"Before I go further, I should say that I watch porn."

Read Boys & Pornography, II.

"A Chorus Line Of Mocking Queens"

"We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear no underwear
We show our pubic hair...
We wear our dungarees
Avove our nelly knees!"

Chant sung "Rockette style" by a "chorus line of mocking queens." Duberman, Stonewall, p. 200.

Via Columbia University Library's online exhibition, Stonewall and Beyond: Lesbian and Gay Culture.

Nice Spindles, Babe

From Ben Pearce's Flickr set (which is most excellent, but lacks any info for collectors), found via Fabulon.

Marlene Dietrich

It was Marlene Dietrich's birthday on the 27th, so a belated birthday post it is...






Below are some of her poems, found in an old suitcase by her only child, Maria Riva. The poems, some scribbled, others typed on playwright Noël Coward’s typewriter, were written after Dietrich retired from the public eye. Riva claims to have edited them in hopes of publishing them to illustrate that her mother did not retreat from the public gaze because of vanity, as some biographers have claimed. Riva said, "My mother withdrew because she was simply tired of being Marlene Dietrich. She was tired of the endless effort to present an ideal of perfection even though she was not perfect."

However, the poems as of yet have not been published -- and believe-you-me, I've been watching and waiting!

Here are a few of the poems, which strike melancholy, if not romantic, notes. And, interestingly, none of them -- or at least none of the released poems -- are to women... I would have expected something to or for Mercedes de Acosta, at least.

To Ronald Reagan:

A tense silence
Grips me Surrounds me
Grounds me to the
Messy floor Around me

No voice No wind No rain Just silence will remain
Around me What a fate
‘Too late cried the Raven, Too late'

To Orson Welles:

Even when you are dead
You are not safe,
Not out of reach.

To Noël Coward:

No more Body
To hold on to
While you Sleep
Just the Sheet. What a cheat!

To Ernest Hemingway:

Losing you
Feels like A fisherman feels
Who loses his catch He thought he had
So securely
Hooked
While piercing
The gills of his prey.

Poems & info on them via The London Times.

Related: Medal of Freedom Recipient Marlene Dietrich

Pre-Code Film & Lingerie

At SK Slip of a Girl has posted reviews of Pre-Code films by Wellman, which is where the above still of Dorothy Mackaill in Safe in Hell comes from. Safe in Hell is an exceptional movie about a prostitute who tries, if not for a heart of gold, then for a pure heart -- against all odds.

So far I've only seen copies of this film available at eBay -- why don't they re-issue it? (I found my DVD -- clearly a decent copy from TV, but better than waiting for it to be on -- by searching Dorothy Mackaill, not by film title.)

Related: Thirteen vintage film photos featuring ladies in lingerie -- which is where the below unknown movie still comes from... Got any ideas? Please post it!

Beware The Secretary

No, not that Secretary; the kind you might find fear in hubby's office:

What every Woman Knows

That this Girl is the right sort for Hubby's Office

(C A.P.F. postcard; Serie No. 82)

Written on the front by the sender of this postcard in 1910 is: My you think you are smart.

Because, remember, all women are in competition for men.

Anal Fisting, By Michelangelo?

Bacchus brings us closer to the answer...



If you know anything, or have something to add to the conversation, please post comments for Bacchus (and lil ol me too).

Elsie de Wolfe

Most folks think "Lesbian" and "decorator" when they hear the name Elsie de Wolfe, but she was also an avid promoter of cancer-sticks -- and not just with ads like this Lucky Stikes ad (in the Delineator, February 1929) either.



When Elsie said, "I recommend a Lucky in place of a sweet - when your figure must be considered," she meant it. She wrote a book on it too: Elsie De Wolfe's Recipes for Successful Dining (1934).

Of course, one must remember that smoking was not just fashionable; such promotion was well compensated.

For more on Elsie, see Band of Thebes birthday tribute where they say, "Baby boomers who act like they invented being young at sixty are forgetting about Elsie de Wolfe who at sixty-one in 1926 attended a costume ball in Paris dressed as a Moulin Rouge dancer and made her entrance doing handsprings."

Preparing Actresses for Wetlook Scenes in the 50's & 60's

Images of Claudia Cardinale via Wetfan's Movie Magazine Scrapbook.

Sheik Fathers & Flapper Mothers, That's Why Young People Go Wrong

Found via Infomercantile, in The Troublemakers post, was this excellent clipping:

"WHY YOUNG PEOPLE GO WRONG"
REV HARRY BLACK

Pastor Free Methodist Church
Corner West Colton Avenue and Webster Street Redlands, California

(a newspaper report)

PARENTS HEAR PULPIT ATTACK
Sheik Fathers and Flapper Mothers are Assailed by Redlands Clergyman
(Special Staff Correspondence "The Sun")

REDLANDS, CALIF.--Sheik fathers who enjoy prize fights and jazz more than the comfort of home and children, and flapper mothers "who display the kneebone, collarbone, backbone, and wishbone," were scored in the spirited sermon preached by the Rev. Harry Black at the first of a two weeks revival at the Free Methodist Church in Redlands.

"The automobile, sheik fathers, flapper mothers, immodest dress and lack of religious training are the causes for the downfall of many of our youth," the pastor declared in his sermon on "The Revolt of Youth, Roadside Spooning, Why Our Young People Go Wrong and Who Is To Blame." He continued:
CROWDED AUTOS ARE ATTACKED
"The automobile can be made a blessing or a curse, and it is both. It is a disgrace to society for four or five young folks to crowd into one seat of a car, and nothing but a base desire will lead boys and girls to do this. They should be arrested right on the spot.

For more from this Free Tract, including the Bible on bobbed hair, see Thingsville's post with scans.

Vintage Hula Girls & Retro Wanna-Bes

Fanny Brice, Al Jolson & The Seven Lively Arts

As promised in part one, more on Fanny Brice (with a generous dollop of Al Jolson).





This from the The Seven Lively Arts, by Gilbert Seldes, this is The Daemonic in the American Theatre (pages 191-200).

ONE man on the American stage, and one woman, are possessed--Al Jolson and Fanny Brice. Their daemons are not of the same order, but together they represent all we have of the Great God Pan, and we ought to be grateful for it. For in addition to being more or less a Christian country, America is a Protestant community and a business organization-and none of these units is peculiarly prolific in the creation of daemonic individuals. We can bring forth Roosevelts--dynamic creatures, to be sure; but the fury and the exultation of Jolson is a hundred times higher in voltage than that of Roosevelt; we can produce courageous and adventurous women who shoot lions or manage construction gangs and remain pale beside the extraordinary "cutting loose" of Fanny Brice.

