"In the 1930s, pyjamas were exotic, the sort of thing worn by young flappers. These so-called 'new women' dressed in skimpy clothes, they smoked, they drank, they partied and they laughed at convention" -- and when they were murdered, it was what they deserved. Alessia presents the whole nasty scoop of clumping kitty litter that is The Pygama Girl Mystery in, My Pajamas Made Him Kill Me (Or, In Which I Review A Film I Haven't Seen).
Katherine Heigl Under Siege From Celebrity Sleuth Magazine, 1996
Two pages of chatter about Katherine Heigl -- with photos, of course -- found in a 1996 issue of Celebrity Sleuth (Ingenudes 9, "Issue #69!")
Billed as a "Beauty To B-Hold" and promising to deliver talk of Under Siege 2 (where Heigl appeared with Steven Seagal), most of the article is spent dishing like gossipy school girls, turning nothing into a risque giggle-fest.
For all the underage innocence Katherine exudes {like in this hands-on candid from a Seventeen magazine bash in '94, facing top left}, there's also been a dark territory hidden behind her squeaky-clean surface {like the dark cleavage, bottom left}. And isn't that Sandra Taylor with her hands up next to Katherine in a scene from Seige? (middle right) -- Taylor used to be Penthouse Centerfold Sandi Korn.
Seriously?
Seriously.
The majority of the film-focused talk is on the 1993 Disney flick, My Father, the Hero, Heigl made with Gerard Depardieu. From the blue box on the second scan, titled Ingenews:
"The smirkiest touch in My Father, the Hero involves parading naughty little Nicole {Heigl's character} in a thong swimsuit (below right)," fumed one critic, while another angrily wrote, "Some Americans in the audience might well cluck their tongues at the way the skimpily attired 14-year-old Heigl's body is exploited by {director Steve} Miner's camera." Now add to that the twisted incest plot-twist, and we discover Disney's real definition of "family" entertainment: "When Nicole falls for a hunky local, she concocts a jealousy-making scheme to rope him in. She pretends {dad} Gerard Depardieu is actually her lover and an international spy. The vacationers all think he's a child molester and give him scorching stares." ____________
Disney was nervous about the film before its release, as evidenced by the post-production makeover Katherine's costume received for previews. Bottom right: "Disney wanted to market My Father by showing its trailer along with G-rated movies. Unfortunately, Heigl's outfit didn't quite have the, um, material to play the lion King crowd {as opposed to the Loin King crowd!}. A quick digital paint job meant the Mouse could have its cheesecake and eat it too."
___________
THE SCENE: "I'm going to the beach," Katherine tells her protective papa. "Aah," Gerard gasps, grabbing her discarded towel. "What are you wearing?" he stammers. "My bathing suit," Katherine responds. "Are you sure you didn't leave part of it in the box?" he demands. "Get real, Andre," Katherine crows, flaunting her cheeks to the poolsiders. "Everybody's wearing them." "Everybody's staring at you," he blithers -- following after her bouncing buns with the towel.
"Her Legs Aren't Legs, They're Dramatic Exclamation Points!"
More from Tip Top magazine, this a bit of gossip about Jill St. John from Notes On The Leg Line, "News and comments from the leg-watching world", a column by Goodwin Stephens:
I only remembered Jill St. John as a Bond Girl (she played Tiffany Case opposite Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever) when I watched Bond Girls Are Forever. That was released in 2002 and Jill looked fabulous.
Oddly enough, I do remember her as being in Hart To Hart with hubby Robert Wagner -- and Jill was only in the pilot episode.
Since the Tip Top bit features a photo of Jill St. John stripping in The Oscar (a film I've yet to see), here's the scene:
I've long avoided films with Jack Lemmon in them. Because of Tony Curtis' poor treatment of Marilyn in Some Like It Hot, all things & persons connected with that movie were sour. I don't have to explain it (and frankly, if you weren't ever a teen aged girl who idolized Marilyn, you'll never understand it anyway), it's just the way it was. So Jack Lemmon became a real lemon to me -- about as welcome as lemon scented dishwasher tabs which leave that smell which makes me think what I'm drinking has a (most unwelcome) lemony taste. I hated lemons before Jack, but they both elicited the same nose-wrinkling "No, thank you," response.
Enter TCM with it's broadcast of several Jack Lemmon films.
I don't mind telling you that I'm a TCM addict -- and I have no plans for quitting, either. I was more than greatly disappointed to find Jack hogging my favorite television channel; I was twitching for something to watch.
Eventually I decided to give Irma La Douce (1963) a try -- the lure of a retro Parisian prostitute played by Shirley MacLaine was too much to pass by. And since I'd never heard of the film before (or if I had, I'd blocked it due to Lemmon), I figured it might just be train-wreck-y enough to make mocking of Lemmon my evening's real entertainment.
Enter my surprise that Irma La Douce is a fabulously fun film.
Just campy enough, but not overdone with kitsch; gorgeous in fashion, rich in absurdity, and lush in MacLaine's beauty; all good things. Perhaps most surprising was the blend of risqué & reality -- sans the predictable post code moral judgments.
The plot revolves around an honest & naive Paris policeman, Nestor Patou (Lemmon), who falls in love with titular prostitute (MacLaine) who always appears in her signature color green, and the lengths to which he goes to win her affections -- which, in typical male thought, means she will give up her life of impure sex crime and sexually belong to him alone.
She, like any independent career woman, doesn't want to give up her work, her life, for some man who will probably only be temporary anyway.
Her practical stance, one most any sane woman holds today, is quite unusual for the time; but her high regard for her sex work career is still something not oft depicted in media even today. I'm not saying that this film is a true rendering of sex work, then or now, but it was far more frank and unapologetic than I had anticipated. (Perhaps it was a 'blame it on the French' attitude which allowed Wilder to get away with it all?)
Nestor, unable to convince her to quit, divines a plan which will keep Irma off the streets and only in bed with him. He dresses up as a rather foppish elderly English lord, pays her 500 francs just to play cards with him, and promises to visit her twice a week.
Irma excitedly does the math and, as Nestor had hoped, concludes she only needs to work twice a week with Lord X as her only client. She announces the happy news in public and all the prostitutes and pimps elect Nestor as their leader -- which means he's to pay the huge bill for the party along with the 500 francs he borrowed to start his plan. And so begins the multiple lives of Nestor.
He works multiple jobs at night, spends time with Irma by day, and twice a week appears as Lord X, the money ticket. Now, the money Nestor earns is given to Irma by Lord X, but Irma spends it nearly as quickly as she gets it, putting Nestor further and further behind. In the rather typical 1960s comedy-of-errors-fashion, Irma becomes suspicious of so-tired-I-can-barely-can-keep-up Nestor, believing he is seeing other prostitutes.
So, at Lord X's next visit, Irma seduces him into playing more than cards and tells him that she wants to leave Nestor and go with Lord X to England.
Nestor decides it's time for Lord X to leave permanently. Shouting "Goodbye your bloody lordship!" and other insults, Nestor throws his Lord X costume into the river -- which, of course, is overheard by one of Irma's former pimps, who then thinks Nestor has literally rather than symbolically murdered Lord X. Irma becomes convinced that Nestor killed Lord X out of love for her and decides to stand by her man -- even when Nestor goes to jail.
The bar owner (far larger in film character -- and person -- than mentioned here) helps Nestor escape jail and return to a very pregnant Irma.
In a very absurd scene, Nestor brings Lord X to life and then is able to meet Irma (all in white - the only time she is not seen in green) at the church just in time to marry her -- right before the babe is born.
While the ending is one of Moral Right, it isn't the usual post Hollywood code judgment in which Shirley MacLaine's Irma, like Tom Hanks' Michael Sullivan in Road to Perdition, must die for her sins.
And what of Jack Lemmon's sins?
Well, despite the fact that Irma was a role one could easily see Marilyn playing (and in fact, Billy Wilder was so impressed with her performance in Some Like It Hot, that he originally wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Irma -- but Marilyn died before film production began), I forgave Jack Lemmon his sins.
It was Lemmon's acting, not the green of Irma's wardrobe, which cast Lemmon in a new light -- a greener light of a lime, a fruit I much prefer in everything from drinks to dishwasher tabs. He is so funny & touching in this film, I would have preferred him to have been in The Seven Year Itch (though Lemmon's age may have been an issue there?) rather than Tom Ewell.
I enjoyed Irma La Douce so much that I have since watched several other Lemmon films.
Other notable tidbits from Irma La Douce:
The film was one of the biggest box-office hits of the year, grossing twice as much as The Great Escape and The Birds; I'm going to put part of the film's success down to the unapologetic risqué attitude.
Tura Satana played street walking prostitute Suzie Wong.
Jane & Ruth Earl played the fabulous kitschy Zebra Twin prostitutes.
"Why is it," I asked him rhetorically, "that smut is less acceptable than violence or the shallow idolization of 'famous people'? It's damn odd really, because my kids got here through normal, healthy sex -- not via violence or the vicarious living or emotional stalking of celebrities."
Speaking of books and moms, Elline (at Girl with Pen) happily reviews Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life in Off the Shelf: Mama, PhD:
The contributors in this book, edited by Caroline Grant and Elrena Evans, break the seal of silence that suppresses the intense difficulties and institutionalized prejudice that academics who want to be more than just a "head on a stick" – but rather a whole person, including a maternal body – experience.
In what certainly will not be news to feminists who have long argued that images in & portrayals by the media, the bottom line was, according to Dr Bjarne Holmes, a psychologist who led the research, "We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people's minds."
Interestingly, after participating in the survey about media and relationships, Alessia then asked Which Came First? The Chick-Flick Or The Egg On Your Face? Worth reading -- and keeping tabs on her continuing thoughts on the study.
Because, yes, it bothers me deeply when you (especially my sweet cross dressers), get all squeamish about menstruation. Some of you think it's TMI, but a few of you have made comments about how "lucky" they are to "take what they want of femininity and leave the rest" -- and that really makes me angry. It makes most women angry.
The greatest harm that I can find in the story I have to tell, is that when I thought porn was evil, it had a negative effect on my confidence with women, and in myself; it led to psychological issues for me, and it meant a denial of my true sexuality. That ideology was harmful to me in the same way as it appears that certain right-wing Christian ideologies can be harmful to young gays in their midst. I am glad to accept erotica and porn as being not in and of themselves evil or wrong.
There just seems to be this inability for some of Luke's fans, mostly male fans from my experiences, to accept the fact that this character is a sexual being. I suppose because the Force and being a Jedi is always depicted as being "spiritual" and away from the body, those fans feel the need to see him as a celibate priest. I won't even get into the debate over the Old Jedi Order (Yoda, et.al.) and its regulation that Jedi have no attachments and whether or not that meant celibacy. Lordisa, I'm not touching that one right now!
Nothing against him -- he's been very nice dealing with a movie fan whose ignorance is pretty clear -- but how do I better articulate my thinking that our perceptions may be, at least in part, influenced by our genders (and related expectations, emulations, and emotions) without sounding like a silly girl? Or worse yet, some foaming-at-the-mouth feminazi?!
But at the end of the day it isn't sex in exchange for money that degrades, cheapens and enslaves women it's societal norms and roles. Prostitution will NEVER go anywhere because it's apart of human/ape/primate identity, it's who we are. Whether or not you look at it this way there is "prostitution" all throughout "regular" sexual relationships between people even marriages.
Because you know there's still a lot more defending of sex work to be done, Amber Rhea (of Being Amber Rhea), has some Red Herrings for you:
It's about people articulating their own sexual desires and boundaries - especially women, as we have been traditionally denied this right.
Last, but not least, Latoya Peterson's post (at Racialicious) called The Not Rape Epidemic which is so good, that I cannot select a quote from it. Just go read it all. I mean it.
A few final words about this carnival...
I had a great time hosting it. While the holidays admittedly slowed the number of submissions, those I received were wonderful; in fact, I'll be adding quite a number of new blogs/bloggers to the sidebar due to this experience.
The carnival, and in fact the issues the carnival supports, needs your support too. So please submit to future carnival editions, consider hosting a future edition, and link to the carnival posts.
Perhaps most important of all, please continue the conversations presented in individual posts/articles in the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy. It can be silently, in your mind; in person discussion with friends & family etc. in the real world; or via blogging, letters to the editor at other publications, or other use of media. But continued exploration and expression of these issues is important.
While my carnival hosting duties may officially be over, I'm open to hearing from more of you about such related topics; so please, whenever you have or find posts which fit my beat aka submissions call, please do contact me.
I absolutely abhor it when a person starts off a blog with "I'm sorry I haven't written", a preamble to some excuse that, frankly, nobody really wants to read; but today I have to do it. (Such is the curse of uttering the word "never".)
I've had a dreadful sinus infection, keeping me couch-ridden for several weeks as moms cannot afford to take to their beds and still watch the tots -- yet I was too tired to climb the stairs just for a change of sleeping venue. The reason I mention this is not to 'excuse' my absence (as a hobby-blogger, you pay me nothing for my services; so I owe you nothing in return), but rather to explain just how I managed to watch hours upon hours of films as I just have. OK, and maybe to justify things if, still under the influence of cold medicine & an antibiotic still ripping its way through my digestive tract (and sure to cause a yeast infection), I don't make a lot of sense right now.
Enough of the disclaimers already; get yourself a beverage and settle in to read because I'm about to begin a long post.
For the second time in my life I watched Let's Make Love (1960). The first time I saw it in its entirety I was about 16 & I really disliked it.
I told myself that I didn't like it because of Yves Montand. His personal ickyness in his relationship with Marilyn was so visible in his character (Jean Marc Clement) -- or at least that ickyness was the general perception of Jean Marc Clement & why the theatre group in the film was mocking him. Also, because 16 was the age at which I began stalking Marilyn Monroe, knowing how horrid director George Cukor was to her made me feel the whole film was a mean mess. While this film isn't Marilyn's greatest, and there's something valid in Marilyn's real life situations which would affect the film thus, the real truth -- the honest truth -- is that sixteen-year-old-me was uncomfortable with Marilyn's sexuality.
And it hits you right from the start of the film, with the voluptuous blonde wearing a bulky but short purple sweater over a sheer black nylon catsuit.
Strangely, I've always loved Marilyn singing My Heart Belongs To Daddy. I've owned it on CD and even performed the song, including public impersonation of Marilyn singing it (actually I did so twice, if you count my parody performance of My Heart Belongs To Mommy at a "lesbian music festival"). But the vision of Marilyn in such sexualized 60's beatnik garb just didn't sit right with me at 16; while the song was verbalized peek-a-boo & tease, the physical display was nearly vulgar to me.
Aesthetically speaking, I prefer more glamour and peek-a-boo tease than blatant sexuality in dress; but what made me squirm at that age, though I never would never say so out loud, was all those curves -- including a soft, feminine, rounded tummy. Watching the film again as an adult, I was once again embarrassed -- but this time, over my confused, immature, 16 year old self's reaction.
It's easy to understand, and forgive, a young woman's discomfort with such an out-there, highly-sexualized presentation of the female form. And I did forgive myself for that easily enough. But that other part, that lack of acceptance of a woman's real form -- including her belly, that seems unforgivable... Unless you allow for my early indoctrination of beauty standards which eschew the realities of the female form. And that's precisely what upsets me.
How unforgiving I was, how unkind to my idol, to not allow her her humanness in physical form when I was so ready, willing and able to condemn those, like Cukor and Montand, who wouldn't allow her human frailty-- or would exploit her for it. My inability to accept her non-perfection -- even when so uncomfortable being confronted with her attractiveness, her sexuality -- seems nearly unforgivable.
My only consolation is that I have out-grown such childish notions. Having put them aside, I no longer will need to avoid watching Let's Make Love.
Feeling wiser and somewhat emotionally victorious, but no better health-wise, I was prompted to then watch another movie that I had not seen since I was 16.
That movie was Blue Lagoon.
Blue Lagoon was the 'it' film for teens in 1980, and raised quite a ruckus which I felt was a much-to-do-about-nothing. Maybe it's because I was already reading far 'worse'; or maybe because while I found the film to be a sensual ode to (primarily) Brooke Shields, I did not find it erotic. Shields was (still is) beautiful, but I found the film footage to be more artistic than smutty... The island setting, the flora and fauna, the ocean and sky, were beautiful and Shields' beauty just seemed to blend in with that. It was natural. Not that sex isn't natural, but I didn't feel any heat. Not 'down there', not on my cheeks either.
You'd think that after all I said about Let's Make Love and Marilyn's obvious prancing sexuality that I'd have had some discomfort or other with this film. Especially as Let's Make Love was watched at home alone, while Blue Lagoon was a public trip to the theatre with my peers. But I didn't experience any sexual confusion or discomfort; at least not directly.
Perhaps this was because Christopher Atkins did next-to-nothing for me. He was too soft & pretty -- like those non-threatening boy-band guys (then and today). Which totally explains his 1982 nude appearance in Playgirl.
Even watching it again as an adult I was more moved by, attracted to, Brooke's beauty than his. But I certainly didn't feel 'erotic'.
Not that Let's Make Love made me feel erotic (then or now); but there was the idea of sex, much more so than in Blue Lagoon... In fact, Blue Lagoon, while lush & far more beautiful (in terms of film quality too), just had the feeling of kids playing at being grown-ups. It could have been the awkward acting, simplistic dialog dumbed-down rather than portraying innocence (almost mocking what we then-called Third World countries for a lack of education and superstitious rituals in place of actual Religion), but even then I held the director, Randal Kleiser, accountable for being too in lust with 'beauty' to care about the story.
In fact, I wasn't just "not erotically moved" by the film, but disappointed angry at what was delivered as opposed to what could have been. There were hints of possibilities, things to think about, but it was campy -- and what was up with that tacked-on rushed ending? Wasn't the family's return to 'society' one of the most interesting concepts to explore?
I guess Brooke & Chris were too beautiful for anyplace other than that island setting.
Anyway, the sticking point for this film, the food for thought for today, is what happened after my friends and I had watched the film back in 1980. All my friends, those I had seen the movie with and those who had just seen it period, were absolutely in teenage love-lust with Christopher Atkins -- and staring at me oddly because I was not.
This is where my embarrassment kicks in.
No, I didn't think I was a lesbian; I didn't think I had any problem at all. I was embarrassed by their adoration of this pretty man-child, that they would fall for some mishap of movie making which attempted to manipulate them -- transparently, cheaply, and without any skill or finesse. Like a cheesy country song or the clumsy hand of a careless lover whose only concern is to please himself. (Yes, Kleiser, you can take that personally.) How could girls fall for that? Truly embarrassing.
It was even more embarrassing & disconcerting than those who objected to the film for moral reasons.
I was keen to watch Blue Lagoon again after my recent experience with Let's Make Love, I wondered how I'd feel about it now; but nothing had changed after all. I'm still disturbed that anyone could be moved by the film enough to fall for the romance or be outraged by the immorality.
Whatever points 16-year-old-me lost with Let's Make Love I more than recouped with Blue Lagoon.
But my re-run movie fun isn't over yet.
Next, up The Wedding Singer. There's not much to say other than I have always loved this film (I own it and the soundtrack); as a product of the 80's why wouldn't I? While watching it with my husband he asked, "What else has the actress who plays Linda been in?" I couldn't think of a thing -- which is rather a shame because Angela Featherstone's excellent as the bitch-to-hate.
But the real reason I mention this is that right after The Wedding Singer ended, I flipped channels.
What did I find?
On the Sci-Fi channel, Caved In: Prehistoric Terror, an as-to-be-expected campy horror film -- starring Angela Featherstone and Christopher Atkins!
I shit you not.
Featherstone is still pretty; but Atkins isn't -- he's finally handsome!
Chris and I have finally grown up, I guess. And now I wouldn't mind some nude photos...
