The Creator of the Midnight Palace Introduces Us to Leila Hyams

Gary Sweeney, founder of The Midnight Palace, is a very busy fellow. I have told you about his website in two previous articles, and he shows no signs of slowing down . The site continues to grow, and now he has started another website, this one dedicated to Leila Hyams, an actress who at the height of her career, walked away in 1936. We talked about his new site, Leila's career, and his current projects.

You have been a pretty busy fellow. What are you up to these days?
You can say that again! There never seems to be enough hours in a day. I'm still maintaining The Midnight Palace, as you know. In a few months time, it seemed like I had interview after interview. Don't get me wrong, they're great but they're a lot of work. So I decided to cool off on interviewing people, at least for a few months while I get my current projects up and running.

I understand you've got a new site!
That's right. I recently launched LeilaHyams.com, which is the only website on the internet dedicated to Leila Hyams, an actress of the 20's and 30's.

Why did you start it?
Well, I'd thought about doing it for a long time. I kept hesitating initially, probably because The Midnight Palace is a lot of work by itself and I knew that adding a second site would only increase the workload. I knew that the domain name was available. One day I just had this overwhelming feeling that if I didn't grab the domain name while I could, the next time I tried it would be unavailable. So I snatched it up. Of course, I wasn't going to own the domain name and let it go to waste, so I started building the site from the ground up. It took me about 4-5 days total to build the site, and that's only because I went a couple of days without sleep and worked tediously. When it all boils down, I started the website because I felt Leila was being lost in Hollywood history. I also felt she deserved to be remembered in a classy and informative way, which is what I hope I've done with the site.