Veiled Threat

So to cheer myself up, I've been reading about Diane Arbus.

Still Reigning

Well, she's done it, and if it the "it" is simply having lived this long, the manner in which she's done it comes as close as I can imagine one human's efforts could to actually deserving the global outpouring of praise and sheer affection that's coming her way.

Come to Me...

...My melancholy Barbie...

She May Have 99 Problems...

...but at least this year Joan Fontaine isn't one of them.  Many happy returns on her 99th to the one and only Miss Olivia de Havilland.  I hope that she's up for a little celebration; Paris, after all, is lovely this time of year.  As, I'm sure, is she.

Three on a Match

A trio of lovely, crazy people share a moment.  There is a lot going on in this snap, and I can't quite believe I've never seen it before.

Beauty's Where You Find It

I hope you'll pardon, Gentle Readers, the quality of this image, imperfect as it is, given the sheer treasurability of what it portrays.  The year is 1968, and Lady Bird is in Palm Beach as the guest of Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post, then wintering at her modest little cottage, Mar-a-Lago.  Why she has chosen to accessorize her swoop-ti-doo-sleeved gown and pearls with what appears to be a Play Wig is an enigma lost in the mists of social history.

Birthday Girl: One More Kiss

Speaking of Sumptuous, it's worth noting, every now and again, that still we have a giant or two amongst us - today's birthday girl being an excellent case in point:  the great Mme. Licia Albanese is today a lively 101.

Birthday Girl: Hellcat

A baby named Anne Frances Robbins was born on this day in 1921 in New York City, the daughter of a car dealer and an only middlingly successful stage actress.  That means that today, Nancy Reagan is 93.  So the old saying does have some truth in it, sometimes: only the good die young.

Million Dollar Baby

I don't know about you, but I don't think I've ever seen her looking so glamourous.

Out to Lunch

Last night I dreamed I went (no, not to Manderley)...

Together Forever

Well, I don't know about you, but I think this is an awfully encouraging glance, shared as it is between two people married these 66 years.

First, Last, and Always a Star

There's nothing like a ten-hour flight to plow through a good book, and that's exactly what I did yesterday, flying back from Vienna.

All Mod Cons

One Tuesday morning, Irene learned that she could refill her Miltown prescription over the telephone.

On Finer Newsstands Now!

Accept no substitutes.

Ever since I dug up an issue way back in 2008 (do you believe it?), this classic periodical has gained a certain discerning little following.  Dear Donna Lethal discovered several back numbers over in her droll corner of the cyberverse, and dear Jon has even come across an issue or two over in Blighty (perhaps he found them in some tempting corner of the Portobello Road?).

As with the legendary Flair, though, complete sets are hard to come by, and I do believe we can all live in hope of finding new editions.  Later issues seem to be especially rare - there's no denying dowagers were an endangered species once Mamie Eisenhower left the White House...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Kittypalooza

"Style is everything."

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Kitty Carlisle had a sensational figure.  And she was one, too - a peerless self-invention (aided, it's true, by a fairly poisonous mother, the high-society equivalent of Momma Rose).  She had a middling career as an operetta leading lady (at precisely the moment that the genre more or less died) and was something of a fizzle as a film star (too distinctive in her looks to be an ingenue, too young, in her early '30s go at the screen, to suit her temperament) before she made a highly advantageous (and apparently, however, unorthdox, quite entirely devoted) marriage, one that allowed her devote the subsequent six decades to the fine art of being Kitty Carlisle, Mrs. Moss Hart.

Watching her breeze on to the To Tell the Truth set - as here, again and again - it's striking how contemporary she still looks.  There's a lesson there: if you hone a style until it is indistinguishable from your own genuine persona, you can maintain it almost indefinitely.  Having perfected the art of looking perfect, she could then turn her attention to all the other things, from promoting the arts to maintaining her husband's legacy, that interested her.

Some people - and characters as diverse as Crawford and Madonna come to mind - use their style as a weapon, a kind of barricade to really knowing anything about them; Kitty's was a natural extension of her character.  Paradoxically, this both made her a character - the ultimate Great Lady, New York-division, which one would normally think would be a limiting thing, and gave her enormous freedom to exercise what was never, really, more than a limited talent (considered impartially on its own) on a far wider stage than would otherwise have been at her disposal.

By the end, she was an institution, through sheer force of personality, a phenomenon of charm and joy that seemed to draw strength from its contrast to the increasingly crass world outside its orbit.  Kitty Carlisle is on the very, very short list of people about whom I have never heard anyone whisper an unkind word. Insofar as she is camp, it's of a very knowing kind, in which she is wholly complicit - the joy of an ugly duckling having turned into the most exquisite, and appreciated, of swans.

