(2016)
Masthead Resort and Cottages | Isabella Rossellini Cottage.
Yes, that Isabella Rossellini — the actor and model, and daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. She stayed in this house for 10 weeks, from October to December 1986, while filming Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance, in which she played the role of Madeleine Regency, just after her triumph as Dorothy Vallens in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. A portrait of her hangs on the second-floor landing, barely visible through the doorway in the photograph, together with this handwritten note:
Dear John and Valeria,
I came by to say arrividerci but you where not home. I am going back to New York. Thank you so much for my lovely staying at ‘the Masthead.’
I left a painting that a nice man did of me but I don’t want it. If you like it keep it. Thank you again. The wine was excellent (?) eccellente.
Generally speaking, the Tough Guys guests’ behavior was not recalled too fondly by Ciluzzi. “They were O.K. when they were in separate places,” he recalled in an interview with The Banner in 2009. “But when they got together, the music was blaring, the windows were all wide open in December with the heat on full-blast. I had to collect thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of damage from the film company for imploded televisions and damage to the floor where they all put out their cigarettes.” Is it perhaps telling that Rossellini’s stay is nonetheless commemorated, although there is no Ryan O’Neal Room at the Masthead?
For an overview of the Masthead Resort and Cottages, please see 31-41 Commercial Street.
¶ Last updated on 16 June 2018.