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Chipsey's films were all sent East to be shown in New York on the burgeoning underground circuit, where they were highly regarded among midnight-movie devotees.
Film Culture
first coined the term “Baudelairean cinema” as a slot in which to place the Venetian series. But
Venetian Mauve
was destined to be upstaged that year by an even more daring advance into decadence: Jack Smith's
Flaming Creatures,
which was hailed as the first film to show total male frontal nudity. A “dick show,” as the aficionados termed it. This erotic revelation actually passed in a flash, surrounded by the sort of impromptu goofing off that had lately been given critical dignity among New York intellectuals as something called “camp.”
Flaming Creatures
weighed in on the scales of outrageous misconduct as
high
camp; it at once became a minor
succès de scandale
which the police collaborated in publicizing by staging a few well-reported busts at which the film was confiscated and the theater owners momentarily arrested. This happened in Los Angeles when
Flaming Creatures
made its premiere. The result was to embolden Chipsey, who was determined not to be outdone by Smith, one of his old rivals for attention and acclaim. He at once announced that he too was prepared to go “all the way” in his next opus. This was
Venetian Magenta.

Shortly before its debut at The Classic Festival, Clare and I attended a preview. About an hour into the film, the trusty Venetian blind opened on the key sequence. There stood a figure wrapped from head to foot in aluminum foil. An urgent whisper traveled around the darkened room; this was
Chipsey,
the director himself. The figure was delivering a muffled monologue, a lament that had something to do with the fact that he'd never been allowed to learn the rumba, how could his mother have been so cruel? He had a right to do the rumba, didn't everybody? He knew he could do the rumba, he could do it better than Rita Hayworth, but by the time he learned the rumba, everybody else was doing the samba. When would he ever have the chance to rumba? Oh, where were you, Xavier Cugat? Oh, where were the rumbas of yesteryear? In the background, the music was—what else?—a snappy little rumba.

At last Chipsey did indeed begin to rumba. Many minutes of that, leading up to the daring climax at which he stripped away the foil covering his crotch, revealing all. Several graphic, close-up seconds of that and the blind closed. Gasps and applause on all sides.

Afterward—two more hours
of Venetian Magenta
afterward—Clare and I bumped into Chipsey expounding upon the film to a group of admiring minions. He was holding forth on the deeper, existential meaning of the rumba and the artistic debt he would always owe to the great Cugat. Clare interrupted to ask, “But tell me, in that marvelous rumba section, what was that thing that showed through the tin foil at the end?”

Chipsey, startled, replied, “Why that was
me,
Clarissa.
All me,
the real, real thing.”

“Oh,” Clare said. “It looked just like a penis. Only much smaller.”

It was one of the few thrusts that got through to Chipsey. “Well, wait till you see
Flaming Creatures,
my dear, before you make any comparisons.
Mine
is on view four seconds longer.”

This became the most advertised word-of-mouth fact about that year's festival. Chipsey Goldenstone was going to show
his,
right up there on the screen for a record-breaking full-frontal nine seconds. Even the police knew. Especially the police. And they dutifully responded by breaking up the screening, grabbing the film, and busting Chipsey, Sharkey, and the projectionist, who happened to be me. The entire rowdy scene got on the television news that night with film clips of Chipsey raising histrionic Cain in the streets in front of the theater, proclaiming the freedom of artistic expression, denouncing
the fascist cops. The result, as the case went to trial, was off-and-on flashes of publicity for The Classic, now firmly identified with the cause of the underground. Try as she might to fade out of sight, there was no way Clare as owner of the theater could avoid being dragged in by the press and the courts.