PS If you're still reading this, I will be (fingers crossed) moving this blog to its own domain & private hosting this weekend.
I do this because ever since the "blogger warning" has been issued to me (and yes, I take it personally), traffic (also affected by a lack of posting, I know) and stat tracking (which should not change with poor posting habits) has dropped drastically.
I honestly have no idea what fresh hell I shall discover with such a move, but, despite the possibly snarky sounding (yet accurate) statement that I owe you nothing as far as guaranteed postings, I do apologize in advance for any craziness which comes from 'moving' the blog.
However, Sten didn't learn English very well and so did not endear herself to American film fans; she was dubbed Goldwyn's Folly.
The movie has consequently been rather ignored, but really isn't as bad as folks might have you think; I rather enjoyed it on TCM tonight. The only irksome thing for me was The Code ending.
And the fact that TCM doesn't allow you to embed the videos; so you'll have to click the links above to see them.
October 4th was Buster Keaton's birthday. Growing up, I always thought Buster Keaton was a euphemism -- even when I wasn't sure what it would be a euphemism for. But then, I also didn't know what a "Buster Keaton" was, so it only added to my confusion.
(Of course, Buster didn't come up in conversation too often. Diane Keaton did, however. And, combined with the attitudes & jokes about Mr. Goodbar, such namedropping conjured the weirdly reminiscent, "Hey, I'd like to bust-her keaton!" ideas.)
In any case, I eventually came to know just what a Buster Keaton was -- and became rather smitten with him. Sure, most of his films are rather formulaic, and they don't exactly feature strong women, but they are charming for what they are. And the absence of strong females in Keaton films doesn't appear to be (nor even feel) misogynistic. From The Keaton Heroine:
It was totally intentional on Keaton's part to make his heroines distant and dramatically underdeveloped. They were there purely as an impetus for his journey through the picture. His silents were love stories of some description, all with the same formula -- Buster wants girl; girl or her family doesn't want Buster: Buster proves himself through some heroic fete: girl (generally) wants Buster or her family finally approves of him -- End. Keaton said of his leading ladies,
"There are usually but three principles - the villain, myself and the girl and she was never important…. The leading lady had to be fairly good looking, and it helped some if she had a little acting ability. As far as I was concerned I didn't insist that she have a sense of humor. There was always the danger that such a girl would laugh at a gag in the middle of a scene, which meant ruining it and having to remake it."
What was Keaton's reasoning behind the lack of development in his female co-stars? To push them into the background so he could egotistically be the center of attraction? Doubtful, he was considered to be a generous performer by his peers. The public were paying to see a Buster Keaton film staring Buster Keaton. That in itself dictated a high priority for Keaton screen time. There is also little room in comedy for extended passionate and involved love scenes between the hero and heroin… it just isn't funny. Once a love scene becomes funny it is no longer believably passionate. A quirk of the times seemed to dictate that comedy films had the morals of Victorian culture rather than that of the Jazz Age (the exception being Clara Bow). Sex were not the territory of the young, it was an adult privilege to be earned, not an instant proof of adulthood to be embarked on as soon as the hormones kicked in. A respectable young man of the middle classes was expected to prove his love and maturity through non sexual displays of valor, and show he had the means to support a wife before being allowed the joys, or otherwise, of marriage.
There are three exceptions in Buster Keaton films; and you can read about them The Keaton Heroine.
Simply watching 80's porn won't do that for me because for the most part the fashions shown rarely reflect "me" at that time. And, no, I didn't really watch porn in the 80's. Aside from a few views for a fellow I was dating, I had no need to watch it.
She brings up a few points which were likely brewing in my subconscious... Like how much do things like clothing & setting affect my viewing or porn?
I know when I laugh out loud & become snark-master rather than slipping my hand in my panties; but what about more subtle things, like when I want to connect to the time and place? I know I can't really relax into arousal with erotica so poorly written that a character has a third hand reaching for her heaving bosom, or when his shorts inexplicably find themselves back on again. Like readers of historical fiction who freak when there's a car being driven on roads before Queen Victoria's birth, I can't help but be annoyed by those things -- and such annoyances interfere with my willing suspension of disbelief.
Now, we all know porn by & large offers little in the way of practicality & accuracy, but we do have to find something to relate to. So what happens when you are turning to porn for a sense of nostalgia? Surely porn can offer the fantasy of your own yesteryear, right?
But what Gracie says is that she's yet to find porn that can transport her back to her youth, her "glory days", because none seems to capture or reflect the fashions & settings of her at that time.
Is that too much to expect from porn?
Maybe; but it still raises some good questions, if not libidos horny for nostalgia.
It makes me wonder what & who the fashions in porn reflect today... What other elements in porn might be missing which renders porn non-relatable... Is this what makes amateur porn so appealing ~ that we see ourselves in those clothes, those situations and so are more responsive?
I don't know. I'm still looking through porn and thinking about all this. Of course I'm also still just looking at porn for the fuck of it too; so it may be awhile before I get any closer to those answers.
Me too. *wink* But now I have another excuse to look at more of it.
The bottom line of all these themes is the intimidating / overwhelming / frightening nature of women's sexuality for some men. Fear often ignites a sexual response. (I remember being reprimanded at work when I was 25 and nearly having an orgasm as I listened to my superior dress me down.)
And women are the ultimate scary creation because they're so unassuming. Yes, they look soft and speak with a lilt. They nurture and comfort. But you'd do well to worry, buster. Women's capacity for god-knows-how-many orgasms ... the unknowable how-to-score with women that all men must somehow learn, and the classic, now-cliched-but-still-asked -- and unanswered -- question looms and dooms so many men: "What do women want?" ...
My absolute favorite find this morning was "Giantess Ultimate (Got Milk?)." (It's posted below.) A beautiful woman in a milk ad on a billboard comes off the billboard in the middle of the night and teases and toys with a man nearby who was admiring her two-dimensional beauty. Once she's real, though, his lust mixes with fear (intensifying his lust).
He fearfully claims the gorgeous, giant, sexual woman will "corrupt the whole city of two million people" if she wanders into the town nearby. She does so anyway, him in tow. Along the way she teaes him, "Does it bother you to be so small?" and then derides him, "Poor little thing, poor little insect."
He runs from her. She coos, "I won't hurt you." She captures him. "You're so warm," he says softly. So touching. To which she responds, "I'm going to eat you." He claims her perfume is intoxicating him; he's losing control, succumbing (so as not to have to take responsibility for his actions). He claims she's taking advantage of him because she's "so big." The old she-made-me-do-it.
Substitute "women's sexuality" for the beautiful blonde and you have one of the greatest unspoken fears amongst many men: women's sexuality. Unspoken - but not undepicted. Enter, the giantess fantasy.
3)Foundation garments inspired by the fashions of Queen Victoria and King Edward.
4)Just Like Us?: "What's the point of a portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire with the politics left out? The new film version works well as a study in misogyny, argues Amanda Vickery, but spare us the cod psychologising and allusions to Princess Di."
When you mention the name Veronica Lake, everyone remembers the hair. (There was one movie, which for the life of me I cannot remember the name of, in which a male character refers to a group of girls -- each sitting there with the trademark Veronica Lake peekaboo hair wave -- as being in their Veronica Lake phase. If you remember the scene, please tell me; it's killing me not to remember!)
But, as evidenced by this vintage photo, Veronica was also sold on another physical attribute: her dirty smirk.
DIRTY LOOK--DIRTY FACE HOLLYWOOD--Constance Keane--Vernoica Lake to-you-- can give the dirtiest of dirty-looks and have the dirtiest of dirty faces and still be charming. She proves this in her second stellar role of her meteor-like film career in :Sullivan's Travels," Paramount Picture to be released in February. Here she turns on that dirty look for Sullivan, played by Joel McCrea, when she finds out that the "bum" she has befriended with her last 35 cents is really a movie director rolling in the lap of luxury.
The seller adds the following info about the photograph: "Vintage 1942, 6" x 8" Publicity Portrait of Veronica Lake as featured in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS – (although this portrait was first used to promote THIS GUN FOR HIRE in 1941)."
A center-fold presentation of what radio and movie talent-scouts looked for... I guess a gal really had to measure-up for radio too.
(Click to read the huge scan.)
Posed by Lillian Cornell, NBC singer, who typifies those qualities sought by the alert talent-scout. Photographs by Maurice Seymour.
From Radio Guide, week ending Sept 22, 1939 -- thanks to Pop Tart (who also put up a quiz from this issue, along with answers at CQ) for sending it to me!
Guy de Maupassant's The Private Affairs of Bel Ami is a film I've never seen (Bosley Crowther's review in The New York Times (June 16, 1947) was hardly kind; but it the film seems to have fans today, such as the folks at the Harvard Film Archive), but it matters not for my discussion of the film's posters/marketing materials, one of which I glimpsed at an auction recently.
These are examples I found on the web, the black & white looking like what I had briefly seen:
There were apparently (at least) two versions, each depicting a young Angela Lansbury fixed as firmly as a Chihuahua to a guest's leg (if not actually humping it), in desperate attempt to keep her man. This is as dramatic as film posters should be, and apparently in keeping with the story. But...
It's the taglines which draw my interest:
"All women take to men who have the appearance of wickedness"
"Are women too weak to be wicked?"
I suppose it's unfair to rile at such stereotypes when you have not seen the film nor read the novel, but from all accounts the story is that of a man who eschews love for power, willing to step on & then over women to get what he professes to want, which is money & social standing. How then does one feel free to label all women as drawn to the appearances of wickedness, an entire gender as weak? Wouldn't it be more fair to make the judgments about the man himself? Or at least use the word "some".
"It's to sell movie tickets," you say. But that's the part that bothers me.
If you want those who see the posters and read the ads to buy a ticket, you entice and seduce, not libel and offend -- or at least you do for an entertaining film, not a activist documentary. And so the point is that the taglines were not just accepting of such beliefs, but titillating -- indeed glorifying -- victimization, complete with damn-near titular advice on how to victimize women by exploiting the general gender gaffe.
Pickup on South Street (1953), starring Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, Murvyn Vye, Richard Kiley, Willis Bouchey, & Milburn Stone.
At the time, August 1952, the script was deemed unacceptable by the Production Code, for "excessive brutality and sadistic beatings, of both men and women." The revised script was accepted but required multiple takes including for a scene in which Jean Peters and Richard Kiley frisked each other for loot was considered too risqué.
The film went on to great success, including an Oscar nomination for Thelma Ritter for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1954.
The French release of the movie removed any reference to spies and microfilm in the translation. They called the movie Le Port de la Drogue (Port of Drugs). The managers of 20th Century Fox thought that the theme of communist spies was too controversial in a country where the Communist Party was still hugely influential.
Pickup was also a regular fixture on top ten lists of film noir before feminist intervention in that discussion made a femme fatale mandatory for the category. Seen now, it's Fuller sui generis, making films that are like no others. Nearly always working with tiny budgets, Fuller always spent up big on cinematographers, in this case Joe MacDonald. Fuller and MacDonald build the film on two extremes: tight closeups lit for sharp facial modelling; and free, sometimes flamboyant camera movement.
Pickup is assembled from standard pulp fiction components: situations, stock characters, conventions, cliches, attitudes, images, gestures, actions, and relationships. Unlike later practitioners described as neo- or post- , Fuller's work is at one with such material, not outside it. The film draws its energy from creating a world from within this pulp paradigm in all its crudity, brutality, sleaziness, and pure improbability (Fuller had a set built for Skip's home: an abandoned bait shack built on piles ten meters out in the East River, reached by a wooden gangplank. Its refrigerator is a crate lowered by a rope into the river. Its only amenity is a hammock. Fuller gets full value out of the set, using every inch of it across several scenes--wonderful filmmaking. Living there, how does he keep his suits so perfectly pressed? Where's the wardrobe? Does he cook? Why would a professional criminal choose a place with only one way in and out? Don't ask).
This film was remade as The Cape Town Affair (1967), directed by Robert D. Webb and starring Claire Trevor (in the Thelma Ritter role), James Brolin (in his first leading role), and Jacqueline Bisset.
The letter mentioned Terence Knapp, British actor turned Emeritus Professor of Theatre at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Thinking of Knapp again, Ms Ryan contacted him; here is Knapp's reply.
Las Vegas policeman Bill Cassell said Tuesday that the actor was cited Friday for carrying an unloaded concealed weapon at the Las Vegas airport.
Lewis' manager, Claudia Marghilano, says the handgun is a hollowed-out prop gun that Lewis sometimes twirls during his show. She tells The Associated Press that the gun couldn't fire.
Marghilano says Lewis didn't know the gun was in the bag along with other props.
Cassell says if the gun were merely a prop "it wouldn't be a weapon and we couldn't cite him for carrying a weapon".
Possible quips:
a) Jerry's always mistaking real things for props; like Jerry's kids, for example.
b) Do the French still love Lewis?
c) Jerry hasn't been this low-key funny (as opposed to out-right slap-stick annoying) since Boeing Boeing (that's the 1965 film farce about sexist playboy journalists with a thing for stewardesses starring Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Dany Saval, Christiane Schmidtmer, Suzanna Leighnot, & Thelma Ritter' not to be confused with Boing Boing, the site which may or may not delight in such films).
Bodies all over the place, everywhere you looked, stumbling over each other trying to be next in line. Where do they all come from?
There was a while, back during the late 1960s and on into the '70s, when I was buying people by the ton. It sure seemed that way, at least. After Greenleaf Classics began buying magazines filled with photos of naked people packaged by outside contractors, I began growing annoyed with the types of people they were using as models. Somehow, they were doing things all wrong, I contended. They should be paying attention to what those people look like at least, and cleaning up some of them considerably ahead of time.
Naturally, I figured I could pick desirable people out as well as the next guy, and hopefully a little bit better while I was at it. I had no sooner begun contacting Los Angeles area modeling agencies when they started barraging me with telephone calls themselves. I had no idea there were so many modeling agencies in the entire state, much less in Hollywood alone. Each one of those agencies had loose leaf notebooks filled with Polaroid photos of naked people for me to look at…lots and lots of loose leaf notebooks. It was much easier that way, flipping the pages, looking at the naked people trying to smile up at me from within those loose leaves.
Earl Kemp also, literally, exposes himself...
And others too...
Occasionally, and just for fun, I would insert photographs of personal friends without their knowledge, in the nude, into some of our various publications. Then, after the publication appeared, give them copies of it and point them out inside the issue. Without exception, every one of them was pleased with the surprise and passed copies of them around among their friends.
In a similar jest, I would also insert close-up photos of myself without showing my face into those books or magazines. At one time, most of the black cork wall on one side of my office was pinned with tear sheets of just me, and not one person working there knew it was me. I recall taking my cue for this from Alfred Hitchcock, who always inserted himself into each of his productions. I figured I could easily outcock Hitchcock, and I did.
Continue reading this issue of Kemp's fanzine for more on Song of the Loon, the work "that started a mini revolution in sleaze book publishing," the film Adultery for Fun and Profit, and the film's aftermath too -- featuring lots of great old ephemera and lurking federal government guys.
This "guy" recently discovered that Great Uncle Mutz was TheMutz Greenbaum (aka Max Greene & Max Green) -- and then starts digging through the old photos. Below, Mutz on right, with who is thought to be Peter Sellers.
I don't know whether to smack this "guy" with a rolled-up newspaper for not knowing, or to hug him/her for posting his goodies online. (Then again, maybe they like the smacking thing, in which case we can all win.) Now they need help with identifying the people, films, &/or locations etc. in the photographs.
In his research he discovered that Mutz's father (so "the guy's" Great Grandfather) was Jules Greenbaum. Jules Greenbaum was not only the founder of Greenbaum films, but he produced and patented a number of motion picture equipment, including the Bioscope, the Vitascope, and the Synchroscope, one of the better early synchronized picture/sound systems.
Anyway, if you have any information on the photos, please post/share it.
Ruan Lingyu: A Decade Of Film & Even More Years Of Tragedy
Ruan Lingyu (also known/billed as Ruan Ling-Yu, Lingyu Ruan, Lily Yuan, & Lily Yuen) is the Chinese silent film star whose works are not very well known here in the US; I myself have TCM to thank for making her acquaintance -- first via The Peach Girl (aka Peach Blossom Weeps Tears of Blood, 1931; I'll be reviewing it soon!) & then The Goddess (1934).
Born Ruan Fenggeng in Shanghai on April 26, 1910, Ruan experienced the difficult life of a child of a poor migrant family from Canton. Her father died by the time she was six, and her mother moved away from Shanghai the following year to work as a housemaid in the home of the wealthy Zhang family. While she sent Ruan to school, by the age of 16 the young girl dropped out -- and moved in with the Zhang's son, Damin.
There was very strong opposition by Zhang's family to this tongiu (the romantic cohabitational love of 'the moderns' who eschewed arranged & even agreed upon marriages). This opposition resulted not only in Zhang not getting any financial support from his family, but in getting Ruan's mother fired as well; she moved in with the young couple. This, along with Damin's gambling & general irresponsibility, meant that Ruan must work to support the household.
In 1926, at the age of 16, Ruan spots an ad for "film actors needed" at Star Movie Studios. With the help of Zhang HuiChong, Damin's elder brother who had starred in swordplay films for the Commercial Press in the early 20's, Ruan went for an interview and audition. (Zhang HuiChong got married to Xu Sue/Wu Suxin, a rather famous actress working at the Great China Film Studios, and together they created the short-lived United Film Studios -- sometimes referred to as the HuiChong Film Company -- from 1924-1927.)
Ruan's diligence & beauty outshone her lack of education and she was cast in 1927's A Couple in Name Only (aka The Nominal Couple), directed by Bu Wancang (aka Wancang Bu &/or Richard Poh).
Prior to 1920, only a few short movies had been made in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and, much like Shakespearean works, all the performers were male, including the female roles.
Public opinion lumped actresses in with prostitutes, actually calling them prostitutes; in their defense, prostitution was one of only two options for women who wanted to work, and as proper modest Chinese women would never boast or promote themselves in public, the willingness to project themselves onto screens for everyone to see put them in the same category as the other indecent women.
She made a few films at MingXing, but it wasn't until she left MingXing and joined Da Zhonghua Baihe Film Company (which quickly merged with other companies to become Lianhua Film Company) that she found real success and Shanghai stardom. That film was A Dream in the Old Capital (aka Reminiscence Of Peking, 1929).
It is said that around this time Ruan adopted her daughter, XiaoYu; yet she and Damin have already parted from each other three times -- and between 1927 and 1928 Ruan is said to have tried to commit suicide. By the end of 1928, their relationship crisis seems to be over, but Damin continues to gamble and live off Ruan's earnings.
Ruan continues to make films for Lianhua and her popularity grows. According to TCM, in Bright Lights Film Journal Gary Morris says that at Lianhua, Ruan "would find her greatest successes in a series of intense female-centered melodramas, many of them engaged with such pressing social issues as poverty, class conflict, prostitution, illegitimacy, women's rights, suicide, and occasionally a political film that grew out of anxieties around Japan's invasion of Shanghai."
In 1932, during the invasion of Japanese towards Shanghai, Ruan & Damin fled to Hong Kong. As soon as the situation became stable Ruan returned to Shanghai and involved in her first leftist inspired film, Three Modern Women, which brought her to another peak of her career, pushing her into second place on the 1933 list of the Top Ten stars in a Movie Queen contest run by local newspaper & magazines.
It was in 1932, while Damin was still in Hong Kong, that Ruan met wealthy merchant Tang Jishan, the "King of the Tea", at a party; by March of 1933 Ruan had moved into Tang's home.
On April 9th, Zhang returned from Hong Kong, prepared to make a fuss with the press regarding his romance with Ruan. A few days later he signed an agreement saying that Ruan would provide him with 100 yuan per month for the next two years -- and in return he would not bother her again. Sort of a common law divorce.
