Broken Goddess

I rarely wax dictatorial, but today if you're able, I'd like to recommend you do a good turn for a great lady.

All Kinds of Empresses

Forget Sissi; forget Maria von Trapp - this is the face of Austria in 2014.

The Shutterbug and the Underworld Empress

The entirely New York phenomenon that was Weegee was born on this day in 1899.  Just to be clear, this is not he.

Party Girls

I suppose you won't be surprised to learn she's more than just a pretty face...

Hail the New...

...ye lads and/or lasses...

Truth. That's Her Nature.

Heroes come in unlikely packages.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Drag Rant

What is extravagant in an inconsistent or an unpassionate way is not Camp.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

A few snippets of Camp at its most classic for this lovely August Saturday...

Victory!

May 8, 1945 may have been V-E Day for much of a war-weary world, but for at least a few happy Londoners, it would seem that it was also TV Day.  While the boy on the right is achieving a sort of Talullahesque insouciance, his companions are clearly indulging in what our pal the Professor refers to as "booger drag."  Perhaps it was rationing, and they just couldn't get hold of a decent pair of heels...

Friday Sports Update

Yes, you read that right.  There must be something in the air, or in the water, or perhaps it's the lingering effects of those games that the Duchess of Cambridge spent so much time at these last couple of weeks, but not only did dear Peteykins of Princess Sparklepony fame yesterday run not one but two at least tangentially sports-related items, but now even here at the Café, we've gone all athletic.

Or at least we're thinking good thoughts about athletes.  Perhaps you could say we were athletic supporters.  Or perhaps not.

In any case... The very vigorous gentleman above, you see, has been the topic of much conversation of late at the Villa Muscato.  Specifically, I've noticed Mr. Muscato talking about him with the many Egyptian pals with whom checking in for long phone/Skype conversations almost daily is apparently a core aspect of Ramadan devotions.  Generally, these chats cover topics such as What We Had for Breakfast (which is supper, which remains confusing even after nine years), What [Insert Actress Name Here] Is Up To On Her Ramadan Soap Opera This Year, Slutty Queens Other Pals Are Dating/Have Dumped/Will Absolutely Bag After Ramadan, and, being Egyptian, How Much They Miss Mama.  Politics figures, but rather depressingly of late.

Football has its place as well, but I've noticed that this year's iteration of that portion of the conversation is repeatedly interrupted by laughter - loud, raucous, and prolonged. 

This man, it turns out, is the cause.  He is a Ghanaian by birth and in the last few years has played in Europe and for teams at home.  Once upon a time I lived for a while in Ghana and loved it, so at first I thought it was some aspect of a place I love that was being derided and was distinctly chilly about it all.  Far from it, it turns out.

You see, Mr. Clottey has in recent months been under consideration for recruitment by one of Egypt's leading teams, El Ahly.  Ahly is one of the two big Cairo teams, and loyalties run deep both with it and with its arch-rival, Zamalek.  Having lived in the neighborhood of the same name, I'm an ardent Zamalkawi, while Mr. Muscato is a fervent Ehlawi.  We try not to let it get in the way of things too much.

The problem with the prospect of this gifted and not unpleasing young sportsman coming to play along the Nile?  Cue the screaming laughter from Egyptians, for the problem is his name.  "Clooti," you see, in the Egyptian dialect - and it really is pronounced exactly like the poor man's family name - means "my panties."   Say it aloud a couple of times.  His presence would force Cairo's sports announcers to keep a straight face while saying things like "...the ball goes to My Panties," "watch out! The fielders are tackling My Panties," and even, "Now the whole game rests on My Panties."  The gang just can't get over it.

Although it seems that the prospect of Mr. Clottey heading out from Accra seem to be fading, having gone in search of him proved worthwhile even absent the saga of his moniker, for it enabled me to find this memorable image of a happy Ghana fan:

Personally, I think Miss Richfield 1981 ought to sue.  Or start a franchise.  Either way - isn't she great?

Ya Gotta Believe...

For anyone who found yesterday a little too wholesome - and, while I love her to death, I know that Alice Faye can have that effect on people - how about a little something, umm, less so?  The anti-Alice - the one and only, late lamented, totally demented Divine - shows us how it's done.

Image du Jour: Funnies Business

Ten questions this arresting image provokes:

1.  Who would have thought that Jimmy Olsen would so closely resemble Anne Baxter?

2.  Wouldn't you love to see the rest of the outfit?  Based on the blouse, I'm guessing knee-length navy pencil skirt with rear kick-pleat and coordinating sensible pumps.  Alternate scenarios welcome.

3.  Did he borrow the outfit from Lois, or was it a fresh purchase?  Spend a moment thinking of Jimmy Olsen shopping in the Career Gal section of Gimbels.*

* I just looked this up.  Turns out the department store in Metropolis is Lacey's.  I suppose that means their competition is Mimbels, Kanamakers, or Ultmans.  Fancy metropolites must shop at Pergdorf Doogman.

4. Is it a coincidence that the wig so closely resemble's Ed Woods's in Glen or Glenda?

5.  If so, why isn't there more angora involved?  If not, why not?

6. Haven't we all had a night or two like this?

7.  If your answer to (6) was "no," was the overriding reason: (a) the drag? (b) the armed, J. Edgar-ische heavy? or (c) the bat-toting chimp?

