Thursday, September 30, 2010

Goodnight, Josephine


TONY CURTIS
1925 - 2010

Tree Hugger


"I vorry about global varming, too, dahlink!"






From MATTADORE!

Miss Cyd Charisse


Adored.

Very Vera





Apparently, if you were named "Vera" in the Golden Age of Hollywood, you were guranteed fabulosity, if not superstardom.

From Mrs. Miniver to Auntie Mame





Oh, how we wish there was preserved video of this performance!!! As much as we adore Roz Russell, and revere the film, one can only imagine the superbly silky heights that Miss Greer Garson achieved when she took over the role from Russell on Broadway. Imagine that deliciously plummy voice reeling off those one liners! Garson's appearance on What's My Line? during her run as Mame Dennis is as close as we'll get to having been there. Listen to the wild crowd reaction as Garson enters, in costume!


Garson won rave reviews for her performance; and, from the looks of this photograph taken a few years later, she and Russell maintained a mutual admiration society of Mames (who mingle with Merle).

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Sweet William


Bill, we love you so, we always will.

Surprising Sirens





Beneath every placid exterior beats the heart of a tigress.

The Private World of Dorothy Dandridge





"Dorothy Dandridge, circa 1962, seems to be a woman who knows, not only where she has been, but precisely where she is going... Gone are most of the traits of nervousness and uncertainty that many observed in earlier years..."

Within a year of this lavishly illustrated, fawningly-written article, Dorothy Dandridge would be bankrupt, her beautiful home foreclosed upon, and her brain-damaged daughter placed in state care. In less than four years, increasingly despondent and addicted to both pills and alcohol, Dorothy Dandridge would be dead from an overdose of antidepressants. She was 42 years old.