Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

Did you see my post about Armie Hammer‘s response to James Woods anti-gay tweet? In Hammer’s new film, Call Me By Your Name, he plays a 24-year-old dating a 17-year-old guy. Woods tweeted,

“As they quietly cop away at the last barriers of decency“

To which Hammer responded,

“Didn’t you date a 19 year old when you were 60…….?“

Jumping into the fray, actress Amber Tamblyn, 34, took to Twitter to say that Woods had tried to pick her and a friend and that he invited her to Las Vegas when she was 16.

“James Woods tried to pick me and my friend up at a restaurant once. He wanted to take us to Vegas. ‘I’m 16’ I said. ‘Even better’ he said.“

Woods (of course) said Tamblyn’s tweet was a lie. Amber responded with a screenshot of a text in which she asked a friend if they remembered the time Woods allegedly tried to pick them up as teens.

“Damn totally forgot about that.”

Teen Vogue got this open letter from Tamblyn to Woods, which is printed in full below. They reached out to Woods’s agent, but as of this writing, haven’t heard back,

“Dear Mr. Woods,

What you are experiencing is called a teachable moment. It is called a gift. It is called a humbling. It is called Jesus, I come to thee. It is called an awakening. It is called a growth edge. It is called hope.

The hope being that through this experience, you can change. You can redefine the man who will come after this moment and this man who came before.

Since you’ve now called me a liar, I will now call you a silencer. I see your gaslight and now will raise you a scorched earth.

My friend Billy and I were at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard seeing a band we loved. We decided to go to Mel’s diner on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood to get burgers after. I had just gotten my driver’s license and very specifically remember my nervousness trying to park in the diner parking lot. Upon leaving the restaurant we were stopped by you and your friend, who both seemed very nice. At one point you suggested we should all go to Las Vegas together.

‘It’s such a great place, have you ever been?’

You tried to make it sound innocent. This is something predatory men like to do, I’ve noticed. Make it sound innocent. Just a dollop of insinuation. Just a hair of persuasion. Just a pinch of suggestion.

‘It will be so much fun, I promise you. Nothing has to happen, we will just have a good time together.’

I told you my age, kindly and with no judgment or aggression. I told you my age because I thought you would be immediately horrified and take back your offer. You laughed and said,

Even better. We’ll have so much fun, I promise.’

Here’s the thing, Mr. Woods. At that time I was not a public persona. I had done a couple years on a soap opera as an actress, but you wouldn’t know me from Adam. I’m sure you’ve racked your brain trying to remember how you could’ve possibly hit on the actress Amber Tamblyn at a diner almost two decades ago. You think, it’s not possible, there’s no way I would’ve been so stupid as to hit on a 16-year-old known actress. But I wasn’t known then, James. I was just a girl. And I’m going to wager that there have been many girls who were just girls or women who were just women who you’ve done this to because you can get away with it.

The saddest part of this story doesn’t even concern me but concerns the universal woman’s story. The nation’s harmful narrative of disbelieving women first, above all else. Asking them to first corroborate or first give proof or first make sure we’re not misremembering or first consider the consequences of speaking out or first let men give their side or first just let your sanity come last.

So it is with hope, Mr. Woods, that I ask you to go inward now and ask yourself the hard stuff. The ominous unconscious stuff. The archetypal masculinity stuff. The power-play stuff. The perversion persuasion stuff. The secretive stuff. The id’s most cherished stuff.

Only you and your darkness know who you are. Only you and your actions know what you’ve done. That means you and only you have the power to change your behavior.

Are you and your history with women and girls a part of the problem, Mr. Woods?

