Je Suis Malade

As usual, the divine Dalida nails it. Je suis en fait malade - complètement, parfaitement. Bugger.

A Fabulous Invalid

Sorry, darlings; your Auntie Muscato is feeling a tad under the weather - crummy, actually - and is retiring to the Land of Counterpane.

Where's Ben Casey when I need him? Or even Dr. Kildare? Hell, I'd settle for Dr. Bombay right about now. Or maybe just some Bombay. On ice, sweetheart, with just a hint of tonic...

In the Clinch

I don't know about you, but I had no idea that Ginger Rogers and Doris Day felt so strongly about one another.

A Word from our Sponsor: Stink Less with the Stars!

A very young Diane Keaton, deploying an accent that falls somewhere between Betty Rubble and Anne Meara, tells how to keep dry - the Seventies Fun Housewife way!

Doctor, Doctor

Yet another travel snap, from the cemetery in Montmartre. This rather arresting monument is just down the way from Dalida's and was, it seems, the inspiration of a Dr. Pitchal. My money is on his having been a Magritte fan.

I love Google! Writing this, I thought of looking him up. Well, it turns out that Dr. Pitchal's widow has written up their great affair - and she claims to have been Dalida's best friend on top of that. She sounds like rather a character herself:

"Jacqueline's life is rich in adventures; whether at the court of the Shah of Iran, or in Los Angeles, Palm Beach or Dubai. From the ministrations of a healer in Marrakesh which almost left her blind to her kidnapping and ransom in Saint Tropez in 1982. Jacqueline Pitchal has truly lived many lives in one."

And to think I thought Mr. Muscato and I had a colorful life. You really need to read more about her; it all made me need a nap. But not as long a one as that on which Dr. Pitchal has embarked...

Continental Gossip

"No, darling - as far as I can tell, it's all true! They've competely split up, and I hear the chippy's name is Crystal Allen. I'm surprised it hasn't been in the International Herald Tribune!"

No, No, Nanette!

It seems to me that Nanette Fabray always gives the impression that she's waiting for her song cue. And actually, I think that's a very good thing.

Hong Kong Carmen

Eastern superstar Grace Chang sizzles in this number from her 1961 epic The Wild, Wild Rose. She's equal parts Anna May Wong and Kathryn Grayson, with just a twist of Eartha Kitt here and there. Enjoy...

The Past is Another Country

Sometimes you look at an image like this and you think: nothing here makes any sense at all. Are they indoors or outdoors? Trapped in some underwater hell, or simply the victims of bad lighting? Why is that middle-management type grilling steaks in that vaguely Asian garden area? If they are indoors, aren't they all going to die from the charcoal fumes? Is it really hygenic to leave more steaks just sitting on that ledge, next to Madge's apparently vast lower body? And perhaps most disturbingly - what is that graven-image/idol thing staring out at us from the right border?

I could sit staring at the picture for hours and not come up with a single rational explanation. And not want to.

Service With a Smile

So I'm finally having time to dig through our travel snaps, weed out the blurs, the duplicates, and the flatout failures.

This one is for all my fellow expatriates here across the Gulf; it's the sort of thing that, after a while, could bring tears to your eyes. Not merely because it is a lovely, old-fashioned Continental sort of shop; not merely because it undoubtedly stocks a range and quality of pork goodies that we never see or chickens that weigh more than two pounds. No, the thing that you could sweep the width and breadth of the Arabic Gulf, from Kuwait to Yemen, and not find is what's contained in the promises on the awning: "Conseil - Tradition - Service Soigné".

It's a fantasy to us, you see - the idea of strolling into your local shop and actually encountering someone who knows about the goods they sell; who is pleased and eager to help you purchase them; and who, in so doing, could offer anything even vaguely resembling service that is soigné.

Oh, I suppose I shouldn't complain, I know, but I was spoiled by a childhood of grandmothers both of whom had a legion of "lovely men" - as in "well, of course I have a lovely man who keeps an eye out for the kind of filets your grandfather likes," or "that lovely man at the market saved me these three quarts of black raspberries..."

So we put with up with the choatic, haphazard supermarkets or the occasional forays to the traditional souqs - but, as they say: we'll always have Paris.

He Does the Rock

Tim Curry. For about four years I thought he was the hottest thing in creation. I might still be talked into it.

Darling Daughters

Everybody's somebody's baby...

Being a dancing daughter is what first set Joan's career on the right path...

...But being B.F.'s didn't do much for B.S.'s - how can she have made so many movies one has never even heard of? I'm going to make a wild guess that Coburn was B.F.

I don't believe this one helped anybody's career. Great lashes, though.

Loretta Young. On a farm. With a Swedish accent. Yeah, that's believable. Possibly the prissiest picture ever named after a genre of dirty joke.

At least one of the four looks like she might be Dracula's. The rest just look Inexplicably Solemn, but then it is from a Fannie Hurst story...

Once Drac got the ball rolling, everybody wanted in on the act. Sadly, none were ever such a success that we reached the Dracula's Daughter and Frankenstein's Daughter Meet the Daughter of a Brooklyn Gorilla phase, but I bet people thought about it...

Ah, John "ex-Mr. Shirley Temple" Agar - the mark of quality.

Do you know how hard it is to make a long-sleeved bias-cut buckskin shirtwaist-style minidress? The leopard belt really does set it off, though.

Actually, Mrs. Brown, what you've got is a bad case of wannabebeatles. Take two aspirin and wait for the sixties to pass.

I think this is the one where she swims, but you never can tell with an Esther Williams picture.

And this is definitely the one where she cries, but that's written into Sally's contract, no?

When I was a tiny tot, my parents went to see this. It was a Huge Event movie playing at the downtown movie palace, and it was going to be the event of the season. The morning after, you would have thought that they had been forced to sit through repeated showings of Plan Nine, and forever after it's been a family byword for Terrible Movie.

But could it really have been worse than this? When you don't recognize a single name, when the graphic looks like that, and when the best that the tag line can come up with is "hundreds of extras" - I think this is one daughter to send back to poppa...

File under Spouses, Supportive

Well, what else could she do? After all, the toothpick obsession had been her idea, and she had to admit that ever since the Rev. Dr. Usalus got the bug for his new hobby, he hadn't once looked at a choirboy...

Trailer Trash: Ease on Down

Here's a picture that had it all: big stars, a hit Broadway show, infinite reservoirs of goodwill from the source material, and a hip disco sound.

Unfortunately, in having it all, it also had all you can think of go wrong - Sid & Marty Krofft-calibre costumes; a cheesy neo-Metropolis design scheme; busy, pointless numbers full of flailing extras; terrible stop-motion animation; and rear-projections that wouldn't have passed muster in a Poverty Row programmer.

Still, it also had Lena Horne, and the only on-screen pairing of Motown's two greatest stars, and if nothing else it entirely sums up, good and bad, the times that made it.

This week it seems to mark the end of a certain road, or one not taken. Imagine if it had been a hit, with both its stars then leading a revival of the musical genre that rolled on for a half-dozen years or so - maybe Miss Ross in a neo-Lady in the Dark, or Jackson paired up with someone like Irene Cara for a string of song-and-dancers. Well, didn't happen; the same year brought us Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and a musical drought that even the success of Grease couldn't stem.

On the other hand, its failure freed Jackson up for Off the Wall - and everything else that happened after. Maybe it really is a shame it flopped.

Beautiful by the Sea

Here we find Mr. Manhunt Egypt Tarek Naguib lounging on one of his homeland's spectacular shores, looking rather spectacular himself.

Word on the street (if not on the seashore) is that the long-awaited Mr. Manhunt International 2009 will now be held sometime this month in sunny Seoul, South Korea. One hopes that the seemingly rather casual management of this esteemed annual event doesn't portend poorly for the Parade of Nations...

Obsequies

Ellis Wilson, Funeral Procession

Yes, even here in on this far edge of the Arabian peninsula, we're sitting in front of the box, watching. It turns out that the great triumvirate of mourners I had hoped for won't come together; no Diana, no Elizabeth, and, so far, no sign of Liza.

The nattering commentary is, as usually on these occasions, inane to a head-exploding degree - greatest, historic, most, total...

Well. He was, in fact, a great dancer, of a kind; he was an enormous star; he was a dynamically effective presence. Any further judgments - of the songwriter, the phenomenon, the pioneer in shape-shifting (and, yes, the predator, the addict, the profound mess) - will have to wait for time and cooler heads.

What we have, now, undoubtedly, is a deeply troubled man at rest, a mother bereaved, children bereft of, whatever else it was, the familiarity of the only life they have ever known - and profligate expressions of what might be for some grief, for others hysteria, for most a curious wonder at how we get caught up in these little madnesses.

What a Feeling

Oh, I'm happy for them, really I am, but as for myself, I'm feeling faint.

Greta Garbo. John Abraham. Charles and Naomi and their spawn, Thing 1 and Thing 1.4. Sometimes it's hard to believe we're all one big happy species, isn't it?

Meanwhile, in the Morning Room

As the anxious young man awaited her answer, Lady Viola reflected sadly that however elegant Mr. Camberwell's jacket, his breeches gave every indication that their married life would be singularly devoid of incident...

Something Spiteful and Elegant

I just happened home, after a latish evening out (business party - is there any drearier phrase?), to find some odd station showing BUtterfield 8. What a strange, awkward, weirdly moving film.

The picture may all fall apart at the end, but the ten minutes of pantomime that open it should have put to rest once and forever the question of whether its star can act: she is as effective as any of the great silent stars, with an anger and reserve that boils over into the whole first hour.

Watching this performance, I found it bizarre to think that she's still with us. Her buxom, sly brand of lacquered, earthy glamour seems as far removed as the acting of Sarah Siddons; she is a goddess as grande horizontale - or is it vice versa?

And Now for Something...

...completely ridiculous. Since we're in a TV kind of mood, herewith the cathode Lunt and Fontanne, making mincemeat of the Bard. The Scottish play, Paul Lynde, Elizabeth Montgomery, and a rogue hairpiece - what's not to love?

Flying home last week I watched an episode of Bewitched - and I have to say, it held up (it helped that it was an Aunt Clara, although not, alas, an Uncle Arthur). The writing may have been sketchy, and the sexism unbearable, but what a bunch of troupers, what a festival of character ladies!

The Gentleman's Gentleman

Today offers an extraordinary array of birthdays, but I can't think of anyone I'd like to think about more than this gentleman, whom I think might have been one of the formative influences of my slightly twisted childhood, the very amply proportioned Mr. Sebastian Cabot.

Family Affair clearly furthered my development as a rootless cosmopolite. Who was more dapper than Mr. French? What prospect could be brighter than having ones inconvenient parents swept away, and your own personal version of Terre Haute (why do I remember that?) replaced by a swish (in several senses of the word) Manhattan penthouse?

And the gentleman himself? Apparently, against all odds, quite different from his most famous role as an urbane bachelor of aesthetic tastes - a married family man who used his TV earnings to settle down in bucolic British Columbia. Go figure.