On August 8th of 1933, Tang and Ruan announce their engagement.
Things continue to go well for Ruan. In 1934 she stars in Cai Chusheng's A New Woman, considered by many to be her best film.
However the press takes issue with the film's heroine, who, having been forsaken by her husband & failing to make a living from writing, was forced to become a prostitute to raise her child -- and then to commit suicide. It wasn't so much the ethics or morals of the plot which angered the press, but the film's accusation that the suicide of the woman had been a result of the press' libelous reports. The film was edited to tone down the accusation, but as the film was inspired by the life & death of actress and writer Ai Xia, who took her own life in 1934, the accusation lingered like the taste of bile in a throat... But the film was very well received by audiences and Ruan's fame soared.
Damin, likely either deeply in gambling debt, or just wanting a larger piece of Ruan's popularity (and yuan) pie, returned to extort more money from the actress. This upset Tang who, despite insider suggestion that it made Ruan unhappy, brought Damin into court on December 27, 1934, resulting in a media frenzy.
Despite public adoration of Ruan and the more or less scandalous living arrangements between herself and Damin, the couple is seen to have a common law marriage and Tang -- along with Ruan -- are accused of fanghai hunyin jiating zui, the equivalent of an attack on family values & marriage in general.
Perhaps this was due to some acceptance of Damin & Ruan's common law marriage; but Damin's old & traditional family name with its history of imperial officers also outranked Tang's "new money" and simple "merchant" status. Of course, Tang's history of divorces and affairs probably didn't win him any points either... Not that Damin hadn't been a louse too.
But in this sordid scandal, it is Ruan who looses pubic favor and is put under great scrutiny and stress. She is summoned to appear in court on March 9th, but sometime during the night of March 7th she wrote several letters & then committed suicide.
She was found dead on March 8, 1935.
It was International Women's Day.
More than 100,000 mourners were drawn to the WanGuo funeral parlour, her funeral procession, on March 14, 1935, reached over three miles long -- and three women committed suicide during it. It was estimated that more than three hundred thousand people crowded the streets of Shanghai for her last journey. The front page of the New York Times pronounced it "the most spectacular funeral of the century."
Every magazine in Shanghai ran memorial issues in her honor. Even after her death, Tang was openly insulted and cursed by the press and Star Movie Studios openly declared they'd have no part in any mourning ceremony held by Tang Jishan, saying he was "a criminal who did harm to the whole movie world, being the direct cause of Ruan's suicide."
This even after some Ruan's last letters were published, described as "tender" towards Tang, in which Ruan asks Tang to take care of her mother and daughter. It matters not. In the movie world Tang is not recognized as Ruan's beloved, official husband; he is the man who murdered her with immorality.
Clearly neither of her lovers were very kind to her in many ways, and the press' field day with her choices and status as a woman, therefore less powerful and respected, was more than she could bear.
In one of the letters written before her suicide, she writes in grief-stricken self-defense of her actions, saying that while she's aware that she's taking a risk that some may take her suicide as an evidence of some guilt, she'd rather die than to continue to face the public slander.
In her suicide note, she wrote, "Gossip is a fearful thing."
Lu Xun (Lu Hsün; Zhou Shuren), a prominent writer at the time, took that phrase and made it the title of an article denouncing the media's exploitation of Ruan. Of the media and Xun's article, however, Stefania Stafutti has some pointed things to say. In The Perception of Privacy: The Case of Ruan Lingyu (published in the International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies) she writes (link added by SPS):
Only the (male oriented) society control over human beings is questioned together with the dramatic fear of loosing one’s own face, but nothing is said on the individual right of carrying on one’s private life with no external interferences. Even if once more referring in general terms to “the feudal society of old China” the Min bao is the only journal which stigmatizes the backwardness of the film-goers, who simply like twisting the knife in the wound: the perception of privacy is strictly connected with people’s perception on what is to be "hidden" and what is to be "protected". With his article published under the pen name Mu Hui on Tai bai, which title “Gossip is a fearful thing” is picked up from one of Ruan’s letters, left behind after her suicide, Lu Xun goes to the core of the problem. As Eileeen J. Cheng points out in a recent article Lu Xun is fascinated by dead women, especially those who are somehow victimized by the society At the same time their choice of dieing is seen as having a cathartic and rather ambiguous function. The blame put on the wild circulation of details on Ruan’s personal life expresses Lu Xun strong objection against the circulation of exploitative images of women but, at the same time, strips the women of their gender issues, to sit them on a throne of purity which radically prevents them from enjoying or inducing any idea of pleasure As a matter of fact, Lu Xun stigmatizes much more the voyeuristic attitude of the readers and of the film goers than the total lack of scruple of the sensationalistic press. Being Lu Xun perfectly conscious of the enormous power of the press, who would rather expect him being more indulgent with the common readers. He goes much farer than Min bao, almost attributing to the readers a sort of cannibalization of their victims (a topic dear to Lu Xun!): “[Ruan Lingyu and Ai Xia] deaths are like but adding a few grains of salt to the boundless ocean; even though it fills bland mouths with some flavour, after a while everything is still bland, bland, bland”. Lu Xun’s utter repugnance for the mass miserable appetites cannot simply be regarded as an “ascetic” gaze towards the female world.
It is true, however, that the press kept a full-press on Ruan & her death.
Stafutti writes of it as a "voyeuristic attitude, even transgressing into the kitsch," as the media described in great detail her corpse, how it was dressed, how her hair was styled, and "about the hopeless Zhang Damin, who wiping two blood drops from Ruans’s mouth seems to have stated that they have to be considered her last gift to him." The media even missed the irony of reporting on Ruan's mother crying to the press that they were to blame for her daughter's death, saying, “It’s all because of you. You killed her. You will reckon with me.”
It would be easy to follow suit here and, 73 years later, discuss Ruan in terms of public out-cry and media portrayals, comparing them to similar gossip witch hunts of today... But I'd like to let Ruan's life and choices speak for her.
Her acting is brilliant -- and plentiful. In less than 10 years she made nearly three times that many films... 29 films in 9 years. Amazing films too, from the ones I've seen.
In them she explored female advancement & exploitation; a rigid patriarchial & feudal system built on class, which maltreated (if not out-right abused) women and men alike, yet was perpetuated by both genders; and a warm naiveté which, even should innocence be lost -- and find itself punished for its supposed immorality, could outlast & outshine the old & cold hierarchical social structure.
For her suffering heroines, Ruan was compared to Garbo; but I think Ruan Lingyu and her luminous acting stands on its own.
About Jack: From 1988 to 2000 Jack Hafferkamp published/edited Libido: The Journal of Sex and Sensibility with Marianna Beck. Since then he has operated Libido Films, which specializes in gender-equal explicit erotica. Libido films have been honored at the annual Erotic Awards in London and featured at New York's Cinekink festival. Jack holds a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality, specializing in Erotology, which is the material culture of sex.
Call in with questions & comments will be taken at 1 (646) 200-3136.
In a study of the films from the 1930s to 1970s, historians have categorized four dominant types of roles that women played. The first one is the “Pillar of Virtue” types played by Doris Day or Julie Andrews. This category also features mothers and mammies such as Hattie McDaniel’s character in “Gone with the Wind.” The “Glamour Girl” range from sex goddesses such as Marilyn Monroe in “Bus Stop” to femme fatales such as Marlene Dietrich in “Blonde Venus.” The “Emotive Woman” is the sexually frustrated Rosalind Russell in “Picnic” and the seductive Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Thus, the last category, the “Independent” woman or the Katharine Hepburn type, is Barbara Streisand in “Funny Girl,” or Jane Fonda in “Klute,” the liberated woman. Throughout much of film history, women have been depicted as manipulative, sexually repressed, or sexually overt. There was also a lack of sisterhood and films with women interacting with other women in a positive light. In the 1950s, especially, we witnessed an era of “reaffirming male dominance and female subservience; movies showed women as breasts and buttocks, again idealizing women who were ‘pretty, amusing, and childish,’” (Butler, 145). Much of this female contempt has endured and remained, although it may not be as obvious as the previous decades. Nowadays, we see more sensationalized sexual roles for women as the trend began in the 70s. Women now are also shown as waifs similar to the 60s trend, which was a severe contrast to the idea image of the 50s. All in all, women are becoming an endangered species in films and taking increasingly less leading roles.
Michelle Bauer is known as July 1981's Penthouse Pet, for her work on the Playboy Channel, and, after auditioning for Fred Olen Ray, as a queen of scream for her roles in B-films such as The Tomb, Vampire Vixens from Venus, and Dinosaur Island.
You might be more familiar with her from the campy Cafe Flesh -- shown here in a relatively clean (but O-so-fun!) clip:
But did you also know she was Pia Sands, legendary in retro bondage films?
When the B-film career took off, she was getting divorced and he then filed a lawsuit requesting she not use his last name, Bauer, for her films. In 1988, for Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, she tried using the name Michelle McClellen (McClellen was the last name of her second husband), but the press continued to use Bauer, and so her first husband eventually relented & consented.
She also worked under the names Pia Snow and Kim Bittner, and when you add up all the titles, it's pretty clear to see she did perform in more than the trashy topless films she is generally interviewed regarding -- and note that bondage films like Rope Burn didn't make her barefacts list.
In fact, she's bared more & dared more than she actually admits to in interviews. Like in this interview at Evil Dread, where Cafe Flesh is mentioned, but as you can see, is downplayed greatly:
Did you have a limit as to how far you would go?
Michelle Bauer: I know when I was doing the men's magazines, I was married to Mr. Bauer at the time and he preferred that I did not do any layouts with men for the stills. So I refrained from that. There's maybe, if anybody looked and searched , there's only very few magazine layouts that I did with another guy. It was all with other women. And then when I got into the B movies it was just an occupational hazard. You had love scenes with guys and you had love scenes with girls. And full frontal was a requirement. I you weren't gonna do it somebody else was gonna. You were defeating your own purpose if you weren't. You completely trusted the people you were working with and working for. No one was going to ask you to do anything out of the ordinary other than act like you're making love to this guy. Okay, I can do that. No I never had a problem with it.
And then there's the back-peddling...
During your career you've acted mainly in B movies. Have you ever wanted to break into the mainstream and become the next Meryl Streep as an example?
MB: I don't think that's possible. First of all, I don't think I'm good enough. Second of all, I wouldn't want things in the past that I've done, that I'm ashamed of, to come out and I know that they would. I think that's hindered me and kept me back from ever wanting to pursue that. I just don't think I have the ability. I don't have what it takes.
According to this interview, Michelle had announced her retirement from film. And the photo below is of Bauer at at 1990's Chiller Con (click the link and read the comments as they are priceless). The "going out of business" signs are ominous, aren't they?
Or maybe that was just a sales ploy. Because she's been in films as recently as 2008 -- and in 2006 under the McClellen moniker too. Perhaps another try at rebranding? Well, not if 2004's Tomb of the Werewolf is any indication.
In the film she plays Elizabeth Bathory (Countess Erzsebet Bathori, who killed 612 women -- and documented the death of each).
"Tomb of the Werewolf" is about breasts. Naked female breasts. It is not about a Tomb or a Werewolf. There is a wolf man running around but he's just filler until the next breast scene.
And that's a good review -- from a fan of Bauer, boobies, and Bauer's boobies.
Audrey Marie Munson was the 15 year old model for the piece.
It is said that she was discovered by chance in New York City by Ralph Draper, a professional photographer who passed Munson and her (divorced) mother walking down the street. Draper is said to have told mom that her daughter's face is one he longed to photograph. She consented and didn't seem to mind that her daughter would be nude.
Draper took many photographs, some of which he showed to his artist friend, Isidore Konti.
Quickly Munson becomes a society darling and model of choice for artistic nudes by all the big-name sculptors and painters, posing for hundreds of works that still adorn public buildings and museums.
As the "the girl with the ideal figure" Munson was the model for 94 versions of Star Maiden & other sculptures at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition -- said to be 75% of all the female-figure works at the Exposition. From BikiniScience.com:
Munson is chosen to be the featured model for sculptures which tell the story of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Her nude body rides atop an oxcart (1) , sits atop a fountain (2), and bears water in angelic form (3). She wears a barebreasted halter as she reclines on a phallic fish (4), wears a diaphanous and revealing costume as the "Star Girl" (5), and bares her breasts and pubis as an angel (6).
Likely as a result of her err, exposure in California at the expo, Munson moved to California and got a contract with the American Film Company.
Her first project was as an actress on a special-project basis with Thanhouser. The five-reel film was George Foster Platt's Inspiration (1915), the story of (surprise!) a sculptor's model, in which "the girl with the ideal figure" poses nude in classic artwork poses. (The film was reissued by the Arrow Film Corporation in 1918 as The Perfect Model).
Inspiration is often credited as the first time that a woman appeared fully nude on film. I think it is more accurate to say that this is the first time a mainstream or legitimate full-feature film had the leading actress go completely nude, without body stocking, and that while Munson was the lead, she was not yet a "film star" (still leaving Kellerman her title of first star to go nude in a feature film).
There was, of course, controversy about Inspiration and its nudity, picketing and the like, but censors were reluctant to ban the film, fearing they would then also have to ban Renaissance art & close museums as such art was featured in the film.
The film was big at the box office, and a year later she would star in Rea Burger's 7-reel silent film, Purity (1916), in a dual role as a spirit figure and as (yet another) country-girl turned nude artist's model. From The New York Times:
Just in case there was any doubt that this American Film Company production was meant to be an allegory, the authors helpfully bestowed upon the characters such names as Purity, Virtue, Evil, Luston Black and Judith Lure! Cast in the dual role of Virtue and Purity, Audrey Munson enjoys the attentions of poet Thornton Darcy (Nigel de Brulier) and Claude Lamarque (Alfred Hollingsworth). But watch out for that no-good snake Luston Black (William A. Carroll) and his scheming mistress Judith Lure (Eugenie Forde). "To the Pure, All Things Are Pure" read one of the film's subtitles. Maybe so, but any film that banked so heavily on the undraped beauty of leading lady Audrey Munson) could not have helped but plant a few impure thoughts in the minds of its male spectators.
After the death of his young wife, Phillip Fletcher, a millionaire and sculptor, makes his home on an uncharted desert island. Harry LeRoy, a cad who is courting the widow Mrs. Hansen, desires the widow's convent-bred daughter Norma and persuades mother and daughter to accompany him on a sea cruise. When the ship catches fire, Norma, abandoned by LeRoy and her mother in the confusion, is washed ashore on Phillip's island. Phillip clothes and shelters Norma, whose mind has become childlike from shock, and uses her as a model for his sculptures. Through Phillip's friend Jack, a photo of one of the sculptures travels to America, where LeRoy sees it and subsequently finds his way to Phillip's island. LeRoy tries to rape Norma, and in the ensuing struggle LeRoy is killed and Norma recovers her adult personality. Phillip, who is in love with Norma, sorrowfully returns her to the United States, but Norma does not board the boat, and Phillip, finding her posing as one of his statues when he returns to his hut, finally declares his love.
Talk about your typecasting.
While the films were box office successes, the reviews were mixed, and one can only imagine how quickly the novelty of the nude model turned actress whose only real roles were that of nude models lost its lust-her.
Munson returned to New York and her mother.
In 1919, back in New York, she and her mother lived in a boarding house owned by Dr. Walter Wilkins. Wilkins fell in love with her, murdering his wife, Julia, with a hammer so he could be available to marry Munson. By the time of the murder, Munson and her mother had left for Canada under the "advice" of Mrs. Wilkins and had nothing to do with the murder, but the police still wanted to question them, resulting in a nationwide hunt for them, with headlines announcing, "Syracuse Model wanted in N.Y.C. Tragedy". When finally questioned in Toronto, the police were satisfied & the women left to return to New York. (Wilkins himself was tried, found guilty, and sentenced; but he hung himself in his prison cell before he could meet the electric chair.)
The Beaux-Arts construction boom was over, fickle Hollywood fame had left, and the dark cloud of scandal hung about her, ending both her modeling & acting careers. While some would say that Munson was forgotten, she did continue to work in public view -- not just present in sculpture and art, but as a columnist.
In the 1920s, she wrote a series of 20 articles for American Weekly, a Sunday insert in The New York American (originally the New York Journal, renamed in 1901), one of the preceding publications merged to form the New York Journal-American, which served as the flagship of William Randolph Hearst's communications empire from 1895 to 1966.
In them she criticized society's lack of respect for models and challenged the prevailing standards of decency and beauty. "All girls cannot be perfect 36s, with bodies of mystic warmth and plastic marble effect, colored with rose and a dash of flame," she wrote. "Of course not."
And in at least one article, Munson wrote of "a man prominent in the theatrical world" (she never named names) who had decided to ruin her career after she resisted his advances.
Munson made one more film, Heedless Moths, which she is credited with writing as well as performing in. Again from the New York Times:
The story involves an incident in the life of notorious early 20th century nude model Audrey Munson. Munson herself appears in various stages of undress, but she doesn't actually play herself -- that's left to Jane Thomas. According to the picture, Munson is supporting herself and her mother through her modeling, but she is actually a good girl -- when a painter makes a play for her, she walks out. She is brought to a celebrated sculptor (Holmes E. Herbert), who is inspired by her beauty and asks her to pose nude for a statue. The sculptor's wife (Hedda Hopper) becomes jealous of all the attention her husband is giving his art and has an affair with the painter. The painter dumps his latest model/mistress for the wife, and the rejected girl swears revenge. She writes a letter to the sculptor informing him that his wife is having dinner with the painter. Munson rushes to take the wife's place at the table and pretends to be drunk when the sculptor shows up. He's so disgusted that he destroys the statue he made of her. Eventually Munson orchestrates a reconciliation between the sculptor and his wife.
It wasn't enough to resurrect a film career -- and enough became enough for Audrey Munson.
After failing to find "the perfect man" in a widely publicized search for a husband in 1922, on the afternoon of May 27, 1922, at her home in Mexico, New York, Audrey Munson swallowed a solution of bichloride of mercury.
From the article that ran May 28th of that year, some interesting notes:
Miss Munson still refuses to disclose the contents of the telegram she received shortly before she tried to take her life. It is thought it may have come from Joseph J. Stevenson, of Ann Arbor, Mich., to whom she said was engaged.
...It became known today that since the announcement of her engagement to Mr. Stevenson, Miss Munson has been calling herself Baroness Audrey Merl Munson-Monson, though the derivation of the title is as much a mystery as her effort to commit suicide.
...Some doubt was expressed in Mexico today as the the authenticity of the telegram.
...An extensive search in Ann Arbor for Joseph J Stevenson, reported engaged to Audrey Munson, has failed to reveal any trace of him. So far as can be learned, no man by that name ever lived here.
She was saved from the suicide attempt, but not really saved at all... On June 8th, 1931, she was admitted to the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane, in nearby Ogdensburg. She was just 40 years old.
To the world she was gone and forgotten.
Which was rather as Munson feared, I suppose, as she wrote this in one of her columns in 1921:
What becomes of the artists’ models? I am wondering if many of my readers have not stood before a masterpiece of lovely sculpture or a remarkable painting of a young girl, her very abandonment of draperies accentuating rather than diminishing her modesty and purity, and asked themselves the question, "Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?"
Just a few wondered about her... Like Barry Popik (links added by SPS):
So I said how about this, I've got another story, there's this woman named Audrey Munson, and she's on top of this building as "Civic Fame," and we just gilted her statues at great expense, but no one knows who she is, or if she's alive or dead...
"Rescuing a Heroine From the Clutches of Obscurity" appeared in the New York Times, city section, April 14, 1996. It was the only article published on Audrey Munson since 1926, in 70 years. The article mentioned, in passing, that I'd also solved "the Big Apple."