Though it was an agonizing bind to find herself in, Clare was no fink. She had no choice but to defend the theater, the film, and even—bitterest pill of all—Chipsey. “Valid? Do I think Mr. Goldenstone's film is valid?” she read herself saying in reports of the trial. “Well, I'm not about to let the police commissioner decide whether the movies I see are valid or not. Of course I believe it's valid, in the sense that … ”

But whatever the qualifying remark might be, Clare came out of the crisis as a nationally recognized champion of underground cinema, committed to showing
Venetian Magenta
again, even if the courts forbade it. And she would have. But the courts didn't forbid it. The film was cleared by one of southern California's more liberal judges, who commented in his ruling that he couldn't believe anybody was likely to stay awake long enough to be corrupted by the offending scene. Chipsey became a hero; Clare became a heroine. A week after the decision,
Venetian Magenta
returned in triumph to The Classic. Thanks to much self-serving advance work by Chipsey, the screening took place with vast hoopla before an audience of more local notables than the little movie house could hold.

Halfway through the picture, Clare, who was putting in her obligatory civil-libertarian appearance, muttered to me, “If I have to sit through that rumba bit again, I'll throw up.” We snuck out together to get coffee at Moishe's. Clare was no sooner seated than she let loose a flood of enraged tears. “I just had my theater swiped from me,” she growled. “This isn't what I want. This isn't the movies.”

I think that was the moment when Clare first took seriously the prospect of cutting free of The Classic to begin a new career. Ironically, the incident helped her achieve just that. She moaned and groaned for weeks over her enforced alliance with Chipsey and the underground, but there was no question about it: the publicity of the
Venetian Magenta
affair hastened the recognition she was soon to receive. Major magazines and newspapers were after her for articles; the NYU Film School invited her to give a series of lectures. “I can see it coming,” she complained to me one night while she was taking time out from an article
Harper's
had commissioned. “I finally get a
break, I get some attention, one-tenth of what I damn well deserve. And for sure somebody's going to say, 'She owes it all to Chipsey Goldenstone's prick.'”

Chipsey's invitation was to his father's mansion, an ersatz Renaissance villa with sprawling grounds that covered a few hundred acres of the Pacific Palisades, one of the original estates in the area. Normally, it was safely ensconced behind a stone wall and iron gates of medieval proportions—and probably guarded by ravenous hounds. But today it stood open to the world. We—Clare, Sharkey, and myself—had intended to come early, but by the time we arrived on Saturday afternoon, the place was already roaring with people. Chipsey's “few
intime
friends” turned out to be the usual mob gathered for the usual binge. The party looked as if it had begun the day before, or the day before that. There were at least three musical combos at work in the house and on the grounds: take your choice, jazz, rock, or rumba. The front lawn was paved nearly solid with cars parked every which way. The walk to the front door rivaled attending the Rose Bowl game.

Once we got inside, it seemed as if most of what was movable in the house was for sale. Sellers wearing pastel-colored straw hats milled through the crowd gleefully bargaining away all the senior Goldstein's furnishings, keepsakes, and cherished mementos. The scene reeked as much of filial vengeance as it did of greed. Chipsey had stationed a contingent of bare-chested bodybuilders at all the doors to check receipts as the merchandise was carried off. Flexing and posturing for one another's benefit, they managed to look more campy than intimidating.

“Our luck's run out,” Clare muttered before we'd shouldered our way more than a few steps into the living room. She nodded toward someone who was struggling toward us through the crowd, waving and hailing. It was Chipsey, who had spotted us and was on his way over surrounded by an entourage of favorites, mainly pretty young men and boys. Chipsey always liked to be seen chatting with Clare; it was his main claim to having a brain. Now, since the trial, his association with her was a mandatory part of his role as Leading West Coast Voice of the American Underground. He was his usual outrageously euphoric self, beaming and bouncy. What was left of his perpetually platinum hair was slicked down into a Prince Valiant bob with bangs. He wore a bulky gym robe that was belted open to reveal
lots of hairy human chest. Chipsey might almost have been mistaken for a slightly seedy prizefighter just come from a sparring session. His beefy body, tanned to a glowing cinnamon, still showed youthful muscle surviving beneath the blubber; his nose was squashed flat; his brows deeply lacerated and beaten into lumps. It was Chipsey's affectation to display both the muscles and the scars: evidence of his adventures among the rough trade of the local harbors and beaches.

