with oil rigs, trash in the once beautiful canals. The rent was dirt cheap. Nobody in “respectable” society would want to live there and it was considered dangerous.
The Ferus Group, includes: Ed Keinholz, Wally Berman, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Craig Kauffman, and the curators and owners of the Ferus Gallery who helped bring them to renown, Walter Hopps and Irving Blum.
These artists loved the freedom to explore and experiment, and “do their own thing,” with art; they lived and worked far away from the competitive New York City art scene and its’ snobbish critics.
Alongside this art scene happening in Venice Beach in the 1950s and early 1960s, the “Beatnik Scene” was flourishing.
LA’s Venice Beach, San Francisco’s North Beach and Greenwich Village in NYC., created a new pop-cultural icon:
The beret wearing, cigarette smoking, coffee drinking, poetry spouting, bongo playing, establishment thwarting: Beatnik.
Beatnik fashion in the 1950s.
The Ferus Gallery gang famously 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. This was for Warhol’s 2nd showing ever and 1st appearance at Ferus.
In fact, it was Warhol’s first trip to LA.
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
For much more detail on this art movement which established the Los Angeles art scene as one on par with New York City or even Europe, see the documentary “The Cool School,” available on Netflix.
The Light and Space movement emerged from the Cool School in the mid-1960s.
DeWain Valentine, originally from Ft. Collins, Colorado, developed a type of polyester resin material that 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.
Richard Sample
told me that after he moved to a studio-home in Venice (late 1960s) he invited Paige to move in with him.
I think it was Richard’s father, artist and western jewelry maker Charlie Sample, who 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 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” 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, but were “not working with the new materials,” to quote Paige in a 1969 interview. She was referring to her neighbors and friends, Valentine, Bell and Irwin, not named.
I have found the location of this Venice studio: 62-68 Market St.
Research and interviews show that Robert Irwin lived across the street from Valentine. This was not mentioned by Richard Sample. At one point I asked him if he “knew Ed Ruscha or Robert Irwin” and some others. He did not recognize those names, he was definitive about Bell and Valentine.
Richard Sample’s niece Ellen Sample remembers visiting her uncle and grandfather Charles Sample at the art studio/home in Venice. Charles also had a retail storefront in addition to his studio.
Ellen, a child at the time, remembers hearing a lot about the 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 and was divided amongst many artists who rented their own studio 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: her Uncle Richard sublet the Venice studio to Paige at one point.
Ellen recalls “tensions” about Paige with 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, but that she 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.
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 asked Ellen if it was possible that Richard felt pressured to ask Paige to leave due to the tension.
Ellen said she thought it was possible.
DeWain Valentine has spoken about this Venice studio in several art magazine interviews; the influence it had on his art and on the art of his many fellow famous artists. This includes Larry Bell and Robert Irwin, particularly the years of the 1960s and early 70s.
DeWain Valentine lived in and eventually purchased the 62 -65 Market St. building.
Several records with his signature and name can be seen in public building archives from LA County, now available online. Copy of one seen below.
61-65 is the address listed here.
DeWayne Valentine spent many years living and creating art in Hawaii.
He passed a year ago as I write this, February 2, 2022.
From the Documentary “The Cool School.” Market St, where Valentine, Bell and Irwin had studios. And Richard Sample and Paige Young lived briefly.
Paige Young in Los Angeles. 