I donated my papers and a copy of the article to the National Sculpture Society. I got a call from a book publisher, and I sent copies of all the papers there as well. One woman, a photographer, called and said she was interested in a photo book about Miss Munson. She had contacted me through the Times. I gave her all my papers and met her and another woman, a writer. I told them that I didn't have any book plans at the moment—I was busy with my father and mother dying, and a full time job, and this Big Apple Boulevard/Corner catastrophe. However, if they were interested, they should contact anyone upstate in her home town of Mexico, NY named "Munson." I never heard from the two women again.
"That Metropolitan Woman" was a book review in the New York Times of October 3,1999. Accompanying the review was a photo of a sculpture identified as Daniel Chester French's "Brooklyn" that was really "Manhattan." The book was American Venus. The authors had gone upstate and had found a treasure trove of Audrey Munson material. Audrey had been living in a mental institution for almost seventy years, until her death in 1996 at age 105. The authors, the review stated, "have made an extraordinary effort to reclaim long-forgotten facts, newspaper clippings and vintage photographs of a once -celebrated life." I wrote a letter to the editor of the book review that, just three years before, in the very same newspaper—yeah, my letter wasn't published.
But such efforts seem incidental in comparison with Mr. Popick's obsession with Miss Munson, a woman he calls "more popular than Cindy Crawford but much uglier." A raven-haired native of Mexico, N.Y., near Syracuse, she starred in a handful of plays and silent movies, but they generally received dismissive reviews. It was her modeling career that made sculptors like Daniel Chester French vie for her services and rave over the dimples in her back.
Mr. Popick might well empathize with her history. He has written numerous plays, short stories and research papers. To date, however, Mr. Popick's efforts have received almost as much scorn as Miss Munson.
Audrey Munson died February 20, 1996, at age 105, nearly alone &, in something that's past tolerable in irony, in an unmarked grave. Says Joe Schumacher of the blog Audrey Munson: model, muse, forgotten, remembered:
She had been committed to the Ogdensburg Psychiatric Institution in 1931 for what now are largely treatable diseases of depression and schizophrenia. Her parents divorced when Audrey was very young. After her parents died (Edgar is her father) she had no visitors for several decades before being rediscovered by a niece. Audrey Munson is buried in an unmarked grave in her father's plot in the New Haven, NY cemetery.
The Audrey Munson Fund is "collecting funds to finance a gravestone for Munson, who though deceased for more than ten years still doesn’t have one."
In total, Munson starred in four silent films; but only one print of Purity has survived (said to be in an archive in France). But if you want to see her, all you have to do is look her up -- and then, most likely, look up to gaze upon the face and form that has launched a thousand artworks.
PS While the article on Popik says that Munson was in plays, I wonder if Wiki should be linking to this Audrey Munson at the Internet Broadway Database -- if this is the same Munson, she would have been on the stage at 9 years of age. (Then again, I never know what the hell Wiki's going on at Wiki.)
I get that Lovelace made porn a household word, but she also turned ninny and denounced porn. And, politics aside, for pure aesthetics, you can't beat the beauty and enthusiasm of either Sprinkle or Del Rio.
I remember being allowed to stay up late and watch The Carol Burnett Show. Korman was rather dashing to me. I know Lyle Waggoner was supposed to be the stud, "tall dark & handsome"; but Korman was tall dork and handsome, and that won me over.
(Which explains why Tim Conway was put in the pile with Artie Johnson -- funny & cute, but not tall enough for me. Sorry, guys.)
I loved that Korman often couldn't keep a straight face. That somehow made him less imposing and more human, especially to a goofy, dorky girl like me.
Therefore, I don't want to wish Harvey the traditional, "Rest in peace", but a more meaningful, "Go do that voodoo that you do so well!"
In honor of Korman, I recommend watching Blazing Saddles.
The Love God? (1969) stars Don Knotts as the prim & proper publisher of The Peacock, a magazine devoted to birds of the feathered variety -- but soon he plays pigeon to a smut publisher who has lost his own mailing rights due to obscenity, turning the bird mag into a smut rag. What ensues is a mocking romp of magazine publications, obscenity law, and the sexual revolution with Knotts in the position of a reluctant, geeky Hugh Hefner.
Hedy Lamarr's first films were made in Germany and Czechoslavakia, but it was film number five which was the one which really started her career. The film was the notorious 1933 Czechoslovakian erotic drama Exstase (aka Ecstasy), and I recently watched it on TCM (Oh, how I love thee!).
An early "talkie", the film has little spoken dialog. In fact, I was startled to hear human voices, for having watched at great length & hearing only music, I had determined that this was a silent film. (It also has English subtitles, including for the song lyrics.)
In the film, Lamarr plays Eva, a young wife who, unhappy from the first day of her new marriage, leaves her husband and heads back to her father's house, intending to ask for a divorce. Papa is rich, with a large home and horses, which leads to the lush outdoor nude scenes.
While she's skinny-dipping, her horse runs off, literally answering the "call of the wild" from a stallion. Forced to chase after the horse, Eva finds herself hiding in the brush as a young man, named Adam, of course, catches her horse. (Au) Natural-ly Adam (Aribert Mog) discovers the nude Eva, and proffers her the nightie which (luckily) remained on the runaway horse's back.
She rebuffs him, but later that night, a storm is brewing. The tempest outside matches her emotions, and Eva finds herself heading to the young man's residence. What follows are the scenes which caused the most trouble.
"It was the close-ups of [Lamarr's] facial expressions which chiefly shocked the jury," the New York Times reported after the trial. Hollywood magazine concurred: "All you see, all the camera gives you, is Eva's face. Hundreds of feet of Hedy's face, covering the whole range of love. You get it from her expression or you don't get it at all".
In truth, watching the film, you can't mistake it. Her pearl necklace breaks, and pearls are splayed along the floorboards, removing any doubts. And, as neither couple undresses, it would appear that her orgasm is due to receiving oral sex. (Scandalous!)
Here's (roughly) the first half of the film, and right around minute 44 the scene begins...
Some credit Ecstasy and Lamarr with the first nude scenes, which is inaccurate. However, the film was blocked in 1935 by US Customs from import into the US for its obscenity, and that is a first.
Others call Lamarr's Eva "adulterous"; which is technically accurate as the young couple consummate prior to the dissolution of her marriage to Emile (Jaromir Rogoz), but hardly the same as a "cheating" spouse.
However, the fact remains that the film is a wonder of eroticism, unlike anything that predates it (other than true porn). No wonder and Joseph Breen (of the Hays Office) also refused to give Ecstasy approval. According to de Grazia & Newman, Breen refused because:
It is a story of illicit love and frustrated sex, treated in detail without sufficient compensating moral values, the portrayal of a mare in heat, and of a rearing stallion, the actual scene in the cabin where the woman's face registers the varying emotions of the sexual act--all are designed to stimulate the lower and baser elements and are suggestive, lustful and obscene. [It] is designed to glorify sexual intercourse between human beings and between animals, and to arouse lustful feelings in those who see it.
Eventually, an edited version of Ecstasy was released in the US; but I've not seen that version. Apparently it makes quite a story change along with the removal of nudity and Hedy's orgasmic face.
In the original, Emile comes a callin', trying to get Eva back. She refuses and he leaves, coincidentally taking the road near Adam's project... I don't want to spoil things for you (so stop reading here if you don't want to know the film's ending!), but...
Emile recognizes Adam's relationship to Eva (due to the fact that he is carrying her necklace, now repaired), and he commits suicide in the very hotel when Eva and Adam are celebrating their romance and planning to run away to marry.
While this was not a US film made under the Hollywood Code, I still wondered... Would Eva be punished even more?
Devastated by Emile's death, she is unable to runaway with Adam -- who has no clue of the history between Eva and Emile. She leaves him sleeping at the train station, dreaming, no doubt of their future.
The train leaves and next we have a montage of sorts, accompanied by what the subtitles only called a "workers chant". Images of spring, in the dripping-water in buckets and workers wielding pick-axes sort of a way. Honestly, it was so long -- and without a recognizable face -- that I began to wonder if they had made a gross error, splicing in some footage from some other old film. Then we see Adam.
He seems older, less happy, but he has a distant look in his eye... The camera shows us a Mexican or Native American women with two young children; one a toddler seated behind her who waves at Adam, and, on the woman's back, a baby who still manages to play with his own toes. We see Adam's face again, with another odd look -- then we see Eva, playing with a babe of her own. It must be Adam's baby... He knows, in that magical way only a-man-who-really-loves-a-woman can.
But that's it. The End.
So Eva may not have her love, but she keeps her baby. Rather a mixed message. And a surprising one.
Well worth the excruciating minutes of chanting montage, anyway.
It's also interesting to see an equally beautiful, but less sophisticated & polished glamor-girl version of Hedy Lamarr.
From my email to Love & Radio's Nick van der Kolk (I told you he'd appear here, so don't look so puzzled):
Speaking of Bedouin... Did you happen to see, on TCM's Sunday Silent, the (silent) documentary, Grass? The kicker was the bio on Merian C. Cooper afterwards, where he and the director mock the "lady author"... Huh. Now that I'm thinking about it, I should make a post about it.
And post about it I now will.
Last Sunday I watched Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life on TCM. It's a sweeping epic of a silent film. A naturally dramatic documentary, with the (apparently) famous scenes of 50,000 tribesman (and their vast herds -- 500,000 horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, bulls and cows) crossing a swift Karun River. I personally was more struck by other images. Men, many in little more than loin-cloth-esque garb, sitting in the snow to remove their cotton shoes (deemed, as the title card stated, about as practical as bedroom slippers), then proceeding, barefoot & carrying shovels, to create a zig-zag path for all to follow up the snow and ice covered 15,000-foot-high Zard Kuh (the highest peak in the Zagros Mountains). It's amazing.
But perhaps I should back-up a bit.
Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life is the 1925 film made by s Merian C. Cooper & Ernest Schoedsack, documenting the journey of The Forgotten People, a branch of the Bakhtiari tribe, from Angora (modern-day Ankara, Turkey) to the Bakhtiari lands of western Iran, in what is now the western part of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province and the eastern part of Khuzestan.
If the names Cooper & Schoedsack are at all familiar, it's because they made the original, definitive King Kong (1933).
However, as the biography I'm King Kong!: The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper (shown after Grass, but without record at TCM) informs us, the names Cooper & Schoedsack shouldn't be known -- in fact, couldn't be known, without Marguerite Harrison.
The three had met in Poland, during the Polish-Soviet war of 1920. Cooper, a bomber pilot during World War I, had spent time in a POW camp, yet after that war he was instrumental in creating the Kosciuszko Squadron, a group of young American airmen who had volunteered to help Poland. When he was shot down over the Ukraine and captured by the Russians, Cooper was sent to the Gulag. There, he was saved from starvation through the intervention of Marguerite Harrison, a woman who became an American spy because women were not allowed to be war correspondents. (Ah, such delicate flowers should not use the pen, but slink around the swords.) He managed to escape, and poor Harrison would need to wait several years to be released.
So, when Harrison puts up half the money to make Grass and insists upon coming along, Cooper, naturally, feels indebted to do so.
The "hysterical" part is during The Exploits bio piece, when Schoedsack voices his opinions post return from filming Grass.
In a recorded interview, Schoedsack speaks freely, saying that women are pains in the ass; they can't help it.
He sympathizes with the Arab leaders in the migration, saying they were responsible for thousands of their tribe and the livestock, and here they were catering to a woman who required her own sleeping quarters etc. He says (and I'm paraphrasing) that Harrison "tried not to be a pain in the ass," but "she couldn't help it", she "was just a woman." Apparently Schoedsack was also greatly irritated by her continual application make-up before every filming -- even though of the three, Cooper, Schoedsack & herself, she was the only one in front of the camera.
The film script for King Kong was written by Schoedsack’s wife, Ruth, who, according to in Mark Vaz in Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, based the it on conversations she remembered between Cooper and her husband about their travels and exploration. (Including Grass & Chang.) Hence, Marguerite Harrison, was the inspiration for the the "unwanted woman" Fay Wray played on the King Kong expedition.
However, such photographs are intriguing... And not just for bare breasts beneath army jackets.
There's a retro look to them, which at first made me feel as ashamed as when I went to borrow one of my parent's magazines. What if the porn was new and I was being an Ugly American?
But fear not, it seems that somehow I have great abilities involving the translation of both film and hair styles into decades, for most other countries.
THE stáb former tagja, the yet today 57 age-old Dietmar Schürtz like an actor vett part the trolls, and in an interview she told me: the specific units 1982-ben hozták create, and 1989-ig, i.e. the regime collapse 12 in the movies made by.
Holy crap!Someone actually owns the belt, slave bracelet and chain of office Theda Bara wore in the 1917 (presumed lost) silent film production of Cleopatra -- and I mean a some one, not an institute, archive or organization.
You've hear of Big Mamma's House, well here's more men in drag -- in the big house.
A promotional still for Monogram Pictures' Mutiny In The Big House (1939), starring Charles Bickford, Barton MacLane, & Dennis Moore. The seller says:
One of the movie's taglines was:
'YOUR PRAYERS WON'T HELP NOW, FATHER!" Hell breaks loose as terror rules the big house...and desperate men are bossed by a half-human killer! Don't dare take your eyes off the screen for a second---or you'll miss a shocking, sensational thrill!
We imagine this photo captures that 'shocking, sensational thrill.'
Monica Lewis was born in 1925 in Chicago, Il, and went from hosting, at 17, her own radio show in New York to become an accomplished pop singer and jazz stylist, television personality, and film star.
The blonde beauty who graced many a magazine and advertisement naturally rubbed elbows with giants and would-be giants. From her official bio:
she paused for (and sometimes steered clear of) romantic entanglements with Ronald Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Herman Wouk, Sidney Sheldon, Kirk Douglas, Richard Rodgers and Milton Berle.
(Shown at right with a young Ronald Reagan.)
My disc-overy of Lewis began with her cheeky backside of her 1945-1949 Song Book Collection, Monica Lewis Sings.
She was discovered by Benny Goodman and quickly was recording at Signature, Decca and Capitol where she worked with such musical greats as Billy Butterfield, Yank Lawson, Bob Haggart and Teddy Wilson. Her early recordings ranged from Gershwin, Kern and Coward, to more risque songs such as I'm Gonna Be a Bad Girl (which she co wrote) and was the first to record Put The Blame on Mame.
A quick search and I discovered Lewis was the singing voice of the animated Chiquita Banana for 14 years (1953 and 1967). This fascinated me, as you'll see, because Chiquita was one hot fruit -- and I don't just mean the banana's exotic tropical local either. Lots of folks find the Chiquita Banana a-peeling.
Seldom does a fruit inspire such lusty thoughts. Wile no doubt part of the sexual confusion is due to the whorish glamorous garb and makeup, I suspect it's really the arched back which sends the libido a message.
When Chiquita became a woman rather than a banana, I lost interest too. A woman's a woman, and as far as illustrated babes go, she's not as exciting as the pre '87 forbidden fruit was.
Back to Monica Lewis.
Her musical success brought MGM a-courtin' and the studio signed her in 1950 as their response to to Lana Turner. She was in a number of films, including, as this still shows, in The Strip.
In 1956, at what many would call the height of her popularity, Lewis would marry Jennings Lang and busy herself with running an 'executive household' and mothering their children. She made the occasional television appearance, but it's for her supporting roles in Lang's blockbuster disaster movies, such as playing the heroic stunt secretary Barbara in Earthquake, that she is often most remembered.
My favorite was when she played a retired jazz singer in The Concorde: Airport '79 (1979), the third sequel to Airport (1970), that she was really 'noticed' again.
Cool Cinema Trash notes that in the film Lewis is joined by her "jive-talkin', pot smokin', saxophone playin' friend Jimmie Walker."
After an impromptu jam session, she worries, "Maybe I don't have it anymore."
"You're like fine wine, you get better with age." He assures her, "And you're gonna get those Russians drunk."
Meanwhile, you can content yourself with reissued CDs and films, as well as collectibles. While her official website teases that memorabilia is available, I've yet to find any there. Until that changes, check eBay.
In Gracie's review of John & Mary (1969), there are images from the film of one of those gosh-darn-cool-big-city parties where those naughty artistic folks projected film onto live nude girls a female nude.
I've not seen the film (yet), but have, naturally, heard-tell of such things. When I read/saw the John & Mary review, I was reminded that I'd recently stumbled upon some more recent projection photographs and I realized something... Why I had not thought much of them.
I then tried to retrace my Internet-steps, which was not easy. I couldn't find the original photographer's website -- and I searched, doggedly, for over an hour, with no luck (which made this female bitchy). Instead, I offer you this: The Living Canvas.
What strikes me, when I think of those radical retro artsy projection parties, is the fleeting nature of moving images upon flesh -- which also moves. You have the magic of something seen on, by not felt by, the model/canvas/person. You have the ephemeral quality of it all happening in moments, and then it's gone.
It's titillating, transitory... Arousing and alive. And then it's over. No matter how young, ripe and lush the body, the life, the party or event, everything ends. Only to live on in memories and flashbacks, I suppose.
I 'get' the performance, be it the old or artsy party or the new theatrical event; but the photographs seem to loose something. What they 'gain' in ability to keep, they loose in luster. The very stillness of the human form, the lack of movement, even subtle breathing, puts the matter of 'alive' into question and the moment saved is really not the moment at all.
When performance, however subtle, is replaced by a pose, it's just film on film.
No longer is the flesh really a part of the image at all.
Also not to be missed, the collector's 'mission statement', titled Why Do I Collect?, which begins:
I have encouraged my wife to believe my collection will be worth a fortune to her when I die. I don't think she is totally convinced and is right to be skeptical. It is just the best justification I can come up with for what is a pretty strange and expensive hobby: collecting discarded advertising material.
As the blog header states: this isn't just smut here, it's sex history. And in order to have better historical perspective you need to understand the time, the place, and the culture of that time and place for 'culture' varies. For example, 1955 New York was not the same as 1955 Nebraska and neither were the same as 1955 Sweden or 1955 Angola (which were not alike themselves) -- even if, to you smut-hounds, the breasts look deliciously the same. (Similarly exotic, enticingly differing breasts may not necessarily be an indication of differing cultures.)
I've written before on the importance of context, either anecdotally or with entire posts such as Context Is The New Bullshit, and if you haven't let that sink into your brains please take a moment to do so; this post will help with that. If you share this love of history in context, then you'll just enjoy this post all the more.
One of the best ways to glean a general overview of times and places, especially with Western cultures, is via newspapers and magazines.
For example, look at 1955 Fargo-Moorhead newspapers. There, along with the news of the day (such as "Yogi Could Be 'Great'" and the odd news item regarding the police's possession of woman's lingerie), and the ads promising pork loin at 39 cents a pound and the debut of the 1956 "PowerStyle" Chrysler, you find old advertisements for films.
This Swedish film, based on the novel Sommardansen by Per Olof Ekström, was originally titled Hon dansade en sommar and was directed by Arne Mattsson after the producer decided he didn't want to "risk Ingmar Bergman's 'Neurotic Vulgarity,' and fired him".
The film starred Folke Sundquist and Ulla Jacobsson as teenage lovers who meet on a farm -- complete with a short outdoor nude swimming scene and "unambiguously implied coitus, minor aspects on which most Swedish critics did not bother to comment in their reviews of its premiere in Stockholm in December 1951."
For that matter, the sexual aspects drew little attention when Hon dansade en sommar won the coveted Golden Bear award and received more popular approval than any other entry in the Berlin Film Festival the following June (see "Tag" and "Festspiel"). Its score also won a secondary prize that year at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown under the title Elle n'a danse qu'un seul ete (see Magnan). Reviews in several European countries were favorable and in some cases definitely enthusiastic. In the United Kingdom, however, One Summer of Happiness was not allowed to be shown until 1953, and in some parts of the United States of America local authorities forbade it entirely.