To say that each of these two is possessed by a daemon is a mediaeval and perfectly sound way of expressing their intensity of action. It does not prove anything-not even that they are geniuses of a fairly high rank, which in my opinion they are. I use the word possessed because it connotes a quality lacking elsewhere on the stage, and to be found only at moments in other aspects of American life-in religious mania, in good jazz bands, in a rare outbreak of mob violence. The particular intensity I mean is exactly what you do not see at a baseball game, but may at a prize fight, nor in the productions of David Belasco, nor at a political convention; you may see it on the Stock Exchange and you can see it, canalized and disciplined, but still intense, in our skyscraper architecture. It was visible at moments in the old Russian Ballet.

In Jolson there is always one thing you can be sure of: that whatever he does he does at the highest possible pressure. I do not mean that one gets the sense of his effort, for his work is at times the easiest seeming, the most effortless in the world. Only he never saves up-for the next scene, or the next week, or the next show. His generosity is extravagant; he flings into a comic song or three-minute impersonation so much- energy, violence, so much of the totality of one human being, that you feel it would suffice for a hundred others. In the days when the runway was planked down the centre of every good theatre in America, this galvanic little figure, leaping and shouting--yet always essentially dancing and singing--upon it was the concentration of our national health and gaiety. In Row, Row, Row he would bounce up on the runway, propel himself by imaginary oars over the heads of the audience, draw equally imaginary slivers from the seat of his trousers, and infuse into the song something wild and roaring and insanely funny. The very phonograph record of his famous Toreador song is full of vitality. Even in later days when the programme announces simply "Al Jolson" (about 10.15 P.M. in each of his reviews) he appears and sings and talks to the audience and dances off-and when he has done more than any other ten men, he returns and, blandly announcing that "You ain't heard nothing yet," proceeds to do twice as much again. He is the great master of the one-man show because he gives so much while he is on that the audience remains content while he is off-and his electrical energy almost always develops activity in those about him.

If it were necessary, a plea could be made for violence per se in the American theatre, because everything tends to prettify and restrain, and the energy of the theatre is dying out. But Jolson, who lacks discipline almost entirely, has other qualities besides violence. He has an excellent baritone voice, a good ear for dialect, a nimble presence, and a distinct sense of character. Of course it would be impossible not to recognize him the moment he appears on the stage; of course he is always Jolson-but he is also always Gus and always Inbad the Porter, and always Bombo. He has created a way of being for the characters he takes on; they live specifically in the mad world of the Jolson show; their wit and their bathos are singularly creditable characteristics of themselves-not of Jolson. You may recall a scene I think the show was called Dancing Around - in which a lady knocks at the door of a house. From within comes the voice of Jolson singing, "You made me love you, I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it"--the voice approaches, dwindles away, resumes -- it is a swift characterization of the lazy servant coming to open the door and ready to insult callers, since the master is out. Suddenly the black face leaps through the doorway and cries out, "We don' want no ice," and is gone. Or Jolson as the black slave of Columbus, reproached by his master for a long absence. His lips begin to quiver, his chin to tremble; the tears are approaching, when his human independence softly asserts itself and he wails, "We all have our moments." It is quite true, for Jolson's technique is the exploitation of these moments; he has himself said that he is the greatest master of hokum in the business, and in the theatre the art of hokum is to make each second count for itself, to save any moment from dulness by the happy intervention of a slap on the back, or by jumping out of character and back again, or any other trick. For there is no question of legitimacy here-everything is right if it makes 'em laugh.

He does more than make 'em laugh; he gives them what I am convinced is a genuine emotional effect ranging from the thrill to the shock. I remember coming home after eighteen months in Europe, during the war, and stepping from the boat to one of the first nights of Sinbad. The spectacle of Jolson's vitality had the same quality as the impression I got from the New York sky line-one had forgotten that there still existed in the world a force so boundless, an exaltation so high, and that anyone could still storm Heaven with laughter and cheers. He sang on that occasion 'N Everything and Swanee. I have suggested elsewhere that hearing him sing Swanee is what book reviewers and young girls loosely call an experience. I know what Jolson does with false sentiment; here he was dealing with something which by the grace of George Gershwin came true, and there was no necessity for putting anything over. In the absurd black-face which is so little negroid that it goes well with diversions in Yiddish accents, Jolson created image after image of longing, and his existence through the song was wholly in its rhythm.

Five years later I heard Jolson in a second-rate show, before an audience listless or hostile, sing this out dated and forgotten song, and create again, for each of us seated before him, the same image-and saw also the tremendous leap in vitality and happiness which took possession of the audience as he sang it. It was marvelous. In the first weeks of Sinbad he sang the words of 'N Everything as they are printed. Gradually (I saw the show in many phases) he interpolated, improvised, always with his absolute sense of rhythmic effect; until at the end it was a series of amorous cries and shouts of triumph to Eros. I have heard him sing also the absurd song about "It isn't raining rain, It's raining violets" and remarked him modulating that from sentimentality into a conscious bathos, with his gloved fingers flittering together and his voice rising to absurd fortissimi and the general air of kidding the piece.

He does not generally kid his Mammy songs-as why should he who sings them better than anyone else? He cannot underplay anything, he lacks restraint, and he leans on the second-rate sentiment of these songs until they are forced to render up the little that is real in them. I dislike them and dislike his doing them-as I dislike Belle Baker singing Elie, Elie! But it is quite possible that my discomfort at these exhibitions is proof of their quality. They and a few very cheap jokes and a few sly remarks about sexual perversions are Jolson's only faults. They are few. For a man who has, year after year, established an intimate relation with no less than a million people, every twelvemonth, he is singularly uncorrupted. That relation is the thing which sets him so far above all the other one-manshow stars. Eddie Cantor gives at times the effect of being as energetic; Wynn is always and Tinney sometimes funnier. But no one else, except Miss Brice, so holds an audience in the hollow of the hand. The hand is steady; the audience never moves. And on the great nights when everything is right, Jolson is driven by a power beyond himself. One sees that he knows what he is doing, but one sees that he doesn't half realize the power and intensity with which he is doing it. In those moments I cannot help thinking of him as a genius.

