Paul Mazursky, Who Brought Marijuana to The Movies

Before Easy Rider portrayed marijuana smoking on film, and long before American Beauty, Peter Sellers played an uptight Jewish lawyer whose life is pried open by Leigh-Taylor Young's pot brownies in 1968's I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!

It was the breakthrough film for Paul Mazursky, who wrote and nearly directed the cult classic. Mazursky died yesterday, and all his obituaries linked him with marijuana because of that film.

Growing up in New York, Mazursky worked as an actor, appearing in the seminal Blackboard Jungle (1955). Venturing into stand-up comedy and writing, he wrote for Danny Kaye before moving his office to the Sunset Strip, where the hippies he saw inspired his Toklas screenplay. He followed up with his directorial debut, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), based on experiences he had at Esalen. In that film, unlike Easy Rider, the women (Natalie Wood and Dyan Cannon) also get in on the pot-smoking fun.

In his 1999 book Show Me the Magic, Mazursky describes going to the jungle to take Ayahuasca, and mentions that a shamanic healer used tobacco smoke, "not weed," during the journey. Although he describes himself as a "Greenwich Village hipster" (and his mother as "a hipster, a gypsy, a beantik, a hippie"), he doesn't mention that he smoked marijuana himself. Perhaps it went without saying.  Or maybe he preferred psychedelics.

In the book, he describes a very interesting exchange with famed director Federico Fellini, when Mazursky was planning a trip to Italy and wanted to know whether to visit Florence or Venice. "Do you want marijuana or LSD?" Fellini asked. "Firenze is like marijuana. You will be very happy there. Venezia is not like any place you have ever experienced. She is like an acid trip." "I think I'll take Venice," Mazursky replied.

George Segal and Kris Kristofferson, playing the new boyfriend of Segal's ex-wife, smoke together and form a goofy bond in Mazursky's 1973 film Blume in Love. In his feminist-minded An Unmarried Woman (1978), a 15-year-old girl (Lisa Lucas) matter-of-factly states, "I smoke pot sometimes" upon meeting her mother's new boyfriend, played by Alan Bates. "I do too," he responds. "Got any?" she asks.

Among the remarkable films Paul Mazursky left us are: Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Moscow on the Hudson, Harry and Tonto, Enemies: A Love Story and Moon Over Parador. He even took a stab at Shakespeare in Tempest  (1982).

Mazursky's voice opens the movie Antz (1999), playing the psychiatrist who diagnoses the dissatisfied ant Z (Woody Allen) as the insignificant creature he is. But Paul Mazursky was more like what Z becomes, the little guy who broke the mold. 

The 2019 movie The Last Laugh, wherein Andie McDowell turns Chevy Chase onto marijuana and more, and Richard Dreyfus tokes and jokes his way through, is dedicated to Mazursky.

Bewitched, Bhang-ered and Bewildered

The Colorado NORML Women's Alliance has posted this photo (right) of Agnes Moorehead as Endora in TV's Bewitched smoking a hookah.

The shot is from episode #69 of the series, titled "Divided He Falls," which first aired on  May 5, 1966. In the story, Endora splits her daughter Samantha's straight hubby into his fun and work sides, so that the fun Darrin can accompany Sam on vacation.

When Endora works her magic, the screen is filled with green smoke. (Her character is introduced every week in a cartoon as black smoke.) Witches throughout the centuries have been associated with herbal medicine and persecuted for it.

The splitting of Darrin's personality is a rather apt metaphor for our divided culture: we simply can't accept that people can be hard working by day and smoke something fun at night. In the end of the episode, Darrin is re-integrated (as should be our society). 

According to the website "The Prop is Familiar" the same hookah was also smoked by Endora in episodes 71 ("The Catnapper," shown left) and 154 ("Samantha's Super Maid").

Dr. Bombay, the family's warlock doc, gets in on the hookah action in episode 107 ("There's Gold in Them Thar Pills"). The Old Man of the Mountain, the historic character who converted his assassins with hashish, smoked a larger hookah in episode 217 ("Return of Darrin the Bold").

Episode #163, called Tabitha's Weekend, which aired on March 6, 1969 has an interesting exchange after Endora is offered cookies by Darrin's (straight) mother:

"They're not by chance from an Alice B. Toklas recipe?" Endora asks. When told they were not, "Then I think I'll pass," is her answer. Tabitha, the junior witch, then turns herself into a cookie. Mrs. Stevens suffers from headaches and gulps the more prosaic sherry.

Moorehead, who had a long career on stage and in films, died of cancer in 1974. She was one of several cast members of the 1956 film The Conqueror who contracted cancer after being exposed to radiation while filming in Utah 137 miles downwind of the United States government's Nevada National Security Site. Three years earlier, extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing occurred at the test site. The cast and crew totaled 220 people. By 1981, 91 of them had developed some form of cancer and 46, including John Wayne, had died of the disease.