“Are you moving in or moving out?” Clare asked after Chipsey had forced a wet kiss upon her.

“Moving in
here?”
Chipsey winced. His voice was a nasal buzz saw that could be heard above any tumult. “God help me,
never!
I grew up in this chamber of horrors. Too many vile childhood associations. I'm turning it into a spa. The Spa of the Stars. Herbal steaming. Shiatsu. Deep tissue massage. The Home of the Totally Permissive Jacuzzi. Of course the whole morbid dump will have to be gutted.”

“You sound as if you enjoy the thought,” Clare said. “Gutting the Goldstein family seat.”

“Oh don't I!”

“Will there be films for sale?” Clare called out as Chipsey began melting away into the throng.

“Of course! What do you think? Bargains galore. Giveaways. Catch me later, Clarissa. I'll make sure they set aside something special for you.”

But that was the last we saw of Chipsey or heard about movies until the day had wheeled round through night into the next morning.

Meanwhile, as the party ascended to ever dizzier alcoholic altitudes, Goldstein trivia began changing hands at wild prices … autographed photos, old shooting scripts, famous director's chairs. A pair of Eleanor Powell's tap shoes went for four hundred dollars. A crumpled box of “partially unused” Ramses condoms said to have belonged to Rudolph Valentino fetched an exuberant seven hundred and fifty. A greasy piece of lace and elastic that was described as the “epoch-making” brassiere worn by Jane Russell in
The Outlaw
sold for a thousand. Clare, drinking straight Scotch deeply and steadily, sat sullenly through the proceedings balanced on the brink of nausea. “In medieval Europe,” she grumbled to me, “they used to sell the virgin's milk by the gallon. And we think
that
was the Dark Ages. When they get to Pola Negri's menstrual blood, I'm leaving.”

Midnight came and went with still no sign of the promised film sale. By then the Goldstein mansion was a minor riot of gate-crashers
and transient vandals. Filmland memorabilia, as well as a good deal of furniture, could be seen disappearing out all the doors. The bodybuilders had their hands full running down filchers on the lawn. One small brigade of thieves was caught trying to finesse a Wurlitzer organ through the rose garden. Looking for breathing space, Clare and I found our way to a thinly populated tile courtyard. We'd last seen Sharkey somewhere toward twilight; he was caught up in a nude volleyball game that seemed to be making do without a ball. Clare was by now at a high simmer of exasperation, kept from boiling over by frequent applications of liquor. As we sat together, we became aware of a conversation that was transpiring in syrupy tones between two men huddled on a garden swing just across from us. All we could see of them under the awning were two glowing cigarette tips in the shadows.

“It cost me a thousand, but I've always,
always
wanted it,” one was saying.

“Well, I envy you, I
really
do.”

“Wait until Howard hears I bought it. He'll just flip.”

“It's
definitely
a collector's item.”

“Oh,
more
than that. It's
absolutely
her best work as far as I'm concerned. I mean before this you could see the potential. But this is where she truly
emerges
. I say 'she,' but of course I'm convinced she was a man.”

“You
really
think so?”

“With those shoulders?
Come on!”

“You could be right. I admit I always had my suspicions. I mean the way I responded to her … ”

“And those
deltoids?
Those are male deltoids if I've ever seen male deltoids.”

“Definitely
a masculine physique.
”

“They say she could press one hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Well, I agree that this is where she achieves her, you know, maturity. But do you think it's more
fun
?”

“More fun than what?”

“Oh, say
Dangerous When Wet.”

“Oh, come along! There's no comparison. The big finish in
Neptune's Daughter
is classic.”

“With all the fountains, yes.”

“I
really
get off on those fountains. And then, there's where she comes swinging in on the trapeze from God knows where and does
this scissors thing with her legs. I mean she's like an ethereal being descending from heaven.”

“Oh God,
yes.”

“I could watch that over and over.”

“Good music too.”