Once again, the prudes enter the arena and are upset by a little bit of boob. OK, so it likely mattered that it was a story of teen boob; but only the idiot kind of boobs throw out storyline and cinema for a bare breast. My first thought upon seeing the ad was, "Hell, they had Roxys in Fargo?!" and then, vaguely remembering this film was 'notoriously naughty', I wondered how it had been allowed in theatres in such a conservative, rural, place as 1950's Fargo-Moorhead.
Was I engaging once again in "rampant presentism"? (I love tossing that comment from brave 'anonymous' in now and then; forgive me.) Perhaps I seem to be. But any good or decent historian or anthropologist will allow such reactions -- they are a natural part of human reaction -- and then examine them. To acknowledge my limited experience, knowledge & thought doesn't mean I have to stay stuck in it.
While some places were upset by the film (see info on the 1954 Memorandum of the New York State Education Department regarding this film), places I'd imagined more 'small town' (both in terms of selling tickets and the proverbial closeted attitude) were less likely to make a stink over the film. (Actually, over time the opposite picture is emerging and I'm beginning to see that larger cities are often the ones more inclined to raise such legislative stink -- but that's another musing.)
Now I know that not everyone in 'the charming conservative Midwest' was as prudish in the 50's as I had stereotyped. Point taken; lesson learned.
How anyone can lament Young's continued upset over the devastating effects of Woods on her career is astonishing. Labeled a nut-case, a phsyco; black-balled from acting with the brand of "bitch" when she was the victim; what is she supposed to do? Just say, "Hey, that's OK. Lie and treat me like crap and keep me from my career, all because of your twisted ego"?
It's true that women often get the labels while the men get off scot-free -- even if, as in this case, he had to pay a huge settlement. It's the big omission in so many stories, which leads me to believe that something, someone was at work to make sure Young would be left out in the cold & Woods ultimately win.
But what really, really pisses me off is his 'accidental,' "I am sure it is fashionable to bash the guy (yawn) and pity the poor woman."
Of Lust, Loss, Film Stars & Humor (Or, Get Me On Vince's Bus)
What I am about to discuss is a rare look into the personal life of Silent Porn Star. I do not offer it as a gratuitous glimpse of myself, but rather to illustrate the complexity of arousal and the uniqueness of celebrity status.
I have a personal fetish for a man simply because he looks a lot like one of my former lovers. This lover is now deceased. He died of a brain tumor nearly a dozen years ago. Our stormy relationship, messy separation and short-lived reunion at the time of his diagnosis (further confusing because of his choices in how to spend his time before he died) has always played tricks with my mind. Perhaps our ages have something do with this -- not just his 'too young to die' status, but my own immaturity in how to deal with it. The result is that he is not dead to me.
Instead, he lingers like any long lost lover; in the echoes of my mind he is forever frozen as he was, at the age and appearance of our last interlude, yet he remains alive, wandering about, living his life without me somewhere... The proof that I so believe this is cemented in my hell-hath-no-furry-like-a-woman-scorned anger at the thought of him -- until I remember that he's actually dead. Then I pause, trying to grapple with that fact. I rarely succeed in a real acknowledgment of this. It's an old wound, and very deep; and my denial is only apparently stronger with time.
I do not dream of this man, as some do in -- I think -- similar cases, nor think of him unprompted. However, my breath is taken away with the sight of this man -- or, more factually, the sight of this man who looks so much like him.
And it's not just that this man looks so much like him, but his voice, his humor, and even his mannerisms are so similar that I nearly cry, "Doppelgänger!"
Yet I swoon, all over again.
This celebrity who has the fated position of my fascination is Vince Vaughn, who is all over the news for the much anticipated and now released Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show; a film which, if the trailers are to believed, has my former lover 'written all over it' in terms of humor.
When I watch Vince, I am transported into some fantasy world where my lover is alive and even available for me. I am transported to the days when his arm rested around my shoulders & our laughter rang in my ears -- and, this time, I'm able to lay his darkness to rest in the security of my love. Vince is 'him' and 'he' is Vince. All is well here in this dream. (Even when this general non-celebrity caring girl will occasionally want to kick Jennifer Aniston's ass.)
Does it make me a bad person to flock to Vince's films because I long to pretend that he is my now-dead lover? If it does, then what I do at home to the Vince Vaughn movie rentals & DVD viewing is certainly not to be forgiven. Because, yes, I take the fantasies much further than anything Vince has done on screen.
Sure, Vince is the proverbial tall, dark & handsome. And he's funny. I obviously have a weakness for all of that. I'd like to believe I'd be a fan even if he didn't resemble my former love; but there's no way to know for sure now. He does; and I do.
It doesn't hurt that Dwight Yoakam is also in the film. While I'm not really a modern country music fan, Yoakam's Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose was one of songs I listened to (over & over again) during one of the many break-ups I'd had in that stormy relationship with the man who looked like Vaughn. Talk about your sentimental journey.
The fact that Wild West is a big party boy production, with men being men (read: testosterone fest), means there will be plenty more than just eye candy and my sentiments. Heaven help me, I love men, even at their pull-my-finger worst; but witty men? :swoon: Oh, how I'd love to have been on the tour bus -- flirting with them all, including Vince. (And if he dared to spurn me, Dwight can always sing Turn Me Loose again.)
(No, I won't discuss how Justin Long fits into all of this; I'll just note that he matters too.)
All I can say is that I hope to get to Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show -- but if I don't, I'll be buying the DVD release and adding it to my private viewing pile for many a stay-home and, ah, 'snuggle' night with the Wild West boys.
My point is, that 'celebrity', 'fame', and 'sex icon' status are awards not always given for tangibles which can be counted on. PR machines cannot create them; the people and personas themselves must touch us in some way. Just how they touch us is not always known. I doubt highly that somewhere in America right now there is a focus group dedicated to deciding the next leading male in film based upon his drawing power with female film watchers who've lost a lover to death. (A film, maybe; but not an actor's looks.)
The esoteric 'it' factor can't always be defined, let alone manipulated into marketing. But they still try. Even if only shoot enough would-bes at the wall and see who sticks.
I remember when as a young teen, Tiger Beat et all tried to foist Leif Garret upon us. Yeah, I loved Peter Lundy And The Medicine Hat Stallion (what young girl didn't love a horsey movie?) but I didn't fall for Leif. Peter Lundy? Maybe. However my crush didn't transfer to Leif.
Even when a friend won tickets from the local radio station to attend a Leif Garret concert, the three of us stood there chanting, "Dead!" whenever the other girls yelled, "We want Leif!" (So it was, "We want Leif dead!" --because we were clever, clever teenage girls -- gone wild!)
Perhaps if Leif resembled someone I had attachment to, he would have had a better shot. But his non-threatening white boy status (what marketers continue to thrust at the girls today) just didn't mean a damn thing to me.
While the giant PR machines try to sell us our fantasies and create celebrities they can profit from, there still is no formula they can rely on. And all of this is equally true for the stars of our pornographic dreams. It's not enough to have a big attribute & a pretty face; we want something more. And what that 'something more' is will vary so greatly that it's difficult to make a marketing equation based upon it.
Who could predict that Marilyn Monroe would have more 'it' than Jayne Mansfield? Who can say why Bettie Page lives on while millions of others have not? Who would have known that Parker Stevenson would succeed where Leif Garret failed?
Or just how & why Vince Vaughn will make a grown woman groan.
Playboy's Playmate for May, 1954 was Joanne Arnold. Her pictorial is deemed noteworthy (by me, anyway) as Arnold had a superfluous third nipple on her left breast which can be seen in several of the photos.
I do not mock Arnold and the photographs are exquisite. I am just impressed that Playboy opted to use the photos and not equate supernumerary with imperfection.
Of course, it could also have had something to do with the fact that prior to the June 1955 issue, Playboy purchased photos rather than took their own (at least for centerfolds).
I believe the centerfold photo of Arnold for the May 1954 issue was taken by John Baumgarth Company (the calendar company who had taken Monroe's famous nude), but I'm not certain who took the gorgeous pictorial. As I don't own any Playboy magazines with Joanne Arnold, I'm not even certain which, or if any, issues these photos are from. Any info is appreciated as I'm completely smitten with the underwater shots!
Not that I could afford the actual photos; eleven black and white photographs of Joanne Arnold, circa 1955, some by Lee Friedlander, sold for $3231.25 at auction in 2002. But I'd like the info anyway. (Makes one re-think the high prices of vintage Playboys, doesn't it? *wink*)
Anyway, for more on supernumerary nipples -- in the 'magic number' of three -- see The Superfluous Nipple. Otherwise, just enjoy more photos.
I was up late, into the wee hours, reading pulp novels for you dear readers (ah, the things I do for you -- watch for the reviews) and decided to flip on the TV. It won't surprise you that I'm a huge fan of Turner Classic Movies, so being the last channel I watched, that's the channel that came on. The movie had already started, so I missed the opening monologue by Robert Osborne, but quickly fell in love with Love Me or Leave Me.
The film stars Doris Day in a role -- a film -- which I had not expected. She's much more like Monroe than I had ever imagined in this film, but being so cozy from all the reading, I felt myself drifting off... Until, that is, I heard Day singing Ten Cents A Dance (YouTube). Wasn't that a Ziegfeld Follies song?
Suddenly I found myself leaping off the couch to check the Internet to verify my dim recollection of the song. Sure enough, that song is a classic -- with a classic performance by Ruth Etting (YouTube).
And that's when I discovered that Love Me or Leave Me was the film adaptation of Etting's life.
Well, Ruth Etting's life along with her manager-come-husband, Chicago gangster Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder, and her pianist, Myrl Alderman, the 'love interest' -- all of whom were still living and paid well for consulting during the creation of the film (which still took Hollywood liberties here and there). The film portrays the real life story of Etting's discovery, rise to stardom as America's Sweetheart of Song, and the jealously or love triangle, complete with shooting.
While Etting divorced "Moe the Gimp" in 1937, Moe wasn't the kind of gangster to let it go...
Moe returned to California and in a jealous rage shot and wounded Ruth's pianist and boyfriend Myrl Alderman. The subsequent sensationalized trial brought her career to a halt. Snyder was tried for kidnapping and attempted murder. The trial was a sordid scandal and an ordeal for Ruth, lasting from October through December of 1938. Snyder was found guilty and sentanced to prison. When he appealed the decision, Ruth and Myrl Alderman declined to appear in court, and he was released after a year in prison.
One of the more interesting items in our collection is a scrapbook of newspaper clippings dedicated solely to newspaper coverage of the trial. The Los Angeles Examiner had an especially talented writer, James Lee, whose writings on this trial gave an interesting snapshot into journalistic ethics adn trial coverage of the mid-30s. Lee makes a drama of the proceedings, complete with characters: Ruth Etting is "The Little Lady", her ex-husband, Moe Snyder is "The Gimp", Myrl Alderman is "The Piano Player," and that all important scene prop, the gun, is called "The Equalizer." Here, for example, is a description of "The Little Lady" on the stand.
She was dressed sedately, but expensively. She wore a knee-length gray jacket of very wooly lamb, a severe, dark blue tailored dress, and a blue felt hat that looked like the campaign headgear worn by the Union officers in the War Between the States, only with a good deal more chic, of course. (Los Angeles Examiner, 12/13/38)
This kind of writing, plus word-for-word transcription of some of the courtroom scenes, make for entertaining and sometimes painful reading on this portion of Ruth's life.
After the trail and Ruth's marriage to Myrl Alderman, the two lived in seclusion on a small ranch in Colorado Springs.
The reason this film strikes one as so much different than most Doris Day flicks likely lies in the fact that Love Me or Leave Me, made in 1955 with MGM, was the first film made by Doris Day after her 'liberation' from Warner Brothers. It's rather obvious MGM wasn't viewing Doris Day as just another funny, fluffy, cute, good girl who could sing -- because in this role Day wears sexy costumes, drinks, and has the ambitions as well as the actions of a woman who was less girl-next-door and more on the make.
Maybe saying Ruth Etting was "more on the make" seems a bit too much, but we all know Doris Day's image -- and Ruth, the torch singer, was far more sex pot.
It's said that when Mae West first saw Etting (in the Ziegfeld Follies), she said, "The curtains opened, and here was this girl. Not what you'd call a classic beauty--but unusual. She had a sex quality that seemed to mesmerize the audience. And when she finished singing, they just kind of went crazy."
The Ruth Etting we see portrayed by Doris Day is far more aggressive than most of Day's characters (before or since -- however, I'm not a Doris Day aficionado). Day's abilities as an actress and MGM's faith in Day aside, one shouldn't underestimate Day's understanding of Etting. TCM says:
A final irony about Love Me or Leave Me is the fact that the relationship between Ruth Etting and Marty Snyder had some disturbing parallels to the relationship between Doris Day and her husband Marty Melcher. Like Snyder, Melcher also controlled Day's business affairs, made creative decisions for her even though he had no musical experience, and lived through her work. When Melcher died in 1968, Day discovered that he had mismanaged her entire life savings of $20 million dollars, leaving her completely broke.
Clearly Day wouldn't know how well she understood her character until years later, but it's worth noting.
And, she knew as the filming progressed that there was something special about the movie. Most film critics consider it her very best role. She certainly should have at least been nominated for an Academy Award. But there is something strange about Academy voters. A person in a singing role is rarely taken seriously. Few musical stars have ever been been nominated for an Oscar. She worked very hard on her role. During the first seven weeks of shooting, she had only one half day off!
Cagney said of Doris: “As an actress, she perfectly illustrates my definition of good acting; just plant yourself, look the other actor in the eye, and tell him the truth. That’s what she does, all right.” He considered this film one of his top five pictures.
And the picture turned out to be a “smash.” It was nominated for six Academy Awards. Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Song, Best Original Story. It makes you wonder what Doris’s film career would have been like if she had been at MGM from the very beginning of her career.
Related:
For more info on Ruth Etting, America's Sweetheart of Song, see www.ruthetting.com, the official and family run website. (Where it seems both JLo and Angelina Jolie want to be in a remake of Love Me or Leave Me.)
Also, this page is run by a "palruth" who is researching Ruth Etting for a book.
The details of what the viewer could do, would do if given the chance, was all inside their own heads; viewers were therefore their own directors. But with porn and video the action was no longer inside our own heads, others directed it. All we had to do was add lube and work our hands.
Sometimes I am convinced that what most people are complaining about when they say they hate porn, even wanting to restrict it further, is not that they are against publications or films which are solely for sexual arousal and release but rather that they are unmoved by it. Porn has in many cases removed the imagination of the viewer, directed us not as we desire, but forced us to see things which remove the mystery. We no longer have time to be seduced by the people before us before we are tossed into the action; graphic images of genitalia spread across our screens before we've even decided we'd take him or her home.
I'd love to hear what you have to say, so if you promise to go read it & comment, I promise to post more images later today...
Xavier Cugat: Creative Cool-Cat With All The Kittens
Xavier Cugat, the Rhumba King, is as known for his love life as he is his Latin rhythms.
A notorious womanizer, he married five times:
#1 Rita Montaner #2 Carmen Castillo #3 Lorraine Allen #4 Abbe Lane (In his bands for many years, until their divorce.) #5 Charo (She & Cugat were the first couple to marry at Caesars Palace when it opened in Las Vegas in 1966.)
Cugat also has many film credits, mainly for playing himself.
From Stage Door Canteen (1943) here's Lina Romay (not this Lina Romay) with Cugat & orchestra, performing She's a Bombshell from Brooklyn:
Lina Romay sings Antonio in the motion picture The Heat's On (1944)with the Xavier Cugat Orchestra.
Cugat supposedly gave Rita Hayworth one of her first jobs, and so later appeared with her in You Were Never Lovelier, but I remember him from so many of Esther Williams films, including the remake of Annette Kellerman's Neptune's Daughter.
Via A Damn Find Product's post we learn that Xavier Cugat was also a talented illustrator. Exhibit A, cover of Game & Gossip, 1932:
Exhibit B, Fandango - Dance Rhythms - IV (from Game & Gossip, 1932):
For more names, see the list of names and the key; but note the following: Dietrich could not even pose in Cugat's imagination with Garbo, and note how powerful women were -- their names & personalities still awe.
That Cugat would was an illustrator shouldn't be shocking. Golden Age of illustration notwithstanding, Cugat was a bit of a money-grubbing sell-out jack-of-all-trades who's been quoted as saying, "I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve." According to Solid!:
Cugat was often depicted in publicity photos holding a chihuahua and a pipe, even though he didn't smoke. He was never the one to miss out on a good business opportunity, however. He cashed in on this image and began selling his own line of pipes. He also started a chihuahua breeding business which featured documentation certifying that the dogs were Cugat dogs. Cugat never met a marketing deal he didn't like. Over the years he hawked a diverse line of products, including cigarette lighters and shirts, and also owned several Los Angeles-area restaurants. In addition Cugat was a talented caricaturist. His work appeared in newspapers, magazines and galleries around the world. During the 1920s he worked as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times newspaper while playing music at night.
Perhaps this is why Cugat was never without beautiful women.
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.)
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!
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
While Bamforth & Co is remembered for their "saucy seaside postcards" (postcards with bawdy & risque captions sold on promenades and piers to Victorian English folk on vacation 'seaside'), the story doesn't begin there - that's the end, so to speak.
James Bamforth was a photographer in the 1840's and he founded the company in founded the company in 1870 (in Holmfirth, Yorkshire), specializing in Life Model lantern slides.
James Bamforth specialised in the mass production of photographic "Life Model" slides, often based on religious themes or moral instruction. He was no doubt influenced by the nonconformist, chapel based religion of that area, so it is somewhat ironic that the company should become more generally famous in the 20th Century for saucy postcards.
Bamforth built a studio in Holmfirth, and designed and painted the backcloth's and sets. Members of his family and other local people posed for the photographer for little or no pay. In many ways the Life model slides were made like early movies which they predated by 20 years or more. It is not surprising that Bamforth's became involved with movie making. ".....he chose homely themes, due to his use of neighbours as models and sitters...Thus it came about, to his lasting credit, that the simple characters of his stories combined with the perfect naturalness of the leading figures in them, has endeared his life model sets to millions of children and adults." Photogram February 1899
Many of the slides illustrated hymns and other popular songs. With each slide depicting a verse, they were designed for audiences to sing along. They were such a great success that Bamforth build a factory in 1898 and began mass production.
Since the magic lantern slides told simple tales, and Bamforth had everything required -- a skilled photographer, studio & production space, a pool of performers, costumes, and experienced in plot construction -- it seemed only natural that Bamforth would begin making films.
Possibly in response to this expertise, Riley Brothers of Bradford, who had been involved with moving picture technology since 1896 and had already begun to make films of their own, commissioned Bamforth in 1898 to produce further films to be sold exclusively to purchasers of their equipment. Although the exact business relationship between the two firms and the production dates of the films remains unknown, the subsequent advertisement of these productions in a 1903 Hepworth catalogue as 'RAB' films acknowledges their partnership.
Some of his films were inspired by the magic lantern slides, including the themes and stories themselves. While I haven't been able to see many of Bamforth's films (Screenonline only allows Brits in schools to do so), it seems the morality lessons have taken on a more cheeky air.
Two must-see movies are:
Women's Rights (1899): Gossiping housewives find themselves in an awkward predicament.
Lover Kisses Husband (1900): Comedy short in which an adulterous tryst is foiled by a cunning husband.
In 1914, the war itself affected both film making and the focus of Bamforth & Co. The popularity of lantern slides had dimmed with the popularity of films, but movie production slowed due to World War I, and Bamforth & his sons focused on the growing market for picture postcards.
