Monster Love

By Vincent Sassone

Between 1955 and 1962, Paul Blaisdell changed movie history with his creative, low-budget approach to monster making, honed during his years as effects artist for a fledgling Roger Corman and other directors then working in the horror movie genre. Paul was as eccentric as James Whale and more groundbreaking than Ed Wood but despite a list of credits that includes "It Conquered the World," "Day the World Ended" and "The She-Creature," Paul died forgotten and long done with Hollywood in his home in Topanga Canyon in 1983.

Growing up, filmmaker and "Monster Love" author, Vincent Sassone, was all sci-fi and horror geek. He consumed reruns of anything Gene Rodenberry and Irwin Allen produced and stayed up till 3am watching movies like "The Amazing Colossal Man" and "Earth vs. the Spider." In 2005, he read an article about Paul’s work and realized it was the monsters and other strange creatures that drew him to these movies more than anything and he began to wonder what drew Paul to making them, much less donning his creations and acting them out. Sassone had read people attracted to creature films often suffered some form of abuse in childhood and wondered if this were true of Paul.

What happened that summer was life-changing. Sassone discovered Paul's 75 year old widow, Jackie, living as a recluse in their cabin in Topanga, fiercely guarding her dead husband's memorabilia. Paul's protégé, Bob Burns, who owns the largest private collection of sci-fi and horror movie memorabilia in the world including the original King Kong, had told Sassone she was probably dead and Paul's things likely looted. Sassone's theory about Paul’s obsession with monsters could only be answered by his widow, so in his mind, she had to be alive.

After weeks looking, he found the Blaisdell’s old cabin falling down around Jackie who was miraculously alive in it, existing without heat, electricity, running water and just an old transistor radio. Sassone felt as if had fallen into a rabbit hole. Movie artifacts were strewn everywhere. Paul's tools were laid out like he was still using them. After an initial standoff where she threatened to shoot him, Sassone stayed with her for six hours that July day, talking.

He told her his theory and asked her if Paul may have been working out some childhood trauma. She didn't answer but insisted they stay in touch by letter. They did and he visited her twice more before she died. In their amazing correspondence and talks she told him about Paul and his parents, she and hers, why they were childless... and Sassone began telling her about himself.

"Monster Love" is about Jackie Boyle Blaisdell, her immense and lasting love for her husband, Paul Blaisdell and that love's life-changing impact on an unsuspecting filmmaker looking for a story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Sassone
• Release date: May 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458191984

Vincent Sassone

Wrote and directed "A TALE OF TWO PIZZAS," four time Audience Award winning film starring Frank Vincent, Vinny Pastore and Patti D'Arbanville. Released theatrically in 2005, it is currently available on Amazon.com and Netflix.In development: "MODERNISM," a mocumentary set in present day Palm Springs about the wealthy and not so wealthy set who worship mid-century modern architecture.Other screenplays: "MONSTER MAKER," the "almost" true story of Paul Blaisdell, the eccentric designer who made and played the monsters in Roger Corman's 1950's B horror movies; "ITALIAN LESSONS," about a beautiful Italian widow who teaches Italian to a seventeen year old boy in Yonkers, NY; "SUMMER OF LOVE," about a thirty year old divorcee from a strict Italian-American family who takes her two kids to spend a summer a San Francisco in 1975.

Book preview

Monster Love

a memoir of Jacqueline Boyle Blaisdell

by Vincent Sassone

Copyright 2011 Vincent Sassone

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Journal Entry 1

Journal Entry 2

Journal Entry 3

Journal Entry 4

Journal Entry 5

Journal Entry 6

Journal Entry 7

Journal Entry 8

Journal Entry 9

Letter 1

Journal Entry 10

Journal Entry 11

Journal Entry 12

Journal Entry 13

Letter 2

Letter 3

Letter 4

Letter 5

Journal Entry 14

Journal Entry 15

Letter 6

Letter 7

Letter 8

Letter 9

Journal Entry 16

Letter 10

Letter 11

Letter 12

Letter 13

Journal Entry 17

Journal Entry 18

Journal Entry 19

Journal Entry 20

Journal Entry 21

Journal Entry 22

Journal Entry 23

Journal Entry 24

Introduction

In Hollywood in the 1950’s, director Roger Corman produced a series of low budget creature movies for American Pictures International, an independent distribution company that successfully marketed these movies to a paranoid country locked in an atomic arms race with the Soviets.