Quite to that point Fanny Brice hasn't reached. She hasn't, to begin with, the physical vitality of Jolson. But she has a more delicate mind and a richer humour--qualities which generally destroy vitality altogether, and which only enrich hers. She is first a great farceur; and in her songs she is exactly in the tradition of Yvette Guilbert, without the range, so far as we know, which enabled Mme Guilbert to create the whole of mediaeval France for us in ten lines of a song. The quality, however, is the same, and Fanny's evocations are as vivid and as poignant as Yvette's-they require from us exactly the same tribute of admiration. She has grown in power since she sang and made immortal, I Should Worry. Hear her now creating the tragedy of SecondHand Rose or of the one Florodora baby who-- "five little dumbells got married for money, And I got married for love . . .." These things are done with two-thirds of Yvette Guilbert's material missing, for there are no accessories and, although the words (some of the best are by Blanche Merrill) are good, the music isn't always distinguished. And the effects are irreproachable. Give Fanny a song she can get her teeth into, Mon Homme, and the result is less certain, but not less interesting. This was one of a series of realistic songs for Mistinguett, who sang it very much as Yvonne George did when she appeared in America. Miss Brice took it lento affetuoso; since the precise character of the song had changed a bit from its rather more outspoken French original. Miss Brice suppressed Fanny altogether in this song-she was being, I fear, "a serious artist"; but she is of such an extraordinary talent that she can do even this. Yvonne . George sang it better simply because the figure she evoked as Mon Homme was exactly the fake apache about whom it was written, and not the "my feller" who lurked behind Miss Brice. It was amusing to learn that without a Yiddish accent and without those immense rushes of drollery, without the enormous gawkishness of her other impersonations, Miss Brice could put a song over. But I am for Fanny against Miss Brice and to Fanny I return.

Fanny is one of the few people who "Make fun." She creates that peculiar quality of entertainment which is wholly light-hearted and everything else is added unto her. Of this special quality nothing can be said; one either sees it or doesn't, savours it or not. Fanny arrives on the scene with an indescribable gesture--after seeing it twenty times I believe that it consists of a feminine salute, touching the forehead and then flinging out her arm to the topmost gallery. There is magic in it, establishing her character at once -the magic must reside in her incredible elbow. She hasn't so much to give as Jolson, but she gives it with the same generosity, there are no reserves, and it is all for fun. Her Yiddish Squow (how else can I spell that amazing effect?) and her Heiland Lassie are examples-there isn't an arriere-pensee in them.

"The Chiff is after me . . . he says I appil to him . . . he likes my type - - " It is the complete give away of herself and she doesn't care.

And this carelessness goes through her other exceptional qualities of caricature and satire. For the first there is the famous Vamp, in which she plays the crucial scene of all the vampire stories, preluding it with the first four lines of the poem Mr Kipling failed to throw into the wastepaper basket, and fatuously adding, "I can't get over it"--after which point everything is flung into another plane-the hollow laughter, the haughty gesture, the pretended compassion, that famous defense of the vampire which here, however, ends with the magnificent line, "I may be a bad woman, but I'm awful good company." In this brief episode she does three things at once: recites a parody, imitates the moving-picture vamp, and creates through these another, truly comic character. For satire it is Fanny's special quality that with the utmost economy of means she always creates the original in the very process of destroying it, as in two numbers which are exquisite, her present opening song in vaudeville with its reiterations of Victor Hebert's Kiss Me Again, and her Spring Dance. The first is pressed far into burlesque, but before she gets there it has fatally destroyed the whole tedious business of polite and sentimental concert-room vocalism; and the second (Fanny in ballet, with her amazingly angular parody of five-position dancing) puts an end forever to that great obsession of ours, classical interpretative dancing.

Fanny's refinement of technique is far beyond Jolson's; her effects are broad enough, but her methods are all delicate. The frenzy which takes hold of her is as real as his. With him she has the supreme pleasure of knowing that she can do no wrong-and her spirits mount and intensify with every moment on the stage. She creates rapidly and her characterizations have an exceptional roundness and fulness; when the daemon attends she is superb.

It is noteworthy that these two stars bring something to America which America lacks and lovesthey are, I suppose, two of our most popular entertainers--and that both are racially out of the dominant caste. Possibly this accounts for their fine carelessness about our superstitions of politeness and gentility. The medium in which they work requires more decency and less frankness than usually exist in our private lives; but within these bounds Jolson and Brice go farther, go with more contempt for artificial notions of propriety, than anyone else. Jolson has re-created an ancient type, the scalawag servant with his surface dulness and hidden cleverness, a creation as real as Sganarelle. And Fanny has torn through all the conventions and cried out that gaiety still exists. They are parallel lines surcharged with vital energy. I should like to see that fourth-dimensional show in which they will meet.

You can read The Seven Lively Arts by Gilbert Seldes online here; or, if you should, like I, prefer paper to cozy up with, here's the paperback at Amazon -- which, you can get a deal on if you purchase it with The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States by Michael Kammen.

I mention the latter as the blurbs about that book have some of the best, clearest, most concise information on Gilbert Seldes himself.

From Publishers Weekly:

In his 1924 book The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes (1893-1970) made the then-controversial claim that popular entertainment and culture should be treated just as seriously, and as rigorously, as the so-called high arts. Krazy Kat and Irving Berlin were worthy of critical attention, he said; and arts criticism in America hasn't been the same since. Kammen, a historian, stresses the "hands-on" aspect of Seldes's long and versatile career. He was a historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, scriptwriter, journalism school dean, newspaper and magazine columnist and CBS's first director of television. Although at times Kammen seems curiously defensive, his balanced and insightful account of Seldes's professional life?from the early '20s at the Dial magazine (and the beginning of long-running feuds with both Hemingway and the Algonquin Round Table set) to the 1950s debates on the role of "mass culture"?is a story of a life as well as a history of pop culture on the rise. Seldes, Kammen says, thought of himself as "a highbrow populist" and was a "compulsively candid critic." Kammen weights Seldes's contributions fairly but can be equally candid.

Mary Carroll of Booklist:

Cornell University's Kammen is an astute student of U.S. cultural history; People of Paradox (1972), A Machine That Would Go of Itself (1986), and Mystic Chords of Memory (1991) suggest his scope. It's hardly surprising that he would find Seldes a fascinating biographical subject. Seldes was a major contributor to arts criticism and magazine journalism from the 1920s to the 1960s: edited The Dial when it published T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland; wrote a classic defense of popular art, The Seven Lively Arts (1924), hundreds of magazine articles, a successful Broadway treatment of Lysistrata, and programs for radio and TV; and was founding dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications. Seldes fought with Hemingway, George Jean Nathan, and Edward R. Murrow and wrestled with issues of current relevance, including "dumbing down" vs. "leveling up" in the mass media and government's role in supporting (or restraining) artistic expression. Seldes shed light rather than heat on significant artistic issues American society has faced.

