"Royce Reed and Marilyn Hoggatt are emissaries from a more refined time, women who do not end their sentences with prepositions, nor with the declarative question mark that is the California style. They are ladies who appreciate the snug fit of custom-made gloves, who know the difference between a cocktail ring and a solitaire -- and wince whenever their club sandwiches arrive with crusts untrimmed."
These two fabulous, faded elegant ladies live (or
lived - I have no idea whether either or both are still with us) in a slum Los Angeles single room occupancy hotel drinking Chardonnay and dressing up.
Theirs is a bittersweet tale - Miss Reed rails loudly against the modern world, lapsing into fantasy and dreaming of her former life:
"I'm used to New York, I'm used to elegant places, elegant food. We had the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Luau Room owned by Steve Crane, Scandia. LaRue? We lived in those places day and night. Now we have nothing."
Miss Hoggatt quietly appears to accept her fate, having sampled the high life in a far less salubrious manner as a former teacher, housekeeper to the stars, budding author and social butterfly. Her treasures include 75 scrapbooks of photos, letters and assorted memorabilia and stuffed toys.
When the two ladies first met they had both fallen on harder times than they were used to, and after a failed attempt to leave LA and tour the West Coast (like an elderly Thelma and Louise) they ended up in the rooms at the wrong end of town with nothing much except their memories, and each other.
It is quite remarkable to discover marvellously eccentric ladies like this, and even better the fact that someone captured them on film for the delectation of the rest of the world... Thank the heavens! - all together now,
"You know NOTHING!".
Read this marvellous article about Marilyn and Royce from 1999
