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Roberta Teitel Zweig 

I walkd from Inn Exile (my home while visiting Palm Springs) to Camelot Theater (where "Sordid Lives" had its long cult run). I was early. I saw a banquette & sat. on the other end an attractive couple. we began speaking. she was a writer   Roberta Teitel. her husband a retired doctor   Morton Zweig. together they've just written a collector's guide/price list for Advertising Ink Blotters. we became pals for the entire festival.

Roberta once livd at Chateau Marmont. we had many Hollywood adventures to exchange. somewhere along the way I mentiond the Brown Derby near Hollywood & Vine where I always orderd the same thing: Cobb salad (which was inventd there ) & grapefruit cake. the next day Roberta brought me the recipe for the original Cobb salad which includes this great line: "a stunning mosaic of ingredients which are tossed together."

for me that also works for the festival. yesterday I mentiond some of the speakers. but the audiences were almost as exciting. there were representatives of Hollywood's past (Eleanor Parker) as well as present (director Phyllis Nagy). there were writers Michael A. Black (The Heist) & David Wills (Blonde Bombshells). there were a couple of veterans of Sam Fuller films: Michael Dante & Biff Elliot. & munching a number of Dove bars was the festival's co-producer Marvin Paige   longtime casting director who I first met when he came up to the table I was sharing with Lois Wilson & May McAvoy at that same Brown Derby that opend this entry.


with Biff Elliot (the screen's first Mike Hammer)