He shares his natal day with a motley crew that takes in swimmer Annette Kellerman and idol Della Reese, shower diva Janet Leigh and permanent sidekick Burt Ward, thrush Phyllis Hyman, comedy queen Jennifer Saunders, steroidocious Sylvester Stallone, and the Dalai Lama. Oh, and, of all people, Nancy Davis Reagan and Merv Griffin - do you suppose they ever had joint birthday parties?

But still - with the possible exception of Miss Della - it's Sebastian (or my childhood image of him) that I'd most like to share a cocktail with...

Decisions, Decisions...

Miss Constance Bennett stars in her own little re-enactment of the barbecue scene at Twelve Oaks, with the distinct difference that Scarlett didn't have any intention at all of going home with both the old gent with the martini and Mr. Smiley Profile there. And who would say her nay?

Beauties and the Beasts

Well, I feel terribly remiss, and a bit dim. I returned to the office and was busy leafing through back issues of Hello! catching up on some important reporting when I discovered a major story!

I had known that Sheikh Hamad of Qatar, an amiably portly monarch with a distinct resemblance to a shoe polish-dyed S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall (or is he more John Candy?), had paid a state visit to Paris while we were there...

But I didn't know that he wasn't, as Gulf royals often do, traveling stag! No indeed - he brought along his (principal) wife, the rather divine Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser, the woman who keeps Queen Rania of Jordan awake nights as they vie for recognition as most stunning Arab consort. She's seen here shielding something more than thirty percent of her husband from photographers.

Had I been even halfway paying attention, I would have realized that it made perfect sense for her to come along, if only so she could size up the European competition, in the form of the lovely and multi-talented Mme. Sarkozy.

As indeed she did, while Monsieur cools his (elevator) heels in the background. It rather looks as if they've hit it off.

And, during dinner, while Carla studiously reviews the text of the Sheikh's speech (or her latest lyric), someone does a little sizing up of his own. Doesn't he look just exactly like Pepe LePew here, about to pounce?

All the more reason for the ladies, as dinner ended, to head out of the dining room à deux. "Oh, darling," sighs the Sheikha, "let's dump Shorty and Fatty and grab some of your husband's Champagne, go upstairs, get out of these rags, and try on jewelry. I just know you have Eugenie's and Marie Antoinette's stuff up there..."

Another surprise was that the Qatari couple didn't travel alone; they brought along at least one of the children.

Sadly, it would appear that her father's genes rather outweigh her mother's. Fab Chanel, though, I'll hand her that.

And to think we were just across town while all this was going on. Such a tiny planet, no?

Back to Work, You

Yes, all good things must come to an end, and so we put this year's holiday behind us and head back to the happy land of in-boxes, e-mails, and meetings, meetings, meetings. As you can see, I'm practically giddy with anticipation at the prospect.

This is the part of la vie expat that I hate: it's Sunday (our Tuesday, here in bizarro-world, remember), it's 105 degrees at 6:30 a.m. and so humid that the outsides of our windows have steamed up like a 7-11 fridge on a busy night, and I have to put on a wool suit, starched shirt, and necktie and spend the next ten hours being nice to people.

Three weeks ago, we were doing things like sitting in our favorite little café on the Spui in Amsterdam, watching the world go by; two weeks ago, we wandered the backstreets of Paris as the city celebrated its Fête de la Musique; last week, it was brunch with friends in Berlin as we recovered from Pride. Today, I get to turn off "Out of Office" and return phone calls.

In the immortal words of Miss Ball: "WAAAAAAH!"

But, since Grandmother Muscato (both of them, actually) firmly taught that there are few things less attractive than self-pity (unless, I've since learned, you are Margo Channing), it's time to make the best of lashings of black coffee and office gossip, both of which will just as surely feature in my day.

Enjoy your Sundays, Westerners - your day will come. Tomorrow, in fact.

A-Meryl-ca, I Love You!

Now, God knows we here at the Café adore the ground on which Miss Streep walks, and I know that this is a daring choice from a rising young designer, but... I'm not convinced. This is more a Cindy McCain kind of frock, don't you think?

Actually, I think it's what Sarah Palin should have worn for her big announcement yesterday. And every day for the rest of her wretched life. Sorry, didn't mean to venture into politics, but somehow, it just crept in. Schadenfreude shows up at the oddest moments...

"From Ocean to Ocean"...

If I had more free time, I would devote it to making this little ditty the new anthem. Forget "America the Beautiful" or that godforsaken old drinking tune we have to put up with now - I want a national song that requires an accordion solo, a coloratura obbligato, and the appearance of no fewer than three vaudeville acts.

I think Alice is fabulous, but that's hardly news; John Payne is dreamy as always, but he really isn't even trying to act like he's playing the piano. Fox as usual plays it a little on the cheap side, but I'm terribly fond of the bugling ladies. All in all, despite being a blatant Irving Berlin knockoff, it's a winner.

On Independence Day - Indulge!

On this day for rest, reflection, and celebration of our heritage, I think we should all follow the advice of Margie Majorette and her pal, Ghostly Miss Liberty, and make full use of the freedoms afforded us by our forefathers...

Let's have a drink! Mom's flying so high that all she's prepared is salad, shrimp cocktail, and jello - who cares? Give those guests enough Schlitz and no-one will mind at all!

And later, we can join Claudette, Paulette, and Veronica in a refreshing, patriotic Chesterfield.

And to round out the day - why not get married? This would be just the frock to make July Fourth your day of days. The only way I could improve this toilette would be with a big screaming eagle brooch on the left hip, to pull the whole look together.

However you choose to celebrate - have fun! But not quite as much as Mom up there...

High Standards

As we Americans head into this festive holiday weekend, why don't you take a moment and ask yourself this important question: are you as patriotic as our old friend Brookville, IN, DAR President Mrs. Roscoe O'Byrne?

I didn't think so. As for me, there are times I'm not sure I'm as patriotic as her chair.

In a Perfect World

You know what I'd like to do to celebrate this festive weekend? I'd like to run over to the Alvin and get a couple of tickets to see Ethel and the Schnozz in Cole's latest, Red, Hot and Blue! It would even be worth putting up with Bob Hope. We could grab a drink at the Algonquin beforehand, and maybe go on to dinner at Sardi's if we can get a table.

Of course, this is mostly what I would like to do every weekend, and have about as much chance on the Fourth of July as any other. I suppose what we'll do instead is put a patriotic ribbon on Koko and have an indoor picnic (as any outdoor activity would run the the risk of second-degree burns). Oh, well...

Signed, Sealed, Delivered...

The recent glut of celebrity deaths seems to be bringing out the moderately surreal in press coverage; here, the Washington Post passes on news of the sadness of America's mail carriers at the death of the last surviving lead from the film version of Gypsy.

What's next? A fond appreciation of Pina Bausch by the Department of Commerce?

Legal, Tender

In honor of today's good news out of India, I thought it might be nice to have our first ever non-potentially-illegal look at our old friend Mr. Upen Patel.

Yup - still entrancing, even if no longer, as it were, Forbidden Fruit...

Goodbye to All That

This was the last photo I took our last-night-but-one in Berlin, a lovely long evening spent on a boat going round the river and canal system that make something of an inland island of the city. The Potsdamer Platz is the restored heart of Berlin, a festival of Prestige Modern Architecture - hotels, offices, theatres, a casino, apartments, a mall - that somehow doesn't feel false or imposed the way it might in an American, urban-renewed city or in, say, Dubai.

The first time I saw the Potsdamer Platz was twenty years ago when it was a wasteland, the no-man's-land between East and West, anchored at one end by the ruined Reichstag, the Wall, and, on the other side, the Brandenburg Gate. Every now again this past week, in the middle of this bustling new neighborhood, I would catch a glance of something that reminded me of those days and be, again, amazed at Time in its Flight and all the changes.

On the flight home yesterday I reread Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, so beautiful, so sad (and so totally different from the varied works adapted from it). It takes place, much of it, in places where we had spent time - the Nollerndorfplatz, the Tiergarten, the Kudamm - and much of the atmosphere he creates (albeit absent most of the political menace) is still palpable in the air of the city.

It's an odd thing to be an American (new world) living in the Gulf (new money) visiting Europe (old culture). The civilization feels at once so deep - the shops, museums, streets - and so fraught. History, in the U.S., is a hobby, something for buffs and re-enactors; in the Arab world, it's politics, something inextricable from every facet of public and even private life. In Europe, it simply is, an unavoidable fact: here is Napoleon's tomb, Rembrandt's house, the Potzdamer Platz with its shining new buildings marked with signs showing the same site in 1920, 1945, 1989.

We drifted along during our dinner cruise, our Berliner friends - themselves expats - showing us this and that landmark of their lives and the city's. It's impossible not to think of the violence and horror that made possible, equally, the glittering new buildings and the sad, crumbling Eastern apartment blocks. Not just the last war, though, although that looms large, but so many: the "War to End All Wars" that didn't, the ones that created Prussia Triumphant, further back and further back.

And now here we are again, back home, in a country where an old building is one built before 1980 but where most of what makes up people's inner lives was determined 1,000 years ago or more. Europe's history seems far away, here, but just as in the U.S., it isn't. When we visited the site of the destroyed East German "People's Palace" (that itself replaced the Kaiser's principal residence), we learned that at least some of the steel from that disgraced landmark traveled down to the Gulf, reused to build the Burj Dubai (for a moment or two now the world's tallest tower). In the same way, motoring along a canal in former East Berlin, we noted how the cheap glass used to make the now-derelict buildings has aged prematurely, creating the kind of waved, bubbled panes so prized by renovators of colonial and Victorian treasures in the States. Maybe that would be the ultimate recycling - communist windows decorating twee rowhouses in Society Hill and cottages in the Chesapeake.

But anyway, we're home. We had a lovely break, and even get a weekend before having to face reality. And goodness, but we have one happy dog.

Going Up...

Oh, dear - it's been a bad year in ladies' wear; first Wendy Richard and now Mollie Sugden have gone and left their counter at Grace Bros. for the last time.

Sugden's Mrs. Slocombe made the world safe for pussy jokes, if nothing else; but there was so much else. She was a kind of crystallization of her kind, the randy widow who has her roots in The Canterbury Tales and Juliet's nurse and who today seems as distant a caricature as ... well, all the caricatures of vanished types that populate, so delightfully, Are You Being Served?

I don't know about you, but I miss old ladies. Today's septuagenarians and octogenarians (and beyond) are all very well, with their tracksuits and "active senior lifestyles," but they're hardly cosy. As I age, I like to think I'll keep Mrs. Slocombe and her ilk in mind and become one with them, a contented male old lady with a blue rinse and imperturbable calm...

(image: thanks, Hilly Blue!)

Trailer Trash: On the Brink of Something Fantastic

It just seems appropriate. She was sensational. Come to think of it, I think I saw her a couple of times at the parade, too...

The Heavens Over Berlin...

...were once full of stars. Some were born there, some passed through; some lingered long, some burned out young or moved too close to black holes artistic or political. You still feel them, at times, in the streets here, in the makeup of old women and the attitudes of young girls...

Pola, once a serious artist before becoming a Hollywood vamp...

