And I Don't Want To Live This Life.

Throughout my life, I've read many, many books. None of them have stuck with me as much as And I Don't Want To Live This Life by Deborah Spungen. Each and every page is filled with frighting and emotional stories of Deborah's daughter Nancy Spungen - girlfriend of bassist for the Sex Pistol's, Sid Vicious. 

Deborah digs deep into the life of Nancy, making you live in the mind of both her and her daughter which can be very disturbing and uncomfortable for the reader. It's hard to get through page after page, but once you do - the story sticks with you.

And I Don't Want To Live This Life is and forever will be one of my favorite books of all time.

I received this book as a present from my parent's a few year's ago on Christmas. Since I was a child, I was enchanted with Nancy - not with the drug use or the infamous fame she received, I was enchanted with her as a person not her image. I could tell the difference, even at a young age. 

My happy Christmas was over when I opened this book. I held back tears as I read the Introduction, Deborah's simple yet powerful words describing Nancy's destined death was overbearing. I read only that first page before I closed the book to continue our family celebration - which was now ruined because I couldn't get Nancy out of my head.

My family and I soon went to bed at about midnight, I couldn't sleep so I decided to read some more. I read the first few chapters and fell deeper into the mind of Nancy. The way Deborah writes makes you grieve for Nancy and her family. Her mother doesn't make Nancy the victim nor the villain, she makes her a human being - which people seem to forget. 

The book starts out with Nancy's death with the reporters and all. Even a phone call from Anne Beverly - Sid's mother to Deborah, telling her that her son is also dead.

After the telephone call, Deborah is sick with it all and grab's wire and ties it into a noose. Ready to kill herself she thinks of Nancy and her 20 years of pain. 

She then decides that her pain won't go away until she give's Nancy's death a purpose, until Nancy die's with some peace and dignity. 

Deborah move's on with life and she over the years has helped many, many families in need of help with their children - she has saved other "Nancy's" out there from the path their Nancy had took.

One thing that surround's this book is death. As a child Nancy knew that she would die very young and tragic - even her family knew. As Deborah recalled, her family had nothing to do but sit and watch her die. Nancy once recalled that she would go out with headlines - which she did. She was found murdered in the Chelsea Hotel in 1978, her boyfriend Sid confessed to her murder but died of a heroin overdose before going to trial. Nancy was only 20 year's old and Sid was 21 at the time of their death's.

One thing that surprised me was that Sid wrote Deborah after Nancy's murder, the letters are published in this book. They are very personal and give's a little insight on what might have happened in Room 100 the night Nancy was murdered. Deborah never wrote back but she recalled that she felt every emotion that Sid wrote to her. He sent her a poem about Nancy, which was used as the book title:

You were my little baby girl,

And I shared all your fears.

Such joy to hold you in my arms

and kiss away your tears.

But now you’re gone, there’s only pain

and nothing I can do.

And I don’t want to live this life,

If I can’t live for you.

To my beautiful baby girl.

Our love will never die…

Nancy and Sid.

Fans of Sid and Nancy should read this book! Most fan's dislike Nancy but once you read this book you'll see why she acted the way she acted.

Since I've read this book, I've grown an attachment to Nancy and her family. Like all the other people I write about I feel like it's my job to protect them from any unkindness thrown their way. 

This book is a story of sadness and tragedy and will keep any reader trapped in the book - even if your not a fan of Nancy. Deborah's story will stick with you throughout your life.

Happy Birthday Olive!

Today marks Olive's 118th birthday!

Happy Birthday Olive!

They Played in Silence Book Trailer

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My Reasoning's.

I think I should explain my love for Olive Thomas and Jack Pickford, since it is a bit of an obsession. 

I remember the day I first laid eyes on Olive. It was waayyyy back when people still used Myspace and such. I was looking at a page about some other silent star (whom I can't remember) when I glanced at their "friends" list, it was then when I saw Olive.

I immediately clicked on her page, wanting to know more about her. The brief information next to her picture stated, "Olive Thomas 1894-1920 Accidental Poisoning". I was suddenly overwhelmed with great sadness; I  felt so bad for this young woman who died so young and tragic.

It was then that I decided to research this beauty.

I decided that I would write a biography on Olive.

The first photo of Ollie that I've ever seen.

What I loved and still love about Olive, is that she seems so present. She died almost a century ago but she has a modern quality to her, something so innocent and sweet. Watching her on screen is - to me - like watching an actress from now days. It's like she's still her.

 Her photos and film footage have a haunting glow to them, making her seem almost like an orb - an angel on screen.

There are many secrets hidden behind her death; secrets that we may never know the answers to. Secrets that were buried with her. She died suddenly leaving many things behind in her life. Which is my reasoning behind her haunting at the New Amsterdam Theatre. She has unfinished business and staying at a place which she loved, makes perfect sense in my mind.

It was Olive who brought me to Jack Pickford. Obviously, I knew who he was but not too much about him. All I knew was that he was Mary Pickford's brother. Nothing else. 

Jack was Olive's second husband, at first I wasn't so fond of Jack. From what I've read (on the internet, of course) I found that he was a bad man to be with Olive. Olive who was like heaven to me, paired with a man that was a drinker and druggy. 

Reading about Olive's death with the Mercury Bichloride and Jack's Syphilis, I believed at first, but then nothing added up. Nothing made sense in my mind. Things Jack was accused of didn't fit or work into Olive's story. Diseases Jack supposedly had didn't seem correct. So I decided to do my own research. 

 What I found was that most things written about Jack Pickford today, is incorrect. Like, for example, Olive's published biography, pretty accurate on Olive's part but not on Jack's. That book made him seem like a horrible man. I'll admit, he wasn't the greatest man on earth, he had his faults, but he wasn't as bad as Olive's biographer made him. Not that the biographer tried to be mean or anything, just didn't research very well on Jack's life.

On a book that was supposed to be only about Olive, started becoming more about Jack and getting his story straight. I found myself being way more interested in Jack than Olive.

That's when my Olive bio turned into "They Played in Silence", the Death of Olive Thomas and the life Jack Pickford led after her demise. I decided to write about what I knew most about. I was to only write facts, nothing else. If I only had one statement of a true fact about a specific event on Jack and Olive, then that would be my only statement. 

No more lies. No more exaggerating. No more played up versions of Olive's death and no more lies written about Jack. They both deserve better.

They both had their problems, even though I credit Olive as being an "angel", she was not. She wasn't the devil either. They both were human beings, who had some inner demons that tormented both of them.