Not surprisingly, the sentimental was popular, and some of Bamforth's song & hymn lantern slides were converted into postcard series. Often called Bamforth Song Sets these cards are highly collected themselves, and these collectors consider the postcards the best characterizations of the soul of Bamforth & Co.
But with war also comes the need for comic relief, and while the English "seaside holiday" may have been an invention of the Victorians, the seaside postcards became extremely popular during and after the First World War.
So much so, that by the end of the war Bamforth & Co had moved away not only from the sentimental but from photographic images and the company began to really focus on the artist drawn risque comic postcards.
He said: "We never publish anything obscene, we know where to draw the line. But the more vulgar the card, the better it sells."
And so it went, for decades.
Until the 1980's when James Bamforth's grandson retired and the company was sold to Scarborough printing firm ETW Dennis. In September 2000 ETW Dennis went into receivership and the Bamforth name and the copyrights to thousands of designs were bought by Ian Wallace, owner of The Beatles Shop, for an undisclosed sum. Now Bamforth designs can be found in new limited edition sets and licensed as Wallace plans to entice a younger audience who has never seen these gems:
"It's the humour of Carry On films and Benny Hill - they're just plain daft."
However, not everyone sees the images as a "bit of fun". Critics in the past have branded them sexist relics, best left in the past.
"OK some people think they're a bit sexist, but I think they're just fun," said Mr Wallace.
"Anyone who takes the images too seriously and doesn't laugh at them is a bit sad."
He is adamant that he can find a new audience willing to appreciate the cards' humour.
"I think there's a lot of young people who haven't seen this kind of stuff," he said.
"The images have been out of the public eye and hopefully they will come across as being fresh and fun."
Facets Multi-Media, Inc., a non-profit media arts organization located in Chicago, recently had a week long Andy Warhol film retrospective and you can catch clips of Andy Warhol at their blog.
That's where I found this gem:
While Warhol says virtually nothing (and is rather cute in his smug silence), I blame the interviewer for asking simple "yes or no" questions. You'll never get anywhere with those.
Its themes were more seriously, intensely, and disturbingly frank. Very dark but very realistic. And it explores fetishes filmmakers still shirk from.
I had no idea that the 'very dark' (and perhaps 'fetishes') referred to yet another Nazi theme... I am not trying to beat a dead horse here, and even toyed with not posting this (at least for awhile), but this is from a slightly different angle than my recent posts (1, 2)...
The story line revolves around Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), a concentration camp survivor, who runs into her former captor and lover, SS officer Max (Dirk Bogarde), who is now a night porter at the Vienna hotel she is staying at with her husband.
The film has been considered everything from tasteless to arousing, from blaming the victims to missing its potential, and, of course, as anything but feminist.
The film is aging well. Now people are seeing more than the 'potential' but seeing that perhaps it has realized them.
Where once Robert Ebert said, "I can imagine a serious film on this theme—on the psychological implications of shared guilt and the identification of the slave with the master—but "The Night Porter" isn't such a film," now others are suggesting that the film has in fact done so.
Perhaps this is still a case of 'too soon' and as the years pass and taboo of showing Nazis as anything other than evil (and therefore incapable of having any real emotion, or sex we can imagine as pleasurable for another) the film will grow in it's credibility.
You might not think that Sweater Girl sounds like a Halloween trick-or-treat post, but it is.
This 1942 Paramount Picture, starring Eddie Bracken, June Preisser and Betty Jane Rhodes, isn't all campus kitsch. Sure it starts all Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland with college kids trying to put on a show, but somewhere over this rainbow it twists into a murder mystery. Ah, make that a musical murder mystery.
Its cast—all of very tender years and much too immature for shocks of this sort—starts off by preparing that inevitable musical show but become involved in murders, babbling idiots and homicidal insanity in a plot which is nearly as confused as a Times Square traffic jam at curtain time.
However, the song "I Don't Want To Walk Without You" (words by Frank Loesser, music by Jule Styne) went on to become a pop hit -- thanks due to a young and rising star by the name of Frank Sinatra.
"This film's mixture of comedy, mystery and music was handled so skillfully that one reviewer was moved to comment that Sweater Girl was exceptional in its avoidance of the "usual artificiality of college pictures' and therefore contained the "spark of reality."
When you click you get the movie answer, which is quite obviously this blog's name plugged in for the word 'you' in the famous line from the movie Casablanca. (Which, by the way, would actually look good on a tee, as shown here -- it's one case of well-done advertising for the custom T-Shirts @ Spreadshirt.)
One of those lessons is that the Holocaust experience of Jews and others persecuted in Arab lands are not "untold stories" but rather "lost stories." Recall, for example, this scene from the movie Casablanca, in which a Gestapo officer urges the devoted wife of the Czech underground leader to convince her husband to return to Paris under German protection.
Major Strasser: There are only two other alternatives for him.
Ilse: What are they?
Major Strasser: It is possible the French authorities will find a reason to put him in the concentration camp here.
Ilse: And the other alternative?
Major Strasser: My dear Mademoiselle, perhaps you have observed that in Casablanca, human life is cheap. Good night, Mademoiselle.
When Warner Bros. released the movie, in December 1942, filmgoers did not scratch their heads at this passing reference to French "concentration camps" in Morocco. The existence of these camps — much like the terrible fate of Jews more generally — was known, certainly among those who were interested in knowing. Somehow, over the last sixty years, those stories have been lost.
The fact that such a reference in the film went unnoticed by both Gracie and myself (and when prompted to think about it, it would have seemed odd -- like the movie was inaccurate) was proof of the author's words -- and a reminder that we do indeed romanticize the past, as I had posted.
Here's a movie dedicated to the message that love doesn't conquer all -- especially in times of war. Its bitter-sweet message has been so romanticized that the reality of war and Nazis is lost in the swoon factor of a man and a woman giving up personal happiness for the greater good.
So while I may be in error interpreting the old Nazi comic the other 'ugly' facts about the racist humor in that magazine still exist and so my main point stands quite well.
I Was A Man Half-man, Half-woman ...Which way to go?
The Dark World of the Trans-sexual
A Barry Mahon Production
This 1967 film is also known as I Was A Man: The True Story of Ansa Kansas an Hermaphrodite. According to Chateau Vulgaria, the film was screened at the Finnish Film Archive in 2006, but I've yet to see a release on either video or DVD. (Trailers can be found on a few DVDs such as the Run Swinger Run! / Sex Club International Double Feature and Something Weird's Twisted Sex Vol 01 (which is what Chateau Vulgaria discusses in the link above).
Having produced a number of Flynn and Gina Lollobrigida pictures, as well as a considerable output of children's programs, Mahon established The Production Machine, a high-tech film production company in Hollywood, making motion pictures for theatrical and television release. Mahon was the first movie producer to adapt and apply computer technology (as well spreadsheet applications, such as MultiPlan) to the breakdown, scheduling, budgeting and financial analysis of feature-length motion pictures and movies-of-the-week for Columbia Pictures.
According to producer/director James Jaeger, who knew Mahon well and worked with him, Mahon assured him that Errol Flynn was not gay in the least. He might have tried it once, but then Errol tried everything at least once.
The part played by Steve McQueen in the movie, The Great Escape (1963), was loosely based upon Barry Mahon.
You may know Jaime Pressly from the sitcom My Name Is Earl, where she stars as Joy, but she's appeared in several Playboy publications, including nudes:
Playboy's Book of Lingerie Vol. 58 November 1997 - Michael Bisco, pages 56-59 Playboy's Book of Lingerie Vol. 62 July 1998 - pages 32-33 Playboy's Nudes December 1998 - pages 16-17 Playboy's Sexy 100 February 2003
She even made the cover of Playboy in February, 2004.
Her film debut was in 1997's cable-friendly erotic thriller "Poison Ivy: The New Seduction" and posing for Playboy that same year made Pressly's body far more famous than her body of work. Still, those who looked past the film's disproportionate amount of nudity would find that Pressly made the most of her role and brought an eerie coolness to the part of Violet that proved she had more to offer.
Unlike some girls, Presley was able to take nude photos and spread them into a career instead of ending one. A career that in 2001 even Playboy remarked upon -- without mentioning that she'd appeared nude in their publications. Which seems odd, but what do I know?
Recently Pressly had a baby and apparently she was clueless about the 'joys' of pregnancy. However, Jamie clearly isn't an idiot. Along with her celebrity status she's started a clothing line, J'aime, to continue to make her hay when that sunshine fades. It seems a bit ironic for a gal who turned taking her clothes off into a career to start whoring clothes, but well, if we could all buy a body like hers, then Playboy wouldn't be in business would it.
It takes a savvy woman to realize she can make a fortune off dressing those of us who wish we could look like her naked.
She may play white-trash on TV, play it in photos, but she's certainly anything but.
If someone would have asked me while I was growing up what the connection between Tiny Tim and gold digging was, I would have felt the answer lie in anyone who dated him. (Later on I found Tiny Tim to be nearly as sexy as Emo Philips -- don't mock, he got Judy Tenuta. Which is yet more proof that smart sexy women dig men smart enough to be funny. OK, and it's proof of my age. Moving on.)
Thanks to Fabulon for this delightful video for Constance Bennett Cosmetics, featuring (who else?) but Constance Bennett in what can best be described as a kitschy pitch for faux glamour. (I'm not saying the stuff wasn't wonderful; but the vintage advertorial is hardly realistic -- which is just one reason I love it!)
Another reason to love this old promo clip is Constance herself.
Constance was the eldest of the three daughters born to stage matinee idol Richard Bennett and actress/literary agent Adrienne Morrison in 1904. The middle sister was the least known sister, Barbara; she had a brief bit of fame as a dancer but is most known as the mother of talk show host Morton Downey. The youngest sister was Joan, who also found great film success; both Constance and Joan were enormously popular in the 30's, featured on the covers and inside pages of the popular movie magazines.
While Constance was the oldest, sister Joan joked of her sister, "With all of Constance's juggling of dates over the years, I started out as the youngest, then became her twin and finally wound up as the oldest sister."
The Bennetts were every bit as distinguished and as spirited another theatrical family, the Barrymores, which they were friends with. Richard was famous for having battles with critics of the day, writing scathing letters not only when his his performances were panned but when they were praised too. In fact, the entire Bennett family was known for their arguments with the press and Constance and Joan were no exception.
Constance may have gotten her start in film in one of daddy's films, but it was clear that both her beauty and talent would allow her to shine in her own right. Constance would appear in 57 films, several of which are considered true film classics.
Standouts include George Cukor's What Price Hollywood? (a 1932 early version of A Star Is Born, with Bennett in the role later played by Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand), Topper (with Cary Grant in 1937) and the musical comedy Moulin Rouge (1934, in which Constance's singing voice is more than decent). Another fun film is Ladies in Love (1936), starring Janet Gaynor, Loretta Young, Don Ameche and Tyrone Power (in a small part which made him so popular that the studio groomed him for greater stardom). While this film doesn't exactly showcase Constance it is based on the play Three Girls by Ladislaus Bus-Fekete and the film's storyline would became studio standard, inspiring inspiring How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).
I urge you to watch whatever Constance Bennett films you can find -- just note that most of Contances' best work was done Pre-Code and that it looks like the icky code put the kibosh on her just as her star was rising. (Dammit!)
There are a number of sites which will list and review Bennett's films, so I'm going to dish on other matters, including, of course, her love life.
As mentioned, Constance Bennett, like the rest of her clan, feuded with the press and it is said that she 'enjoyed lawsuits'. Constance was never called "Connie" and was often described lovingly as "a steamroller" and a "headstrong girl" -- which might appear to be less than flattering, but it is quite apparent that Constance was intelligent, confident, determined and assertive. And all in a charming manner.
As her son, Peter Plant, said in an interview with Eve Golden (Films of the Golden Age, Issue No 11, Winter, 1997), "Today, a lot of people are horribly aggressive rather than pleasantly assertive." (Perhaps if you read the words "headstrong girl" and feel it is unattractive, you should ponder Plant's words.)
In the mid-1930s she developed her own line of cosmetics. As Plant says, "the cosmetics were a good, quality product, but at some point she gave someone a license or franchise for it, and he ended up putting nothing but lanoline in the jars, and it ruined the product." All that remains is a deliriously bizarre promotional short she made, which was released as Constance Bennett's Daily Beauty Rituals and shows up on TCM as filler once in a while. Constance also became involved in Fashion Frocks, "a dress line from the Midwest on which she put her name -- mail order dresses in women's magazines." That too failed. One of her drawbacks was that "she was very smart, but would not take advice -- she had a number of good advisors, but she had the idea that she was capable of doing things where she was in over her head."
Not taking advice, being headstrong, seems to have also had its up-side -- especially when dealing with studio heads.
While negotiating her contract with Warner Brothers, Constance insisted that Jack Warner pay both her agents fee and income tax along with a salary which would make her the highest-paid player up to that time ($300,000 for just two films).
Constance was also a highly skilled poker player -- one who was not just permitted to play in the "men only" games but most often won them too. It is said that when someone commented that Constance could not take her money with her, her father said, "If Constance can't take it with her, then she won't go."
You know the saying, 'lucky at cards, unlucky in love', well that might have been true for Constance. Or maybe she just loved to gamble; she was married five times.
First, in 1921, she eloped with Chester Hirst Moorehead (the son of a Chicago surgeon). Claiming that the marriage took place on a dare, she had the marriage annulled in 1923.
Next, in 1925 (the year her parents divorced), she eloped with millionaire socialite Philip Morgan Plant (son of Mrs. Mae Caldwell Manwaring Plant Hayward Rovensky and thus the adopted son of adopted son of steamship/railroad tycoon Morton F. Plant). When the couple divorced in 1929, Constance was awarded a $1 million settlement (consider this foreshadowing, folks).
In 1931 she made headlines when she married Henri le Bailly, the Marquis de La Coudraye de La Falaise (a French nobleman and film director who was one of Gloria Swanson's former husbands). About this time Constance brought back from Europe a three-year-old boy, Peter Bennett Plant, whom she said she'd adopted. Bennett and le Bailly founded Bennett Pictures Corp. and produced a couple of films. (Constance would also produce Paris Underground, released in 1945, for a total count of three films produced -- which is apparently how she makes it as a SIMPP member [Kindly disregard this info on the cosmetic & clothing companies; I'd believe the son over this info.]) Constance and the Marquis divorced in 1940.
In 1941, Constance married actor Gilbert Roland. Though Bennett and Roland would divorce in 1946, they would have two daughters: Lorinda (a sculptress) and Christina (aka Gyl Roland, an actress and image consultant). However when Philip Morgan Plant (husband number two) died in '41, a funny thing happened...
A large trust fund was established to benefit any descendants of Plant, and Constance went to battle saying that her adopted son, Peter Bennett Plant, actually was the natural child of both herself and the deceased Plant, born after the divorce and kept hidden in order to ensure that the child's biological father would not get custody. The story may sound a bit strange, but Constance won the claim for her son. According to Time in November of 1943:
Last week, when Plant's mother and his show-girl widow were fighting a court battle with Miss Bennett over the trust fund, she promised that if she got to the witness stand she would give a complete account of her life with Plant. The matter was settled out of court. Miss Bennett picked up her baggage and doll and returned to her theatrical mutton.
Later in 1946, the same year as her divorce from Roland, Constance married US Air Force Colonel John Theron Coulter (who would become later Brigadier General). They remained married until her death in 1965 and when Coulter passed in '95, he was buried beside her.
After her marriage to the colonel, Constance concentrated her efforts on the stage, radio and with providing relief entertainment to US troops (earning military honors for her services). She did return one last time to film in 1966's Madame X.
Playing Lana Turner's rich-bitch mother-in-law in the campy classic Constance looked frighteningly thin. This due to cancer, which no one but her immediate family knew about. Shortly after filming was completed, Bennett collapsed and died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 60. Madame X was released after her death.
In that 1997 interview, Plant this to say about his mother's work and her death:
"It was a grueling production experience," recalls Plant. "But my mother, knowing she would soon be gone, but being true to her profession, got through it fine."
"I'm sure her cancer was caused by smoking too bloody many Chesterfield cigarettes for too many years," says Plant, "and also due to taking massive injections of hormones in the 1950s to preserve her figure and make her appear younger than she was. I could name several of her female star peers who met the same fate pursuing their youthfulness."
Constance died on July 24, 1965, in the Watson Army Hospital in Fort Dix, New Jersey and as Eve Golden wrote:
By that time, Joan had surpassed her in reputation as an actress; Constance was recalled in her obituaries as more of a "glamor girl." Not long before she died, she said of her professional longevity, "If there's a secret to it, it's working like a beaver to be happy. What I mean is, I've always been interested in everything I did. When you're that interested in anything, you're happy.
I'm still interested in you, Constance. And I hope that makes us both happy.
The story is the insect's-eye view of the sexual antics in town and Olympia has a hot excerpt, and the download is only $1 -- in fact, all downloads are so cheap that I feel a spree comin' on...
Vanessa Anne Hudgens, star of the Disney made-for-kids TV movie hit "High School Musical," is under fire because of a nude photo circulating on the Internet. The photo, shown below, was taken for a boyfriend. According to Reuters:
A representative for actress Vanessa Hudgens confirmed on Friday that the image is of the 18-year-old performer. The picture shows her smiling and standing naked directly in front of the camera in what appears to be a bathroom.
"This was a photo which was taken privately," Hudgens' representative said in a statement. "It is a personal matter and it is unfortunate that this has become public."
Kudos for admitting it -- even makes me think that Vanessa is a real person rather than one of those Disney-bots they churn out. (Though we all know there will be hell to pay from the corporate rat mouse.)
What strikes me about this, and is the reason for posting it, is that 'we' are all so freaked out by actions like this.
The photo isn't horrible -- isn't in my mind 'porn' in the nasty way even if it's clearly designed to turn someone on. It's a very natural thing to do. Those of us who have taken such photos raise your hands -- and the rest of you are liars (or have some intimacy or body issues).
Why do we become so upset when celebrities are discovered to have lives, including sexual ones? Why do we kid ourselves that they are not human beings with sex urges (among other things) -- even while we admire, covet and lust after them? People are people.
Why do we freak-the-hell-out when we hear a celeb is a sexual human being?
Yeah, sure she's a product of Disney, marketed for tween consumption, but even then these are people (made of marketing, not in some Disney lab) and so they have lives.
According the the press, "some parents" were outraged:
"She's damaged," Renee Rollins-Greenberg, a Los Angeles mother of two, told Reuters. "She's got this teeny-bop audience, young pre-teens and younger, who are admiring her and thinking she's this wonderful, pure innocent person. Eighteen is awfully young for this kind of display."
"I'm devastated because I have an 8-year-old for which I now have to have an explanation," said another Los Angeles-area mother, Rosie Konkel. "She's always looked at this character as a very smart and proper young lady."
Damaged? Wow. That's overly harsh.
This mom thinks 18 is awfully young for this kind of display? Hey, does she remember what she did at 18? And even if this mom had no sexuality of her own at that age, does she forget we send our 18 year old babies off to fight wars? Eighteen: Young enough to die, but not allowed to be nude.
To the other mom, the one who is devastated at having to give an explanation to her daughter, I have to wonder how her 8 year old would even know? Is she unsupervised on the Internet? If she's so precious, why don't you supervise and control the media she views? And why would this need an explanation anyway? Why don't "some parents" teach their kids the following:
1) An actor or actress is not the role they play. They are human beings who may have little or nothing in common with the characters they play.
2) Adults have the right to participate in and make their own decisions regarding sexuality.
3) Having sex or posing nude does not mean you are not "a smart and proper young lady" (or gentleman). or "damaged". (Heck, posing nude doesn't automatically mean you are having sex, for that matter.)
