♥ Be-Love series: Red Velvet cake ♥

Hello!! I was so busy last few weeks, I'm moving out, so many things to pack... and I couldn't finish my Be-Love Series, so here it is.
Baking a cake or a heart shaped one for Valentine's Day is something usual. Anyway this was my first experience in 'romance bakery' and The experiment called : Red Velvet cake, an American typical dessert.

Tea&Love

Vintage ad 'I feel a kiss coming on!'

On my previous post, I showed a vintage makeup brand whose one of its star products, was a cream blush for instant rosy cheeks and lips. Red is blood, Red is tempting, even in cakes.

Funny retro ad

A Red Velvet Cake is a cake with a dark red, bright red or red-brown color. It's traditionally prepared as a layer cake topped with cream cheese. Nowadays the reddish colour is achieved by adding red food coloring. This cake is well-known in United States and Canada. However, it's widely considered a Southern recipe.

The Red Velvet cake is confused on its origins. Because the ingredients were expensive to buy, cake itself was considered to be a rich man's food in early America. After the American Industrial Revolution took place between late 18th century and mid 19th century, baking ingredients were easier to come by and made more affordable for the common folk. At that time, cake became more of a common dessert rather than a delicacy afforded only by the well-to-do. 

In fact, in the 1920's a story and a recipe began circulating around America, about a cake that was served at the restaurant in New York's Waldorf Astoria. The legend says there was a woman who was staying at the hotel, she loved the caked and she had sampled there so much that she wrote to the hotel, asking for the baker's name and a copy of the recipe. The recipe arrived in the mail alongside a rather large bill. As soon as she saw the excessive bill, the woman was so furious that's why she copied the recipe and sent it to everyone she knew. 

The main ingredient, most Southerners won't do without in their homemade recipes, is cocoa. Many believe the additional ingredients of vinegar and buttermilk will turn the cocoa into a deeper red color due to a chemical reaction. During World War II, some bakers who refused to forgo the cake's signature color despite food rations, used boiled red beets instead of food coloring for their secret recipes.

On the other hand, other people believe its name, red velvet, is because of bakers used to add some brown sugar and its colour was never red. Then food colorings came along. John A. Adams had a fairly prosperous extract business until the Great Depression. His company then started setting up displays to drive business…of course the picture was of a bright Red Velvet cake. With purchase of his red food coloring came the Red Velvet Cake recipe :)

I've followed next recipe and demonstration from Joy of Baking.com

My Red Velvet Cake

My Red Velvet cake

Three layers red velvet cake:)

A resurgence in the popularity of this cake is partly attributed to the late 80's film Steel Magnolias in which the groom's cake (a southern tradition) for one of the film's main character, is a red velvet cake made in the shape of an armadillo.

Have you ever made a Red Velvet cake?

Would you like to make it?

Love,

♡Lorena Be-Bop♡

♥ Be-Love series: J ♡J ♥

I do love hearts engraved in the trunks.

♥ (Source)

That is the image which comes into my mind, when I am thinking about two people: Johnny Cash & Judy Carter. I always imagined them, running down the field, stopping and engraving J ♥ J in a tree. They were the main characters of a true romance: A rock'n'roll love story ;)

A rock'n' roll love story

Have you ever heard about it?

Johnny Cash, 'my tough guy', flirted with drugs and played with the law.

His Mugshot

There is a famous saying which says: 'Behind every great man there's a great woman', in this case a rocker. And there is a legend that goes like this: Johnny Cash met June Carter thanks to Elvis Presley, who introduced them in the Sam Records Company, where rock'n'roll was born.

This is probably the most famous shot of the couple (1969)

June Carter was a 'jack-ie of all trades': a singer, dancer, songwriter, actress, comedian and member of the Carter Family, the traditional American folk band. She could played the guitar, banjo, harmonica and autoharp, and as an actress she perfomed in several films and television shows. She had such a pastoral voice that she was inducted into the Christian Music Hall of Fame in 2009. She was ranked No. 31 in Country Music Television's 40 Greatest Women in Country Music in 2002.