Also, related, is this piece on The Seven Lively Arts and The Freemasons.

For more on Jolson, the International Al Jolson Society.

Horny Old Asses

From Penny Postcards, found via Baikinage's StumbleUpon page.

Feminizing The Female Through Enema

I'm not into enemas ("not that there's anything wrong with that"), but what strikes me the most about this particular artwork is the soft, intimate nature of the women -- right down to the lingerie -- which is in stark contrast to an action which seems rather harsh & strong in-and-of-itself. Very iron hand in the velvet glove, and so atypical of BDSM art where sharp, angled Femdoms wear shiny black as they wield hard objects in bleak dungeons.

Found in Montorgueil and other Erotic Cartoons set at Flickr, I don't believe this is the work of Bernard Montorgueil because he had his females dominate men -- and his works tend to have more of that crisp quality.

You can find lots more of these drawings via manuel1960ar Flickr set.

Double The Fanny Brice Is Twice As Nice (Part One)

Recently at a sale I spotted this 78 with one side titled Second Hand Rose and eager to show it off to my pal Secondhand Rose, I didn't even notice it was by the Fanny Brice -- nor did I note the other side with My Man -- until I had it home.

But once I did, I knew I had sheet music about here... Somewhere...

Weeks (and boxes) later, I found it. (And of course, more than a dozen others to scan and post here later too.)

Anyway, here's the belated post.

To understand the context of both songs, here's a bit of Brice's bio:

Brice starred in the Ziegfield Follies in the 1920s and 1930s and became known for her beautiful voice and limber grace, which she always used in the service of humor. When she tried dramatic Broadway roles, her plays were unsuccessful.

As Brice's fame increased, so did her notoriety. In 1918, she married Jules "Nicky Arnstein, a handsome, urbane but somewhat inept con man and thief she had lived with for six years. Despite Arnstein's infidelity and a stretch in Sing Sing Prison for illegal wiretapping, the devoted Brice stayed with him, had two children and supported him by working on-stage almost constantly. Brice's tumultuous relationship with the ne'er-do-well Arnstein gave her material for a rare non-ethnic success: appearing in the Ziegfield Follies of 1921, the usually manic comedienne stood nearly motionless on the stage and, singing in a beautiful, unaccented voice, moved audiences to tears with her rendition of "My Man" with its now-classic lyrics, "But whatever my man is, I am his - forever."

In 1924, Arnstein was charged in a Wall Street bond theft. Brice insisted on his innocence and funded his legal defense, at great expense. Arnstein was convicted and sentenced to the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. Released in 1927, the ungrateful and unfaithful Arnstein disappeared from Brice's life and that of his two children. Reluctantly, Brice divorced him.

Brice had some of her greatest success during her years as Mrs. Arnstein, including her famous song "Second Hand Rose." Yet, in 1923, as biographer Grossman puts it, Brice "tired of being a sight gag" and had her nose surgically straightened. Still, acceptance eluded her when she tried her hand at "American" drama.

After a failed marriage to Broadway impresario Billy Rose and starring roles in Hollywood film, Brice found a niche -broadcast radio - that made her comfortable. In 1938, she launched her own weekly radio show. A wonderful mimic and impersonator with a great ear for dialect, Brice chose instead to limit herself to one character, Baby Snooks, a precocious, bratty toddler - who had no accent. Her enormously successful run on radio lasted until her death in 1951, just as television was beginning to capture the radio audience.

Barbra Streisand paid tribute to Brice in her loosely biographical film Funny Girl.

Now to the song lyrics.

Second Hand Rose
By James Hanley and Grant Clarke -- listen along here. (Many thanks to Sex-Kitten.Net for hosting the file!)

Father has a business,
Strictly second-hand,
Everything from tooth-picks to a baby grand.
Stuff in our apartment,
Came from Father's store,
Even things I'm wearing, someone wore before.
It's no wonder that I feel abused;
I never get a thing that ain't been used!

I'm wearing second-hand hats,
Second-hand clothes,
That's why the call me Second Hand Rose.
Even our piano in the parlor,
Father bought for ten cents on the dollar.
Second-hand pearls,
I'm wearing second-hand curls,
I never get a single thing that's new!
Even Jakie Cohen, he's the man I adore,
Had the nerve to tell me he'd been married before!
Everyone knows that I'm just Second Hand Rose,
From Second Avenue.

I'm wearing second-hand shoes,
Second-hand hose,
All the girls hand me their second-hand beaus!
Even my pajamas, when I don them,
Have somebody else's 'nitials on them.
Second-hand rings, I'm sick of second-hand things,
I never get what other goilies do.
Once while strolling through the Ritz, a woman got my goat,
She nudged her friend and said, "Oh, look, there goes my last year's coat!"
Everyone knows that I'm just Second Hand Rose,
From Second Avenue.

My Man

Sung by Miss Fanny Brice in Zeigfield Follies of 1921 as Mon Homme (My Man).
Written by Maurice Yvain, lyrics by Channing Pollack.

It's cost me alot,
But there's one thing that I've got
It's my man.
Cold and wet, tired, you bet
But all that I soon forget
With my man.

He's not much for looks
And no hero out of books
Is my man...
Two or three girls has he
That he likes as well as me
But I love him!

I don't know why I should
He isn't any good
He isn't true
But I'll stick to him like glue
What else can I do?

Oh my man, I love him so!
He'll never know.
All my life is just despair
But I don't care!
When he takes me in his arms
The world is bright,
All right!

What's the difference if I say
I'll go away?
When I know I'll come back
On my knees some day;
For whatever my man is
I am his
Forever more!

Sometimes I say
If I just could get away
With my man
He'd go straight, sure as fate,
For it never is too late
For a man.

I just like to dream of a cottage by a stream
With my man
Where a few flowers grew and perhaps a kid or two
Like my man.

And then my eyes get wet
I 'most forget
'Til he gets hot
And tells me not to talk
such rot...

Oh my man, I love him so!
He'll never know.
All my life is just despair
But I don't care!
When he takes me in his arms
The world is bright
All right!

What's the difference if I say
I'll go away
When I know I'll come back
On my knees some day
For whatever my man is
I am his
Forever more!

For more on Fanny Brice, see the Fanny Brice Collection -- and wait for my part two!