Louise, who arrived something of a Hollywood lightweight and left, although she didn't know it for two decades, a sublime artist - and a has-been...

Miss Dietrich, of whom no more need be said than that she did quite all right for herself...

Anna May, who was here a bigger star than ever she managed to be again...

And the ineffable Lil Dagover, for a while the biggest lady of all of these...

Not to mention the problematic Fraulein Riefenstahl, long-lived - but not enough to live it down...

A trouble shared, to some extent, by the far less villainous (and infinitely more camp) Miss Zarah Leander.

I think I saw at least three of them at yesterday's parade...

Taking It to the Streets

Mr. Muscato and I, for various professional reasons, pretty much have to take our big vacation around this time of year; it's also a good idea to get a little time out of the inferno back home, so that the memory of cooler weather can help one last until mid-September.

The result, however, is that for the third year in a row - and really, really, we're not trying and it actually has been in each case a fortuitous accident - we've ended up in a new city for its iteration of that annual phenomenon of modern life, the ABCGLBTQMVP Pride Parade (I can't keep up with the damn acronyms anymore).

After Paris and Amsterdam in previous years, this time around it was Berlin's turn. Of course, one of the main critiques that people who find fault with these kinds of festive events trot out is that no one ever pays any attention to the tens of thousands of ordinary Joes and Janes (or, in this case, I suppose, Wilhelms and Wilhelminas) who turn out, instead concentrating only the the broadest stereotypes of gay life.

I guess you have to count me in, 'cause I all I took was pics of beefcake:

...(And I have to say there was some pretty good eye-candy on offer, although our Berliner friends moaned about the cloudy weather, which kept far too many shirts on)...

...and drag queens. I'm loving Marlene, but her companion looks like the world's most depraved leprechaun.

I think we saw Bruno.

And I know we saw a number of haughty, disapproving mesdames (do you think that the camera and Nivea goodie-bag detracts from the look? The latter were, by the way, weirdly omnipresent - Nivea must have hired about 5,000 good-looking boys to hand out little packs full of travel-size samples - a fairly clever promotion, as the giveaways contained everything from moisturizer to deodorant, meaning that every one-night stand in Berlin last night included a handy trick bag).

In addition to the ladies, as noted, there were plenty of gentlemen...

...more than a little sheer, brazen, and very amusing bizarerie...

...and, in amongst the wild-eyed apes protesting to Angela Merkel ... tens of thousands of Wilhelms and Wilhelminas (of all nations) having a wonderful time.

As did we, with a day that included sekt and strawberries at one chum's glam flat just off the parade route, a turn 'round the massive rally/concert/party in the Tiergarten after the parade (German festival food: fabulous), and an evening of (for us) extremely late nightclubbing at an Arabesque dance party in Kreuzberg.

We've done most of the heavy-duty museum going and other duty-travel that we planned for here, and so now the last few days of vacation will be, one hopes, less taxing; I don't know about Mr. Muscato (since he's still fast asleep), but my calves are going to require some serious downtime.

So Beautiful

A little speechlessness here; I've been waiting to see her since I was about 8. It was worth the wait. Some things in life are even more incredible than you imagine they could be.

Nefertiti - Nofretete in these parts, for various reasons Egyptological - means "The Beautiful Woman Has Come."

Long Ago and Far Away

Wow. Two in one day, and two like this. It's been so many years since he was anything but a sad wreck that looking at photos like this is somehow disorienting. What on earth next?

Tutti-Frutti

So we're staying well above our means, if not our social ambitions, courtesy of a chum in the hostelry business, at a very glossy establishment in the heart of new Berlin.

When we checked in, there were any number of nifty surprises, but certainly the most startling was this little offering of fruit. Is it special for us, since I noted that the reservation was for self "and partner"? Is it because this is Pride weekend in this part of the world?

Or is it simply that, to quote Dr. Freud, sometimes a banana is just a banana?

Angel

She was, in her way, the defining beauty of an era; she even turned out to be something of an actress, of the sort whose successes, fairly or not, are each treated as a surprise.

It was always odd and somehow unsettling to think of her as a 60-something invalid, and in time perhaps some of her less fortunate moments will fade and we will think of her as I think she would have liked, all hair, teeth, and California charm.

(Image from the fabulous photostream of Bouffant Headbutt)

Headline du Jour

Like daughter, like mother, apparently. And this on a day when other choices (from just the Telegraph) were such that I could just as easily have gone with "Monkey Urinates on Zambian President" or "Canterbury is Sufficiently Gay, Council Inspectors Rule" (and what a relief that must be to all concerned).

Speaking of Girls Who Get Around...

She's on my mind, too - not least because we've ended up in Berlin...

A Girl Who Gets Around

I swear, today was going to be my day to be all cultural. Mr. Muscato had plans of his own, so after lunch (which itself followed a vigorous morning of shopping at Printemps and the Galeries Lafayette, frustratingly the day before the big annual sales start) I headed off across the Tuileries and the Seine to the Musée d'Orsay.

Once there, however, I found enormous queues of exceedingly regrettable types touristiques. I decided I simply couldn't stand waiting in line for an hour more and was, therefore, forced, forced! to move to my Plan B.

Which was to visit the Musée de la Poupée, which turns out to be one of the hidden gems of a capital full of them. It's a miniscule private museum tucked into a tiny street near the Place Beaubourg - only half-a-dozen rooms or so, but all packed with every conceivable kind of 18th, 19th, and early 20th century doll (and a generous helping of teddy bears, doll furniture, and associated treasures). They are all displayed in enchanting and extremely creative dioramas - an Edwardian parlor, a Victorian classroom, a Trip to the Zoo, etc., and are just adorable.

I had been attracted by an advert for the museum's current temporary exhibition, "Rêve ta vie avec Barbie", a comprehensive look at Mattel's fair-haired girl's enviable career over the past half-century. If you're in Paris before the end of September, you really ought to stop by.

In one of those little happenstances that makes life interesting, this infinitely twee destination is just next to, of all things, the Jardin Anne Frank, a hidden oasis of calm and green in one of Paris's most congested neighborhoods, where if you like you can sit for a while and think sad thoughts. I did.

But then I went and found Mr. Muscato and, as usual, felt much better.

Piaf

She's on my mind.

Musique, Musique, Musique

Sunday in Paris was the annual Fête de la Musique, a day, we learned, in which Paris boasts upwards of 20,000 concerts, ranging from orchestral galas in the city's great parks to impromptu busking pretty much everywhere we looked. Despite all the apparent variety, though, it still seemed to us that about 19,900 of the concerts featured regrettable young people playing loud local variations on "le rock" circa 1993.

Even so, we had fun. The Egyptian Cultural Service, which we passed by chance, had rather surreally brought in an obscure star of state television, a beaming, wigged, elderly gentleman who plays what can best be described as an Arabic take on cocktail organ (now there's a forgotten genre. And with good reason). Enjoyed amongst a crowd of mostly entirely baffled French people at a street concert, his art took on an air of the sweetly surreal.

And in the Marais, the music ran from Piaf to techno (not all that far, really, with that crowd), and we lounged in the Rue des Lombards until all hours. Mr. Muscato is quite fond of an establishment called Le Bear's Den; I was actually rather taken with the local version of the Eagle, which is infinitely lighter-hearted and more festive than either its Dutch or American sisters.

On the way home we passed one of my favorite landmarks, this flamboyant tower not far from the Rue Sebastopol.

And then another old friend, the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt; in addition to having staged some of that great lady's greatest triumphs, the café on the corner there is where I had my first ever French lunch - a croque madame, if memory serves - all those yonks ago on my very first trip to Paris.

C'est Paree!

While our exuberance may not quite equal Marie-Claude's (seen here attempting the world's first can-can-mambo-jazzercise routine, all to the mellow rhythms of Herr Maier), we're having a lovely time.

Dalidamicalement

As part of our goings-on this week in Paris, Mr. Muscato and I carried out a long-time resolution.

We started by fortifying ourselves, having taken the Metro up, up, up to the further end of Montmartre, with a little something for luncheon at a very nice little neighborhood spot called, charmingly, Ginette de la Côte d'Azur.

Having polished off an excellent terrine de lapin and assorted other goodies, we proceeded through the hilly, leafy streets of the quartier, up a flight of vaguely baroque stairs, and reached:

Yes, it's true: we had embarked on one of the lesser, but more intense pilgrimages known to music lovers, the Tour de Dalida. We started in the lovely square that has been named in her honor, an irregularly shaped space of dignified apartment buildings, venerable trees, and, in the center:

This lovely sculpture, with, it must be admitted, more emphasis on the bust than most busts.

It's a popular spot. We weren't alone with our thoughts for five mintes before tourist groups started coming by. The ones who lingered were, I can't deny, more on the elderhostel end of the traveling scale, but they were having a wonderful time.

I was especially taken with this dear lady, who dutifully took notes in her little red notebook. I admire how she has so sensibly stashed her handbag under her very practical spring coat. Either that or that's one hell of a sanitary appliance.

Then it was on to the nearby Rue d'Orchampt, a tiny lane with a sharp elbow turn, at the very corner of which you find:

Chez Dalida itself, commemorated with this touching plaque. It really is a marvelous house:

Called, for reasons I have not discovered, the House of the Sleeping Beauty. It's currently, it seems, having some kind of overhaul but appears to be in private hands. We thought about trying to talk ourselves into its vestpocket garden, but instead decided to move on, through the narrow streets filled with odd shops, desultory galleries, and dark bars, down to our final stop - and hers.

The Cimetière de Montmartre is a densely packed necropolis, chockablock with mausoleums, marble slabs, obelisks, and other funerary monuments. It has a distinguished roll-call of residents, ranging from the original Lady of the Camellias and Dumas, who immortalized her, to the fabulous painter Gustave Moreaue, the great Taglioni, the playwright Feydeau, Truffaut, and even (although I'm ashamed to say I didn't seek her out), the inimitable Musidora.

Of course, we had but one goal in mind:

I'd only ever seen head-on photos of the Diva's magnificent tomb, which make it seem as if set to itself, in some pastoral setting. Much more fitting for this quintessential girl of the city is the reality, which has the tomb at the very edge of the cemetery, with views of Montmartre.

She is surrounded by ordinary Parisian families, whose relatives must wonder - even if they themselves do not - at all the hullabaloo she has brought to their quiet little corner. The grave itself is beautifully planted, and it is surrounded, to the point of spilling over to its neighbors, with flowers, plants, and all sorts of tributes and memorials.

I was especially taken with this little china book, placed now on the nearest flat slab next to Dalida's tomb. I think I will do all possible to popularize the cordial use of "Dalidamicalement."

So it's in this spirit of Dalidaffection that I offer a final image of the great lady herself - depicted as the Apotheosis of Cabaret, Our Lady of the Music Halls, a diva in its truest meaning: goddess.

The rest of our day (and night) was rather in the same spirit, albeit carried out in the district that today is as louche as Montmartre was once, the divine Marais. But more of that anon...