June Carter Cash

They got married in 1968 but they had been perfoming for many years before their wedding. 

Their wedding day

The couple put up with difficult situations: Johnny's amphetamine overdoses, drunkenness and tours by dusty roads and winter storms, however they remained married for 35 years.

Johnny and June, an Example to follow

The hit 'Ring of Fire' was sung by Johnny Cash and co-written by June Carter Cash and Merle Kilgore. The single appears on Cash's 1963 album, Ring of Fire: The Best of Johnny Cash. The song was originally recorded by June's sister, Anita Carter, on her Mercury Records album Folk Songs Old and New (1963) as '(Love's) Ring of Fire'.

Although 'Ring of Fire' sounds somewhat ominous or even some bad vibrations, but the term refers to falling in love – which is what June Carter experienced with Johnny Cash when they met. Some sources claim that Carter had seen the phrase 'Love is like a burning ring of fire' underlined in one of her uncle's books of poetry from Elizabethan era. She worked with Merle Kilgore on writing a song inspired by this phrase as she had seen her uncle do in the past. She had written:

'There is no way to be in that kind of hell, no way to extinguish a flame that burns, burns, burns'.

Love is a burning thing

and it makes a firery ring

bound by wild desire

I fell in to a ring of fire…

I fell in to a burning ring of fire

I went down,down,down

and the flames went higher.

And it burns,burns,burns

the ring of fire

the ring of fire.

The taste of love is sweet

when hearts like our's meet

I fell for you like a child

oh, but the fire went wild…

I fell in to a burning ring of fire

I went down,down,down

and the flames went higher.

And it burns,burns,burns

the ring of fire

the ring of fire.

Unfortunately June Carter Cash died in May 2003, Johnny Cash couldn't stand losing his lovebird and four months after he passed away too. The couple had only one child in 1970, have a look at his website: John Carter Cash.

Daddy and Mommy Cash :)

Daddy Cash :)

I recommend you the movie Walk The Line (2005), starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash, where John Carter Cash was the executive producer. In this interview, he talked about the film, his parents' faith, their relationship and their musical legacy: My father was a wildfire. 
This film gives a sorely accurate portrayal of the bad and turbulent times of Johnny Cash during his career leading up to his proposal to June Carter Cash. The perfomances are absolutely wonderful.

'Walk The Line' movie (2005)

To finish, I think they were like a couple of swallows. As far as you know, the swallows are an old sailor's tattoo, and I've always associated swallow tattoos with loyalty and fidelity - swallows choose a mate for life and will only nest with that bird and no other. So next image will be my little tribute to this lovely couple.

J ♥ J

I love this pic ♥

Love,

♡Lorena Be-Bop♡

Frosty Blondes

Men prefer blondes and the director Alfred Hitchcock fetishized them. During his career, he glorified them as 'Frosty blondes', perfect women.

Anny Ondra in Blackmail (1929)

A succession of beauties girls combined feminine refinement and sex appeal in a way that was meticulously stylized. Hitchcock heroines tended to be lovely, cool blondes who seemed proper at first, but when aroused by passion or danger responded in a sensual, animal or even criminal way.

Carole Lombard in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)

While they all shared some qualities, it would be a mistake to view them as a cookie-cutter blondes. The continuous and symbolic evolution of the Hitchcock heroine made them very different from each other.

Marlene Dietrich, in State Fright (1950), was one of the earliest of the type and a knowing, glacial heroine. In the film, Charlotte Inwood, a glamorous singer, with her chiseled cheekbones and sharply arched brows, murders her husband, and then tries to pin the crime on her lover.

Marlene Dietrich in Stage Fright (1950)

Kim Novak was more voluptuous, and throughout Vertigo (1958) tantalizingly wore her hair in a tightly coiled French twist (a thinly veiled Hitchcockian metaphor, of course, for tightly coiled feminine passion).

Kim Novak as Madeleine in Vertigo (1958)

Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (1959) possessed, by comparison, a brittle and seductive perfection. She plays Eve Kendall, and she is not as innocent as she looks. 

