This action shot from Carol Channing's short-lived tribute to silent film The Vamp (a trough in her career midway through the decade between Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the Everest that is Hello, Dolly!) raises a troubling possibility: was she in fact a little boy from Little Rock? I've seen more feminine curves at the Anvil.
Warning: moralizing ahead.
...is pretty much what we're up to at the Café these days. I think it's a toss-up as to whether Koko or I miss Mr. Muscato more, but it's really pretty ridiculous how we sit around staring at each other. Sometimes I realize that every moment I spend not thinking about Dalida is a moment of my life I'll never get back.
When she sings - as here, but all too rarely - in Arabic (a child, after all, of Cairo's mixed cosmopolitan semi-slum of Shubra, in her own way a real Daughter of the Nile) I think of all that was lost when Egypt jettisoned the tens of thousands of foreigners - Greek, Italian, French, British, Jews, all - who made the country such an incredible potential bridge between East and West.
Enjoy.
Take a tip from Mlle. Piaf: never underrate the power of gesture. Think sweeping, think drama, think raw emotion.
Doncha just love them designer duds? 
...I can't imagine anything nicer than this lovely Tallulah Bankhead doll. 
Brave Joe has invited us to participate in his annual enumeration of all things annoying, and it just so happens that the last several days have given us here at the Café more than enough to grouse about.
Did you know ... that the first film by Bollylicious megastar John Abraham was a little 2003 epic called (are you sitting down?) - Jism?
From the name, I'm judging the charming Miss Örzel Tűrkblaș to be of Anatolian origin, even though she looks like a rather more busty Eydie Gorme and could just as (or more) convincingly come across as, say, Rachel Goldstein.
Once upon a time, you went to a Broadway play to see Broadway stars: not to see scenery, a Disney story, or a Name vaguely associated with a half-forgotten TV series or last year's "reality" show.
The first of these three formidable profiles was at the time the greatest star and is today perhaps the least remembered. In her devotion to the stage, Katharine Cornell made only one film, as Herself, as if being Katharine Cornell were in itself such an all-consuming experience that it could be subsumed into character only on stage.
The lady in the middle is Dame Judith Anderson, so indelible as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca that her decades of triumph on stage are rather overshadowed. A little girl from Adelaide who made her way halfway 'round the world to New York and stardom in classical and modern drama, Anderson dabbled with more variety in films serious (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and less so (Lady Scarface).
Last but hardly least, and looking uncharacteristically swank in this portrait by Beaton, we have Miss Ruth Gordon, avocationally Mrs. Garson Kanin, who parlayed her years on stage into a late in life run as Beloved Oldster in films like Harold and Maude. Many of her coevals felt she rather overdid her Gleeful Granny shtick, but she clearly had a marvelous time, so what's the harm? She'd worked hard for it.
The oddest thing about the Grove City Oddfellows? All of them are fellows! Such a shame that all Chet ever has to wear is that old black panné velvet.
From cheesecake...
...to sheetcake.
Marketing for the most conservative end of the market in these parts presents some real challenges. Here we have a ladies' shampoo called "Al Abaya" after the long black cloak/coat that is de rigueur streetwear hereabouts (and legally so in Saudi). Perhaps it has special properties that prepare one's hair for being covered completely at all times...
She might not rise to the heights of Joe's new mascots Benign and Blandness Girls, but this Barbie Wannabee is rocking a kind of Circassian-Bride look that recalls early-70s YSL, in packaging that is delightfully dada: "Super Star / Twinkle Enter / Collection Edition". I'm heartbroken that my wholly inadequate cell-cam wasn't able to catch the tag above the headline, an imperative we could all take to heart: "Quote the Vogue Current". Or else!
Finally, an instruction that I have no intention, now or in the future, of defying. In these situations, Grandmother Muscato always recommended hot baking-soda baths.
I don't know what Umm-in-law would recommend, but it would definitely be fattening. And involve getting married.
I've long had a soft spot for Tokyo oddities Shonen Knife, a keening trio of power pop devotees who apply their talents, such as they are, to numbers both original (I'm awfully fond of their environmental anthem "Bear up, Bison") and, as here, classic.
Warning: do not click unless you have an inordinate liking for rainbows, kittens, cuteness, jangling guitars, and an almost damejoansutherlandische disregard for consonants. And Monkees covers, of course.
If your name is Speer, it might be wise to avoid all allusions to things architectural. Unless you're trying to scare people.
A typically evocative - if uncharacteristically glamourous - snap by the one and only Weegee.
Yes, it's an autocracy. Yes, the weather in July is reminiscent of a diner griddle during breakfast rush. Yes, there are eccentricities aplenty and occasional nuisances like the transitory creamed corn/fishy smell (which continues to come and go). And yes, nothing works quite exactly as one might expect (as my fellow scribes Suburban, Angry, and Jet Driver so eloquently attest).
So there you have it. I had thought about finding a piquant illustration for each and every choice, but Mr. P., even my devotion has its limits.