So, get over it, America. (And that includes you too, Disney.)
Does This Film Come With A Vibrator? I Sure Need One...
Thom at Fabulon has posted this lovely video for me, so I'm sharing it here -- but don't just watch it and run away, please stay for the notes at the end! (I wish you could hear me narrating as I view it, but since you can't, notes at the end will have to do.)
And do watch all the way to the end -- the way it's been edited, the narrator's face is priceless!
SPS commentary:
Why block the eyes of the wanton fleshpots? Oh, the added mystery only makes me want them more!
This whole piece makes me want to fuck! Seriously, you should have heard me begging for more photos, larger photos, color photos -- especially with the small b/w bdsm images.
Georgey-boy is right; seeing these images, I've never been the same...
Oh, lordy, he mentions the images on slick pages -- oh, the love lust I have for slick pages. (Surely he makes this remark because he knows that novices will use the pages -- but I beg of thee, please don't! This will ruin your magazine!)
Good old George Putnam is horrified that the nudist publications have, dare I say it?! -- Oh, yes, I will! -- "paid professional models!" (Can you see me sitting here, hand wrist at my forehead in shock and horror?!)
Redundancy aside, George, what of your own "paid professional" status as anti-smut monger? If the models have been paid to pose and spread, is getting paid to pose as a narrator and spread your propaganda somehow more moral?
Think I'm being a bit harsh on ol' Georgy? Here's his bio as a paid "reporter, broadcaster and commentator" (at "92 years young" -- insert chuckle here). Note how Georgey has "had more than a passing relationship with the four great silver screen vamps - Theda Bera, Clara Bow, Tallulah Bankhead and Mae West."
Yeah, that's a man who is anti "Perversion for Profit". I bet those ladies have or would have hit him upside the head.
I know I want to.
Double the irony points: Putnam is from Breckenridge, Minnesota -- as in Myra Breckenridge, the fabulous and controversial film which starred Mae West.
PS This 1965 propaganda film was financed by Charles Keating, the felon.
A Review of Only Two Can Play/That Uncertain Feeling, By Kingsley Amis
That Uncertain Feeling, the hilarious novel by Kingsley Amis, now filmed as Only Two Can Play, starring Peter Sellers, Mai Zetterling, Virginia Maskell. A British Lion Production. A Four Square Book, The New English Library, Ltd., #229. (September, 1962, reprinting of the work published in August, 1955.)
The back of the paperback says, "When this novel was first published it was praised everywhere for its boldness, comedy and style." One of the reviewer quotes used reads, "I must warn readers that this book speaks with the shocking directness about the way of a man with a woman" (John Betjeman, Daily Telegraph). If this is true, I cannot speak to it as I am a woman. However, the book is about a man and told from his perspective (as well as was written by a man), so 'tis more than likely.
The plot is simple. John Lewis is a married assistant librarian in the Welsh town of Aberdarcy, and he and his wife (jean) of just past 5 years are in the dreaded rut, complete with young children and money issues. One morning a wealthy and attractive married woman, Liz, comes into the library. It soon becomes clear that Liz would like to check out more than some books. What complicates the plot, making it more than just the traditional fantasies of a married man (a la the Seven year Itch), is that Liz's husband, Vernon, is in a position to give John a promotion (and a much desired raise).
What fascinates is that John is a rather moral fellow. At first he only believes the attraction to Liz is that she is female fodder for a bit of fantasy and that in fact, she's not (nor would be) interested in him. While finding her attractive, he is also somewhat repelled -- he rather dislikes her position of privilege. (This also speaks of a common human reaction to insecurity -- to loath and disdain prior to being loathed or disdained -- and the reaction to such thoughts, such as to covet.)
But eventually Liz corners John, and he gives in to first one kiss. Then another meeting, and another kiss -- the sort of kiss which is, as Liz says, a "commitment" on his part to further activities...
John's moral reaction isn't exactly as expected -- nor cliched. Perhaps this is the "shocking directness" of a man regarding women that we've been warned about. Whatever; it makes for great reading. This is a passage which illuminates John's thoughts as well as the novel's original title of That Uncertain Feeling:
How, then, was I going to spend the next hour, or rather, adding Jean's usual surcharge, hour and a half? In defending myself, presumably, against a certain feeling. Such defence was never easy, because of its habit of confusing itself with the feeling. How to define this feeling? Depression? Not a bad shot. Boredom? Oh yes. A slight twinge, too, eh, of uneasiness and inert, generalised, lust? Yes, indeed. The centre of it might be called boredom, but not the same sort as the boredom which was fond of attacking me in slack periods in the Library. That was bemused, trance-like, even vaguely pleasurable, like the drowsiness it so often merged into; this, to-night, was restless. It had already stopped me from starting to read, it would shortly drive me to the window again as if I expected someone to call (though I didn't and no one would), it would, later on, make me want to go out to the pub, at the same time informing me that it wouldn't be worth it, that I shouldn't like it there and would at once start wanting to come home.
Yes, it was all very difficult. Curious, too, was the way something so efficient should be so hard to define. But, having for once tried to define it instead of letting it sneak up and jump on my back, I felt a little cheered.
John then turns to his hidden girly magazine.
It represented a full-figure girl wearing a curious yachting costume consisting mainly of a peaked cap, a pair of seaman's boots, and a small, inefficient-looking telescope. Apart from these, she wore two pieces of cloth with a nautical stripe, one covering a good deal of the lower half of her breasts, the other an almost irreducible minimum at the crotch. An expression of guarded joviality was on her face. This jolly skipper, I read in a panel near her right boot, is curvesome Marietta DuForgue, now vacationing at Las Palmas. The dimensions of this trim craft are 38" for'ard, 23" amidships, and 36" aft. What wouldn't you give for a chance of getting her to heave to. Shaking my head over these vulgarities, in particular the maladroit change of image from 'skipper' to 'craft', I went on looking at the photograph.
I didn't just include that section for the giggles. I think it clearly illustrates how John intellectually processes, even to say to himself, "this isn't good," but how he continues anyway. What we know isn't always what we do. And sometimes, we'll accept this lowering of our standards because we don't know what else to do with ourselves, our uncertain feelings. Despite certain knowledge of 'bad' we find ourselves not sure how to be 'good.' And sex, lust, emotions, they aren't solved or sated with our intellectual knowledge.
So our boy John struggles with his uncertain feeling. He has some ambiguity regarding adultery with Liz, but he is most uncomfortable with the idea of Liz fixing the job promotion. Not only is this sort of political, who-you-know game completely against his philosophy, one of the others up for the job is a coworker named Ieuan who in John's opinion, needs the additional pay even more than John. Eventually, though, John and Liz do it. (Not a very erotic bit and I should say that none of this book is really intended to be erotic.)
Immediately afterwards, John realizes that Liz could have been any woman really. And if that's anti-climactic, he's most upset about the job interview being fixed to favor him. He tells Liz to stop her plans, stop her husband, and chucks it all away to return home to Jean, literally and figuratively.
Jean's response as betrayed wife is very real and honest. (This impresses me because the book is touted as such a man's point of view.) Jean doesn't really care that John's screwed Liz because to her, the real pain and loss occurred when she realized that John wanted Liz more than he wanted her. The consummation of his lust is not the real issue.
However, Amis via Jean, carries the attitude and reaction to betrayal even further -- and I think even more realistically.
In the middle of their heated discussion of the situation, John's betrayal with Liz, Jean tells John that she doesn't want to hear about it. The details are unimportant, what's done is done, no need to say anything more -- but of the job? Well, Jean has a lot to say about that.
You couldn't just do it and forget about it, not you, you had to make a bloody fuss, so you told her what to do with the job she'd landed you. Don't talk to me about Ieuan, you don't care what happens to Ieuan, or his wife. You forgot you were married to me, though, that's what makes me so mad. If it had just been your job you were turning down, fair enough, you could do as you liked. But it wasn't just your job, it was my job as well, and the kids' too. But you didn't care about that, you'd got to make your stand and be bloody sensitive. Well, I hope you're satisfied.
She continues to tell John the usual, like he's sleeping alone. And when he tries to kiss her, she slugs him. But then Jean gets a second wind.
What you'd better do is to make up to Elizabeth again quick. Get her to take you away for the week-end or something. I don't care how you do it, but make sure the affair's on again. And then tell her you want that job after all, see? You didn't mean what you said, you acted hastily, something like that. You'll know what to say, I bet. But you get that job back, else I'll stop cooking for you --
Jean even lies and says she's had an affair (with a poet John cannot stand) when she has not.
John is devastated. To sleep alone a night, or many, is likely not anything unexpected let alone unwarranted. But when your wife says she'll stop being your wife in all ways... Well, there's real damage done.
John's hit bottom. Early that night, after Liz and he do it on the beach, not only did John end things with Liz but her husband told John in no uncertain terms to stay away. John's potential promotion isn't exactly something within his control -- and that means losing Jean.
In the end, John is offered the job but he declines and Ieuan gets it. John, Jean and the kids start over in the town where John grew-up. There, at a party, we find John being hit-on by another attractive, yet married, woman. She'd like to leave the party and have a hook-up asap. John hurriedly makes an excuse to the hostess and then quickly makes for the door.
Jean, who was nearby the hostess and so heard John's excuse and saw his departure, catches up with him outside. John tells her that he had to get away from that woman. They smile and walk off together.
Into the sunset? Perhaps. John seems a wiser man, and Jean clearly will keep a watchful eye.
The book is an interesting look at the deterioration of a marriage -- but not a cliched one. Jean's no over-bearing shrew, John's no moral-free playboy, and neither is the anti-Christ. While nothing in particular drives a wedge between them (of the sort that Hollywood would contrive to create a plot anyway), what makes this all work is the interior monologue and subtle actions of John Lewis.
His thoughts are not unrealistic; his actions not so flamboyant. He has morals, but sometimes his intellect makes things a bit too tidy sometimes. He's just a guy with that uncertain feeling, in a marriage with that uncertain feeling, and opportunity is thrust to meet his lust and what's a guy to do? His decisions are not well-made, but in reading how he arrived at those decisions you can see how too easily this can happen. Suddenly you find yourself in a cluster-fuck. That's pretty human. And the excellent part is that all the other characters, trapped inside the cluster or outside of it, are all realistically human too. Right down to the habitually cheating Liz, her seemingly distracted (or tolerant) husband, and the supporting characters such as Ieuan and the Lewis' downstairs neighbors.
Solid stuff. Solid vintage stuff.
One complication for me was the English -- not just the language (which does differ, you chaps -- for example, I didn't know what Jerries were), but much of the book deals with what I can only presume is the classic battle of the English versus the Welsh. While actual Welsh spelling isn't used (thank gawd), some of the terms and nearly all of the jabs about being Welsh or English were over my head. This does not render the novel worthless, but means one really has to pay more attention than I had assumed the paperback would require. It really is a good read.
As noted, the work was turned into a film, Only Two Can Play, in 1962, apparently with the usual book-to-film changes, including a slightly different ending. It starred Peter Sellars as John Lewis, Virginia Maskell as Jean Lewis, Mai Zetterling as Liz (Elizabeth) Gruffydd-Williams, and Richard Attenborough as Vernon Gruffydd-Williams.
The BBC also made this a television series in 1985, staring Denis Lawson and Sheila Gish, under the original novel title, That Uncertain Feeling.
I'm so giddy that I can barely contain myself. I mean, I used to get off to his porn for goodness' sake! And now little 'ol me gets to be in a real live scene with him???
Apparently the shoot went swimmingly. And the star-struck-starlet said, "I was totally shaking in my boots around Lex and I made the confession - on film! - that I had a little "thing" for him."
So I wonder, did she get his autograph? Maybe it's just me, but I'd think nothing of asking a porn star to sign a porno box... After what he did to her box, how 'rude' could it be? *wink*
Woman [In the audience]: I'm back in school at DePaul, working a lot with anthropology and the idea of sex and how it empowers women, etc. Basically, answering this lady in asking you, I guess, the idea of sex, anthropologically speaking, is a power dynamic and there are many women whose agenda has been to, because they felt wounded, because they had felt raped or pillaged or whatever we go through in our society, that sex is kinda scary. So I think what you are up against is a bunch of fear from this society that's been told that the power dynamic is really that and you're trying to say "trust"-that the power dynamic can be really healthy and it can be good and so what if there's somebody in bed that's stronger, one weaker, what the gap is. How do you guys feel about that?
Becky: I think it's partly an uneducation or an unsocialization and I think that really in our society, porn might not be fully accepted. I think that's how it is. But I definitely think the communication needs to happen, more so than it does now in our culture. I think that the communication between parents and their children needs to be more open, the sex education that happens in the schools. People on a base level need to be more comfortable with their sexuality, in general. Before you get to whether or not you want to watch porn, it's like you have to be OK with who you are, OK with your body. From my perspective, I think one of the common problems feminist pornography has from getting out there is that women don't even think that they can watch pornography and that it's not even made for them, so why would they even go there? So I think, though, at its base, it has to do with education.
The best era for women on screen was not the forties, as has been commonly assumed. The best era had nothing to do with ladies with big shoulder pads and bad hairdos watching their boyfriends light two cigarettes at the same time. It had nothing to do with women apologizing for their strength in the lat ten minutes of every film. It had nothing to do with weeping and constant sacrifice and misery.
Those movies may be enjoyable. We may like those movies. But they don't represent the best in women's pictures.
The best era for women's pictures was the pre-Code era, the five years between the point that talkies became widely accepted in 1929 through July 1934, when the dread draconian Production Code became the law of Hollywood. Before the Code, women on screen took lovers, had babies out of wedlock, got rid of cheating husbands, enjoyed their sexuality, held down professional positions without apologizing for their self-sufficiency, and in general acted the way many of us think women only acted after 1968.
They had fun. That's why the Code came in. Yes, to a large degree, the Code came in to prevent women from having fun. It was designed to put the genie back in bottle -- and the wife back in the kitchen. We'll discuss this wretched Code later, and at length. But suffice it to say, to a surprising extent, it succeeded.
Another assumption that needs disposing of is the notion that directors are more important than actors. That may be true enough sometimes, but if we're talking about pre-1940 American film, the opposite is more often the case. Indeed, it's pretty pointless to discuss pre-1940 American film as the art of the director when, in most instances, the stars and the producers called the shots.
Personality was something revered and worshiped in twenties and thirties cinema. People and faces were things to be marveled at. For the first time in history, human beings had the privilege of sitting in the dark and looking at the faces of other human beings, often beautiful ones, thirty feet high and lit up with emotion. Audiences became addicted. They wanted nothing but to bask in and contemplate the faces and personalities they encountered on the screen.
Keep in mind, the close-up was something new back then, newer than the movies themselves. The close-up had only come into widespread use in the second half of the 1910s. Before that, people not only never got to see a close-up in films -- they never saw one in real life. Real life does not allow people to look at strangers so coldly, worshipfully, appraisingly -- and safely. Is it any wonder then that audiences, in the first flush of this amazing new-found privilege, became entranced and fell in love -- or that studios catered to that love? Or that it took a full generation for the huge, loving, glistening, soft-focus close-up to seem corny and to fade from view?
In a cinema that worshipped faces and personalities, the stars were, simply enough, people whose faces and personalities were deemed worthy of such contemplation. Their movies answered the need their essences inspired. Their movies were like the rock videos of today. They existed to put the star over, to capitalize on the image, and sometimes to advance the image. The stories were like little myths created around a screen personality, there to provide the audience with the opportunity to look at and think about the star.
Image -- the public's idea of a personality -- was everything. Studios packaged images, sometimes clumsily, sometimes obviously, sometimes slickly, sometimes with great sophistication. And occasionally, when forced to follow a performer's lead, they helped to create something powerful and socially important.
Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer were stars of the first order who emerged during the image-conscious era of the mid-twenties...
...When Garbo and Shearer started their careers, there were only two kinds of women in the movies. Actresses' images were confined to one-dimensional roles straight out of the nineteenth century. A woman of sexual power was evil, if she chose to exercise and enjoy her power. And a nice woman stayed virtuous, even if she did, like Clara Bow, put on a short skirt and go dancing every night. Those were the choices, vamp or ingenue. Take one or the other. Everything else was just a variation on a theme.
Garbo, by nature aloof and mysterious, was forced to play the vamp, a role she hated. Shearer, who radiated integrity, was forced to play the innocent ingenue, which frustrated her. So they rebelled. Over time, and with some struggle, they persuaded Hollywood to drop the stereotypes and greet a new day. They made the movies safe for real women, and a flood of actresses followed them.
It didn't happen all at once, but they were able to succeed thanks to certain shared advantages. First of all, they had clout. Each had the power that goes with popularity, and each had that power by the time she was twenty-two. Secondly, they worked at MGM, the studio that cared the most about cultivating stars over the long haul. Thirdly, they came along at a time when censorship was relaxed. And finally, their careers happened during a period in history when audiences could not get enough of movies about women.
The last point is all important. Since 1960, female stars have been second-class citizens, but in the twenties and early thirties, women dominated at the box office. The biggest stars were women, and it was a rare month indeed when a male face turned up on the cover of a fan magazine.
Offscreen and on, nothing was more interesting than woman's stories: Women got the vote and were increasingly attending college and pursuing careers. ten times more women were enrolled in public colleges in 1920 than in 1900. Hemlines were raised from the ankles, where they had hovered for centuries, to just below the knees. Women got to throw away their corsets. In place of corsets, women wore brassieres (a new invention), bound their breasts for a boyish look, or like Garbo, Shearer, Madge Evans, Jean Harlow, and many others, went braless.
Bobbed hair was part of the new freedom...Short hair was loose and liberating. Young women started wearing makeup, too -- and flaunting it, powdering up and applying lipstick in public. To the older generation, this was scandalous. Makeup was regarded as immoral, something associated with bohemians and prostitutes. So was smoking... Meanwhile, the availability of diaphragms, spermicidal jellies, and pessaries in the twenties resulted in real changes in sexual behaviors.
...To see (Garbo & Shearer's) films and those of other pre-Code women is to wonder where the American cinema might have gone had censorship not forced Hollywood to change course.
I love it when a unique item on eBay makes me do a search and I discover pieces of a puzzle...
This old German porcelain (or ceramic) piece features three figures: a woman in bed, and two men who, as the seller says, appear to be "in the process of deciding who will be the first to "visit" the young lady in her bed for whatever pleasure may result from such visit."
The seller also says, "I dont ever remember having a similar piece in all the years I have spent in the Antique business." While one can be skeptical with seller statements -- they are at least relative to their own experience -- I'd have to agree. (Hence my researching.)
Introduced in 1901, they remained part of the Sunday comics for years. In this strip, two French characters are so polite they are stymied when they reach a door, each offering the other entry first with what would become, at the time, quite famous lines:
"After you, my dear Alphonse."
"No, after you, my dear Gaston."
The strip pretty much vanished after 1910, but the characters continued to live on in Happy Hooligan, where they ran their bit best as a sideline rather than the lead through the 40's.
You can find remnants of Alphonse and Gaston in the Chip and Dale Mack and Tosh*, aka the Goofy Gophers, politeness, as well as other standards bits, like like two baseball outfielders each deferring to the other and letting the ball fall between them. Which brings us back to our German figurine.
Two men who likely will be so polite to defer to one another, while the lady falls asleep. *wink*
The seller says this is an "OLD VICTORIAN era GERMAN group figurine," which is rather close to the time frame -- give or take a handful of years.
"Come on, man. I doubt if you'd recognize a hippie. I'm a capitalist, baby. I work for my living, not suck off somebody else."
One of my favorite late night television watching is Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Sometimes, the Fox Movie Channel will play it over and over again and I can watch the last half-hour, then the whole thing, and fall asleep some time during the third viewing. Ahhhh. Heaven.