Ironically, the government that assured filmmakers the site was safe also withhold the herb that not only relieves the effects of cancer and chemotherapy, it may well halt the progression of the disease. Yes, Dr. Bombay should recommend it. 

UPDATE 1/5/2015: TV's The Addams Family, from the same era, also regularly featured a hookah. 

Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Jenny Reefer

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Born on February 3, 1874 was the hostess with the mostest, art collector extraordinaire, avant-garde writer and wit Gertrude Stein.

Much has been made of Stein's longtime companion Alice B. Toklas and her hashish fudge, a recipe for which appears in The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, published in 1954. When Toklas's American publisher objected to the "illegal" recipe, she reportedly feared many would assume Stein's writing happened while under the influence (which certainly seems possible, if you read it).

Toklas disavowed knowledge of the recipe, writing in a letter to Donald Gallup* composed on 12-19-21 October 1954, "I hope you were as shocked as I was by the notice in Time of the hashish fudge. I was also furious until I discovered it really was in the cook book! Contributed by one of Carl's most enchanting friends—Brion Gysin—so that the laugh was on me. Thornton [Wilder] said that no one would believe in my innocence as I had pulled the publicity stunt of the year—that Harper had telegraphed from London to the Attorney General to see if there would be any trouble in printing it." Hear Toklas reading the recipe and commenting about it in a 1963 interview.   

It's possible that Stein and Toklas were more conduits for a younger generation of partakers, like Gysin and his friend VIP Paul Bowles, who lived with Stein and Toklas for a time. The Lost Generation was, after all, mostly lost in liquor. However, among Stein's art purchases was the first painting ever sold by Marie Laurencin, which appears to be a painting of a hashish party held in 1908.

Robert Indiana's costume for Jenny Reefer.

An interesting character by the name of Jenny Reefer appears in "The Mother of Us All," a 1947 opera about the life and career of suffragette Susan B. Anthony for which Stein wrote the libretto. Reefer is described as "a mezzo-soprano; a comical feminist, outspoken and opinionated." Sounds like a pothead to me.

Stein and Toklas's greatest significance was in bringing expatriate writers and artists together at their Parisian salon. That tradition was carried on by 1970s superagent and pot lover Sue Mengers, of whom CBS President Leslie Moonves said,  “She was the modern-day Gertrude Stein. People would gather and exchange ideas and talk about things that were not talked about anywhere else in town.” Tokin' Woman Mama Cass Eliot was also compared to Stein. 

Kathy Bates played Stein in Midnight in Paris; Pat Carroll played her in the one-woman show Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted in 1989 to rename a block of Myrtle Street between Polk Street and Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco as Alice B. Toklas Place, since Toklas was born one block away on O'Farrell Street.

Agnes Moorehead as Endora in TV's Bewitched

In the 1968 film I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, Leigh Taylor-Young turns Peter Sellers onto pot brownies, causing him to transform.

An episode called "Tabitha's Weekend" that aired on TV's Bewitched on March 6, 1969 has this interesting exchange: Endora (the grandmother witch) is offered cookies by Darrin's (straight) mother. "They're not by chance from an Alice B. Toklas recipe?" Endora asks. When told they were not, "Then I think I'll pass," is her answer. Tabitha, the junior witch, then turns herself into a cookie. (Mrs. Stevens suffers from headaches and gulps the more prosaic sherry.)

Perhaps this is why Rob Thomas, the singer/songwriter of the highly successful band Matchbox Twenty, called his first band "Tabitha's Secret." (Thomas tells CelebStoner he's a "huge" pothead and advocate for legalization.)

*Donald Gallup was a well-known scholar of American Literature, who served as the curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature for over thirty years. In 1940-41 he and Robert B. Haas prepared for the Yale University Library A Catalogue of the Published and Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein, and he and began collecting Stein and Toklas's materials after meeting them while he was stationed in Paris during World War II. In 1958 he succeeded Carl Van Vechten as the literary executor of the Stein estate. 

Apparently Gallup and Van Vechten (presumably, the Carl of mention) had a hand in producing Alice's cookbook. Toklas wrote, "It's not necessary to tell you that the pieces selected and their arrangement move me deeply. Gertrude always used to say—Let's put them first into groups and then break them up by contrasts—which is just what you have done. You and Carl have done such marvels because of the purity of your purpose which permits inspiration to flow unimpeded. Thank you—dear Donald." 