Seen, in the Rue Ste.-Anne

What I've decided is proof positive that Magda didn't really die, but simply came to Paris and, following in Mama's footsteps, opened up a shop. Hell, you could half-convince me that she's got Jolie and Eva helping her out; I think a Death Becomes Them scenario is all too plausible with those gals.

The Ascot Gavotte, 2009 Edition

Just because we're running around the capitals of Europe discovering how many different ways there are to eat foie gras (answer: many, and they're all delicious) doesn't mean that I'm not doing my best to keep an eye on the critically important developments in this troubled world of ours. Fortunately, I'm also still able to gloss over those and focus on what really matters.

Yes, it's that time again already - the annual festival of Royal-watching that is race week at Ascot.

The older folks are looking well this year, although the Duke is starting to get that tell-tale old man expression that may just be bemused absence or may in fact be a genuine lack of any idea at all where he is.

Personally, I always like Her Majesty better in bright colors, as here in fuschia. That is, by the way, a single stone there in the middle of that brooch - I believe it may be a piece of the Koh-i-Noor diamond.

The York princesses remain wholly regrettable, the Countess of Wessex gives every indication that she's well aware she's in the midst of an only middling bargain, and the Duchess of Cornwall is looking well. The real news, though, is that the Princess Royal is, after a long era of rather disastrous appearances (all too many of them in uniform drag), making an effort.

She looks jaunty in orange, and certainly seems pleased with herself...

...and while I think we may have seen this yellow-and-blue number before, it has a classic appeal.

She saved the real fireworks, though, for day three, with this pleated crêpe jacket, gorgeous black gloves, and a hat that must have added almost a foot to her height. Already the hardest working woman in royal business, she may have an eye on finally dressing the part. Brava!

All in all, it seems to have been a thoroughly satisfactory week all around, although at times...

I do suspect the Queen must wonder how it happens that she has to spend time with some of the people thrown her way. Yes, that is indeed Sheikh Mo of Dubai in top hat and morning coat. Oh, dear...

Movin' On Up

Sorry for such a long interregnum - we've been very busy. What can I say? It's Paris, bitches...

Suddenly Sunday

Mr. Muscato has always been fond of those "hear no evil" monkeys, ever since he happened on a stash of them at a thrift shop in central Pennsylvania (oh, we get around). He was, therefore, inordinately pleased to discover the same theme over one of our favorite bars, translated into cherubs. In Amsterdam, even bar tchochtkes have a kind of faded elegance...

Unlike the Rijksmuseum, one of our Sunday destinations, which is in the midst of some multi-year makeover and therefore has on display only a greatest-hits show, which felt to me like getting one of those "original artists" CDs out of a bargain bin. Even so - Vermeers, so I really can't complain.

And: a lovely lunch with the executrix, cakes at a shop called Pompadour (exactly as foofy as it sounds), dinner at our favorite fish restaurant (the lobster bisque of death), a walk through the redlight district (teeming on a Sunday night), a very brief stop at the local iteration of the Eagle (distinctly scarier than its American incarnations), and a much longer and more convivial stop at the bar of the three cherubs, where Pieter the bartender does a fierce Miss Ross. Good times.

Communing with Nature, Etc.

Despite what Mr. Muscato refers to as "the bitter, bitter cold," we are tremendously enjoying, after our first few weeks of the Arabian summer, the simple opportunity to be outdoors here in the north.

Not, of course, that we mean the great outdoors in any sporty sense; not at all. We just mean things like sitting in a garden while having lunch.

Where, yesterday, we were joined by visitors. It's much harder, it seems, to photograph a bee than you might think.

At another café - this one overlooking a lock - another visitor. The sparrows are so tame as to be postively friendly. One sat at the edge of a plate yesterday, quite un-self-consciously joining in on bread and butter.

But of course all this nature is quite exhausting. We restored ourselves with a good long seige of nightlife, which varied from observing quite incredibly young people going mad at one establishment as if it were the first time they'd had the chance to sing along to cheesy 70s pop (as perhaps it was) to a distinctly more to our taste boite in which older and more respectable gentlemen - well, went mad at the oppotunity to sing along to cheesy 70s pop, this time under the direction of a large person dressed as Marlene Dietrich.

By the time this and more was all over, we had heard Abba's "Does Your Mama Know That You're Out?" at least six times, which meant it was more than time to go back in, which we did at a ridiculous (for us, at least) hour.

Overheard, in the Tourist Quarter

A large group of young North American ladies passes us by...

"Well, there I was, without any idea what to do...."

"So, anyway, after I wandered around for a while - I bought her some edible underpants.."

"And then anyways, everybody was happy!"

[general noises of understanding and agreement from the girls...]

Frankly, it's only the emphasis on everybody that leaves me wondering - just what kind of wedding party are we dealing with here?

Seen on the Voyage

Another perfect day in Amsterdam, brisk and sunny. Mr. Muscato and I go about bundled up in sweaters and scarves, even though the locals appear to be under the impression that it's high summer.

The insistently chinois motif on two walls of our otherwise tremendously comfortable room brings to mind dear Mr. Wilde's deathbed comment: either this wallpaper goes, or I do. Since the rest of the hotel is so entirely pleasant, however, we've decided to stick it out.

Not least because this is our view.

Mr. Muscato's old friend The Dutchman took us motoring today. It turns out, rather to our surprise, that Amsterdam is in fact entirely surrounded by Holland, a country distinguished, from our limited experience, by scenic villages, sheep-ridden meadows, and, as above, absurdly picturesque vistas. This was a lovely castle, poised between a river and the Zuider Zee, surrounded by gardens of an almost numbing beauty.

And then, as if life weren't ridiculously lovely enough, we had a memorable lunch at a tiny, scenic inn, one at which I noticed only as we were leaving the discreet Michelin star tucked away inside the door.

Tonight: dinner chez l'Executrix and then some pub-crawling.

Au Jardin

Yes, it's true. Mr. Muscato and I, having had such a wonderful time last summer, have started our European jaunt in jolly olde Holland.

We've returned, even, to the same hotel, an oasis of Continental charm that seems have fallen, more or less intact, straight out of some time between the 1890s and 1930s. It reminds me, in fact, of Agatha Christie's Bertram's Hotel, although - at least so far - without either menace or Miss Marple.

Amsterdam is just about the most charming city I know - in only 24 hours, we've already sat at sidewalk cafés, found some decent clothes, seen some indecent things, and had a raucous dinner with our dear friend Clarissa, an advertising executrix. Oh, and I've eaten enough pork, in various forms, to almost convince me we've returned to civilization.

We're even being cultured, as seen by our having gone this morning to the charming garden above, which is a highlight of a heavenly house museum, formerly the home of the distinguished Van Loon family. My favorite: one of the Mesdames Van Loon was a dame de chambre to Queen Wilhelmina, so the house is littered with signed photographs of pre-war royalties, up to and including (it was all I could do not to snatch), Queen Marie.

So all's well with the world, at least our corner of it.

Quoth the Neighbor...

"What what? Oh, the Muscatos. Looking for them? Travelling, it seems, my dear. Said something about seeing some queen in Amsterdam. Or was it the Queen in Amsterdam? One never knows with those boys..."

"No, can't say as I've seen young Koko, either. Infernal creature's off summering at Baden-Baden or some such. The boys really aren't bad, but that dog? Spoiled like a Gabor, he is."

And We're Off!

Yes, darlings, it's true - Mr. Muscato and I are packing our trunks and flying north. We are looking forward to museums, nights out, a turn 'round the shops here and there, and lashings of exotic cocktails, not to mention catching up with various chums in the capitals of dear Europe.

I hope to keep you posted on the road, but in the meantime, why not tell me about your summer plans?

Flamenco-a-Go-Go

Let's turn back the page to 1968 and recall - and why is it always such a surprise? - that Charo was in fact an incredibly talented musician. That she got to be Charo on top of it hardly seems fair.

Take my word for it - you want to stay through the end of this one, kiddies, both to see in its full glory her gilded playsuit and... well, stick around.

Picture This: in Dreams

Divine Deco androgyny from the Master, Peter Ashworth.

The subject, we're told, is Walter, "an Elizabethan Gentleman." He handles with aplomb the plaguing question of just what is the right inseam to be worn with platform stilettos...

Suddenly, in the Ladies' Lounge

Janey and Sybil find themselves perplexed by Sandra, the new girl, whose stylishly boyish figure is offset by her startlingly boyish Adam's apple.

"Silly queen," thought Sybil, "doesn't Miss Thing there know that's why God created pom-pom trimmed throat wraps?"

Trailer Trash: No Pinkies?!

Three decades before Mel Brooks took on Broadway (and triumphed, at least the first time out of the gate), Rialto favorite Neil Simon decided to tread the Brooksian route with a spoof of classic Hollywood whodunits.

The result, Murder by Death, may not be a great film, but it has a peerless cast, amusing situations, some funny lines (Maggie Smith really gives her all to "Where's my Dickie?"), and the peculiar spectacle of Truman Capote trying to be a movie star. Throw in unbridled hammery from the likes of Nancy Walker, Alex Guinness, and Estelle ("Murderpoo?") Winwood, and you've got a perfectly satisfactory night out. It's not Young Frankenstein, but then again neither is it (thank God) Won Ton Ton...

And She is Marie of Rumania

Communing with her pearls, Her Majesty has a Total Glamour Moment. Let's hope we all have one this week.

Girls Get Around

Dottie's a girl on the town - all over town...

While Bette's keeping it real on the West Side.

Goldie's stirring things up just a little further East (note to self: Hal Holbrook, astonishingly, didn't always look like Mark Twain. This may require further investigation)...

And girls in the Deep South, it would seem, are no better than they should be.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, the otherwise unheralded Grace Smith appears to be mixed up with The Sepia Bela Lugosi.

Miss Harlow, fabulous as always (did she ever wear anything that wasn't bias-cut white satin?) is busy playing "show me" with Franchot Tone (at least I hope it's Franchot - this isn't another one of those that tries to pair her off with Lionel, is it?).

Further afield, some girls are trying to Menace the Fate of the World (while looking smashing in black latex)....

...even as others are trying to save it.

They are, all of them, girls on the go, and all of them, in their own ways, seem intent on proving true perhaps the wisest adage to come down to us from the mystic 1980s: girls just want to have fun. Truer words, children, truer words. Just ask the Girl from Tobacco Row. Or Mars.

Meanwhile, in 1889

An early study of Fabulon favorites Thing 1 and Thing 2, resplendent in tippets and toques. They're waiting for their third sister, so they can finally go to Moscow. Or maybe not.

He was from Gabon

Omar Bongo, President for Life

1932 - 2009

Yes, Africa's longest serving Big Man has toddled off. The diminutive dictator (five foot on a good day in his trademark Cuban heels) leaves behind 30 children or so, a killer Stutz limousine, and a simultaneously oil-rich and impoverished nation.

What his death really, does, from our parochial POV, however, is provide yet one more opportunity to ref the greatest moment in modern television.

Going on a Manhunt

You will remember, perhaps, that I recently took note of the fact that this year's edition of that landmark on all of our social calendars, Mr. Manhunt International 2009, is set to take place this month. I have to say, though, that I'm getting worried - no venue announced yet? How are we to make our travel plans in time?