This must have been a rather epic little get-together: visiting Hollywood, apparently the only person whom Dame Edith Sitwell really craved meeting was Miss Monroe. 
I was dismayed that the very first guesser of our mystery dowager, the very clever Dirky-Do, was spot-on: the imposing lady above is indeed Sophia Loren, done up rather impressively for the 1965 epic Lady L, a charming-sounding Continental romp in which she plays an 80-year old lady with a past, opposite an impressive roster of gentlemen including Paul Newman, Peter Ustinov, David Niven, Philippe Noiret, and Michel Piccoli.
Here is la Loren today, just six years shy of the age she was made up to be. She'd need just as much time in the chair today to play an old lady as she did 40-odd years ago. There's a lesson there for all of us, if only we could find it...
Say it isn't so! Our dear Thombeau has announced the shuttering of his extraordinary corner of the Intertubes, the wonder that is Fabulon. There is no joy in Mudville - or in many a far more festive locale - at the prospect of a world without Mysterions, mantillas, and meetings of the Board of Directors.
Jean Cocteau was, one suspects, one of the few 1955 inductees into the Académie française whose official robes looked almost drab next to their living room bibelots...
Better than either of her sisters, Magda Gabor clearly understood the concept of age-appropriate glamour. I think this photo proves, as well, that although undeservedly obscure, she was without question the Fun Gabor.
Steve McQueen's butt.
I found this little gem and was going to come up with one of the usual slightly off-kilter scenarios, but I've decided that, in this case, nothing can improve on reality:
"(L-R) Bess Kidney, Leota Stout and President of DAR Mrs. Roscoe O'Byrne, sharing a cup of tea."
Bess looks a little startled to be there (if not a little high), but nothing ruffles the unflappable calm of Mrs. Roscoe. You don't get to be President of the Brookville, IN, DAR for nothing.
And Leota? Oh, haven't we all met a Leota a hundred times over? A good soul, but the only question here is: how did she end up center stage? The Leotas of this world generally hover around the fringes, taking out the teacups and making sure old Mrs. Pennyfeather has a comfortable chair.
Perhaps it's her birthday.
The Empress of Iran (far right - in so many senses of the word) and friends, in happier times. When did women stop making barbie feet when posing in swimwear? Why did they start?
Clever Donna Lethal uncovered another issue of my favorite light reading, which inspired me to rummage around the piles of magazines that litter far too many of the Villa Muscato's darker corners and see what I could find.
The script is not, arguably, a Deathless Work of Art, and the whole thing, for Western tastes, goes on rather long. Even so, Dostana is saved by what so often makes Indian movies such terrific fun: their sheer joy at being movies, their gleeful intoxication with all the possibilities of cinema (an underpaid male nurse takes over a whole amusement park for a night to impress his lady-love? Why not! A fashion photographer can plausibly never have met a gay person before? Whatever you say!).
It's a quality that American movies seem to have lost (for no particular reason I blame Rosemary's Baby: the rise of mean cinema), and one that allows you to enjoy the all-singing/all-dancing/all-credulity-stretching fun without worrying about the plot holes or the bits that fall just a shade flat. Hardly a revolutionary convention breaker (although the gay theme clearly titillated the mostly Indian crowd last night), Dostana - which after all means friendship - ends up a surprisingly sweet-natured paean to platonic friendships (and shirtlessness, which is all to the good).
So: if you like sun, fun, extensive displays of exotic beachwear, melodrama, hyper-costumed musical numbers, and a happy (and even slightly unexpected) ending, Dostana may just be your cup of tea.
It certainly was ours, and we spent the balance of our evening BollyBoogying around the Villa Muscato. Why don't you try it out?
Local note: this is a movie that features wall-to-wall bikinis, a fair amount of causual profanity in at least two languages, a generous helping of mock-homoeroticism, and the indelible image of John Abraham hiking skimpy briefs up over one very exposed cheek. Yet, it seemed, not a moment was cut. What gives? Do our local censors simply ignore Hindi movies? Arabs clearly go (the subtitles were English and Arabic), and had this been an American movie, I think it would have lost at least ten minutes - starting with most of the credits. Is it all somehow less corrupting-of-youth if it's subcontinental? Add it to the list of local mysteries...
Through it all he's kept up a level of glamour not seen since the glory days of Cher and a level of energy that almost approaches the Charoesque.Another fab moment from the vaults of Hollywood on the Nile: the uninhibited Miss Hind Rostom is seen here in one of her great hits, 1963's Shafiqa the Copt. With a cast of jaunty chorus boys, an enthusiastic audience, and a coterie of acolytes in the arts of raqs sharqi, known to the vulgar as bellydancing.
And yes, that is a candelabra on her head. Don't ask. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Bellydancing fun fact: Egyptian audiences, to this day, actually do get up and dance along with their favorites, just as seen here. They do not, however, usually join in harmony to close out the number. Which seems a shame.
The ever-surprising Dame Joan Collins takes on the role of pundit today, decrying in marywhitehousian tones the plague of vulgarity on British television (Pot? Kettle called - you're black.).