Gertrude and Alice met the younger painter and writer Brion Gysin in the 1930s when he lived in Paris. Toklas wrote Gysin in Tangiers on 26 February 1952, giving motherly advise about finances, and calling Jane Bowles [the wife of VIP Paul Bowles, a friend of Gysin's]  "strange as an American but not as an Oriental." She signed off, "Affectionate good wishes to you—dear Brion always." Bowles had lived with Stein and Toklas. On 24 February 1954 she wrote to Gysin offering help with a UNESCO investigation being conducted on him. On 11 June 1957 she wrote congratulating him on a New York showing, signing it, "So many good wishes to you and fond love." On 27 November 1958, in a letter to Ned Rorem, she wrote that Gysin "is here [in Paris, or maybe staying with her] and painting beautifully—working hard." 

On 14 March 1953, Toklas wrote to her friend Louise Taylor, letting her know that in order to receive an advance on the cookbook, she needed to come up with 12,000 more words, and so was opening up a chapter to contributions from friends. She asked Taylor if she could include Taylor's Circassian Chicken recipe, and said she would be including contributions from the Van Vechtens, Marie Laurencin, Isabel Wilder, and "undoubtedly" Brion Gysin. She complained in the letter of exhaustion from jaundice; Toklas was in ill health and so depended on contributions from friends. The book has a section titled, "Recipes from Friends," in which the Hashish Fudge recipe appears, attributed to Gysin and misspelling cannabis as "cannibus." 

On 24 April 1953, Toklas wrote to Carl (who she called "Sweetest and only Papa Woojums") about the "difficulty in getting the miserable cook book finished" which had been a "tormenting and very unsatisfactory effort." (In this letter she recounts the last words of Baby (Stein). "About Baby's last words. She said upon waking from a sleep—What is the question. And I didnt answer thinking she was not completely awakened. Then she said again—What is the question and before I could speak she went on—If there is no question then there is no answer."

Source: Letters of Alice B. Toklas: Staying on Alone. Edited by Edward Burns. Vintage Books Edition, January 1975. 

Marie Laurençin: Pot Party Painter

UPDATE 10/15: Laurençin is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.
 

Les Invités (The Guests) 1908

"Everybody called Gertrude Stein Gertrude, everybody called Picasso Pablo and Fernande Fernande and everybody called Guillame Apollinaire Guillame and Max Jacob Max, but everybody called Marie Laurençin Marie Laurençin," wrote Gertrude Stein.

Stein purchased Laurençin's Les Invités, the painter's first sale. The painting is a record of an infamous 1908 dinner party where hashish pills were taken at Azon's restaurant in Paris. Laurençin's self portrait is upper left, with knowing eyes, flanked by Picasso and Apollinaire. Fernande Oliver, Picasso's mistress, is bottom right.

The following year, Laurençin painted Un Réunion a la Campagne (A Reunion in the Country), where she is depicted reclining as a hostess would, along with the three from Les Invités and others. Thus Laurençin is possibly the first person to paint a pot party (or two). In the first portrait she is the most fully realized image, and is bringing a flower: was she the instigator for the hashish taking? She may have been a lover of Princess Violette Murat, who could have supplied her.

Marie Laurencin, Diana a la Chasse (Diana of the Hunt) 1908

An illegitimate child, Marie Laurençin was born in Paris in 1883 to a Creole mother who worked as a seamstress. She began her career as a porcelain painter at the Sèvres factory, studied with the flower painter Madeleine Lemaire, and attended the Académie Humbert where she met George Braque. Through Braque, she soon became part of the avant garde artist set in Paris. Source.

The paintings reproduced in Elizabeth Louise Kahn's excellent 2003 biography of Laurençin demonstrate amply her unique and prodigious talent.  In 1907 Laurençin exhibited her paintings at the Salon des Indépendants and was introduced to Apollinaire. The two artists began an affair that lasted until 1913, and she has also been linked with Picasso and with other women. Rodin said called her "a woman who is neither futurist nor cubist. She knows what gracefulness is; it is serpentine." Picasso purchased her painting La Songeuse (1911) and had it all his life.

Max Ernst painted her portrait, as did Cocteau and Rousseau. She kept company with Mary Cassatt and Susanne Valadon. In 1912, Laurençin and two other women (Charlotte Mare and Gaby Villon) fought off angry viewers of the controversial Cubist House with their umbrellas.

Les Chansons de Bilitis 1904 (print)

In Stella Gibbons's wonderful 1932 book Cold Comfort Farm, the heroine advises a protegée not to share her poetry with society people. "Nor must you talk about Marie Laurençin to people who hunt. They will merely think she is your new mare."

Laurençin was named chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1937 and in 1983, the Marie Laurençin Museum in Nagano-Ken, Japan was inaugurated to celebrate the centenary of her birth. A Japanese influence can be seen in this print (left). Marie Laurençin's 130th birthday is October 31st of this year.

Perhaps Laurençin was also familiar with Alice B. Toklas-style brownies: she was a regular at Gertrude Stein's salon on rue de Fleurus, and remained in contact with Toklas for the rest of her life. "I see Marie Laurençin quite often," Toklas wrote in a 1949 letter. "She wants me to translate for her some of the poems of Emily Dickinson so that she may do some illustrations—most certainly her dish of tea." Sadly, Toklas never did the translations.

