"The bodily message of what it means to be a star..."

"Watching Liza triumph and then crash, crash and then triumph, we witness humiliation's fiery presence within the mother-daughter bond. ... As we watch her sing "New York, New York" again and again (even as we cheer, even as we shiver with uncanny pleasure), Liza passes on to us the bodily message of what it means to be a star. ... It might mean private planes and Harry Winston jewels, but it also might mean delirium tremens at the Betty Ford Center, and garish caricatures of yourself in the minds of others.  Not always garish: in many hearts, there are genuine shrines to the fallen star, shrines tended without irony, and without unkindness."

- Wayne Koestenbaum, Humiliation

Tango Whiskey Toothpaste

Sometimes the best inventions just don't, for mysterious reasons, find a foothold.  62 years ago today, the good people at Life magazine documented one such forgotten landmark: the creation of something that could have revolutionized grooming as we know it - whiskey toothpaste. 

If the cartons are to believed (and what could be more reliable than background props in what is likely, after all, a joke setup?), the product came in scotch, rye, or bourbon.  I'm mostly a vodka man, myself, if forced to abandon my beloved Champers, but I suppose I could have settled.

Movie Night

So, we're back from our little jaunt, and as always after the flash of Dubai, it's nice to be home and lovely to be with the dogs.

A highlight of this trip turned out to be just staying in, as we spent the first part largely in the hotel for the end of Ramadan and then enjoyed that so much (we got upgraded and lolled about in splendor) that aside from a brief mall jaunt we hardly stirred - even passing up a night out dancing with the boys.

The temptations to be even more than usually sedentary were some of the usual suspects - our favorite hotel has a splendid indoor pool, a killer spa, and an open bar from 6 'til 9 - but also one more:  they now get TCM, and we lucked into a fun run of pictures.  It's pretty inexcusable, I know, after what's probably something in the low three figures of viewing, to spend prime vacation time watching The Wizard of Oz, but on a big screen in a decadently comfortable hotel drawing room, why carp?  Besides, Mr. Muscato's only seen it a few times, so we had some reason to be so lazy.  And you know what?  It never fails, in any way, to entertain.

That was good (as was a welcome rescreening of What's Up, Doc?, another never-fail favorite), but in addition we saw two movies in a row that really got me thinking. 

The first, as you might have guessed from the picture above, was Key Largo, which I'd seen before but really enjoyed, as I did on this second viewing.  It's a tense, atmospheric, weird picture, driven by an over-the-top performance by Edward G. Robinson as a high-strung gangster and, at the other extreme, by turns by Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that are so low-pitched that at times they seem to be standing perfectly still while the movie whirls around them.  They are tremendously effective, and I'm baffled by people who say that of their pictures together, this one has the least chemistry between them.  Their connection is the moral foundation of the movie, and while it's less flashy than the incredibly seductive To Have and Have Not, it's rock-solid.  Never in the movies have two so different people been so ineluctably right for each other, and they play the whole movie as if they know that, even when the rest of the world collapses around them.

As it nearly does when the hurricane hits.  Each of the characters suffers a kind of Dark Night during the prolonged storm sequence, but the greatest glory in it goes to the lady above, the incomparable Claire Trevor.  She plays Gaye Dawn, a faded nightclub chantoozie whose name at first seems a cruel joke - until, in the end, it becomes prophetic, for despite her desperate, destructive love for Robinson, her dipsomania, and her essential foolishness (summarized brilliantly by the tacky jewelry she wears like some sort of penance for getting older) she saves the day, and brings a happy morning after the storm.

So that was the good half of our impromptu double feature.  When I saw that the next movie was the 1976 A Star is Born, I was kind of jazzed.  I'd never seen it, believe it or not, as it came out just before I could have been allowed to see what was widely believed to be a racy film, and then its critical drubbing more or less removed it from consideration.

I'd like to report that I found it to be a lost gem, a worthy fellow for the versions by Constance Bennett, Janet Gaynor, and Judy Garland.  It's not.  It's not dreck, exactly, but it's awfully close.  No, I take that back - it is dreck:  endlessly long, excruciatingly paced, laughably staged, portentous and pretentious and utterly humorless.  It's hard to imagine that only four years separate the Barbra who was so effortlessly Judy Maxwell in What's Up, Doc? and the impassive, self-enchanted creature who walks through A Star is Born like it was a series of wardrobe stills for its misbegotten fashions (she spends what seems like hours in a knee-length white cardigan-over-bell-bottoms that made me want to throw things at the screen, while material success is represented by a series of increasingly flashy gypsy-style outfits that Rhoda Morgenstern wouldn't have been caught dead in with her eyes gouged out).  And let's not even start on Kris Kristofferson and how very much he looks like he'd rather be anywhere else, or the pointless series of cartoon bit parts for people like Gary Busey as a manipulative manager or the two unfortunate actresses who play Barbra's first-reel pals, whose roles are so exiguous that they are billed only as One and Two.  They're black, you see; fledgling-star Barbra's in a group with them.  It's called the Oreos.  Get it?  That, in fact, is the high point of funny in A Star is Born.  I rest my case.

