Journal Notes

Don’t worry.  A fellow doesn’t die of a broken heart from his first love.  Only from his last.  For this and other examples of love lessons learned by wild women of the west plan to read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West coming soon. Order your copy now through Amazon.com. Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned. The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way. To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Stay in Touch, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned. The best love lesson wins the gift package. A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014. Good luck!

Be willing to live and die for the man you love.  Women who married the defiant Geronimo after he had lost other wives in raids on Apache encampments must have believed the risk was worth it.  For this and other stories about love lessons learned by wild women of the west plan to read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West coming soon.  Order your copy now through Amazon.com.  Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned.  The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way.  To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Stay in Touch, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned.  The best love lesson wins the gift package.  A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014.  Good luck!

If your mother is your theatrical manager, make sure her managerial duties do not extend into your personal life.  Gold Rush actress Lotta Crabtree learned this love lesson in 1861.  For this and other stories about love lessons learned by wild women of the west plan to read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West coming soon.  Order your copy now through Amazon.com.  Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned.  The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way.  To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Stay in Touch, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned.  The best love lesson wins the gift package.  A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014.  Good luck!

A mustache on a woman isn’t as well received as on a cowboy.  Eleanora Dumont’s reign as the Queen of Twenty-One came to an end when men began to make fun of her fading beauty.  This love lesson was learned by one of the Old West’s most famous women gamblers.  Love Lessons of the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women is coming soon to bookstores everywhere.  Stay tuned for news about the Love Lessons Learned giveaway package to find out how you can register to win.  Visit  www.chrisenss.com for more information. 

Don’t be afraid to go against the law to hold on to the man you love.  Emma Walter married Bat Masterson long before her divorce to her first husband was finalized.  You can’t let bigamy stand in the way of holding on to a man like Bat.  This was a love lesson learned by Emma Walter.  Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women is coming soon to bookstores everywhere.  Visit www.chrisenss.com for more information and to share your own love lessons. 

When you’re the paramour of an outlaw your relationship is bound to have longevity problems.  This was a love lesson learned by Etta Place.   Love Lessons Learned by Women of the Old West coming soon to bookstores everywhere.  Visit  www.chrisenss.com for more information. 

Nothing was more appealing to an Old West lawman than a damsel in distress.  Hickok’s friends noted that once he spoke up for the Widow Lake at a city council meeting, “a look, a smile, or a kind word from her could win him.”  This has been another Love Lesson Learned by Women of the Old West.  Love Lessons Learned by Women of the Old West coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

Most men in the early days of the Old West lost interest in a woman who was skilled in the art of cursing.  Some believed that St. Peter wouldn’t accept women who used profanity regularly.  Too bad Calamity Jane didn’t know this love lesson.  Love Lessons of the Old West coming soon to a book store near you. 

Zorro was a huge hit during the fifties and sixties.  The daring masked man in black cape who made his signature Z with quick slashes of his rapier was imitated by millions of kids; Z’s carved into the tops of wooden school desks across the country became epidemic.  There were many Zorros, but the one best known on the early TV series was played by Guy Williams, born Armando Catalano-six feet 2 inches, handsome, athletic.  He had more than a few would-be senorita-moms turning the show on for their children.  Finally unmasked, Zorro died in 1989 at age sixty-five of a brain aneurysm. 

If you die at the height of your fame, you can achieve immortality.  If you live long enough for your fame to fade, you are forgotten.  Montgomery Clift belongs in the latter category.  In the early 1950s his moody, sensitive performances in A Place in the Sun, From Here to Eternity and Red River made him a major heartthrob.  More than that, he added an introspective, psychological dimension to those roles which made him the idol of two men who would become the most popular actors of the decade, Marlon Brando and James Dean.  But by the time Clift died a little over a decade later, his obituary wasn’t front-page news.  And unlike other ill-fated stars of the decade, such as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, the forty plus years since Clift’s death have produced only three or four biographies of his life.  Clift had been on Broadway since he was 14, but fame in Hollywood seemed to strike him differently.  Three years after his first film, in 1948, he was treated for alcoholism.  Some said it had to do with his insecurity concerning his many clandestine homosexual affairs.  But whatever the cause, it turned a thoughtful, delicate actor into an inarticulate one.  He soon began mixing pills, mostly depressants, with his drinks.  He threw food at dinner parties, threw childish tantrums, and suffered blackouts.  By the late 1950s movie studios were reluctant to cast Clift, especially since his last few films had not been hits.  He showed up in supporting and cameo roles, but even then his long scenes would have to be chopped up because he couldn’t remember all his lines for one take.  In 1966, after not working at all for four years, Clift was cast as the lead in The Defector.  It was a B-movie spy thriller and he knew it, but he treated it as his comeback.  To prove to the studios he was reliable star, he insisted on performing all his own stunts, including a grueling swim in the freezing Danube River, even as he was suffering from phlebitis and cataracts and was trembling.  Clift, still drinking, seemed happy with his performance.  But then he saw a rough version of the movie.  In it the 45-year-old actor looked like an old man.  He returned to New York that summer deeply depressed and drinking even more.  In mid-July he saw or spoke to several of his remaining friends.  He was uncharacteristically emotional, and some later believed he was telling them goodbye.  He spent Friday night, July 22, alone in his bedroom, which was not unusual.  But his male nurse was concerned when he found the door locked at 6 a.m. Saturday.  He discovered Clift lying face up on his bed, dead, and wearing only his glasses.  An autopsy revealed that the faded film star had suffered a heart attack.  But one friend, reflecting on Clift’s last thirteen years, called it “the slowest suicide in show business.”