In a letter Toklas wrote in 1950 discussing the Cone collection, which had just opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art, she suggests her correspondent look for "a very early Marie Laurençin" and describes Les Invités. Apparently the painting had been sold to the Cone sisters; Claribel Cone met Stein when the two attended Johns Hopkins medical school and the Steins introduced the Cones to the Parisian art scene. 

Tales of Two Cities

Highly Recommended: Woody Allen's new film, "Midnight in Paris," wherein Owen Wilson's character Gil Bender travels back in time to meet the likes of Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso. For those, like me, who'd like to return to another time, this film is a magnificent journey, with a lovely lesson about living in the present.

When the would-be novelist Gil goes to Gertrude Stein's (a pitch-perfect Kathy Bates, pictured above) the door is opened for him by Alice B. Toklas, she of the brownie fame. (Actually her brownies were more of a majoon, and the recipe was contributed by Brion Gysin.) It's unknown whether or not Gertrude ate them, but the two did influence VIP Paul Bowles.

When Gil tries to explain his fantastic adventures to his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams), she asks him, "What have you been smoking?" Gil may be named for Gilgamesh, mankind's original hero whose fear of death lead him to seek immortality in a magic plant.

Mentioned in the film as the first lover of the composite character Adriana is VIP Amedo Modigliani. Adriana could be based on Beatrice Hastings, the pen name of Emily Alice Haigh (1879-1943) who lived with Modigliani as his mistress, and reportedly shared his indulgence in hashish. Hastings was a journalist, a poetess, a circus artist, and a follower of Helena Blavatsky.

Also spotted: a musical version of Armistead Maupin's beloved stories of San Francisco, Tales of the City, now having its world premiere at SF's American Conservatory Theater. Here are some reviews of the show:

This musical is an enjoyable three-hour "celebration of sex, drugs, and all kinds of coming out" ...Absolutely nothing should be changed about Judy Kaye's turn as Mrs. Madrigal [pictured right], "the bohemian goddess-cum-landlady" who floats around in psychedelic robes and dispenses "sage bits of weed-infused wisdom" along with her strangely addictive brownies...this "Age of Aquarius flashback deserves to be seen on a Broadway stage." --The Week, June 17, 2011

"Exuberantly captures the sweeping current of transformation in Maupin's work . . . a happy blur of flares, gay saunas, and bongs." —The Guardian (UK)

"Whether you are a Mona or a Mary Ann, a Mouse or a Mrs. Madrigal, this show illuminates the colorful, crazy, complicated, wild times of our fabulous city. A gift to San Francisco and all of us who love it!" —Jan Wahl, KCBS/KRON-TV

Sunday Viewing

Lady Jean Inhales

Yesterday, TCM aired the 1947 film Black Narcissus, based on the Rumer Godden novel about a convent of nuns attempting to "civilize" a village in the Himilayas. One nun goes crazy over a sexy sybarite (Mr. Dean), and another, played by the esteemed Flora Robson, goes crazy over flowers, planting daffodil, sweet pea, chinese lily, tulip, honeysuckle and foxglove where her vegetables should have been.

Sister Phillipa leaves the convent because, "I was becoming too fond of the place...there's something in the atmosphere that makes everything exciting. One must be either like Mr. Dean or the holy man [a hermit who doesn't speak], either ignore it or give yourself up to it."

Narcissus is a kind of psychoactive daffodil. Shown is another esteemed actress, Jean Simmons, inhaling its fragrance in the film.

Following the film was a restored version of the 1937 classic Lost Horizon, complete with a scene of a bacchanal attended by Edward Everett Horton (who did the "Fractured Fairytales" on Rocky & Bullwinkle). Horton plays his usual wracked-with-insecurities character, who finally relaxes after this scene and begins to enjoy Shangri La. "There are moments in every man's life when he glimpses the eternal," is a line from the film that Capra repeated in 1948's The State of the Union.

Shangri La's High Llama, who must have been the inspiration for Yoda in Star Wars, was prescient when he spoke of the modern world, "What madness there is, what blindness..humanity crashing headlong against each other in an orgy of greed and brutality. The time must come when this orgy will spend itself, when the urge for brutality and lust for power must perish by its own sword....When that day comes the world must begin to look for a new life. It is our hope that we will find it here...a way of life based on one simple rule: Be Kind."

Last week, TCM aired I Love You, Alice B. Toklas as part of its Peter Sellars tribute. I was surprised how well the film held up, and on how many levels it worked. Leigh Taylor Young was luminous in her first film role as the hippie girl who bakes Sellars his pot brownies. She was nominated for a Golden Globe as New Star of the Year for the performance.