What Your Parents Were Doing

While you were home with the babysitter, your parents were having a good ol' time.

Take Charge

A 1969 Vivitar ad (from Playboy), which Red-Blooded Thing says pushed the envelope:

...while Playboy was naughty, most advertisers played up the suaveness rather than the nudity aspect of the magazine. Vivitar ran with it and worked some female objectification into their ad.

Superhero Porn

From Gracie & CR/LF's review of TheWild & Wacky Adventures of Chloe:

Joel, a comic-book geek, spends way too much time fantasizing over the heroines in his fav comic. He is mocked & ridiculed, but still, he lusts & masturbates (providing himself ‘comic relief’ *wink*) over ‘Super Chloe.’ One night, he is promised that she can be real, if he believes enough... And thanks to the miracle of porn, Chloe is brought to life.

...After Chloe becomes real, enters the 3D world, Joel leaves her home alone as he goes off to work. The door bell rings... [and it's] Two Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door! My God, it’s hysterical!

Click here to watch the clip -- and then go buy it.

Putting The Whore Before The Cart

Via Fabulon.

Sugasm #110

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #111? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form. Participants, repost the link list within a week and you’re all set.

This Week’s Picks
Sex Worker Solidarity: Audacia Ray
“Visibility on our own terms and the ability to uses our voices (and other mediums of expression) are key to the progress of sex worker’s rights.”

So Many Men, So Few Sluts
“Everyone wants to avoid generalizations about men and women, yet they’re too powerful to ignore.”

This Time
“She had That Look, and despite my earlier fatigue, I knew what was coming.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Hombre Magazine’s Left Handed Ads

Editor’s Choice
Love in an Elevator

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Sex Advice
The Everything Guide To Bras
Giving a woman a pedicure
Sex Tips for “Married Old Guys” - How to Keep Your Sex Life Hot, Even Without Erections!
Ten Things I’ve Learned abut Sex #3: Leave Your Clothing on a Pile

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
Different Level of Consciousness
Intimacy
Jodie Foster, a lesbian
Loved endlessly…
Non-anniversary, uncelebration
Unwanted sexual experiences from a new angle; Men have needs too!
Where Do I Come (In)?

Sex & Politics
Strippers and libertarianism

BDSM & Fetish
Dinner and a Menage’ a Trois
Dominating her, er again part2
A Little Restraint
More from my last visit (pt. 2)
My First Erotic Awakening Massage
One Hell Of First Date
Thoughts…
V is for Vicious Ardor

Sex Work
Whip Me, Beat Me — And Call It Girlfriend Experience

Sex News, Reviews & Interviews
Featured Design: Pro-Porn
Fuck The Cheerleader, Fuck The World. (Hogtied.com, Forced Orgasms, Cheerleader)
Gift Guide #2
Intern Sex Toy Review - Saturn Cockring
Interview with Greta Christina about hiring a professional submissive
Pinky & Jade at Pinkys House (Inside Dacia’s Dirty Mind)

Erotic Writing and Experiences
Catalina loves Turning 36
Christmas Tree HNT
Fingers
Foreplay
I Speak Roughly, Part 2: RBU
It’s
The Kiss: All Through The Night.
The Limitations of Terminology
Patience Rewarded
The Shower - Part One
Trying on Shoes (a fantasy)
Women Dancing

Sex Poetry
While sleeping

NSFW Pics & Videos
Danni’s Friends in Daring Nude Galleries
Janelle Elson - Stairway To Janelle
Pornsaint Niya Yu

Sex Humor
Brunch Stories 2-The Strange Folks On Craigslist
Condom Use

Walt Disney's The Story Of Menstruation (1946)

The companion booklet to this Kotex educational film, Very Personally Yours, contains Disney artwork yet the copies I've seen have no mention of Disney copyright.

Smutty Bibliophile Post

Bibliobull is an informative Q & A for book collectors, covering the care & non-feeding of your collectible books.

Derek at CQ discusses organizing your books.

"The Dinner Party"

Tom Pain of Polyamorously Perverse discusses Judy Chicago's infamous The Dinner Party, an installation of ceramic plates and embroidered place mats intended to celebrate important historical and mythical women, complete with vulva plates:

I confess that when "The Dinner Party" first appeared, I was a bit shocked at the crudeness of its chosen metaphor. But over time, the project has grown on me, and seeing it for the first time in person reminded me why gender makes a difference in our appreciation of the world. C. has taught me how women are never free from the sexual pressure of objectification, whether taunts and catcalls on the street, or the never-ending reminders by the media how women are expected to look beautiful and be sexually-available to men at all times.

Read the rest here.

Teresa Brewer Sings Pickle-Up-A-Doodle

I don't know if Teresa Brewer knew it, but this song sure sounds full of euphemisms to me...



Via Fabulon.

Hellish Library Of My Dreams

The the French National Library has unlocked its secret archive of erotic art, and what's most surprising shouldn't be:

Marc Lambron, a novelist, said that a visit to the show, which is closed to visitors under 16, was a lesson for those who believe that good morals dominated the past. “Enter these ancestral grottos and you will gauge the scale of that lie,” he wrote.

A-duh. How'd we carry on as a species if we didn't fornicate? Expressing sex in art, if nothing else, confirms our cultural delight -- hey, and no delight in it, no afternoon delight, no babies.

What thrills (and saddens as I won't be able to visit) is the collection of written works:

The show of 350 works, ranging from manuscripts by the Marquis de Sade to early pornographic photography, is causing a stir because the library’s trove of licentious literature – known as L’Enfer (Hell) – has been the stuff of fantasy since the early 19th century.

L’Enfer, to which “immoral” works were often consigned after police seizure, was closed in 1969. Now that morals have changed, the Paris transport authority has even joined the fun, converting a Métro station into a teaser for the exhibition. Underground trains will slow down at the disused Croix-Rouge station so that passengers can glimpse erotic engravings.

Hell got its name in the 1830s when the library isolated from its vast collection works that were deemed to be “contrary to good morals”. The original works, which survived police bonfires and theft by curators, include a rich collection from the libertine age of the 18th century. Top among them is Thérèse Philosophe, a 1748 novel about the initiation of a lustful young woman that was a bestseller of its era. Some great names were consigned to Hell, including Voltaire, whose heroic-comic poem La Pucelle (The Maid) sparked scandal and the wrath of the King and the Pope in 1762.

Link found via Radical Vixen.

Nude Ladies To Light Up Your Life

This pair of antique nude lady wall sconces didn't sell, but maybe they'll be relisted. They are lovely; but out of my wallet's reach. Photos & info placed here for posterity.