Also of concern is the apparent lack of a candidate from Egypt. Last year, it seems contestant Tarek Naguib proved unable to travel.

Which, you'll have to admit, really is rather a shame.

He definitely has a certain something. To paraphrase what dear Miss Dorothy Parker once observed of Clara Bow, "It? He has those!"

Sadly, he remains, all his attributes aside, a minimal web presence. We will do our best to keep looking, though, both for more Naguib and for news of this year's festivities. I'm just jonesing for that costume parade...

Joan

Iron-clad in her self-regard, resplendent in a necklace that looks like an explosion in a pearl fishery, and apparently entirely unaware that her left bosom has started to drift off as if wanting to leave the room without her. And yet, against all odds, a star to reckon with, even here, even now.

(borrowed from the startingly comprehensive

Joan Crawford encyclopedia, The Best of Everything)

And Baby Makes Three

With, of course, one notable exception, I am almost entirely immune to cuteness in the Animal Kingdom; I am still less enamored of cute animal stories of the kinds that the wire services pump out at slow news times. Add in anything to do with children, and you're almost sure to lose me.

Still, even my stony heart has been helpless in the face of the tale, coming from the Berlin Zoo, of the happy couple pictured above, Z and Vielpunkt, a pair of Humboldt penguins who have set up housekeeping together, apparently in order to share their interest in things like fashion, design, and the career of Zarah Leander.

Together, they have recently become adoptive parents of a now-hatched egg. They are apparently model parents. I think they make a lovely couple; that's actually more or less exactly how Mr. Muscato and I look at the door of the Villa Muscato when there's an unexpected caller.

I think that my favorite detail of this little saga is that the proud fathers are just one of three male couples at the Zoo. This makes me very happy, just knowing that, should they choose, they can have bridge evenings and, if nothing else, always have someone else to talk about.

And Another Key Change!

Even all the way out here, darlings, one does hear the occasional whisper from Gotham, and so I know quite well that Sunday night is the Tonys, which came to mind again just now thinking of Mr. Fierstein.

Consider this little video moment the Café's tribute to Broadway's night of nights. I was terribly excited to find it on the Youtubes, because I recall clearly and with enormous nostalgia that this remarkble rendition from the 1983 telecast by the much-missed Miss Loudon was, in fact, the first time I ever heard this song. Life's never been quite the same since, I'm happy to say.

When was the last time one of those shows had this much life, this much crazy wonderful Broadway Rhythm (everybody dance)? She was a theatre dame, and this was her moment, and she grabbed it and ran just as fast as she could...

Great Moments in Sexploitation

You know, I would have sworn that I myself have been out in the territory Beyond Booze, but for the life of me I don't remember ever having ended up frugging in an all-in-one next to Mr. Birnbaum from Accounting.

But maybe that's the point...

Birthday Queens

Well, technically a Tsaritsa and a queen, but what do you want on a Saturday? They had very different lives; think of them as embodiments of the masks of tragedy and comedy, linked, perhaps, by an enormous capacity to love...

The tragic one first. I realized with a shock today that Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress of the All the Russias, was just my age or thereabouts when she met her tragic end. One thinks of her as an old woman by 1918, but she was merely weary.

It started promisingly enough - a grand-daughter of the great Victoria, raised in a serenely Anglophilic nursery in the country her mother had married into, Hesse. It seemed to get only more so when she entered into a love-match with her handsome, gentle cousin who would someday be Tsar. Almost immediately, though, it started to go wrong - the wedding marred by a stampede as the poor scrambled for gifts, then the birth of a series of girls - much loved, but not heirs.

At last, a boy - and the end somehow becomes inevitable: hemophilia. The Empress, mad for a cure, descended into a kind of mystic religious mania. Rasputin. World War. Revolution. Exile. Death, sudden and violent, in a dank Siberian basement.

Her portraits always seem foreboding, as if she has some idea, already, that there's something gone awry. And yet when she was a girl, her nickname was Sunny, for her smile; her husband called her that until the day they died.

Thinking of our other birthday celebrant brings drama of a different kind - the sturm und drag of life on the fringes of New York's avant garde, followed by sudden, sensational success, Tony Awards (the first one 27 years ago, would you believe?), and then a long stretch as America's Official Theatrical Homosexual. Harvey Fierstein has worn the highs (La Cage, Hairspray) well, even as he's weathered the lows (Legs Diamond; the very special hell that is Double Platinum...) with aplomb. He's an original, and today he celebrates his 55th.

Cover Girl

Margie was top girl at the Leamington International Adenoidal Modeling Agency and a regular for some of the best budget labels, but all told it didn't really get her that far.

Why Don't You...

...Stay limber by lounging in the lotus position on your bearskin rug? It works like a charm for Mexican superstar María Félix!

Actually, I'm rather entranced by La Félix's taste in decorating - her fetching drawing room would appear to be a unique blend of Louis Something, Pre-Columbiana, and Self Worship, all brought together as one by the bearskin. That's a style I can identify with.

Travel 101

As Mr. Muscato and I prepare for our summer holiday, I am of course looking for travel tips. Fortunately, reliably as ever, the Telegraph has come through with some thoughtful insights from their perennial go-to gal for common-sense help, Miss Joan Collins.

She may not break any new ground (she marvels at the "new craze" of buying counterfeit handbags on Canal Street, which I believe dates back to the Cretaceous), and sadly she doesn't really say much about our intended destinations, but she does provide some useful information for us to keep in mind:

Never underpack: Miss C. reminds us that climate is unpredictable. I'm so glad she brought this up, so that now I can be sure to bring plenty of resort togs and my mink. Overweight charges be damned! Or could this possibly have something to do with the fact that, as the article reminds us in tiny print as a postscript, that Miss Collins is a "brand ambassador" for a luggage forwarding company?

Be prepared: Dear Joan recounts for us a recent (! remember that part) vacation upset, when en route to friends' in Acapulco, her luggage, sadly not forwarded, went missing, and she was forced into a tragic situation that involved "replacing all my resort clothing and ... borrowing bikinis and make-up from my hostess." Some day, when the shaking and the sleepless nights have passed, you'll forgive me for having planted in your mind the image of a bikini-clad 21st century Joan Collins in borrowed make-up.

While Miss C. is sensible on the whole about where to stay - she expresses strong preferences for the Ritz in Paris and the Dorchester in London - she also claims to be eager to venture out to our part of the world in order to experience the wonder that is Atlantis. Well, you know how I feel about that. Perhaps I'll just have fall back on my old standby when it comes to useful travel tips; I know I have my copy of Joan Crawford's My Way of Life around here somewhere. Ermilia!

Notes From All Over

At last, it seems, our busy social season is drawing to a close, as heat engulfs our little Sultanate and the expat community starts its annual peregrinations to cooler climes. I went last night to the penultimate concert in this season's offerings by the royal symphony; Mr. Muscato, curiously, always seems to develop a slight headache on these evenings.

The symphony is one of the more appealing curiosities of our corner of the world; a true court orchestra, it is the monarch's own ensemble, created at his diktat entirely from local performers (making it the only all-citizen orchestra in the region - you couldn't walk into the Cairo Symphony without tripping over players from Minsk, Pinsk, and the capitals of any number of ex-Soviet -Stans). It dutifully works its way through a range of light and middling classics, under the direction of a rotating case of mostly entirely deservedly obscure imported conductors. I shall have to tell you, one day, the tale of the concert that featured the world's direst (and possibly vastest, and that's saying something) mezzo...

But last night's was rather better than many, with a Turkish focus thanks to being presented by that country's very dapper ambassador. A Turkish piece opened the program (and very good, too - vaguely Copland-ish, a kind of Anatolian Spring), followed by a Grieg piano concerto played by an appealing young Turkish soloist, one whose choice of evening gown (plunging, clinging, and trailing peach jersey) was a startling reminder that the Muslim world is far from uniform in its thinking.

She made for a piquant contrast to the ladies of the ensemble, who wear stage versions of traditional local dress, which is both colorful and entirely all-encompassing (the men wear white tie, and the young locals look adorably uncomfortable in their unfamiliar and doubtless constricting splendour as they saw away).

In any case, as in much of the world, one of principal reasons to be in faithful attendance at these evenings is to see and be seen, and last night the roster of local social stars was in perhaps its last full array until next autumn. There was the usual sprinkling of ambassadors and ambassadresses; a generous helping of academics and their spouses (identical the world over in their tweeds and enthusiastic expressions); an assortment of British Banker Types and their dressy ladies; a nattering crowd of Young Internationals (off to go dancing later); and a number of local types who are familiar figures from the social columns - the Hat Lady, for example, a dear creature resplendent as always in flowing robes of her own design, complemented by vast flat pancake hats worn at a roguish angle (last night's toilette was crimson crushed velvet, and lovely it was).

We adore the interval at these concerts, when all concerned rush to the theatre's reception room for the only known "wet" public gathering of its kind hereabouts - for a few minutes, as we jockey for wineglasses and make catty remarks, we might be anywhere in the world.

Today, Mr. Muscato (miraculously recovered) and I watched the President's speech from Cairo, and we felt rather proud of dear Egypt. The city looked lovely on television, and I hope that on his way to the stately auditorium at Cairo University Mr. Obama caught sight of the statue above, which sits at the head of the long avenue that leads from Avenue Charles de Gaulle to the University. It's one of my favorites, Egypt's Awakening by the marvelous Egyptian Moderne sculptor Mahmoud Mokhtar.

As for the speech - oh, darlings, that's politics, and outside my ken, but I do think he looked wonderful, and people seem to have appreciated it very much. Whether it does any good, we shall see, but as for me, I keep thinking about the phenomenon of hearing the "New World Symphony" (last night's second half) out here in this part of the world. The string-playing may have faltered, but the feeling was there, and it was one that would deeply depress anyone who hopes for a monolithic, anti-Western Muslim world. And I like to think that's a very good thing.

Angels of Mercy

Nurses on film get kind of a bum rap. They're either insufferably noble:

(Neagle, Robson, Oliver, Pitts - add in Dressler and you would have had a festival of comedy dowagers trying to act serious)

Or they're the biggest sluts this side of stewardesses:

It's a serious profession, but movies always seem to fall back on tired starched-cap-and-sponge-bath routines:

In some cases, it must be admitted, with apparently enough success to inspire a sequel:

This one reminds me of The Killing of Sister George - I've never gotten over the idea of bucolic country nurses biking around British villages. Our heroine here, however, is clearly more Susannah York than Beryl Reid.

This one looks like it's trying to have it both ways - noble and naughty...

But then again, so did this one, decades earlier. Still, I'm going to presume that one is not a remake of the other...

No mistaking it here - it's noble all the way; even if she were to try a little naughty - I mean, Forrest Tucker? (Although there are those miltonberleische rumors...)

Here it's hard to tell - is Stanwyck a Florence Nightingale or a Floradora Girl? (Both, as it turns out - she's a bad girl gone straight, with, as you might expect, complications - and Clark Gable as a rotter. Good stuff)

No such ambiguity here.