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (1959)

Even the choice of lipstick colour could be loaded with symbolism. Hitchcock's 'good' female characters wore cool, barely-there makeup to minimize their sexuality, while lipstick blatantly signified sex. For instance, Kim Novak as the idealized Madeleine in Vertigo has light-pink lips and blonde hair, but as 'imperfect' Judy has coppery hair and red lips.

Kim Novak as Judy in Vertigo (1958)

My little tribute for Vertigo and Kim Novak

Madeleine and Judy, Vertigo (1958)

But it was Grace Kelly who was the quintessential 'snow-covered volcano'. Kelly was one of the definitive beauties of the 1950's. An icon of elegance and refinement, she effortlessly portrayed the haughty allure that so appealed to Hitchcock, for whom she starred in Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955). She retired from film to become Monegasque royalty in 1956, but always credits Hitchcock for being her one, true cinematic teacher: 'He taught me everything. It was thanks to him that I understood that murder scenes should be shot like love scenes, and love scenes like murder scenes'.

Grace Kelly and Alfred Hitchcock in Rear Window (1954)

Rear Window (1954)

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955)
♥♥♥I love this couple ♥♥♥

On the other hand, the director once said, 'You know why I favour sophisticated blondes in my films?' 'We're after the drawing-room type, the real ladies, who become whores once they're in the bedroom'.

I bet, he preferred the white bird haha x)

Love,

♡Lorena Be-Bop♡

Midnight, The Stars and You

Hello Be-Bops! Well, I named this post after a song title, 'Midnight, The Stars and You', I bet you've heard this 30's song before ...listen carefully! :)

Where do we know this song from? 

It was chosen for The Shining movie ending credits. I reckon, I would have been an easy target, for the wicked Overlook Hotel, much better than Jack Torrance hahaha. It was a Be-Bop Paradise! hahaha ;) However, my boyfriend said to me 'Lorena, turn it off please! it's scaring me! OMG What a creepy song! ' hahaha but I disagree, it's so gorgeus! isn't it?;)

I guess, you have watched the film, which is based on the Stephen King novel, produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Otherwise, you should do it! :)

Some years ago, I read the novel and to be honest with you, the film has a rather weak argument, if you compare it with the book: missing pieces, those characters (i.e Shelley Duvall, as Wendy Torrance) stick out a mile..,just another screen adaptation. However Nicholson's Jack Torrance role is terrific! wow! s-p-e-c-t-a-c-u-l-a-r! love it!

Without further ado...

Do you know there is an Overlook Hotel in real life? 

The Stanley Hotel is a 140-room neo-Georgian hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. Each room affords a There is a panoramic sight of the Rocky Mountain National Park. Stephen King hosted over there and it inspired him to write The Shining.

Stanley Hotel

Parts of the mini-series version of The Shining were filmed there, although Stanley Kubrick's cinematic version was filmed at the Timberline Lodge in Oregon and at Elstree Studios in England. The Stanley Hotel shows the uncut R-rated version of Kubrick's The Shining on a continuous loop on Channel 42 on guest room TVs Would you like to celebrate New Year's Eve Party over there? It would be lovely! Check out its website for further information, you'll find a mechandising online shop too ;)

Stanley Hotel Official Website

Well actually, I am writing about The Shining movie, because the building, where I live in, reminds me of the famous wicked Overlook, just a little bit hahaha, it's true. Have a look at these pics!

This is the hallway on the 2nd floor. My father and I think, it looks straight outta The Shining one hehe.

My lovely hallway ;)

Danny was riding his big wheel through the hallways...and TaDaaaa!!!!

This is the Christmas tree, on the ground floor:

Christmas Tree

To finish, do you remember this pic? Is this one, a photo that Kubrick took? Did he hire so many extras for a picture?

The photograph, captioned Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921.
A young Jack stands smiling in the bottom center.

