7,000th post

 

I started this blog 5.5 years ago after I found online a photo of a young Elke Sommer looking alluring in a red sweater. I wanted to keep the image handy and share it with collaborators on a film project underway at the time, so I created 24 Femmes Per Second. The title nods to Jean-Luc Godard, “cinema is truth at 24 frames per second.” (The Guardian)

I already had a large cache of downloaded Natalie Wood photos, plus a few scans, from that time I worked on a Natalie Wood telemovie, plus folders of digital images of Claudine Auger and other Bond Girls from a sixties spy movie parody, and Hammer Horror heroines from a lesbian vampire project. I worked out the focus and scope of the blog: actresses in their prime in the 1950s and 1960s or born between 1927 and and 1952.

1950s and 1960s are the decades of my favourite films. I watch many movies – award winners, blockbusters, arthouse, B-grade and worse – and add actresses to the blog after discovering them on screen. I’ve been squeezing in a few actresses in movies either side of 1950 and 1970. Contsant favorites include the femmes of 1938 ~ Claudia Cardinale, Romy Schneider, and Natalie Wood ~ and of 1943 ~ Catherine Deneuve and Sharon Tate.

I post on the WordPress blog which autoposts to Tumblr; always in groups of three, sometimes frequently and sometimes not, depending on family life and film work. Generally each post has 5 tags, including the actress’ name, and two categories: year and country of birth. I recently added another category: Tragic Actress.

My WordPress media library is now 93.6% full. I don’t want to delete old images or posts. I don’t own a single image, so there’s no point upgrading to a paid account with more storage. This means the end is nigh.

I have another 12 to 15 posts to complete the collection of tragic actresses (I’ve been posting in order of age at death, youngest to oldest) and biographical information to add to some earlier Tragic Actress posts. I’m updating the alphabetical list of names, adding birth and death years, and relevant country.

11 October 2018 is the start date for a big work project that will run into 2019, so it will be the last day of posts for a while, possibly for ever. I will continue to welcome comments, corrections and, when I’ve expressed an opinion or interpretation, contradictions.

With any spare time, I will post to Beach Party Movies (WordPress and Tumblr). Check it out.

Merci beaucoup, Hillard