And, finally, the trashiest nurse of all. The next time you're in a hospital, look around at the legion of loosely clad, uncapped, be-croc'ed men and women carrying out their mostly routine, occasionally lifesaving tasks - and try to imagine them spreadeagled in ecstasy near an illicit grave.

Although the real question about this film may be: how and why did Nurse Sherri persuade the Pussycats to murder and bury Josie?

A Gentle Reminder

Whatever it is, Lord and Lady Shufflehampton do not approve.

Ann

Sothern. As if there were any question.

Is it possible that, despite never having made a great film (possible exception: Letter to Three Wives) or played a truly great role (can Maisie really count?), that she was the most fabulous of them all? The boys in the stills gallery say yes.

What a Bright Shining Star...

Let's just keep the drag-theme running and spend some time with the immortal Miss Zarah Leander. Oh, yes, I know, Z-Lo was an actual girl, more or less, but, come on - has there ever been a more mannish vibe (at least from any entertainer this side of Rose Marie)?

Here she regales a 1972 television audience with a staple of her concert repertoire, Mr. Porter's "Wunderbar" (which she interprets, as always, as "Wunderbarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"). It's about the only thing I can think of that makes me think kindly of Kathryn Grayson, although even my cold heart can't resist the chorus boys.

Zarah Leander's later career answers the unasked question: What would Marlene Dietrich have been like if (a) she never left Germany and (b) she had had not one iota of taste? Now's your chance to find out.

The Many Friends of Danny La Rue

The British press is now two days into what can only be described as light-hearted mourning, marking the passing of the nation's longest-running Sweetheart in Sequins. He's seen here with the previous record holder.

Is it just me, or does it seem possible that cocktails might have been being served in the Royal Box? I've never seen that tiara pushed quite that far back before.

Here, one stately work of art contemplates another; both look like they could use one of those dubonnet-and-gins that may have contributed to the royal disarray above.

No actual royalty here, but Mr. La Rue's just come from seeing her. At those investitures, ther's usually a string orchestra playing light favorites. One would love to know what accompanied Danny's moment with Her Majesty - "I Enjoy Being a Girl"? "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads"?

Once again, no literal royalty, but I think this pair makes up for not having a picture with the actual Queen. Sadly, now, both have gone to the Grace Bros. branch above...

And only one queen here, but I can't resist dear Mr. Stewart's expression. Is he horrified, intrigued, just a little turned on - or a delicious blend of all three?

Lunar Update

The Man in the Moon may or may not be a lady - but either way, bitch has some very good company...

Trailer Trash: The Singing Baroness

Interrupted Melody is a gorgeous guilty pleasure - a surefire mix of to-die-for sets, fab stage and "real life" costumes (check out the fur-trimmed hostess gown at 1:46), Eleanor Parker's emoting, Eileen Farrell's voice, and "Over the Rainbow", all of it captured in glorious CinemaScope. Who could ask for anything more?

Well, aside from something a little more eye-candy oriented than Glenn Ford as the leading man...

Silk Purse, Meet...

...the disembodied torso of Loretta Young. Even in a ridiculous/fabulous hat, jacket clearly stolen from Wardrobe at MGM (with the "JC" label still stitched in the back), and a brooch the size of a small constellation -

Nope, still can't stand her.

Dream Vacation

So I've been thinking a lot about travel lately, and I've decided that the problem with real-life vacations is all the planning, and these days all the timing - you have the buy this ticket by this date to get that rate, but you can't confirm that reservation until this date to get that deal... it's enough to drive you mad.

It's all just a big bore, especially compared to the luxurious ease of fantasy travel. I've decided that what I'd really like to do for the coming vacation is go to Cairo. In 1942. Oh, sure the war would be on, but by midsummer it was clear enough the Germans wouldn't get much further in than they had, and besides, we know how it turns out and could just enjoy the energy of so many soldiers at liberty...

Having sailed into Alexandria, we'd take the train south. Couldn't be simpler, and Cairo Central Station is very convenient.

Since it's 1942, we'd have to stay downtown to be in the middle of everything, and besides, the traffic's not so bad and Cairo is, after all, known as one of the tidiest cities in the world - some people say it puts New York or London to shame...

And staying downtown means staying at Shepheard's Hotel. Oh, it may not be quite as first-rate as it was in the 20s, but where else can you be really sure of knowing just what's going on?

Because the terrace, you see, is the city's great place to see and be seen. Ambassadors, actresses, the occasional refugee princess or suspicious plotter - all loiter for hours in the comfortable wicker armchairs overlooking the busy street and the passing parade of ladies shopping, Packards swinging down toward Suleiman Pasha Square, or groups of children, tidy in their school uniforms, on their way to play in the nearby Ezbekia Gardens.

Tiring of the bustling city, we could retire to the secluded garden behind the hotel...

...or rest in the cavernous neo-pharaonic lobby.

As evening falls, we would of course repair to the bar, where American, British, Italian, and Greek bartenders each have their specialities and their own devoted followings.

And then, to finish off a long day of travel, perhaps a quick turn on the garden dancefloor before some well-deserved sleep. Tomorrow, we have so much to do, and that nice attaché on the train said he might be able to get us a places for the concert gala at the Opera House; they say the Queen of Iran might be there, and...

Good Night, Sweet Prince(ss)

Ah, there's a new (and very glittery) star in heaven tonight, darlings, for Danny La Rue, that Slightly Different Diva, has gone and left us.

In the mixed-up pomo-homo world we live in, there's something slightly quaint, and very charming, about La Rue's long reign as the UK's favorite "comic in a frock," but we ought not let his old-school impersonations of the Great Ladies (including the fictional Dolly Levi) cause us to underestimate him. Anyone Noël Coward could describe as "The most professional, the most witty... and the most utterly charming man in the business" shouldn't be taken lightly.

When it comes to drag, La Rue was the Mother of the Them All for half-a-century or so; I like to think he's taking a little cocktail even as we speak with Julian Eltinge and Charles Pierce. You just know those peignoirs are fierce.

Start Walkin', Boots

This bemusing 1992 snap of Miss Faye Dunaway - who has apparently stumbled off the set of an Adam Ant tribute video onto a catwalk - is, if nothing else, proof positive that the 80s lingered on long after its sell-by date.

Dunaway puzzles me. For a decade or so she was the Biggest Star in the World. We see her here about halfway through the long going-wrong that started with Mommie Dearest (or was it The Champ, three years earlier?) and has been going on for rising thirty years. I looked her up just now and was discouraged to discover that in one of her last released films, The Gene Generation, she was fourth-billed in a Bai Ling picture, and that in another she was a one-armed cop in something described as "a rockabilly zombie comedy."

It is, somehow, the longest slow-motion career unravelling I can think of, one that makes (to compare her to the inevitable) Strait-Jacket look like a smart career choice, Berserk the work of an artist in her prime, or Trog a benign valedictory. It can't (just) be the money; it's hard to imagine that a Polish children's fantasy, a Troma thriller, or a cameo in a straight-to-video Andy Dick picture (all actually recent credits) do all that much for even the most cash-strapped movie queen. Is she simply unable to say no?

Perhaps it can all be blamed on these boots. But I have a feeling it's what's in them that's the problem...

Weather Report

Those of you dwelling in gentler climes than those we enjoy here in our eccentric little Sultanate may be interested - even appalled - to know that when I left the office this evening around 6:00 p.m. (oh, it's not all Champagne and brunches in these parts, darlings - we work) it was a salubrious 117° F/47° C.

Frankly, that's a temperature to heat plates in advance of a dinner party by, not to walk through. And it's only the end of May; where June or, heaven help us, July will take us, one hesitates to think.

Fortunately, holiday time is rolling around, and so Mr. Muscato and I will once again - if not quite soon enough - be escaping to cooler latitudes. But more of that anon.

(intertitle from Phantom of the Opera from the fabulous Shadowplay)

The Many Friends of Lena Horne

Everybody loves Lena! And why not?

She's stunning, but not so much that she pulls focus entirely from - I'm guessing on the timeline here - Mrs. Warner;

She's equally at home tossing one back with Tony...

...or kindly leading a guest who may already have had enough to the nearest exit.

She's happy leaning on a guest (bonus points for anyone who can explain why Shirley showed up in a T-shirt, velour housedress, blazer, and pearls - maybe it's one of those reincarnation things?)...

...or herself providing a suprisingly strong knee on which to perch.

God knows she's more patient than I, not batting an eye at being nearly swept aside by Lucy's furs -

Or having her audience distracted when a pal stops by in an outfit only marginally more comprehensible than Shirley's.

And, like all genuine divas, she bursts into living color when at least she meets a true peer. Title this one "when goddesses embrace."

I like knowing that Lena is still with us, albeit quietly, her days of entwined cocktails and evicting junkies, perhaps to her relief, behind her. She's the real deal.

Gender Euphoria II

It look like we can add the divine Rudolph Valentino to the short list of exceedingly handsome men who can, against all odds, sport a turban and serious jewels and still retain more than a shred of masculinity. Actually, Rudy looks butcher here than he often did in far more conventional getups. There's a lesson there, somewhere...

Party Like It's 1969

Dear Bill was recently sweet enough to say a kind word about the new banner, which made me out of all proportion pleased, as I never know if anyone pays attention to this occasionally changing feature of the Café. My skills at digital manipulation are slight (no cracks, please), and the banners are about as techno as I get.

This current one, as you can see from the snap above, is a detail of a photo by the remarkable Slim Aarons, that indefatigable chronicler of pretty people in pretty places. It's a garden party in Miami, in 1970.

There is something incredibly evocative about this particular subset of Aarons's pictures; they are like Johnson-era variations on the rococo féte galante, with socialites in hostess gowns replacing frolicking court ladies and the gardens of the rich standing in for those of the king. Here we have a Beverly Hills tea party, circa 1960.

Whether Miami, Beverly Hills, or, as here, Marbella, there is a stillness and serenity in these pictures that one suspects was absent in the actual events, where shrill conversation about Jackie and Liz and assassinations would have competed with Sérgio Mendes on the hi-fi.

In any case, these pictures make this fairly recent past look as exotic and distant as a dream; it's hard to imagine that some of these people might still be alive. One wonders if it all feels as far away to them as it does to us...

And For Our Next Number

It's been too long since we've drawn on the inexhaustible archives of Egyptian cinema for some amusement, but today's selection will soon take care of that.

Here we have Egypt's beloved "Cinderella", Souad Hosni, in a number from her 1974 hit Amira Hobbi Ana (Amira My Love). You will learn - almost immediately, and, I fear, unforgettably - that the song is called "Kiki Kiki Kiko" or something very similar.

No, I cannot explain the presence of a vast visage of someone who looks very like Nicolae Ceauşescu at the back of the set, any more than I can explain the perplexing (and yet not unalluring) bellydancing of leading man Sameer Ghanem, or how it's possible that the scriptwriter for this picture was Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz.

Beauty and the Beast

Seconds before she planned to spring at and devour rising starlet Jane Fonda, Louella Parsons finds her attention distracted, saving us from the prospect of a world without Barbarella.