The seller says:

Each one measures about 12" tall and extends away from the wall 6". This is an awesome pair featuring the most adorable little nude ladies sitting atop the sconces. The little lady figures measure 8 1/8" tall. These are in wonderful condition with no chips or cracks...only some paint flaking from age and normal use. These will require some kind of wall bracket for mounting, which I do not have.

I am unsure of the metal used...it's not soft like spelter, and too thick to be spelter too, so I'm thinking they must be made of iron, but I'm really not sure about that either. They are very heavy for their size, and each one weighs three and a half pounds. In any case, they're certainly beautiful and very unusual.

The Moaner Lisa

I don't usually post new objects here, but when I spotted this Moaner Lisa Orgasmic Bottle Opener at The Diary of an English Courtesan, I had to make an exception -- because, well, it is exceptional, in a kitsch sort of a way.

Barbara Stanwyck & Joan Blondell In Lingerie - With Skeleton

A still from the film Night Nurse:

Strong pre-Code film has (for 1931) strong dialogue, Stanwyck and Joan Blondell in their underwear, alcoholism, nymphomania, attempted rape, child abuse and Clark Gable (without his mustache) slugging Stanwyck unconscious.

Discover more about the power of scantily clad women in horror movies here.

For more on the Hollywood code, see my post on Complicated Women: Sex & Power in Pre-Code Hollywood.

Where Do I Come (In)?

Via The Marketing Whore I found Gram Ponante's talk on Creampies:

It is when I asked about creampies that I drew blank stares.

"It's a porn thing, right?" asked a student at San Francisco's Cordon Bleu School who had, in fact, had sex with a MILF that very morning.

"Oh Yes."

And this is tragic, because it is evidence that porn has made a generation of people think that male gratification doesn't exist unless evidence of it is deposited on the face, breasts, belly, ass, or windshield of one's partner.

For a creampie is simply an internal cumshot that is then expelled or leaked from where it was deposited. It is for this reason that most men never see a creampie, because their girlfriends/spouses immediately run to the bathroom after sex, or simply mark its arrival by rolling away from it.

I find this interesting for two reasons:

One, it furthers my thoughts on the things we learn from our porn.

Two, it goes along with the "Where do I come in?" postcard shown here (postmarked 1911, Theochrom Serie 1230-70) which I had just scanned.

Imagine, a generation of people who don't know where to spew? Linked to fertility problems? Probably not. I think Gram jests a bit. But it's true that there's a greater demand for seeing ejaculate leak than ever before.

Safer sex means (I hope!) more folks are not seeing the natural phenomenon, and so the film version is likely as erotic to them as anything else 'rare' seen in porn.

Yup, as rare as a threesome seemed in 1911.

Sugasm #109

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #110? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form. Participants, repost the link list within a week and you’re all set.

This Week’s Picks
Body Image In Art, Porn & Media
“Imposing it upon myself, or accepting that someone else has the right to impose it upon me, is something I can refuse to do.”

The Importance of Getting Tested for Sexually Transmitted Infections
“I am taking care of myself. I wish they would do the same.”

When Natural Doesn’t Feel Natural at All
“I’d kept mine neatly trimmed for so long, then cleanly shaved, that I couldn’t remember what I look like in full and natural form.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Pic(k) of the Day

Editor’s Choice
Darkroom Fantasy

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Erotic Writing and Experiences
A Blow By Blow Lesson
The Butch/Femme Tango
CyberGirl and I last night…
Endless to everlasting
Happy Birthday
“He”…
I told her of my blog
Making love, man to man
MILF Barbie
Confessions: My First Blowjob
O
The Other Side Of The Table - Part 4
Possession

NSFW Pics & Videos & Audio
Ekaterina (Hegre)
HNT: Downblouse/Upskirt Tease
Kimberley Franklin - White High Heels
Orchid
Shay Laren dancing topless

Sex History
Antique Tommy Also Came

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships
“The Dinner Party”
Dipping My Toes In Foreign Waters - Polyamory
World AIDS Day

Sex News, Reviews & Interviews
Catalina loves XXXmas Shopping
The Cone
From Object to Subject
Memphis Monroe HotMovies Interview
My reason
NEW Blogging Designs!
Sexy’s New Holiday Center & Erotica Contest - Win $25.00!

Sex Poetry
The Crescendo
Half-Nekkid Haiku

BDSM & Fetish
Blow-up dolls
An Erotic Picnic
Goody Fellatrix
I’m TOO submissive
My Play Piercing Video
Soulmates Reunited
Tale of a Shoe Fucking Piss Slut
Wait.
Webcamming, Bondage, and Amateur Porn…

Kellerman, The Nude Mermaid

These photos are of swimming sensation and film star Annette Kellerman in the waterfalls of Kingston, Jamaica, for the filming of A Daughter of the Gods -- the photoplay was released October 16, 1916 (reissued by Fox Film Corporation in December 1917, in August 1918, and in February 1920).




Kellerman, The Australian Mermaid, was billed as "the Diving Venus" and called "the world's most perfectly-formed woman" -- and she had her share of scandal, including being arrested in 1907 for indecent exposure when appearing in her bathing suit:

In 1907, Annette and her father left London to seek greater fame and fortune in America. New York theater operators, however, were not impressed and found her swimming costumes offensive to American moral sensibilities. In spite of the General Slocum disaster little progress had been made in teaching women to swim and Annette was appalled by the cumbersome dress and pantaloon combinations that prevented American women from swimming. "I can't swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothesline," she reportedly said before walking on to Revere Beach near Boston wearing a one piece bathing suit that exposed her shapely form and bare legs. It was an act of defiance that resulted in her arrest and imprisonment for “indecent exposure.”

When her case came to trial she admitted violating the law but asked the judge how many more women would have to die because they didn’t learn to swim? “What difference is there from these legal costumes than wearing led chains around our legs?” She brought to court a man’s suit onto which she had sown leggings, making a one piece suit that technically conformed to the law, which required women to be covered from neck to toe. The sympathetic judge agreed to drop the charges against her, in return for her promise to only wear this swimsuit. The resulting newspaper headlines and outpourings of public support tolled a death-knell for Victorian attitudes towards women's swimwear and fashion and gave young women and girls a role model and encouraged them to swim. It also made Annette Kellerman a star.