Remembered after 10 years, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" seemsmore and more like a movie that got made by accident when the lunatics tookover the asylum. At the time Russ Meyer and I were working on "BVD" I didn't really understand how unusual the project was. But in hindsight I can recognize that the conditions of its making were almost miraculous. An independent X-rated filmmaker and an inexperienced screenwriter were brought into a major studio and given carte blanche to turn out a satire of one of the studio's own hits. And "BVC" was made at a time when the studio's own fortunes were so low that the movie was seen almost fatalistically, as a gamble that none of the studio executives really wanted to think about, so that there was a minimum of supervision (or even cognizance) from the Front Office.
We wrote the screenplay in six weeks flat, laughing maniacally from time to time, and then the movie was made. Whatever its faults or virtues, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" is an original -- a satire of Hollywood conventions, genres, situations, dialogue, characters and success formulas, heavily overlaid with such shocking violence that some critics didn't know whether the movie "knew" it was a comedy.
A cult favorite, yes. It combines sex, drugs, 'rock music,' humor, violence, sex and also explores some pretty nifty social issues. Like should you trust the lesbian who wants you to give you advice on keeping or aborting your baby?
I just wish they were larger and made into PDFs or something I could print. Better yet, sell me a nice glossy set in a box (with your signature, of course!).
How am I supposed to live my life -- understand it -- without these cards?!
To paraphrase the movie dialog, "Howard, you've made me a whore -- and I dig it, you little freak!"
I'm a fan of Jane Fonda, so when I found this vintage paperback I was thrilled. The Ballad of Cat Ballou struck me for its campy sex kitten cover and it wasn't until I was in line at the thrift store that I recognized that face.
The film Cat Ballou (1965) stars Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman, Nat King Cole, and Stubby Kaye -- and was nominated for five Oscars, for which Lee Marvin did win Best Actor in a Leading Role. The film is a comedy-western, but the original novel (by Roy Chanslor) upon which the movie is based, is a serious western telling the story of a woman out to avenge her father's murder.
The Ballad Of Cat Ballou (lyrics)
Well now friends just lend an ear For you're now about to hear The ballad of Cat Ballou It's a song that's newly made And Professus and the Shade And the Sunrise Kid are singin' it for you
Cat ballou, Cat ballou It's a hangin' day in Wolf City Wyomin' Wolf City Wyomin', eighteen ninety four They're gonna drop Cat Ballou through the gallows floor
She killed a man in Wolf City Wyomin' Wolf City Wyomin' killed a man it's true And that is why they're a-hangin' Hangin' Cat Ballou
She has the smile of an angel (fights like the devil) The eyes of an angel (bites like the devil) The face of an angel (I say she's the devil) (She's mean and evil through and through) Cat Ballou, Cat Ball-ou-ou-ou She's mean and evil through and through
With her outlaw band they're now tellin' a story Now tellin' a story how she rode the plain The wildest gal in the we-est since Calamity Jane And today's the day that she's goin' to glory She's goin' to glory for the way she sinned They'll be a-speedin' her soul on a wayward wind
She has the smile of an angel (fights like the devil) The eyes of an angel (bites like the devil) The face of an angel (I say she's the devil) (She's mean and evil through and through) Cat Ballou (Cat Ballou) Cat Ball-ou-ou-ou (Cat Ballou)
She's mean and evil through and through Cat Ballou Cat Ball-ou-ou-ou She's mean and evil through and through
Lyrics by Mack David and Jerry Livingston. Recorded by Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye.
Forty years later, I still find myself thinking about Cat Ballou. I lost my innocence right alongside Cat that day when the sheriff lied about her daddy's death. The bold courage and willingness to stand up to authority displayed by Cat showed me that all it takes is guts for anyone (including women) to stand up for her rights. If a young, innocent girl could ride fearlessly after a noseless killer, then nothing could stop me! Cat Ballou was an inspiration to throw caution to the wind and fight for what I believe in.
This New American Library copy (sixth printing) is clearly the movie tie-in, so I wonder if it will have the humor of the film? With Roy Chanslor listed as the author, and no mention of any screenplay, I doubt it... But I can't wait to find time to read it.
Now every Friday MrSkin gives us film updates, pointing out all the goodies in film nudity:As this updates every Friday, I'm going to link to this in the sidebar so you can find it easily.
Leda and the Swan is a motif from Greek mythology, in which Zeus (Jupiter) took the form of a swan and raped Leda on the same night she slept with her husband, King Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. (Of course Zeus had to be a swan; as a member of the Anatidae family it's one of the few birds that possess a penis.)
The motif was rarely seen in the art of antiquity, but emerged in the Italian Renaissance as a combination of a classic theme and erotica. Using the classic Greek myth exploring sex was possible as long as it was bestiality, yet explicit sex between humans was far too inappropriate.
There are many variations depicting Leda in sexual acts with the swan: love-making, copulation, beak/mouth penetration, and rape.
In 1928 William Butler Yeats published his poem, Leda And The Swan.
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
In 'Leda and the Swan', the issue that causes heartburn in many modern critics is not the fact that the theme is a rape, but that Yeats seems to 1. glorify the power and sensuality of the rapist - "the feathered glory". 2. accede to the (male) belief that 'women love a bit of force' - "And how can body, laid in that white rush / But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?" 3. use the rape as a starting point for historical and cultural inspiration - "his knowledge with his power".
Of course, it must also be said that Yeats at least tries to represent Leda's state of mind - "those terrified vague fingers"; compare Spenser:
'Whiles the proud Bird ruffing his fethers wyde, And brushing his faire brest, did her inuade; She slept, yet twixt her eyelids closely spyde, How towards her he rusht, and smiled at his pryde.'
(This same link also refers the question of what "feminist critic" means.)
There's even large debate over Yeats' intentions with his poem. Apparently Yeats had desired a political poem. As proof, see this passage from "Pornography and Canonicity: The Case of Yeats' Leda and the Swan," and essay in Representing Women: Law, Literature, and Feminism, pages 165-87:
According to Yeats, the poem was inspired by a meditation on the Irish situation in relation to world politics. The first version was finished at Coole in September 1923, in the atmosphere of political instability resulting from the Irish Civil War. Yeats told Lady Gregory of "his long belief that the reign of democracy is over for the present, and in reaction there will be violent government from above, as no in Russia, and is beginning here. It is the thought of this force coming into the world that he is expressing in his Leda poem." The swan-god, it seems, originated as a "rough beast," an unlikely amalgam of Lenin and President Cosgrave, subduing the anarchic masses personified by Leda; but Yeats insisted that, "as I wrote, a bird and lady took such possession of the scene that all politics went out of it, and my friend tells me that his `conservative readers would misunderstand the poem.'" All politics did not evaporate in the alchemy of the creative process, however: class politics were overshadowed though not entirely effaced by the politics of sexuality.
Ah, politics and sex. Gotta love that combination.
As long as I'm quoting... More from those same pages:
Yeats knew that his name and become a byword for paganism, anti-Catholicism, opposition to Gaelic culture, and snobbery. . . .
"Leda and the Swan" can thus be read as an aristocratic liberal intervention in the cultural debate about post-Treaty Irish identity, an insistence that in bringing to birth a new, independent Ireland, "love is a lustier sire than law." Was Ireland to become, as Yeats wished, "a modern, tolerant, liberal nation," free to deploy the resources of classical mythology and to admire naked Greek statuary; or was it to surrender to the obscurantism of the clergy, soon to be reified in the legislation of the new state? Sexuality, bodies, and their representations occupy center stage in this ideological struggle. The Swan, originating in Yeats'' mind as an image of the violent imposition of the law, ironically comes to symbolize all those desires the censors found threatening: in the context of the poem's reception its brutal energy represents the forces of sexual liberation. . . .
The Greek mythology itself was conflicting about the aspect of rape. Was this seduction, god allowed trickery? Was it violent rape? Is her submission to be expected because she's a mortal? Or did she enjoy it?
The subject of rape vs. seduction and Leda's participation level (enjoyment) is often part of the art too.
In Leda and the Swan, by George O' Connel Leda is rides the swan seemingly unaware of the consequences of will follow. (1973, Lithograph on woven paper), Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia.
In this engraving on paper by Cornelis Bos (ca. 1536-1540), one copied from a painting that Michelangelo completed for the Due Alfonso of Ferrara but did not deliver because he was insulted by the Duke's agent -- or possibly because he was not sure the painting was appropriate, Leda is rather masculine and very sexual. There is no resisting the swan's advance.
There are many imaginations of Leda and Zeus the swan...
Salvador Dali, Lena & Swan.
Petrus Paul Rubens, Leda and the Swan, oil on canvas. Flemish, 1601-2.
Early Georgian period heavy gold ring, 15ct gold (by test) and with a gorgeous hand carved bezel and shank surround in a continuing pattern of dense flowers. The intaglio, classified as an "erotic" intaglio shows a nude Leda with her swan suitor, the God Zeus.
The story of Leda doesn't end with that one night...
Being a god means that Zeus is going to impregnant her -- immortal sperm, and all that. Of course, she was also with her husband, Tyndareus.
From this one night we have several children, which typically hatch from eggs, and several versions of the children's parentage. In some Leda bore/hatched Helen (of Troy) and Clytemnestra, children of Zeus, and at the same time bearing Castor (Kaster) and Pollux (Polydeuces), children of Tyndareus. In others, Castor's father was Tyndareus and Pollux's father was the Greek god Zeus resulting in twins where Castor was mortal and Pollux, being the son of a mythological god, was immortal.
Further confusion continues as Castor & Pollux are sometimes both mortal, sometimes both divine. One consistent point seems to be that if only one of them is immortal, it is Pollux. In Homer's Iliad, Helen looks down from the walls of Troy and wonders why she does not see her brothers among the Achaeans and the narrator says that both are already dead and buried back in their homeland (Lacedaemon), suggesting that at least in some early traditions, both were mortal.
Mortal or not, Castor and Pollux are the twins known as Gemini, including the constellation.
Leda's daughter Helen becomes Helen of Troy, the most beautiful mortal. At least in some versions. There are others which say that the Helen of Troy is the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Nemesis. Adding to the confusion, there is even one story where both Leda and Nemesis have contact with the egg which is to be Helen.
One story comes from one of the Cyclic Epics, Cypria (generally thought to preserve traditions that date back to at least the 7th century BC). In Cypria, Nemesis did not want to mate with Zeus and so she changed into various animals forms in attempts to avoid Zeus. Eventually Nemisis becomes a goose and Zeus, also transformed as a goose, mates with her. In this story it is Nemesis who produces the egg from which the Helen (of Troy) hatches.
In some of these stories, this egg, before hatching, is found by a shepherd. He gives the the egg to Leda to protect. Leda does and when the egg hatches, she is so enamored with the baby girl (Helen) that she raises her as her daughter. In the 5th century comedy Nemesis (by Cratinus) Leda is told to sit on an egg so that it would hatch, but there is no doubt the egg is Nemesis' (and that the Helen who hatches has Nemesis as her biological mother).
It is also interesting to note that in stories in which Helen is Leda's daughter, the sex with Zeus is not depeicted as rape. For example, in Euripides' play Helen (late 5th century BC), it says that Zeus, in the form of a swan, was chased by an eagle and sought refuge with Leda. The swan gained her affection and the two mated. Leda later then produced an egg from which Helen was born.
Apparently such beauty as helen's cannot be so tainted as to have been concieved in rape.
However, Leda and swan are on reverse of a bronze medal of Faustina the Roman. Faustina herself is interesting -- she was 'a courtesan celebrated by Joachim du Bellay, who was in Rome from 1553 to 1558, and possibly identical with the Faustina who excited the passion of Brantôme.' The legend may be completed as Favstina ro(mana) o(mnium) p(ulcherrima), or the Roman Faustina, of every beauty.
The reverse also has the legend si Iovi.quid homini which implies if Jove does this, what of men? (The Roman name for Zeus was Jupiter or Jove.)
"Based on the poem by Yeats called also "Leda and the Swan" it features some unforgettable and disturbing imagery. We see Leonardo,who grates a large cucumber over Leda with a grater,squashes 10 tomatoes and cracks 5 eggs on her.He places a bottle containing a rose between her legs.Then he scatters bread-crumbs and coffee powder over her.Leda sets her upper body upright and draws in one leg.Leonardo places a large,uninflated plastic swan between her legs and so on.Unquestionably bizarre and edited very fast,"Leda and the Swan" is among the best short films made by infamous Viennese Aktionists.7 out of 10."
I don't even know how to follow that up.
If all these Leda and Swan images weren't enough for you, try here.
For a somewhat strange (definitely kitschy) version of Leda and the swan shown with fashion dolls, go here.
We also have Irving to thank for Watergate. Nixon, paranoid about what Irving's book might reveal, ordered the second Watergate break-in to discover what Irving might have told the Democrats about Nixon's financial and political dealings with the reclusive billionaire.
Oooooooh scary and fun. The 70's were so.... what's the word? Wacked?
Irving himself gave an interview in the Village Voice in which he said, "I was talking to Richard Gere the other day and we kind of honed in on something that not many people have talked about thus far, which is that the climate of the late 1960s and early '70s was a climate of happening and events. And where I lived, on the island of Ibiza, that was a community of anything goes. It was sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. It wasn't the real world. And that was a very important part of what happened that, unfortunately, is not included at all in the movie."
Does that mean there's no sex in the movie -- not even a fade-to-black thingy? I find that hard to believe.
Well, even if Gere isn't acting out Irving's adultery here, we know lots of folks were screwed in 'the great literary fib.'
I just missed this pretty photo of a young Gene Tierney -- and when I say 'missed' I don't mean time wise (there are a few hours left) but rather that I am $95 shy.
(In a world where collectibles are worth what folks will pay for them, I'm betting this sells -- the seller sold another for $95 and that wasn't anywhere as pretty or sexy.)
Tierney is most famous for her role as Laura Hunt in the 1944 film noir classic Laura (at least to me). Others might remember her most for her role as the femme fatale Ellen Berent Harland in Leave Her to Heaven. (And why not? This performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in 1945.)
Tierney had two husbands, costume and fashion designer Oleg Cassini (they divorced) and Texas oilman W. Howard Lee (former husband of Hedy Lamarr), but was romantically linked with Prince Aly Khan (former husband of Rita Hayworth) and Tyrone Power.
During the filming of Dragonwyck, she met John F. Kennedy, who was visiting the set. They began an affair that ended the following year when Kennedy told her he could never marry her because of his political ambitions. It is said that after the election in 1960, Tierney sent him a note of congratulations on his victory — although she later admitted that she had actually voted for Richard Nixon because she thought that he would make a better president.
Made in 1924, Michael (Mikael) is the story of Zoret, an aging artist, as he pursues his protege Michael. A landmark silent film which explores homosexuality by the legendary Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer.
The basic plot is that Zoret and Michael work on a portrait of Princess Zamikoff, but the unscrupulous royal femme fatale becomes smitten with Michael. Michael seems to be an opportunistic fellow, forgetting all Zoret has done for him, given him, creating a triangle.
This film stars Walter Slezak, Nora Gregor, Benjamin Christensen, runs 86 minutes (silent with music score), and includes audio commentary & filmography.
This film is also known as "Chained: The Story of the Third Sex," "Heart's Desire", and "Mikael."
There's an excellent review at the Houston Voice which proclaims this film as "relevant 80 years after its release" and "a valuable piece of gay history."
Sheldon mostly wrote about stalwart women who triumph in a hostile world of ruthless men. His notable novels included "Rage of Angels," "The Other Side of Midnight," and "If Tomorrow Comes."
His books became the more suspensful equivalents of soap operas -- predictable in some regards, but boy wasn't it fun getting to the end anyway?
"I try to write my books so the reader can't put them down," he explained in a 1982 interview. "I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It's the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter."
Analyzing why so many women bought his books, he commented: "I like to write about women who are talented and capable, but most important, retain their femininity. Women have tremendous power — their femininity, because men can't do without it."
He also created and produced "I Dream of Jeannie," which lasted five seasons, 1965-1970. "During the last year of 'I Dream of Jeannie,' I decided to try a novel," he said in 1982. "Each morning from 9 until noon, I had a secretary at the studio take all calls. I mean every single call. I wrote each morning — or rather, dictated — and then I faced the TV business."
Many people forget Sheldon's movie career. He won the Academy Award for best original screenplay in 1947 for "The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer," starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple.
He also won a 1959 Tony Award for his musical "Redhead," and earned an Emmy Award for his work on "I Dream of Jeannie."
Ancient Abortion, a point of view which I do not share, presented here as an example of context. Our times and their threats shape our thoughts and our fears, and allow for the call to control sexuality.
If you want to contact me, post a note. If you wish to talk in private, Naughty dot Words at gmail dot com is the current solution -- however, if it's about link swaps, affiliate programs etc., read the FAQfirst!
If you insist on knowing more about me...
I've been interviewed on Radio Blowfish (direct link to the specific podcast download here).
Peter of
Jane's Guide says, "This blog site is perfectly charming. What an enjoyable time I had here. Your hostess, and the site, is named Silent Porn Star - with no doubt interesting and untold stories behind the name. The focus here is in curating - and celebrating - sexual iconography. I browsed the site's last couple of years of archives, hip hopping over such delights as old pulp fiction cover art, black & white vintage photography, occasional contemporary censorship issues, and even - to my delight - a link to a YouTube clip of Cher and Raquel Welch, all glitter-glamoured up in their prime and glory, singing Peggy Lee's "I'm A Woman". If that isn't as iconic as you could ask for, you're not looking. The commentary is smart, positive, and insightful. This is just the sort of unique site we love to encourage." (Silent Porn Star even made Peter's list of favorite sites!)
Cinema Retro says, "[A] gem of a site that will appeal to any libertines among our readers. Silent Porn Star is an addictive, often hilarious look at how sex and pornography has presented in pop culture over the last century. There are vintage postcards of topless Polynesian dancers, tasteful nude starlets of yesteryear and some delightfully distasteful photos and stories of more recent vintage. We don't expect too many contributors to Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign to patronize the site, but those of us who are proud to be less pure can have a field day looking through those old ads for movies about promiscuous teenagers as well as reveling in other forbidden delights. There's plenty to gawk at whether you're straight, gay or in between - fun for the entire family!"
"Required reading," and "When it comes to sex and collecting, there is no better blog to read because it is always about the sex and the collecting," says Shon Richards.
Blowfish Blog says, "Although the writing is warm and friendly, an aura Sphinx-like and cool surrounds Silent Porn Star. Written by a female collector of historical erotica and risque objects, in it we find out a great deal about a great many things, although not much about the author. But that is part of its charm; like an expert strip-tease, you think you see everything, and then realize that you only saw what you were permitted to. If you are a lover of historical smut, this site is simply mana from heaven, of course. But for everyone, the commentary is learned and witty, intellectual without being snobbish. And we learned so much about the mafia, too."
Starla of The Naughty Guide says: "The writing is elegant and flows off the screen with ease and the site is packed full of information. Some humorous, and some thought provoking. I am sure you will find something to tease your taste buds on this site."
Engaging in "rampant presentism," says anonymous. (Ha!)
Erotic Mandy of Sexy Blog Reviews says, "This is a sex blog of a more 'cerebral nature'," and gives Silent Porn Star 3/5 Orgasms because I'm, "interested in vintage sexuality and is probably quite smart."
Terra at The Naughty Guide gushes, "Silent Porn Star was a joy of a find for me, due to my fetish for vintage erotica. LOVE IT!! This is a blog that is a collection Vintage Erotica bringing it to us in one spot. It is a must visit for those of us that are curious or enthralled with the history of erotica. ...Content is slick, almost as if it was a commercially produced site. I usually read personal blogs, but this interest blog is one that I am adding to my daily read list."
As noted, the work was turned into a film, 