Reader's Choice

I'm always keen, of course, to respond to regulars' thoughts about what might appear in this space. Recently, dear Bobby - could he have been tiring of our steady diet of Upen and John? - provided a mysterious link.

And this was the photo at that link. Hmm...thought I. Not without promise. Don't you agree? His name, it turns out, is Neil Nitin Mukesh, and he's a rising star, it would seem, in the Mumbai firmament.

He comes from an acting family, and after a brief stint as a child star, he only recently returned to the screen, very much not a child.

He has, one reads, to date resisted the kinds of roles - so eagerly snapped up by Messrs. Patel and Abraham - that require acquiring the male equivalent of a fifties sexbomb's figure. But still, he has his own kind of allure, I think.

And even with his apparent emphasis on high-toned drama over crowd-pleasers, it would seem that he has this year gone his rivals one better - moving beyond mere shirtlessness to full on nudity.

The picture's called Jail, and one can only imagine what goes on. I, for one, certainly wouldn't mind seeing more, despite what looks to be the star's inappropriate use of Nair or some such depilatory.

But I do have ask: what kind of name for a Bollywood star is "Neil"? It's like trying to conceive of someone named Poindexter Kapoor.

And, in Another Corner of the Garden...

Lord Fogminster had hoped that his faraway expression would cover for his uncontrollable flatulence, but the Dowager Duchess completely blew his cover.

Pop Quiz: Score Card

Well, it didn't take long for the secret identity of our recent Pop Quiz subject to be revealed.

Dear Rick knew at a glance that this was no gender-bending Phyllis McGuire impersonator, but instead television soap-opera stalwart Eileen Fulton.

Still - I wonder... isn't there some sense that in answering the question "Drag or actress?", the most appropriate answer came from Miss Janey: "Both"? Think about it.

Even Rick admits that he knew the answer because he "saw her perform once on Fire Island." It's hard to conceive of a less ringing endorsement of genetic femininity, no?

And then there's the look: for better or worse, Miss Fulton has clearly staked out a fashion territory that puts her somewhere between Lypsinka and a TJ Maxx-reliant suburban Joan Collins acolyte.

Her choice of company hardly instils confidence - anyone caught frugging with Phyllis Diller in an outfit like that is, by definition, a drag queen, no matter what the chromosomes say.

Even the leg-art stills aren't reassuring - this is one big-handed soap-opera diva.

So, I think we'll close out the current query by saying that it was, in a sense, a trick question: Eileen Fulton is an actress who's made a career - and, apparently, a long and happy one - out of her very own, very special form of drag. And whyever not?

Portrait Gallery: Eternal Kate, by Amsel

One of the first people I wrote about in the early months of the Café was the marvelous and too-little shouted about artist/illustrator Richard Amsel. I'm very happy to report that I've stumbled across a (relatively) new site chockablock with his works, well-known and less so, and even more excitingly, finished and as-published and, as with the TV Guide cover here, in process. Enjoy.

Why? Revisited

She'd like to propose a toast...

It occured to me recently that I've been remiss, having let slip a (semi)significant date: in late April, the Café celebrated its first birthday. I let that one go, since another (semi)landmark was in the works, the thousandth post. Then that one went by as well, but since here it is Thursday morning and I have a moment, a thought or two on this whole experience.

I started blogging one fine April day only because Thom, damn his eyes, suddenly no longer allowed one to join in the fun on Fabulon without registering, which created a Google ID, which, I discovered, created the possibility of making a blog. I'd never played with Blogger before, and it seemed kind of fun. Thinking I'd at least leave a placeholder, I clicked around and finally wrote this, under the headline "Why?", never thinking it would go much further:

Because I said so. Because I blame it on the summer night...or the bossa nova. Because that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Because it's always something.

Why? Why the strange fascination with the films of Kay Francis? With the minutiae of forgotten mitteleuropean dynasties of the 19th century? With the old age of the Duchess of Windsor? With the youth of Tutankhamun? Why the all joy, the tears, the deep, abiding bemusement with the ways of the world?

Just one damn thing after another.

And here we are now. It does turn out to be one damn thing after another, or rather anywhere up to three things per day, which I find is generally my limit.

I knew from the start that I hadn't Thom's incredible eye; that I was fractionally as dedicated as Joe.My.God; that I was one-tenth as trenchant as Peenee; and that I had nothing like the crazed glee of J*O*E or Kevin (then Shirley). I admired Miss Janey's gumption, and Donna Lethal's feral take on beauty. I was interested in local things here is our odd little Sultanate, but hadn't the insider knowledge to be a font of good gossip like Muscat Confidential or Suburban.

So, thought I, what to do? And I decided just to think out loud, more or less, and have fun. If picking around Google looking for amusing pictures can be called creative, I guess I would say this has been the most creative thing I've ever done (believe me, you don't want to read the abandoned novel drafts - they definitely don't count).

From the beginning, I have been amazed by the community that blogs have made possible. Peenee was the very first commentor here, and I count it a brighter day when I get to hear from him, here or over in his corner of the world. I've loved hearing other people's takes on everything from travel to the fashion choices of Bollywood stars; I like knowing that Larry's (careful - his, I believe, is the NSFWest blog that links to this staid place) going to check in, or that I'll get to read what Jason's thinking way down there in New Orleans.

I hope you - whoever you are, known or unknown - are enjoying yourself, because I am.

Vanity of Vanities

You know, I keep telling Koko he's way too young for these gauzy, shot-through-Vaseline portraits - that they're far too late-period Crawford, Ball, or Gabor for a canine of his age - but does he listen? Of course he doesn't listen.

What can I say? We live with a dog who wants to look like he's starring in a revival of Forty Carats at a south Jersey dinner theatre. I suppose it should come as no surprise...

Pop Quiz

Drag or actress?

When Gods Descend

Miss Fontanne and Mr. Lunt lunching at a cafeteria, 1942. Imagine running into Kate and Petruchio over the salisbury steak...

Trailer Trash: The Dress Doctor is In

Well, okay - this is less a trailer than a featurette. And yes, you do have to sit through the annoying TCM intro. Still, I think you'll agree that it's worth the wait to hear the one and only Miss Edith Head introduce the sensational fashions that enlivened the otherwise not-so-sensational Natalie Wood vehicle Penelope.

This is the kind of movie that if you enounter a bit of it late one night, you think "Gee, why haven't I heard of this? It's kicky, fun, and great to look at! Why don't they make movies like this anymore?

Then one day, you set aside time to catch the whole thing, and you walk away thinking, "Oh. That's why."

So now you don't have to, because you've seen the most important parts - believe me: after that white gown, it's all downhill from there.

Kevin's Little Secret

Actually, through the miracle of modern photography, these are Kevin Gavin. And doesn't he have good taste in pumps? Blazers and caps? not so much.

A Word From Our Sponsor

Shoes. Painful, pointy, fabulous shoes. Remember: Toes are for sissies.

Birthday Girl II: Peg and Co.

It's a day of birthday richness; in addition to the magnificent creature that was Queen Mary, today marks the birth of one of the Café's favorite thrushes, the fabulous Miss Peggy Lee. Apparently, as evidenced by these clips from Pete Kelly's Blues, the two ladies shared a fondness for pearls.

It must be admitted, though, that the birthday roll today blends the sublime with the sublimely annoying: also sharing this natal day are Lenny Kravitz, Helena Bonham Carter (I bet even her birthday cake is Edwardian), Al Jolson, and Bobcat Goldthwait. It takes the combined might of fellow celebrators Pam Grier, John Wayne, Norma Talmadge, and Jay Silverheels to offset all that horror...

Birthday Girl: The May Queen

On this day in 1867, in a grace-and-favour apartment at Kensington Palace, a little girl was born to the vast Princess Mary Adelaide, a granddaughter of George III, and her rather musical-comedy looking little husband, Prince Franz of Teck.

The Tecks were an improvident couple, and their daughter grew into a solemn and serious girl who was shuttled from house to house as her parents (who eventually more or less fled to Italy) avoided creditors and increasingly irritated relatives, including Mary Adelaide's formidable cousin, Queen Victoria.

Despite this less-than-ideal upbringing, the little girl - called May, after her birth month, and certainly less of a mouthful than her given names, Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes - grew into a serious, intelligent, and not at all unattractive young princess.

She entered the Royal Marriage Mart not once, but twice, having lost her first fiancé, the distinctly unpromising Duke of Clarence (the heir to the heir) to flu before being snatched up by the Duke of York (his brother's replacement in the succession as well as at the altar).

And so she lived happily ever after.

She became the stately creature known as Queen Mary, possessor of the most fabulous collection of jewellery and bibelots in the world, seen here in this rather alarming hand-colored portrait with her husband (who seems genuinely to have been the love of her life, at least after diamond-and-pearl stomachers), George V.

Although she shuffled off this mortal coil, at a venerable age and secure in the adoration of her people, nearly 60 years ago, Queen Mary left her mark on the world we live in today, for she was a formative influence in the life of the Queen who is still very much with us. The Queen used to take the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose on little educational outings, which were, one reads, as much looked forward to by the former as they were dreaded by the latter.

So, on her 143rd birthday, here's to May of Teck, the pauper-princess turned Empress of India. She was a good old girl and rock of stability through all her long life, as implacably Victorian on the day she died as she had been on the fine May morning that brought her into this world.

Design for Living

This can only be considered, from what one gathers from the illustration, a Hollywood Pattern in that it might in fact have been designed with Dorothy Arzner in mind.

Actually, I find it rather touching, somehow, that at least some lesbians of the 1930s stayed home and tailored their own mannish clothing.

Heldengedenktag

Shall we stop, for a moment, on this Memorial Day, so that Miss Dietrich can remind us what we should be remembering? Even in German, her message comes through, loud and clear. Quiet, children - Mama's testifyin'...

Suddenly, Susans

Susan. Susan, Susan, Susan. Seems like a demure enough name, no? And when you've got a list that includes Debbie Reynolds, Joan Fontaine, and Garbo, you would think that things were fairly upscale, wouldn't you?

Nope. Somehow, being Susan brings out the inner Madonna in a whole lot more people than just Rosanna Arquette.

Of course, it doesn't take a whole lot to tease the tempestuous out of Miss Connie Stevens (and at least she's waxing melodramatic over the sole member of Henry Willson's legendary stable who's at least somewhat likely to respond).*

When your most demure example is embodied by Joan Crawford, you know there's something serious going on. This might be, by the bye, the least satisfying Crawford picture ever, if only because the denouement is all about how nice she really is at heart. Who goes to a Crawford picture for that?

When playing a character called Susan can put that look into Debbie Reynolds's eyes, something's definitely afoot. It certainly seems unlikely to have been her leading man, Dick Powell.

Even the quintessential lady (except when discussing her sister), Joan Fontaine, is caught up in the madness - the very idea of Susanness inflaming her to the point of trying to vamp George Brent, a pointless endeavor if ever there was one.

Garbo's Susan falls and rises - no surprise there, since that's basically what Garbo heroines always did - but the neon diner-sign font does give it a slightly tawdry air...

It's a sign of the name's potency that the outright trashy movies incorporate the name into titles no more risqué, really, than the ones starring Reynolds or Fontaine...