If this swimmer-turned-movie-star-with-scandals sounds at all familiar to you, you're probably thinking of Esther Williams and her role as Kellerman in the 1952 film Million Dollar Mermaid. Williams had such great respect for Kellerman that Williams titled her autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid, after the movie she made about Kellerman's life. Which includes the years of athletics, stage performance and vaudeville (see the Keith-albee New York Hippodrome program) prior to her movie career.


But Kellerman would make a splash in Hollywood. According to Bikini Science:

In vector momentum terms Kellerman begins in the movies fully clad in 1909, bares her legs in 1914 (AK1410) and is fully nude in 1916. Covered to not-covered in seven years--and that's not just the story of Kellerman, it is the story of the era.

Kellerman's nudity is not Hollywood's first, but she is the first big-name star to appear à natural on the big screen. And the first to display an active role as opposed to a static poser, a relative modesty difference.

In the 1911 film The Mermaid, Kellerman became the first actress to wear a swimmable mermaid costume on film -- and in 2006, MermaidFX is said to have created a line of costumes based on the designs worn by Annette Kellerman (and claims to have the rights to her name & copies of Kellerman films -- which I find no proof of, nor reasoning for).



In 1914, Kellerman wrote a script for a film called Neptune's Daughter, which cost a modest $35,000 to make but which was the first film to gross $1 million in ticket sales.

Then in 1916, she was nude in A Daughter of the Gods.

A Daughter of the Gods was the first Hollywood production to cost over $1 million, with it's lush 1/2 mile long sets and a cast of over 20,000 extras. And it was well received. Sort of.

In it, Kellerman plays a girl who, disconsolate after the death of her bird, hurls herself into the ocean only to be reborn as "Anita, a daughter of the Gods," also described as "a mysterious beauty." A convoluted plot involving characters with names like "Chief Eunuch," "Fairy of Goodness," "The Sultan," and "The Arab Sheik" results in Anita vanquishing the "Witch of Evil." Though the film, like Neptune's Daughter, had a complex narrative and bewitching visual effects, it was Kellerman's unclad figure that formed its centerpiece. "Beauty is the keynote of the film. Beauty and symmetry of the female form," noted Moving Picture World. Male spectators sought out this very quality. A West Virginia woman made "four deep gashes in her husband's head" with a potato masher following the release of A Daughter of the Gods. "That scoundrel went to see that Annette Kellerman movie three times in three days, and he'd tell me every night what a pretty form she had," complained the angry, masher-wielding wife. The lifting of Victorian sexual mores clearly presented new difficulties for many an American housewife, not to mention her vulnerable spouse.

(Page 98, Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915 by Andrew L. Erdman.)

While A Daughter of the Gods was a great success, the film lead to a formal banning of nude scenes in the US motion picture industry in 1917. (The rumor is, some enterprising Chicago guy took the nude scenes and inserted them into underground trade films called called Charles Chaplin comedies -- I'm searching, but so far no luck on finding any actual leads on either the films or the gentlemen who produced/distributed them.)

However the film & scandal thrust Kellerman into international stardom. And as a result she was the highest paid working woman in the world, earning as much as $5,000 a week, for almost ten years.



A Daughter of the Gods is considered a lost film; but we still have hope. In 2004, Mary Ann Cade found many Kellerman films presumed lost. (Keep your fingers crossed!)

It is said that Kellerman wrote and published several books -- including How To Swim (1918), Physical Beauty: How to Keep It (1919), and a book of children's stories titled Fairy Tales of the South Seas (1926) -- and wrote her unpublished autobiography, My Story.

She also wrote numerous mail order booklets on health, beauty and fitness; and in 1924, according to this program, she had a fitness club in LA:

Annette Kellerman has formed a club for women who are interested in gaining health and physical beauty in addition to enjoying all the advantages by a high-class country club. All members of your family enjoy privileges under your membership. Her club-located near Los Angeles-is the only one of its kind in the world where physical education-diet-swimming-tennis-golf-indoor and outdoor sports and pastimes may be enjoyed year round.
Write Miss Kellerman today! Her booklet tells the full story of this interesting development-Miss Kellerman's life work.
Dear Miss Kellerman: Please send me the booklet about your club for women. Annette Kellerman Country Club 500 Metropolitan Theater Bldg., Los Angeles.

Related:

The Original Million Dollar Mermaid: The Annette Kellerman Story

The Powerhouse Museum has a large collection of Kellerman items, including personal items.

Aroldo Bonzagni (1887 -1918)

Images found here, via Secondhand Rose, who wrote a poem to accompany this one:

Hey, Secret Santa (& Other Santas)

CQ has 13 Gift Ideas For Collectors, which includes shopping at Schiffer for books. I took a peek, because the 20% off is intriguing, and found there are quite a few titles worth a smut collector's limited shelf space, including Striptease Artists of the 1950s by Bunny Yeager.

However, the best idea is the folding shopping cart. I can't believe that I don't have one. Santa, please fix that.

And Still No Swan Song

From an art gallery link sent to me by Thom of Fabulon, another Leda:

As A Collector, I Could Make A Lot Of Money Off Celebrities

As news of poor Heather Mills' 'more pornographic' photos hits the tabloids and the blogosphere, I am reminded of a few points. However, let's cover the story first...

Heather Mills, aka Lady Macca, was known to be a model and in 2006 the first photographic proof was put on display for all the world to see. These photos came from a 1988 German sex book, Die Freuden Der Liebe (The Joys Of Love), which featured naked images of her performing sex acts on/with a male porn model. Mills 'escaped' that time, claiming the book was a "sex educational manual".



Apparently this how-to was for the illiterate as well as the sexually ignorant as, "The filthy volume features 112 pages filled with pictures — and contains NO accompanying words." (No need to know German to enjoy the book!)



The newly-found photos, clearly from the same shoot as they feature the same lacy red corset and stockings -- and ill-conceived pink glossy lipstick, show more than naked boobies.



(To my collector's eye, that's clearly 80's pubic hair-covered pussy.)

These photos are said to come from a magazine (so far unnamed & dated) and this time it's the use of text which is damning. The photo caption reads, "I'm gonna drive you crazy with my body..." which surely sounds less like a sex ed manual and more like an invitation to masturbation.

Or maybe that's just me.

The media feeding frenzy is all about the horrible lies -- how Mills denied & denounced that she's ever done porn, or been a prostitute. (Apparently she's also faking being blonde, but we can forgive that, I suppose.) I would say that it's more about pushing pulp (and digital ad sales). But in either case, the bottom line is that the public is fascinated. "We" must be; or the money wouldn't be made.

Which brings me to my points.