Happy Jack Torrance! :)

No, he didn't! It was a touch up job and it didn't obviously use Photoshop in the 80s. When it comes to tricking a picture, the modern world offers filmmakers so many forms to do it, but they look badly sometimes. This was a good job ,even with airbrush and manual retouching technique. Stanley Kubrick did it carefully and it looks perfectly, much better than any modern one.

The Real man in the original picture before he was erased from history.

Love,

♡Lorena Be-Bop♡

The Black Orchid

Hello Be-Bops! Yesterday, it was 14th November that's why in order to celebrate Louise Brooks' birthday, I want to pay tribute to her on my blog. Since I last watched her silent film 'Pandora's box' (1929), she became my favorite flapper, the queen of silent-movies. I couldn't look her away. She radiates a incomparable captivating sensuality. Brooks' portrayal of a seductive, thoughtless young woman whose raw sexuality and uninhibited nature bring ruin to herself and those who love her. This film was initially unappreciated, eventually made her a star.

Pandora's box (1929)

Provocative Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box

In 1906, Louise Brooks was born in Cherryvale, Kansas into a difficult family. Her father, Leonard Porter Brooks, was a busy solicitor, who wasn't very strict with his practice to discipline his children. Her mother, Myra Rude was an autistic pianist and their relationship was always at each other's throats. Since she was 5 years old, Brooks was an unfriendly girl who looked her famous hairdo; the bob cut in which the hair is typically cut straight around the head at about jaw-level, often with a bang at the front.

Young Louise Brooks 

The Bob Cut was copied by thousands of women

She spent her childhood  surrounded by books and listening to music. She used to perform in front of the neighbourhood children, being her main hobby. It reads, her father had stored so many books that the foundations collapsed in the library area. Growing up, she fervently read Dickens, Thackeray, Carlye, Darwin, Emerson, and Twain masterpieces, nevertheless her favorite author was Goethe who always went with her at dressing rooms. Louise Brooks was a cultured gal, at the school she got good grades in English, Latin, Social Sciences and Maths. She was always reading pieces of literature and writing a diary when she took a break in the shootings. She starred in 17 silent films and, late in life, that diary helped her to write the  witty memoir, 'Lulu in Hollywood'. In the neighbourhood, she was fiercely criticized, chit chat everywhere because Brooks was a rebel, perceptive and unusual girl.

My Disquieting girl

Despite her mother's protection her nine-year old was shattered when a neighbour sexually abused her. Myra was very cruel because she said that Brooks led him on. That fact deeply marked her life, she was incapable of real love and what she defined as 'sexual pleasure' must have bondage features. When she was 14, Brooks became a Lolita because she fell in love with a married man, 'He was one of my cradle snatcher', she said.

Love this pic ♥

After that, she left Kansas and moved in Los Angeles, where she started her career as a dancer joining the Denishawn modern dance company (whose members included founders Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn, as well as a young Martha Graham) in 1922. Next year, Brooks had advanced to a starring role in one work opposite Shawn. A long-simmering personal conflict between Brooks and St. Denis boiled over one day, however, and St. Denis abruptly fired Brooks from the troupe in 1924, telling her in front of the other members that 'I am dismissing you from the company because you want life handed to you on a silver salver'. The words left a strong impression on Brooks; when she drew up an outline for a planned autobiographical novel in 1949, 'The Silver Salver' was the title she gave to the tenth and final chapter.

Also, she had a very high level of culture and this didn't help her in the relationships. Men felt awkward in front of her because they couldn't speak about authors and masterpieces as she did. This was the main reason because of she went to Algonquin Hotel, where bohemian people used to live in.

A woman and two men: Rolled Stockings (1927)

She was nicknamed 'The Black Orchid' due to her hectic life. Getting fed up with double standard, she went away Europe thanks to her friend Barbara Bennett and overthere she was the first woman who danced charleston. She met Marlene Dietrich in a rich decadent European environment, however she was going to see each other some years later.

She was the first woman who danced charleston

At 18 years old, she wrote an article for The New York Times, about the comedy film 'No, no, Nanette' (1940) because whoever must be its author, fell asleep when the movie opened. It was such a successful article that the most famous critics imitated her style. People strongly criticized her, because she was only interested in books, fashion, alcohol and intellectuals such as Aldous Huxley.