...and this one sounds like it could almost be a 20s campus romp starring Nancy Carroll or some such. But it's not - because of the dangerous power of "Susan."

* Did you remember that Troy Donahue was married to Suzanne Pleshette? I had totally forgotten.

An Occidental Lillian...

...in, it seems, an Oriental mood for mischief. By Steichen. I've always thought Miss Gish had more going on than that good-girl facade - maintained with such polish for eight decades or so - let on.

May Cause Drowsiness...

And not for the first time, Timmy wondered if the side effects of his antidepressant really were typical, or if Dr. Flessenhopper might be misleading him...

Trip Report

Well, we're home, and in one piece, or rather in as many pieces as we left and no more, which is a good thing, you see, because en route out of Dubai we had a little accident. Not really serious - the Muscato Mobile is disfigured and humiliated, but more or less driveable, if carefully.

The culprit who rammed us was a gentleman who had chosen, on a fine Saturday morning, to become drunk as a lord before twelve noon and go out for a spin in order to catch up, it seems, on his telephoning and chain smoking. It's some measure of how completely schnockered the poor loser was that he is Emirati, we're not, and still the police had no compunction in immediately declaring him at fault.

But before all that, our trip was everything a naughty minibreak should be.

We had a lovely evening at the nitespot pictured (and discreetly blurred), a regular haunt of the city's confirmed bachelors. It was a gloriously not-broiling evening, and we held court under the palms, Mr. Muscato and I, with all sorts of chums and acquaintances.

About half our friends seem to be doing better than ever, and the other half are either moving in with them or heading back to their countries of origin. Whatever the economic situation, though, the boys were out in force and it was a pleasure to see them.

The view from our lodgings did finally appear from the haze, and as promised it included, in the distance, the city's much-vaunted new attraction, The Atlantis. You'll get an idea of the size of the thing by knowing that in this picture it's about ten kilometers away.

Having never been on the Palm (whose villa-choked fronds are in the foreground), we decided after brunch yesterday to motor out in the company of The Hotelier and his visiting friend, whom I suppose we must refer to as The London Hotelier.

And now at least we can say we've been, and the best thing is we need never, ever return.

The décor is Disney on steroids, executed with the kind of ponderous solemnity associated more with the works of Albert Speer than a holiday resort. American kitschmeister Morris Lapidus described his style as "an Architecture of Joy"; this is the infinitely more dreary "Architecture of Mandatory Fun."

The place was overrun with tourists - guests and visitors alike - of a seemingly infinite number of nationalities, each and every one of whom would have immediately, once upon a time, been classified by Society Grandmother Muscato as "not quite our kind, darling." Harsh, but true, true, true.

Getting almost as much attention as the massive aquariums, stuffed with tropical sealife of all kinds, or the dazzlingly horrid shops (who do they really expect to buy a yellow diamond and black pearl parure complete with tiara in a place like that?) was the lobby's pièce de résistance, a sculpture by Dale Chiluly (and what upscale tacky resort is complete without one of those?). The Hotelier describes it as "a four-story high closeup of a very unhappy nerve," and that about sums it up.

We repaired our own shattered nerves with a sundowner evening in the garden of friends of The Hotelier, who live in a (comparatively) old and (comparatively) tranquil neighborhood, in a wonderful small villa surrounded by bougainvillea. It felt like one of the places I remember from West Africa, making it all the more surreal to look up and see, glittering in the distance, the misbegotten towers of Sheikh Zayed Road.

And now, replete with three days of rich food and good company, we're back in our own little house. Koko was very pleased to see us, as you can imagine, and while everyone on the other side of the Atlantic heads into the Memorial Day weekend, we've finished ours and go back, such as it is, to reality.

Muffing It

A recent conversation over on Fabulon celebrated the ever-perfectly-accessorized Miss Ida Lupino, and in particular - thanks to the trenchant eye of MJ - her penchant for keeping her hands warm...

Which got me thinking about muffs. So practical in one sense, so ridiculous in almost every other...

I mean, surely in that gown, keeping her hands warm is the least of Miss Monroe's problems...

While Persian lamb just doesn't seem warm enough, however much it reinforces the visual message that Judy is perfectly fine, whatever else the readers of Photoplay might have been hearing.

As was so often the case in her pre-Desi career, Lucy seems less to be wearing than being worn by this particular costume...

While William Powell seems to be reacting with an inappropriate alarm when presented with Miss Binnie Barnes's impressive silver fox muff - although it must be admitted that she is wielding it superbly.

They go beyond Hollywood of course - on this important day, Jackie is actually using hers (something of novelty after all the foregoing) to keep her hands warm...

...while here it would seem that it is only the combination of muff, collar, and hat that's keeping the late Princess of Wales from spontaneously combusting on the spot.

Muffs! So versatile, so lovely, and so much of eras past! I trust that Miss MJ will now lead us a characteristically high-toned discussion of their sizes, depths, virtues, and uses.

What a Piece of Work is Man

I think this austere little study of studly Bollypop Upen Patel captures a certain je ne sais quoi reminiscent of Hellenistic portraits like those of Antinous - by which, of course, I mean that in a fair world, he'd be about to take off that belt and go full-bore Greek nude. Ah, well - a boy can hope...

A Day at the Beach

Beware: here be ear worms.

This charming little archival clip really captures, I think, exactly what a day sur la plage in Dubai is all about: clamdiggers, picture hats, and Jerome-Robbins-meets-Lithium choreography.

On the Town

As dear Mr. Porter once observed, there is indeed no cure like travel, and for that reason Mr. Muscato and I are taking a little Bridget-Jones-style minibreak, running up to Dubai once more for a fix of glamor, sophistication, and candles and other local nonobtainables from Ikea.

Thanks to our dear pal The Hotelier we are ensconced in a very comfortable suite (oh, we live the Life Deluxe, on discounts, doncha know) with sweeping views of - haze. If and when the haze clears, I'm assured we will have views of the Palm, the Burg al-Arab, and, of course, this being Dubai, construction sites.

Sign of the changing times: we started the festivities with dinner last night at a very good, and at one time very hot, seafood spot. The last time we ate there, we got the very last table, on a combination of pleading, proof of reservation, and finally a discreet little cadeau. It's one of those places with several areas (formal dining, café, bar, terrace, etc.), each with a different menu, and there were all sorts of strict rules about what dish could be served in which zone, and how this wasn't possible, sir, and that wasn't possible, madam, and so very sorry...

Last night, we swept in reservationless, sat in state at a very lovely table with a very lovely view, had the hostess (and an armada of staff) tending to us as if we were the wounded at Gallipoli, were presented with a great heap of all the various menus combined, and heard repeatedly what seems to be the new mantra of the straitened era in which we find ourselves, oh, no, sir, nothing is too much trouble...

Lord, to paraphrase Miss Dinah Washington, what a difference an international economic collapse makes!

I Do Want to Go to Chelsea

This, in case you didn't know, is Chelsea Flower Show Week in London, an occasion our British friends treat with the seriousness (and column inches) more usually associated with natural disasters or another Madonna divorce.

In any case, the Flower Show always calls forth a healthy showing of the Great and the Good, as well as a great deal of the Silly. And why not? It's spring in London after their godawful winter, the flowers are in bloom, and some of our favorite people are out and about:

Isn't she just the kind of person who, when you think of her, you automatically feel better? I believe Joanna Lumley should be recognized as the (inter)national treasure that she is.

Much in the way that the somewhat more astringent, but equally fabulous, Dame Helen (seen here holding, apparently, the flower of her secret) has been of late. And she would seem to be wearing an article of clothing I thought as vanished as the bustle, a spring coat. Good on her!

Stopping to smell the roses is the ever dapper Mr. Stephen Fry. Why is it that only British men can get away with floppy bangs after 25?

Helen Bonham Carter is always good for a fashion moment; here she seems to be channeling one of her more rumpled outfits from Room with a View. You know, for someone who always complains about getting stuck in corset pictures, she wears an awful lot of Edwardiana...

It being London, hats are much and quite festively in evidence; here we have someone called Claudia Leigh - whom the Daily Telegraph seems to think we'll know all about, although I doubt she's any relation at all to the late Lady Olivier - in a really rather wonderful creation.

Although others have a significantly less-developed sense of proportion. Or, perhaps, far greater access to drugs. I only wish the lady in the towering garden trellis looked more pleased to be there...

Royalty is a regular presence at the Flower Show; the Prince of Wales, in fact, won a prize this year. In a retrospective of royal visits, I especially liked this lovely if enigmatic snap of a regal foot ("believed to be Queen Elizabeth II", the caption oddly tells us) treading a flower-strewn lawn. Such a pretty shoe, don't you think?

I keep meaning to be in London for the Flower Show, but somehow it never works out. I think of gardening like cooking; I may not be all that involved in the process, but I do like the results.

Trailer Trash: The Meaning of Propriety

There's something about this movie that never fails. If she had never taken herself more seriously than she does here (and if by '75 she wasn't stuck in dreck), La Streisand could have been the greatest of them all, instead of just the greatest pipes of all.

And who knew Bogdanovich was such a flirt? And who remembers that Ryan O'Neal was so very lovely?

But the great mystery of this trailer: where is the person called Eunice?

Bed Head

Oh, I suppose we've all woken up a few times feeling exactly like this. I find that strong coffee and a glass of Champagne help, but that time is the only cure...

Lookin' for Trouble

Goodness, all that prose heavy lifting has just left me worn out.

Let's recover with a nice example of the subtle song-and-dance stylings of the glorious Miss Jane Russell; I'm especially fond of her little rap/spoken word segment in the middle, as well as, of course, the deeply Fontainebleau décor.

To Tell The Truth

Damn Peenee! The evil creature has sentenced me via blogtag to write ten honest things about myself. Given that to me the whole point of blogging is a certain amount of obfuscation, this runs against the grain; add in the whole WASP “never begin a paragraph with ‘I’” background, and you have recipe for, if not disaster, then certainly discomfort.

Even so, when duty calls…

Herewith, my answers to the Honest Blogger Tag:

1. Just in case any of you were worrying/wondering: there really are a Mr. Muscato and a Koko the Wonder Dog, although neither is likely to respond if called by those names. They are both as wonderful as you might think from my feeble attempts at description, which sometimes leaves me gobsmacked at my good fortune. I may not be as beguiling as advertised, but they easily are, or more so.

2. I love our life here, but there are times – and they are usually trying times – when I truly, deeply, madly wish we lived somewhere more interesting. It’s a stunningly beautiful place, and the people are lovely, and we live lavishly…and there’s absolutely nothing to do on a weekend night. A slight exaggeration, but only slight. I miss old movies in rep houses, I miss live theatre of any kind, and concerts, and dancing, and smoky dark cabarets. I miss wandering around a neighborhood of clever little restaurants and trendy boutiques, and, alright, I’ll say it: I miss drinking in public – a glass of wine at a sidewalk café, say, and I miss drinking that wine while eating a pork chop and wearing shorts.

3. The weight: really must do something about it. And every passing month makes it harder to lose.