But it wasn’t the thin scripts, wooden acting or meager production value of these second feature B movies that sold tickets. It was the monsters. And these were made and often played by Paul Blaisdell, a young illustrator who worked as a handyman and shared a tiny weekender in the wilds of Topanga Canyon with his beautiful, supportive wife, Jackie Boyle Blaisdell.

Despite his ingenious designs that paved the way for future monster makers, Paul died forgotten by the movie industry of stomach cancer in 1983, just one year older than his father died of the same disease.

In 1996, author Randy Palmer approached Jackie for help with a biography of Paul. She directed him to her husband’s one time close friend and protégé, Bob Burns, for information about his work. Palmer was Jackie’s only connection in many years to Paul’s Hollywood past and it would be short-lived. He died tragically in an auto accident soon after "Paul Blaisdell, Monster Maker’ was published the following year.

After a horrible El Nino winter in 1997, in which Topanga Creek rose to overflowing, damaging homes and property, all contact with an already reclusive Jackie had been lost. In the years that followed, those who knew her assumed she had either moved back east or passed away.

In April 2005, I began researching a screenplay about Paul. Burns and his wife, Kathy, pointed me to Topanga Canyon where they had spent weekend after weekend with the Blaisdell’s during the heyday of Paul’s monster making career.

There, in July, 2005, I discovered in that now falling down cabin overhanging Topanga Creek Jackie Boyle Blaisdell living alone without heat, electricity, plumbing or communication of any kind save for her transistor radio and a monthly mail and food delivery from her neighbor, Mark.  

What follows are my journal entries about and the correspondence between Jackie and me. The text is unexpurgated except for last names, addresses, phone numbers and a few other sensitive details. Grammar and spelling, almost entirely, are presented as they were originally written.

Like sons of Serendip, we set out looking for one thing only to find treasures we never imagined.

Vincent Sassone

May 2011, Palm Springs

Journal Entry 1

Monday July 11th 2005, Studio City, CA, 7pm-ish PST

Ali’s backyard – sun in my face, wine in my glass, pretzels in my left hand, Bic black ballpoint in my right.

Hit the fucking wall today. In my experience you can only really do that in Los Angeles. This is the epicenter of showbiz, more than Broadway could ever be – or the disparate pieces of the indie film scene scattered about Manhattan – or the 17 Law and Order Shows that make up the TV industry there. NY, NY so nice they named it twice. Los Assholes as Conor D named it.

Driving over the hill 12 years ago, an actor, boxing with God – punching at empty air – futile. Running back to NY, changing tack, now I’m going to make films… years writing screenplays, then making Italian Lessons, then my feature. Back here every year, my toe in dabbling, thinking, wandering, worrying – did I choose right?

April sucked out here. But this trip – this return for a month was seeded. So much occurred since then that I do not wish to waste ink or paper on – more of everything I’ve written about since 1997 – and before. Put stuff in storage – cleaned out the closets – put stuff behind me before I came out here. A clear demarcation. The end of an era. The start of another. New! Saw stuff I wrote, journal stuff, back to the plane ride to San Francisco in my Summer of Love years as a kid back in the 70’s.

Managers and agents suck. So I hit the wall. I made every call. I sent every e-mail. I just keep doing what I’m always doing. And BAM. I’m giddy and slightly inebriated. And happy like hell to be here and I don’t want to go back.

Me – I’m a champ. What I did is not for the feint of heart. I saw so many leave, fall off here. I am - in LA – like the dog that slid across the floor chasing a cat, paws back pushing to stop the inevitable, ass sliding around in front of my front. Cat disappears, just me and the wall. BAM!

I saw that clock that’s in the Times, had drinks near there at the bar, Carl B’s investment, the second night I was here – the night that it was in the paper. Timing is all.

No one returns calls in LA. This is a passive aggressive city. But I have a secret. A story. A screenplay. It’s new. It came together Friday night over a glass of Happy Hour $3 merlot in Santa Monica. Then I reached Nirvana. But I had yet to hit the wall.

Dude begging followed, me writing from bar to car. I can’t give you a thing I’m a poor screenwriter, I tell him.

You got something, he says. It comes tripping off your head.

Journal Entry 2

Wednesday July 20th 2005, 633 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., 1:43pm

Paul Blaisdell’s Cadillac is still in the garage – abandoned – as is the house on the