Dear Flynnstones,
Barbara Barondess was a colorful caracter. Born in NY on the 4th of July in 1907 she left the US for her parents` homeland Russia, only to take a bullet for her father during the October Revolution. She came back to the States and became an actress in Hollywood. Winning a Miss New York pageant along the way, paved her path. She filmed with Greta Garbo, whom she would term a polite, if dull, friend (“She chose to be a recluse, basically because she had nothing to say.”). One of her better known movies was “8 girls in a boat”- Flynn was not in, he surely would have loved to, but it preceded his arrival at the Traumfabrik by two years. Barondess met Errol, when she persued a second career as an interior designer and in that capacity worked for him.
Her third job was a dream come true, since she alwas aspired to be a writer, ever since she went to dinner with literature great Eugene O`Neill. In 1990 she released her memoires “One Life is not enough. Surviving the Russian Revolution and Capture the American Dream of Broadway and Hollywood”. Apparently one book seemed not enough and she had two more additions planned with anecdotes about Harlow, Gable and Garbo. Having been the love interest, or shall we say muse, of producer Paul Bern, it would have been interesting to read, if she also had an apparition of a mischievous dwarf in Bern`s mansion like Sharon Tate had when she lived there with Jay Sebring. If it was Paul or the Pole Tate saw in a lucid dream, who threatened her life years before her gruesome murder. And if Barbara B. would have approved of Sebring`s choice of pitch black as a color for his bedroom. If Errol Flynn`s pool had been of the same color at some time. If… Nuff!
Enjoy,
— shangheinz
Karl
September 7, 2024 at 7:18 pm
The game is once again afoot fellow Flynnsters!
As always, Topper and The-Shang-Meister keeps the joint-a- jumping in this L-O-N-G dry spell between the OASES (that’s right, the plural of that fertile region) of comments.
Never heard of the actress, Barondess (which almost sounds aristocratic in and of itself), nor her even more acclaimed rearranging of the furniture prowess!
Anyway, was not aware of the whole Barbara-Bern-Tate connection and was curious and so looked it up and found a “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” related connection, and, of course, a dissenting voice as to the whole premonitory premise:
“The Haunting Of Sharon Tate was directed by Daniel Farrands, who previously wrote Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers and directed acclaimed horror documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. In making The Haunting Of Sharon Tate, Farrands stated he aimed to make a movie about the crime that focused on the victims, instead of the cult, telling THR “I wanted to do a story that would change the narrative so that the victims would be able to rise up and take their power back, if you will, from their would-be killers.” The movie’s premise also comes from a supposed quote Sharon Tate gave to Fate Magazine – which covers psychic phenomena – a year before her death.
This Fate Magazine article was titled “Sharon Tate’s Preview Of Murder,” and the article details an interview journalist Dick Kleiner had with the actress in 1968. When asked if she’d ever had a psychic experience, Tate recalled an event from the year before where she stayed in Jay Sebring’s home while he was away. The house previously belonged to a film director named Paul Bern, who had committed suicide there in 1932. According to the interview, Tate awoke to see a strange-looking man – who she later believed to be Bern – prowling around her room like a ghost. She left the bedroom and then saw a figure which she thought was either herself or Sebring tied to the staircase, having been murdered.
The dream continued with Sharon Tate heading downstairs to make herself a drink and pinching herself to confirm she was dreaming. The experience concluded with her going back to bed, passing the body on the staircase and the figure in her room once more. This story was published nearly a year after Sharon Tate’s murder, but her sister Debra Tate later personally debunked this story with a 2019 PEOPLE magazine interview while decrying The Haunting Of Sharon Tate’s premise, stating “I know for a fact she did not have a premonition — awake or in a dream — that she and Jay would have their throat cut. I checked with all of her living friends. None of her friends had any knowledge of this. Tacky, tacky, tacky.”