picture, and jump back in again. Once when I was doing a Glamour shoot, the editor handed me a long-sleeved shirt that would not go past my elbows and pants that would not go past my knees.
“What size are these?” I asked, poking around for a label.
“These clothes are French,” she said with a sniff.
“Well, these are not French shoulders,” I said. “My elbow must be the size of a French woman’s thigh.”
“You can go home,” said the editor with a sigh. Getting paid to go home was one of my favorite days of modeling.
On a shoot in Saint Martin, the other model had spent much of the past year in Mexico, obviously sitting in the sun with iodine and baby oil, and it was the middle of winter in New York. When we lay on the beach together, we looked like the black and white keys on a piano, and I was told to stay out in the sun so we would “match.” I had baked myself for years, but this time I had an allergic reaction, and the next morning, my eyes were swollen shut. I stayed indoors for twenty-four hours with compresses of wet tea bags, but it didn’t do any good. I got paid for not working that time too.
Most models casually took appetite suppressants that were pure speed, professing satiety after nibbling what I considered hamster food. Practically everyone smoked, a habit I’d avoided because of childhood pneumonia, with the added incentive of my mother’s hacking cough as morning reveille and evening taps from her three packs a day. On location for Glamour in Key West, my roommate was a former Miss Universe who convinced me to try her prescribed amphetamines.
“Are you sure they won’t make me feel weird?” I asked. “And aren’t they addictive?”
“Not at all,” she answered. “I take them every day.”
She assured me there’d be no unpleasant side effects, and I’d watched her sleep sound as a baby, so I swallowed a few pills. I lay a wake all night, sweating and staring at the ceiling, my heart pounding as if it was going to pop out of my chest and my teeth gnashing like a hungry beaver. When she woke up and asked, “Would you like--” I quickly said, “No, thanks.”
The photographer on that shoot was a man named Frank Horvath—scruffy and obese, partly shaven before it was chic, wearing supersize dark army fatigues, utterly unappealing and initially interested in me. At our first meeting, in a dark room at the magazine offices, he’d looked me up and down for about two seconds, shrugged, and muttered, “Okay, she’ll do,” and left the room. We were working at Hemmingway’s house in Key West, with a resident collection of six-toed cats living in the garden, and Horvath didn’t bother to knock when he came into the room where I was being dressed by the editors, demanding of no one in particular, “Is she ready yet?” We were working on a second-story veranda, and he hadn’t even shot a whole roll of film before he said, “You’re not very good at this.” I stared at him, struck dumb by his blunt candor. “Stop posing,” he said. “You’re trying too hard, and you’ve developed some bad habits. Just think, be in the moment, actually see what you’re looking at.” I didn’t know it at the time, but he was giving me my first acting lesson. The camera captures what you’re thinking, so it had better be something besides: if I hold my hands like this, I’ll look thinner . Jimmy Cagney said that acting was stand up tall, look the other guy in the eye, and tell the truth. what Horvath led me to that day was a kind of photographie veriti.
Glamour put me on the cover and used 101 photographs of me inside that issue (my grandmother counted) followed by seven Glamour covers that year. The era of Twiggy and Jean (“the Shrimp”) Shrimpton was over, and there seemed to be a little window of opportunity for a healthier look, personified by Tiegs and me. Everybody is supposed to have a better side, and I was always photographed from the left for covers, but Richard
“What size are these?” I asked, poking around for a label.
“These clothes are French,” she said with a sniff.
“Well, these are not French shoulders,” I said. “My elbow must be the size of a French woman’s thigh.”
“You can go home,” said the editor with a sigh. Getting paid to go home was one of my favorite days of modeling.
On a shoot in Saint Martin, the other model had spent much of the past year in Mexico, obviously sitting in the sun with iodine and baby oil, and it was the middle of winter in New York. When we lay on the beach together, we looked like the black and white keys on a piano, and I was told to stay out in the sun so we would “match.” I had baked myself for years, but this time I had an allergic reaction, and the next morning, my eyes were swollen shut. I stayed indoors for twenty-four hours with compresses of wet tea bags, but it didn’t do any good. I got paid for not working that time too.
Most models casually took appetite suppressants that were pure speed, professing satiety after nibbling what I considered hamster food. Practically everyone smoked, a habit I’d avoided because of childhood pneumonia, with the added incentive of my mother’s hacking cough as morning reveille and evening taps from her three packs a day. On location for Glamour in Key West, my roommate was a former Miss Universe who convinced me to try her prescribed amphetamines.
“Are you sure they won’t make me feel weird?” I asked. “And aren’t they addictive?”
“Not at all,” she answered. “I take them every day.”
She assured me there’d be no unpleasant side effects, and I’d watched her sleep sound as a baby, so I swallowed a few pills. I lay a wake all night, sweating and staring at the ceiling, my heart pounding as if it was going to pop out of my chest and my teeth gnashing like a hungry beaver. When she woke up and asked, “Would you like--” I quickly said, “No, thanks.”
The photographer on that shoot was a man named Frank Horvath—scruffy and obese, partly shaven before it was chic, wearing supersize dark army fatigues, utterly unappealing and initially interested in me. At our first meeting, in a dark room at the magazine offices, he’d looked me up and down for about two seconds, shrugged, and muttered, “Okay, she’ll do,” and left the room. We were working at Hemmingway’s house in Key West, with a resident collection of six-toed cats living in the garden, and Horvath didn’t bother to knock when he came into the room where I was being dressed by the editors, demanding of no one in particular, “Is she ready yet?” We were working on a second-story veranda, and he hadn’t even shot a whole roll of film before he said, “You’re not very good at this.” I stared at him, struck dumb by his blunt candor. “Stop posing,” he said. “You’re trying too hard, and you’ve developed some bad habits. Just think, be in the moment, actually see what you’re looking at.” I didn’t know it at the time, but he was giving me my first acting lesson. The camera captures what you’re thinking, so it had better be something besides: if I hold my hands like this, I’ll look thinner . Jimmy Cagney said that acting was stand up tall, look the other guy in the eye, and tell the truth. what Horvath led me to that day was a kind of photographie veriti.
Glamour put me on the cover and used 101 photographs of me inside that issue (my grandmother counted) followed by seven Glamour covers that year. The era of Twiggy and Jean (“the Shrimp”) Shrimpton was over, and there seemed to be a little window of opportunity for a healthier look, personified by Tiegs and me. Everybody is supposed to have a better side, and I was always photographed from the left for covers, but Richard
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