From the time she was a young child, Jane Hall had an interest in Native American culture, particularly that of the Hopi Tribe, a northeastern Arizona sovereign nation. My mother adored her childhood home in Arizona; she had learned about the Hopi from her father, Dick Wick Hall, who spent time with the tribe as…
My grandsons are now teenagers, no longer the little boys they were when I first wrote this post in 2018. Since then I moved to California to be nearer family. In addition to unexpected medical adventures, a lot of my time has been spent sorting through boxes of family papers that have some interest outside…
Travel back to the 1930s…. Movies Jane worked on in Hollywood still play on Turner Classic Movies! These include the following four – in a couple of cases to watch the trailer you may have to skip an ad. Though that’s not the case with These Glamour Girls her satire about life among the debutante…
The November 21, 2022, New Yorker cover, “Low Tide” by Barry Blitt, features a huge grey elephant on a red surfboard looking less than confident about the future. How different his mood from a fellow pachyderm that appeared on the December 31, 1938, cover of the magazine, a gleeful pink elephant by Rea Irvin (1881-1972).…
What determines who a woman will become? Jane Hall was an orphan at fifteen and a “literary prodigy” according to the press. How did this daughter of Arizona’s most popular humorist become a Depression-era debutante, a successful author of magazine fiction, and a screenwriter at Hollywood’s most glamorous studio? Jane soon found that her ambition…
October 2020 Alice is inside today. I don’t usually name plants but this one reminds me of the resilient lead played by Ellen Burstyn in the movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Usually Alice is on the balcony of my 5th floor apartment; the 97° heat and sharp gusts of northeast wind make that perilous.…
For much of my childhood and young adulthood I had an ocelot for a sibling. In fact, many of my friends remember that more than anything else about our family. My mother, Jane Hall Cutler, was devoted to Menasha Skulnik — she named him after the famed Jewish American actor in spite of her Catholic…
For the last several months I’ve been preoccupied with planning a move across the U.S.A. to the East Bay. (Obviously not with writing posts on this blog. That should change soon.) Both of my daughters and grandsons are permanently in California. So I’ll start a new adventure living in Oakland near Lake Merritt in…
Once again, the town of Salome, Arizona, and the surrounding community will celebrate Dick Wick Hall Day. Years ago, I was fortunate to participate in these festivities with each of my daughters. My grandfather’s most visible legacy still lies in Salome (where he’s pictured here), and in the other towns of the McMullen Valley among…
“Movies teach us all sorts of things: how to aspire, whom to fantasize about, (all those princes will come), how to smoke, dress, walk into a room (always like Bette Davis). They teach us whom to love and how, as well as the ostensible necessity of sacrificing love along with careers. . .…
Happy August to you all who have been following Jane Hall’s story and other posts. Please disregard the much older post you just received about Poplar Springs history as it was not supposed to be resent. I simply looked it up for some info. But there is news. Poplar Springs has a new owner…
Jane Hall’s experiences in Arizona and California before she became an orphan in 1930 did not expose her to as many people from other nations as New York City. Although her guardians introduced her to an exclusive social world, when she went to art school at The Cooper Union on Manhattan’s Lower East Side,…
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