Glamour is defined in the American Heritage Deluxe Dictionary as:

1. An air of compelling charm, romance, and excitement, especially when delusively alluring.

2. Archaic. A magic spell; enchantment.

Alice Bailey, the psychic, wrote a book on the nature of "Glamour." For her it is an illusion fed by desire, a being that has no substance in itself, a false 1ight, an illusion of substance.

The year is 1939. Summer. Czechoslovakia has fa1len to the Nazis. In a few more months Poland will fall and Europe will be at war, a war that has never seen its match in the history of humankind. Fifty-five million people will perish. The face of the world will never be the same. It was an age of cults, of glamour. Mussolini, “il Duce” (the leader) had glamour, Generalissimo Franco, "El Caudillo" (The Overlord) had glamour, Hitler, “Der Fuhrer” had it. Mussolini wanted to restore Italy to the glamour days of Rome. Hitler's glamorous blond beauties would rule the world for a thousand years as the third German Empire. The goosestep, the rallies, the black fashionable uniforms with the skull and crossbones had ghoulish glamour. In the summer of 1939 Laura Riding and Robert Graves traveled to New Hope, Pennsylvania from Spain on Riding's prompting, after Graves' friend, the editor of Time Magazine, Tom Matthews, secured a good review of Riding's poetry. The reviewer, Schuyler Jackson and his wife, Kit invited Graves and Riding into their home. Graves and Riding had left their home in Spain after Franco took over the country. They had five minutes to pack and only one suitcase between them. Robert Graves was a poet, novelist, biographer, mythographer. classical scholar and translator. He is best known for "I, Claudius," a two-volume fictional autobiography of the Roman emperor of the first century that was serialized for television broadcasting by the BBC. Laura Riding enjoyed no such fame. She resentfully lived in his shadow. But Graves worshipped her, thought her a superior writer to himself. He was in essence hypnotized by her "glamour." Riding had the ability to develop a cult-like devotion among her friends; She had several circles of followers. Having decided that the handsome Schuyler Jackson must be hers, Laura behaved with calculated ferocity. Schuyler Jackson's wife Kit, the good-natured mother of their four young children, was a serious obstacle; but within six weeks, through sheer force of will, Riding reduced her to a demented and violent creature prepared to 'confess' to witchcraft before being removed to an insane asylum. Clearly this is stuff for the silver screen.. Even in a post~Fatal Attraction Hollywood context and the story is absolutely true. I was drawn to the story because of its dramatic allure (glamour) and because of the parallels of Laura's invasion of Kit's house and the invasion of Europe .I had no idea that the parallels would be so clear and abundant. Acting on W.C.. Fields' advice about animals and children I had to configure' the Jackson's as childless. And although the hideous dismantling of Kit's psyche took the work of eight people, I had to simplify the cast to four. Gradual1y, through the alchemy of necessity I found that I was writing a play I had never expected, a taut, nasty little drama of quite large dimension. I moved the Pennsylvania farm to the New England Coast. I simplified Schuyler's mind and de-emphasized Laura's demonic intentions. She was still demonic but not self-consciously so, But most important, Kit was not driven insane. She was forced to clarity, She is the only sane one in the place, a place surrounded by the yawning chasm of darkness and danger.