A) As a collector I could make a lot of money off celebrities. I could sit home all day digging through my boxes of porn, sex ed manuals, calendars, postcards, et all, looking for faces, names and identifying characteristics of celebrities, then phoning my info in to publications & reaping big financial rewards as I provide scanned evidence. But I don't.

It's not that I have more fun things to do, and providing scans means I don't even need to damage my stash; it's just that I don't like the idea.

In fact, I don't understand it.

(That's point B.)

Why are we so freaked out that people, especially beautiful people, powerful people, desirable people, have sex lives? That they were models, actors, & sex facilitators? Why, for that matter, are we surprised that they were some how compensated for this?

Sex isn't horrible. Being paid for it, especially in a performance (really equal to that of an actor playing any role, including some atrocious character), isn't either.

But lots of folks think it's bad. The shocking scandals couldn't push profits if it wasn't. So no wonder Mills denied such things.

However, even if I own enough proof to sink a thousand celebrity careers (and for the most part, I am not into celebs, gossip, and those which trade in such things), I have no desire to do so.

Another example of how taking the higher road and following your principals, leaves you with less financially? Perhaps. But in the end, sex will remain. (If it doesn't, we as a species die.)

And I, for one, am hoping the universe or gods of smut will honor me, not with 1,000 virgins, but with some sort of smutty afterlife. Maybe even let me keep my smut collection.

Flea's Pleasure

This flea has writ his autobiography on the prostitute's leg:



Via Postcardman's prostitution cards.

Stripping Girls

In 1998, photographer Anton Corbijn & artist Marlene Dumas joined forces for an exhibit in 2000 called Strippinggirls, and this is what the photographer had to say about it:

I was determined NOT to make a journalistic, documentary kind of photography. Nor was I out to create glamorous images - there are already so many around. Instead I wanted to try out some new things that I have been playing with recently and I figured that some would go quite well with this project. First the idea that striptease could have some of the attraction for people that the old freak shows used to have. I ended up using computer manipulation - making tiny changes so that you really gave to look for them, close-up like in a peepshow. Then the 4-letter words; in England these usually gave sexual connotations, so I used 4-letter words for feelings that the strippers might gave rather than the viewers, albeit a little ambiguously. Next were the very normal portrait photos of 5 girls, shot outdoors in Amsterdam; displaying the information regarding their profession might make you look at them differently. No discussion was intended about comparisons between painting and photography - I personally was merely interested to see how someone else tackles the same subject, under the same circumstances, albeit with different tools. The main difference in working seems to be that I struggle more at the start of the project (the shoot) and Marlene more in the latter phase of it (the actual painting). That is a pretty mundane observation which would seem obvious from the start anyway. Shooting next to Marlene brought out some anxieties - when looking at her polaroid's I was sure her way of shooting was far superior to mine, which was an interesting aspect I discovered in myself - I am worried about comparisons in the same discipline but not at all in a different medium. This kind of unease never lasted long, it was my uncertainty as it concerned shooting a subject unknown to me, a contrast with my day work. I adore Marlene's work and would swap my photographs for her paintings any time, but not because I necessarily think they would be better or compare them that way with my work, it is just because I love painting, and I believe that deep down I am a frustrated painter. The only envy there is one which is based on the freedom in time, the delay of a decisive moment, and the independence from reality that Marlene has to create. But if anything I think that this project brought me (as a person) closer to my own work.

These are a few of Corbijn's photos from that project.

The peep-shows:




The four-letter words:




The portraits:




A catalogue of the museum show can be found on the photographer's website, where he writes:

It is not a documentary or a comparison between the two artforms but just two people tackling the same subject in different ways. The way we operated was to always go together to meet and photograph the girls and then work it out in our own ways afterwards. All the work was done in Amsterdam between late 1998 and spring 2000. I have used three different methods of approach with 5 works for each direction and Marlene has 15 paintings in total as well. I enjoyed the collaboration enormously.

Found via Sexuality In Art; more photos at the LipanjePuntin Contemporary Art Gallery.

He Is Risen

Wrong time of year? --Or is it, hmm?

I wonder why Viagra ads haven't snatched this one up... err, so to speak.

Nude & Wet Naps

6 Vintage Risque Linen Cocktail Napkins; each measure 9 1/4" x 5 3/4".

Bronze Nude & Swan

Yet another Leda & Swan, this one in bronze:





Found via Gloria Brame.

Of Storks & Babies

My friend collects vintage storks, as do I, so when I spotted this card, I had to post it here:

A bonnie Scotch laddie wi' kilties to his knees kin nay do wi'out ye, an' yearns to bae your cheese cake. He kenn hoo to play the bagpipe un hae muckle siller, un your only trouble will be the keeping o' his knees warm, in fact most o' your troubles will be little ones. Dinna pass him up.

May the collector with the bigger budget win. lol

Storks are fertility symbols and I've long wondered why. They aren't particularly cuddly looking... Too pointy to have near delicate babes. Which is why I collect them. Maybe if I see enough of them I'll figure something out. But so far, no luck.

I asked my German grandma because I remember her talking about actual "stork children".

She said storks were lucky; so, therefore, were folks who had babies. But I pushed about the old fable.

She said that the souls of the unborn lived in watery areas such as marshes and ponds and in the caves and rocky areas around them -- the "Adeborsteine" or "storkstones" -- and that storks, who frequented both such watery places and the steep rock crevasses, were the creatures who fetched the souls as babies & delivered them to their parents.

This, of course, from a woman who thought that she was dying when she got her period and she had no knowledge of such things. So it could be complete BS, yah?

But I did some searching for 'storks' and 'Adeborsteine' and found this. So she isn't nutty -- or at least she's no more nutty than the rest of our German ancestors. *wink*

She had no info to offer on this old post... Do you yet?

Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel"

Der Blaue Engel (1930) was the first sound film ever made in Germany. It's also the movie that rocketed Dietrich, as the cabaret singer Lola Lola who headlines at "The Blue Angel," to international stardom.

It's also the first film in which she sings Falling in Love Again, which became a Dietrich trademark over the years.

Related:

A review of Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, which includes this tantalizing tidbit:

Greta Garbo possessed some of the same qualities as Marlene Dietrich, but Garbo brought a more introspective quality to her performances. Dietrich's innate bitchiness was always part of the characters she played. Like Dietrich, Garbo had a seemingly cool exterior, but this coolness was balanced by a faint-but-discernible smoldering sense of warmth. Dietrich was rarely warm but her magnetism has become legendary.

Listen to Dietrich music clips here.