Good morning everyone,

You know how sometimes your friend brings his girlfriend to the pub and although it's the first time you've met her, the two of you immediately engage with one another and spend the next two hours talking and swapping phone numbers and planning to go for wine once a fortnight for the rest of your lives? Well, I guess the going for wine is a dated reference, but the basic point here is that this is exactly how I feel about Sheilah Graham, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last mistress.

I'm reading another of her books right now and she's still so good. I mean, look at this! She thought this, believed it, and, later, it occurred to her as a good enough principle to put in a book:

Here's an interview with Sally Koslow, who wrote a novel about Sheilah Graham. Quite recently and you can get it new on Amazon! Might be nice reading over the coming evenings:

beyond the paper trail of Sheilah Graham’s columns, she wrote quite a few memoirs in which, I was surprised to learn, she was the very definition of an unreliable narrator. Never, for example, did she admit in print that she was born not only poor, but also Jewish. Nor did she always tell her story the same way.

https://carolineleavittville.blogspot.com/2018/05/who-was-f-scott-fitzgeralds-last-great.html

Of course, Sheilah Graham fought to make Old Hollywood work for her, here's Madame Sul-We-Tan who did that too; the first black actor, male or female, to sign a film contract and be a featured performer. Her name, obviously, is a stage name, and according to Lillian Gish everyone was too frightened to ask her her real name. Unfortunately she (Sul-We-Tan) did not write a memoir, but you can read more about her here:

Over the course of her four-decade career, Madame Sul-Te-Wan didn’t just craft an intriguing star persona. She forced her foot in the door of the film industry, becoming the first black actress to land a studio contract, carving out a place for herself in the emerging Hollywood scene.

https://daily.jstor.org/madame-sul-te-wans-forgotten-brilliant-career/

Love,

Alex.