Louise Brooks was a cultured person

In 1925, there was another sexual scandal. She met Charles Chaplin and they were shutted away in a room at Ambassador Hotel for 2 months. They did sex orgies with another couple, and at the same time they were playing the piano, dancing, perfomancing, singing...a little bit of everything...

Louise Brooks was object of desire for many people, including Marlene Dietrich, however it was Charles Chaplin who pulled it off.
She enjoyed fostering speculation about her sexuality, cultivating friendships with lesbian and bisexual women including Pepi Lederer and Peggy Fears, but eschewing relationships. She admitted to some lesbian dalliances, including a one-night affair with Greta Garbo. She later described Garbo as masculine but a 'charming and tender lover'. Despite all this, she considered herself neither lesbian nor bisexual.
What was her most famous quality? Brooks had sex appeal. In the 20's , nobody knew what that word meant, however directors took advantage of it. Louise was a pioneer girl, sex isn't taboo for her.

The hottest pic of Louise Brooks

In the summer of 1926, Brooks married Eddie Sutherland, and their honeymoon was at Ambassador Hotel , but this time it took her two days. By 1927 she had fallen 'terribly in love' with George Preston Marshall, owner of a chain of laundries and future owner of the Washington Redskins football team, following a chance meeting with him that she later referred to as 'the most fateful encounter of my life'. She divorced Sutherland, mainly due to her budding relationship with Marshall, in June 1928.

Eddie Sutherland and Louise Brooks

In 1929, she starred German silent melodrama 'Pandora's Box', directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in his New Objectivity period. The film is based on two plays by Frank Wedekind and Brooks plays the central figure, Lulu. This film is notorious for its frank treatment of modern sexual mores, including one of the first screen portrayals of a lesbian. It reads, this role was going to be to Marlene Dietrich, and she was furious as she didn't get the role.

Brooks then starred in the controversial social drama 'Diary of a Lost Girl' (1929), based on the book by Margarete Böhme and also directed by Pabst. In this film, she dances, has sex and drinks alcohol...A new scandal in Europe, as you can imagine. Next year, she starred 'Prix de Beauté' . All these films were heavily censored, as they were very 'adult' and considered shocking in their time for their portrayals of sexuality, as well as their social satire. In North America, producers ignored her.

Pandora's Box theatrical poster

Brooks was fed up with Hollywood and retired from the screen after completing one last film, the John Wayne western 'Overland Stage Raiders' (1938) in which she played the romantic lead with a long hairstyle that rendered her all but unrecognizable from her 'Lulu' days. After that she came back to New York and finally she  returned to her hometown, Wichita, where she was raised. Overthere, she became Catholic. She loved being in state of sin, to go to a confession and to have sex as a prostitute. She loved being in state of sin over and over again, in a vicious circle.

Overland Stage Raiders (1938)

She wrote a memoir 'Lulu in Hollywood'. One of her fan started to write some love letters to her, and Brooks answered him. He was very surprised, discovering she was a great writer, and it reads he became her lover. 

'Lulu in Hollywood' was a great success, I recommend you, next article: Tales from Louise Brooks.

Lulu in Hollywood

Brooks also had an influence in the graphics world – she had the distinction of inspiring some famous comics: the long-running Dixie Dugan newspaper strip by John H. Striebel that started in the late 1920s and ran until 1966, and the erotic comic books of Valentina, by the late Guido Crepax, which began publication in 1965 and continued for many years. Crepax became a friend and regular correspondent with Louise late in her life. Her famous hairdo is present at strips, as you can see :)

Valentina

Dixie Dugan

On August 8, 1985, Brooks was found dead of a heart attack. She was buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Rochester, New York. Her death was a great shock to many European newspapers ,however in North America, she was ignored.

One of her last pic :(

Happy Birthday Mrs Brooks! 

This is my little tribute for you, my couple of hair black orchids.

Hair Black Orchids