8.  Do you suppose that 7(c) marks the first appearance in English of the phrase "bat-toting chimp"?

9.  In this case, is a cigar just a cigar?

10.  If this is panel No. 8, do you suppose panels 9 through 12 hinged more heavily on the pistol or the baseball bat?  Please submit your concepts, with special points given for (a) the intervention of aliens; (b) the appearance in a pivotal role of Thelma Ritter as Birdie Coogan; or (c) a sex scene not involving the chimp.

Jifts of the Season

One of the great joys of a summer in Xanadu-on-Sea is the opportunity to catch up on what's been going on in the Great Wide World of Drag. On any given night, there are upwards of a dozen choices, ranging from almost embalmed traditional evenings of more-or-less straightforward impersonation* to performances that take makeup and heels as a springboard for something much, much more ambitious/transcendant/surreal.

Of these, I don't think there can be anything better than the creature pictured above, the incredible Dina Martina. It's actually rather hard to describe an evening in her presence, except that it is raucous, mindbending, and, most surprisingly, startingly cosy. She reminds me of one of my favorite Susan Sontag lines: "Camp is a tender feeling."

Who else could make an audience vie fiercely for the privilege of winning what are billed as "the world's largest underpants" (emblazoned, live on stage, with the star's own makeup faceprint)? Who could create a mash-up on "Fever" and "No Scrubs"? Most of all, who else could take an act made up of just about equal parts malapropisms, mispronunciations (g frequently becoming j -Ms. M. is very pleased with her "jifts"), hoary jokes, show-biz lore, and a healthy dose of the very difficult art of singing just badly enough (it really is tough, kids - just ask Jo Stafford)? I can think of no one but Dina.

Each of the acts we've seen these past few weeks have been pretty fab - the tight, Vegas-style evening of cabaret with Cher-extraordinaire Randy Roberts (whose own character, a diva poised somewhere between Ann Margret and Rita Hayworth, is even better than his star takes), the trip into Varla Jean Merman's glamorously demented song-stylings, nights with Miss Richfield and Miss Burlington and more, and of course the truly awe-inspiring trainwrecks that are each week's edition of the town's legendary "talent" contest/revue Show Girls. Still, it's Dina I'll take away as someone I'd not only like to see again, but maybe have a cocktail with, in character or out. I know nothing about the man behind the legend, but it must take a fascinating brain to go so far out and still feel so very much at home.

* Although no one, alas, seems to be doing Bette Davis this year. I have a hunch that you can guess who this year's sensation is, done in tributes ranging from respectful to disembowelling. If you were to guess that her initials are L.G., you wouldn't be far off (and no, it's not Linda Gray).

Dueling Bankheads

She knew, of course, that in a way she was immortal. Looking in her mirror, Tallulah must have sensed that what she had created had taken on a life of its own, and that long after the little girl from Alabama had gone on before...

She'd show up the damnedest places - as, for example, in a TV movie, played by Mrs. Dick Cavett.

Or as part of the one-man repertory company that is the legendary Jim Bailey.

The essentials of the impersonation are consistent: the sweep of hair and slash of lipstick; cigarette of course; frequently a mink, for clutching and throwing off the shoulders; most generally a cocktail...

She can be played younger, with a dose of the glamour that dominated her life in the '20s and '30s (Miss Kathleen Turner seems altogether too gamine for the part, but the setting is suitably deco)...

Or older, dire and in her cups - although here, Miss Valerie Harper looks less Talluvian than like Mayor Rudi Giuliani on a bad night.

She's been played by the great - as here, by illusionist supreme Mr. Charles Pierce (we saw him do Tallu, darlings, yonks ago, and were greatly twisted affected by his performance, which was if anything more astonishing even than his Bette)...

And she's been played by the simply inevitable - is there a one-woman show that Tovah Feldshuh hasn't done? I'd look it up to make sure, but frankly I don't want my suspicions that this was a musical confirmed.

She's most recently been taken up as the subject for their ongoing cabaret/drag/performance art act by the duo who give this post its title. They venture pretty far afield from the source material, but the fundamentals - liquor, lipstick, excess, and a knack for the outrageous - are true to life.

What makes it work - whether for a roadshow turn like Harper's or Feldshuh's or for the alchemy of Pierce - is that the lady herself rose above the persona, or rather inhabited it so fully and unstintingly, with a talent and a kind of greatness of spirit that shine through, on some level, even the broadest burlesque, even the ones (and they were many, too many for the good of her reputation as an artist) she inflicted on herself.

Ah, but on a good night - I have been assured by Ones Who Were There - ah, then the angels sang. I've heard it on good authority that on some nights, during her too-short run in a revival of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, she could by sheer force of personality and utter fabulosity, strike gay not only the entire audience, but passers-by of the Brooks Atkinson Theatre for a distance of up to two blocks.

She's a kind they just don't make these days, but at least we can enjoy, to varying extents, the ways that others bring bits of her to life...

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.

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, there'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?

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.

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.

Meanwhile, in Montauk

What else would you expect Lypsinka to wear to breakfast at her summer share? To me, the real question is: who brought the sprogs?

Who Becomes a Legend Most?

Or, Blackglama and her two white-lady sidekicks. Apparently, they did a one-off night of Legends earlier this year. Who knew? Must've been a helluva night in the theatre...

A Nod to the Season, I

The Easter Lady Bunny