Dream Weaver

Oh, I know, other people's dreams really are dull, and mine are no exception.  Even so, I'm going to beg your indulgence and hope that you gentle readers might help me parse out one I've been having lately.

Maybe it's just a delayed reaction to reading her obituaries last summer, or maybe it's just the effects of reading too many show-biz bios, but she keeps popping up.  Usually, I'm in some random situation from everyday life, albeit one that has, for no good reason, become peppered with the great names of cinema. For example, in one I was a waiter (which I was, once upon a time, by the bye, and a damn good one), at a smart urban joint waiting on a very chummy Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (BD circa 1943 and JC 'round about 1970, it seemed, but it didn't faze me at the time) having a girls' lunch out.  As I hand them the check, I say, "Boy, that Celeste Holm sure was a bitch, wasn't she?"  Surprised expressions all around, a couple of raised eyebrows of agreement, and curtain.

In another, I am playing bridge with Gloria Swanson and a couple of Waxworks, and apropos of nothing, during a lull in a conversation about real estate (the consensus: sell), ask the same question.  Miss Swanson looks disapproving, as if she believing that if someone were to make such observations, it should be she.

Then there's the one where I'm rehearsing a dance number with Charlotte Greenwood and Kay Thompson (and there's an unpicturesque trio - with me standing between them, we'd look like the number 101) and I stop the piano player to demand of my partners, "Tell the truth - was Celeste Holm the biggest bitch you ever worked with or was she not?"

Finally, and most chillingly, there's the one in which I don't remember of whom I ask the fateful question (Margaret Rutherford? Theda Bara? Nancy Kulp?), but after doing so I turn and realize that standing behind me is... Celeste Holm.  And in that moment I know, in a flash of shock and fear, that "bitch" doesn't begin to describe it.

Sometimes I think I need to drink more before bedtime.  What do you think?

Neither Heroes Nor Clowns

As you might have guessed, I find myself, this holiday season, rather morose - so many problems in the world (something one is even more aware of out here in the Sandlands, in close proximity as one is to political upheaval, not to mention social injustice on a scale and a class system as vile as one is likely to find anywhere in the world) and so few answers.

I suppose you won't be surprised that I've found, if not answers, then at least a little consolation, by watchng as many tacky holiday numbers as possible.  And, here, even finding as good a stab at an answer as I've come across yet. 

Leave it to the woman who kept up the spirits of a nation by keeping her eyes firmly fixed on "Tomorrow, when the world is free," to remind us that, as another British sensation once sang, love is all you need.  Ladies and gentlemen... Dame Vera Lynn.  It may be syrupy '70s pop, but she really socks it over.

Birthday Boy: Gentleman in Waiting

The lace-bedizened infant seen here in the impeccably regal (imperial, in fact) lap of his great-grandmother turns 64 today.  Charles Philip Arthur George (known formally as Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Member of the Order of Merit, Knight of the Order of Australia, Companion of the Queen's Service Order, Member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and Aide-de-Camp to Her Majesty) must certainly rank among the most patient persons in history.

As I do his sister, the formidable Princess Royal (perhaps the current member of the British family most like the occasionally terrifying Queen Mary), I rather admire the man.  He has managed to maintain a quirky individuality even as he's nearly faultlessly done his duty this past half-century or so, and while his personal life certainly had a rough patch after his unwise first marriage, he has taken from its wreckage two apparently well-raised sons and found very evident happiness in a second marriage that likely ought to have happened decades before it was finally manageable.

Seeing him here, cradled in that not-exactly-maternal embrace, it is rather astonishing what continuity this image represents.  Today, the baby's daughter-in-law is the Duchess of Cambridge, and a fetching creature she is.  In 1867 - just two years after the American Civil War ended - Queen Mary was (as unlikely as this may seem) herself a helpless babe in arms.  Her godmother was the last Duchess of Cambridge, a redoubtable woman who presaged the later longevity of the family by living from 1797 until 1889.  So, the ruddy-faced man who today opines on the environment and wears perhaps the most beautifully cut suits of anyone this side of his father was dandled on the lap of a woman who was, in the year that Marx published Das Kapital, brought to the baptismal font by a woman born in the year Napoleon deposed the last Doge of Venice.

All of which, because I am funny that way, makes me sit and think.  What I mostly hope is that, when she is given the chance, the Duchess of Cornwall emulates the style of her husband's great-grandmother and loads on the jewels with a trowel.  I think she'd look well draped in ropes of pearls en style Teck, and heaven knows the toque is ripe for a comeback.  In the meanwhile, I hope the Prince has a very happy birthday, secure in the knowledge that, if he can stick it out, eventually he'll take over the family firm.

