#lyn thomas

[tyronepowerbottom]

Roddy McDowall and Lyn Thomas in Black Midnight, 1949 Director: Budd Boetticher

[gatutor]

Lyn Thomas-Roddy McDowall "Big timber" 1950, de Jean Yarbrough.

[tvln]

black midnight (us, betticher 49)

[perinart]

This is a crossover that I made some months ago

[gatutor]

Lyn Thomas (Fort Wayne, Indiana, 2/11/1929-Riverside, California, 26/08/2004).

[classichollywoodactresses]

Lyn Thomas

[jennicresswell]

Dress Projects: The Black Beaded Dress. Relaunch of Life Writing Projects website, book launch of The Missing List by Clare Best, hosted by the Centre for Life History & Life Writing Research (CLHLWR), Sussex University, 17th October 2018

In 2016 I was invited to contribute to a new website called Life Writing Projects, a platform dedicated to sharing stories through a whole range of media, not just writing.  I shared my Three Green Dresses MA final project: a 2.5-minute film.

At that same time, the force behind the website, Lyn Thomas gave me a dress of hers – a black beaded dress - for me to use as a project and promised to send me her written response to the dress.  It took over a year for the story to arrive, at the same time as a request to attend a re-launch of the website. Given that the dress had been languishing in my possession for so long, I suddenly had a limited window of time in which to create my response.  Fortunately, with Lyn’s story to inspire me, it was easy to formulate my response. 

I took words from Lyn’s story that resonated with me and sewed them in to gaps in the dress created by beads that had fallen off the dress.  I also wrote a response to the story and the dress.  At the (re)launch event I was able to display the fabulous dress in all it’s decaying beauty while Lynn and I read out our stories that were connected by the dress.

This idea of narrative running through a dress, passed from person to person is a powerful one, and continues to inspire and humble me as I discover each dress’s story.

[lidi-ana]

Jackie 's family...