Go now and look in the mirror and ask yourself if this is true. Go on, I’ll wait. But I won’t hold my breath.“–Amber Tamblyn

Dear Mr. Woods, . What you are experiencing is called a teachable moment. It is called a gift. It is called a humbling. It is called Jesus, I come to thee. It is called an awakening. It is called a growth edge. It is called hope. . The hope being that through this experience, you can change. You can redefine the man who will come after this moment and this man who came before. . Since you've now called me a liar, I will now call you a silencer. I see your gaslight and now will raise you a scorched earth. . My friend Billy and I were at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard seeing a band we loved. We decided to go to Mel's diner on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood to get burgers after. I had just gotten my driver's license and very specifically remember my nervousness trying to park in the diner parking lot. Upon leaving the restaurant we were stopped by you and your friend, who both seemed very nice. At one point you suggested we should all go to Las Vegas together. "It's such a great place, have you ever been?" You tried to make it sound innocent. This is something predatory men like to do, I've noticed. Make it sound innocent. Just a dollop of insinuation. Just a hair of persuasion. Just a pinch of suggestion. "It will be so much fun, I promise you. Nothing has to happen, we will just have a good time together." I told you my age, kindly and with no judgment or aggression. I told you my age because I thought you would be immediately horrified and take back your offer. You laughed and said, "Even better. We'll have so much fun, I promise." . Here's the thing, Mr. Woods. At that time I was not a public persona. I had done a couple years on a soap opera as an actress, but you wouldn't know me from Adam. I'm sure you've racked your brain trying to remember how you could've possibly hit on the actress Amber Tamblyn at a diner almost two decades ago. You think, it's not possible, there's no way I would've been so stupid as to hit on a 16-year-old known actress. But I wasn't known then, James. I was just a girl. And I'm going to wager that there have been many girls who were just girls or women who were just women who you've done this to because you can…(link in bio)

A post shared by Amber Tamblyn (@amberrosetamblyn) on Sep 13, 2017 at 9:32am PDT

(via Teen Vogue)

The post Amber Tamblyn’s SCATHING Letter to Creep, James Woods –”I See Your Gaslight & Raise You a Scorched Earth” appeared first on The WOW Report.

On the beach at Santa Monica with Elizabeth Taylor, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University

September 17, 1928– I ran into Roddy McDowall two times. The first time was at the 50th Anniversary of MGM Gala at the Beverley Wilshire Hotel in 1973, which I had successfully crashed. He was there as Elizabeth Taylor’s date, or Taylor as his beard. He could not have been more gracious and warm. He was better looking in person than I had ever found him to be in films. The second time was at a coke fueled all-male party at the home of a famous producer in the Hollywood Hills. He couldn’t have been more gracious and friendly, and from his films I would never have guessed that McDowell was so profoundly “gifted”.

McDowall was thought to be one of the nicest people in showbiz ever. He was also known as an especially good friend, noted for being able to keep a confidence.

After winning an acting prize in a school play, little Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was able to secure film work in England beginning at 10-years-old with Scruffy (1938). He appeared in 16 movies before his family was evacuated to the USA during the Battle Of Britain in 1940.

McDowall’s arrival in Hollywood coincided with 20th Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck search for “The New Freddie Bartholomew”. McDowall screen-tested for the juvenile lead in John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley (1941). He was cast in the role and he received terrific reviews and a contract with Fox. McDowall was cast with the then unknown Elizabeth Taylor in her first American film, Lassie Come Home (1943). Taylor and McDowall became lifelong, very close friends. Taylor’s casting in this film was an absolute fluke. The director, Fred Wilcox, simply wanted any young girl who could do an English accent. But, it was the beginning of an extraordinary career.

McDowall’s first adult role was as Malcolm in Orson Welles 1948 film version of Macbeth. Yet, for the most part, McDowall left films in the 1950s, preferring to take television and stage work. Among his Broadway credits were No Time For Sergeants (1955), Compulsion (1957) working with fellow former child star Dean Stockwell, and Lerner and Loewe’s musical Camelot (1960) as Mordred, a role I played in summer stock a decade later.

McDowall won a Tony Award for his work in a short run of the play The Fighting Cock (1960), by odd coincidence a chapter header in my memoir. He returned to films, spending almost all of 1962 portraying Octavius in the mammoth film production of Cleopatra with longtime pal, guess who?

An accomplished and original photographer, McDowall’s photos of Taylor and other celebrities were frequently published in the leading magazines of his era. He was, briefly, the photographic editor of Harper’s Bazaar and he published the first of several collections of rather extraordinary photographs, Double Exposure (1966).

From Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University

McDowall went ape shit for his acting gigs between 1968 and 1975, in elaborate simian makeup as Cornelius in the Planet Of The Apes films and the television series. He kept working and did the occasional film role or stage play into the 1990s. McDowall also served on the executive boards of the Screen Actors Guild and Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences.

Photograph from 20th Century Fox

McDowall was a lifelong film collector, archivist and historian. In 1974, around the time I met him briefly, the FBI raided his home and seized his collection of films and television series during an investigation of film piracy and copyright infringement. His collection consisted of nearly 200 16mm prints and more than 1,000 video cassettes. McDowall had purchased actor Errol Flynn’s home movies and the prints of his own directorial debut Tam-Lin (1970) starring Ava Gardner, transferring them all to tape for storage. McDowall was open about those who dealt with him: Rock Hudson, Shelly Winters and Mel Tormé were just a few of the celebrities who gave support in his film reproductions. No charges were brought against McDowall, but he was shaken by the experience.

McDowall’s passion was film preservation and he worked diligently with the National Film Preservation Board. In 1998, he was elected president of the Academy’s Foundation.

He had a special devotion to the great female stars of the past, whom he idolized. McDowall enjoyed unlikely friendships with some of the most elusive women stars of the silver screen, including Jean Arthur, Greta Garbo and Lillian Gish.

McDowall was one of the most loved stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, noted for his kindness, generosity and loyalty. McDowall’s announcement that he was suffering from cancer a few weeks before he died, rocked the film community and many of his friends came to say good-bye to the gravely ill McDowall at his home in Studio City. Shortly before his cancer diagnosis, he had provided a voice-over for Disney/Pixar’s animated feature A Bug’s Life (1998). A few days before McDowall’s final credits rolled in 1999, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences named its photographic archive for him.

Tab Hunter mentions McDowall in his terrific memoir Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making Of A Movie Star (2005):

“While making shakes at the Rexall drugstore at Hollywood and Highland, I met my first bona fide movie star. It was the night of the big 1948 Christmas parade. Dick Clayton brought along Roddy McDowall. Roddy was only 20, but he’d been in pictures his whole life. We hit it off, gabbing and laughing…”

Hunter and McDowall had posed shirtless for a Photoplay Magazine spread titled Calling All Girls!.

UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, PFA Library and Film Study Center

Farley Granger writes about McDowall in his very fun and readable memoir Include Me Out (2008). Granger knew McDowell prior to his joining the Navy at 18-years-old. Granger:

“It was 1953. I found an apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan… My old pals Roddy McDowall and Monty Clift lived on the same block.”

UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, PFA Library and Film Study Center

McDowall and Clift were very close and even lived together for a period, and along with Taylor they were often seen out and about as a trio. During this time McDowall also had a short, but intense, affair with Marlon Brando, but who didn’t.

Eddie Fisher, in his autobiography Been There, Done That (1999), mentions McDowall and his decades of hatred towards him. Fisher had first met Elizabeth Taylor at a party that Merv Griffin and McDowall had thrown in an apartment they were sharing in one of my favorite NY structures, The Dakota Apartments. Fisher:

“She spent most of the evening in a corner with her close friend Montgomery Clift. She was recently divorced from her first husband Nicky Hilton. But that damn Roddy wouldn’t let me near her.”

Lauren Bacall, in her memoir By Myself (1978):

“He was someone I always looked forward to being with, loved seeing, loved hearing from.”

McDowall was with Bette Davis during the last part of her life, taking care of her and watching out for her best interests. When Julie Andrews asked McDowall why he didn’t write a book about his life, he said:

“I have too many friends. I know too much, I couldn’t.”

McDowall has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame at 6632 Hollywood Boulevard, plus there is an honorary rose garden on the grounds of the Motion Picture And Television Fund with a statue of him in costume and makeup from Planet Of The Apes.

McDowall:

“My whole life I’ve been trying to prove I’m not just yesterday.”

From “Columbo” (1972) with Peter Falk and Anne Francis, NBC/Universal, photo via YouTube

Interesting that in his over 260 film and television roles, none of the characters were gay, but nearly all were gay-coded. I also think that I would really have loved to have been pals with McDowall. True friends are to be treasured.

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