Birthday Girl: Silent Star

The lady seen here, had she been marginally longer-lived, would be celebrating her 119th birthday today, and for a while it seemed quite likely she might.  Lillian Gish had an old soul, and for decades she was the presiding spirit of the Silent Movies, at times almost singlehandedly keeping alive the flame of an art form that conquered the world and then vanished overnight - almost.

We see her here toward the end of her Top Stardom, when she was for a few years Queen of the Lot at MGM (a rather different thing in 1927 than it would be a decade later, but still hardly chopped liver), as a Scottish lass in Annie Laurie.  Why she appears to be dressed more as a Russian tsarevna is one of those mysteries of Hollywood we hear so much about.

In an excellent essay on Gish and her career, author Don Callahan observes, "...in a career that spanned seventy-five years, she was a girl of 19 who seemed like 90 and at 90 she seemed like a girl of 19."  I think that seems just right.  Here she's at the further end of her long life, elegant as always in her ruffles and turquoise lavalier (a very Gish-y word, somehow).

Watching Gish act is a revelation; she was among the first to maximize film's potential for reading a performer's mind, to take advantage of her incredibly expressive eyes and the microscopic movements of her face in extreme closeup.  She acts with her stillness.  She is at the same time an enormously physical actress - her mad scene in Broken Blossoms is one of the most punishing sequences ever filmed, exhausting in its extremity, and of course the scene on the ice floe in Way Down East is quite rightfully among most famous ever filmed (the whole movie's pretty great, but if you've never seen the ice sequence - watch a bit of it now).

She is the start of a chain of such actresses, with some of whom she has only technique in common - I would include among them Louise Brooks (who is infinitely more carnal), Garbo (distinctly less cerebral), and, more recently, Julie Christie (a woman where Gish is more often a waif).  Her greatest descendant, to me, is Meryl Streep, who has Gish's gift of effortlessly dominating the screen, her simple presence throwing everytone around her into the shade, but in a totally untheatrical (seeming) way.  Several British actresses - Emma Thompson and Dame Judi Dench, for example - can also recall the Gishian simplicity and directness of approach, albeit in a way that seems a great deal more academic than the style of acting that Gish developed the hard way, in long, arduous barnstorming on stage as a child and through endless trial-and-error in the early days of one reelers.

I admit, though, that I'm not totally unbiased in my devotion to Lillian Gish (even though I share with Callahan deep reservations many aspects of her life, not least her slavish devotion to D.W. Griffith (an essential film pioneer, but not the paragon of genius whose myth she tirelessly promulgated for decade after decade).  She was a household saint as I grew up, for my grandmother (the racier of the two; not the be-hatted clubwoman) had in her youth played piano in silent-movie theatres and considered her just this side of heaven (she even met her once, a moment recounted ever after in the way that one might talk about being introduced to Athena or Eleanor of Aquitaine).  As children, we were even told the plots of Gish films as bedtime stories, with elements of real life blended in - something easy, actually, to do with her movies, for one instinctively feels that she is as noble in suffering as her Hester Prynne, as brave in life as she is in The Wind, and as obdurate and timeless as she is in her greatest sound film, Night of the Hunter.  She may have revered Griffith, but it is Laughton, in that last film, who ensured her immortality in sound as well as silent film.

So it's a joy to think of her on this, her birthday.  I never met Miss Gish, but I went to her funeral, in March of 1994 at St. Bartholomew's in New York (she's still there, actually, along with Dorothy and their beloved, indomitable mother).  It was a lovely occasion, solemn but joyful as one can be when remembering someone who lived so long and did so much.  I was there to accompany one of the elderly Theatrical Names for whom I occasionally BirdieCooganed in those days; he was much affected by her going, but utterly out of his element in St. Bart's unbending High Anglican splendor.  "Well," he kept muttering, "this explains a lot.  She was e-pis-co-pal.  Who knew?"  (Being of the theatre, Broadway division, to the core, I have a feeling he just assumed everyone was Jewish, with an overlay of WASP to one degree or another).

It's not what he was thinking, I'm sure, but it's true.  "Episcopal," at its root, refers to one who oversees or presides, as a bishop or other leader.  Gish, really, is nothing less than the presiding genius of the cinema.  She is 119; she is the fragile girl first seen in 1912's An Unseen Enemy; she is the nonagenarian who glows with light in The Whales of August; she is eternal.

Pearly King

Mr. Valentino proves that while it may be possible to wear more pearls at one go than the late Queen Mary, it is probably not aesthetically advisable to do so.