What struck me about seeing these two pictures together is how simple Warner Bros. made Key Largo seem, and what obvious, lumbering, all-too-visible and ultimately crushing labor went into A Star is Born.  The former tells its story - nothing less than the rise and fall of its characters' souls - with essentially one set, a few not-terribly-convincing models for the storm sequence, and a short stretch on a boat.  It moves like the wind, without a moment's padding or wasted action.  Even a sequence that another script would have turned into a throwaway number, in which Trevor's Gaye helplessly displays the ruins of her voice by singing "Moanin' Low" in a sad bid for a promised drink, turns out to illuminate the character of every person in the room. 

By contrast, A Star is Born feels like nothing but padding, from the endless helicopter shots meant to awe one at the size of Kristofferson's audience to the whip-round of his Hollywood mansion that felt longer than Jackie Kennedy's tour of the White House.  Even Streisand's songs - theoretically, one would have thought, a prime reason for a Streisand Star is Born to exist - feel bloated and unnecessary.  And that's once you get past the movie's major implausibility:  unlike previous Norman Maines and Esther Blodgetts (the names are changed here, one suspects to protect the innocent, but the characters are more or less the same), the two leads have nothing at all in common including the métiers in which they perform.  Kristofferson's character is meant to be a sort of Jim-Morrison-if-he-had-lived, a full-on rockstar with a kind of grandeur in his desperate excess (that he's played by a singer/actor of middling repute and vestigial screen charisma doesn't help).  Streisand's songbird is a middle-of-the-road pop act at most.  It's as if Jimi Hendrix decided to throw it all away to save the career of Helen Reddy or Rita Coolidge (who actually makes a throwaway cameo as a Grammys presenter).  And it goes on and on, and finally it's over, and you find yourself sitting there in the dark wondering, "What the hell was she thinking with that pantsuit?"

Claire Trevor for the win.

Happy Eid!

The Sandlands are launched onto a three-day holiday, and Mr. Muscato and I have celebrated by darting off to Dubai for a couple of days of decadent downtime.  It's the Eid al Fitr, the festival at the end of Ramadan, which, frankly, expatriates mostly celebrate by having a drink at lunch, as neither would have been possible only yesterday.

A friend celebrated by sending 'round the image above, which set Mr. M. off on a wave of nostalgia.  What we have here is a page from the Egyptian Ministry of Education's official reader, circa 1970, the adventures of a brother and sister called Omar and Amal.  They were more or less the Dick and Jane of the Nile, and if nothing else the Omar and Amal books represent, especially today, a window into a vanished ideal of the modern Arab family.  Dad looks like Nasser in his Western shirt-and-tie; Mom is a blonde and sports the very latest fashion, clearly purchased at Cairo's equivalent of the big Soviet department stores, the state-owned Omar Effendi (Mr. M. reports that even his mama, today a vast and emotional lady swathed in traditional robes and acres of scarves, used to appear in a shirtwaist and blonde wig); and the kids appear to have popped in from the 1930s for the occasion.

The family exchanges Eid greetings:  "Eid Saeed, ya Amal!" "Eid Saeed, ya Omar!" "Eid Saeed, ya Daddy!" "Eid Saeed, ya Mommy!"

Mr. Muscato was up most of the night having more or less the same conversation, if at significantly greater length, with friends and family around the world, so this morning will be a lazy affair, followed, very likely, by more of the same this afternoon (I'm thinking a rigorous round of pool/spa/pool/spa/cocktails, or the like).  Tonight, apparently, we're being dragged out to go dancing, so we shall see, but tomorrow will very likely be much of the same...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Better Red...

This week's SSCE is a full-on dose of Cultural Revolution Realness, right down to the dancing Red Stars that open the number.  I've long been fascinated by the oddness of 60s Chinese pop-agit-culture, something that's trying so hard to be totally new and totally Chinese, but which succeeds only in being an awkward fusion of traditional Chinese performance, Soviet Russian ballet, and what would seem to be the fading memories of Hollywood spectacles as preserved in the less-than-reliable mind of the formidable Madame Mao, a lady whose career as second-tier Shanghai leading lady Lan Ping paradoxically colored the entire arc of Chinese culture in the second half of the last century.

In any case, if you've ever wondered what Agnes de Mille might have made of a factory workers' picnic (other than the one in Carousel, of course), here's your chance.

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?

Bollywood Birthday Boy (Updated!)

Let's wish a happy 31st, shall we, to Indohunk extraordinaire, the Café's beefcake mascot, Mr. Upen Patel.  Word on the street is that after his stretch as a student in the UK, he's plotting his cinematic return.  Not a moment too soon.

Breathless Thursday Evening Update
Just in case it's of interest to any Gentle Readers in London, he's having dinner out!

Anyone brave enough to weather both a tony neighborhood and likely subpar teriyaki in order to take a quick snap of this historic occasion will obviously win my undying gratitude.

And yes, I realize that posting this image confirms (as if many of you had any doubt) that I'm Twitter-stalking him.  Don't judge.

This is the Way to Live

Oh, I know.  This one is all over the place and you've already seen it ten times today.  I don't care.  I think it's genius, and a fit and cheerful way to celebrate the centenary of someone whom I geniunely think a Great American, the late and so fondly remembered St. Julia of Child.  Gimmicky, I know, but catchy enough I can almost imagine it being performed in some other context - the lyric, for example, is both witty and, at least to me, oddly moving:

Freshness is essential;
That makes all the difference.
I like to smell something cooking -
It makes me feel at home!

Bring on the roasted potatoes!  Bring on the rosé! 
This is what good cooking is all about!

Cook and cook and keep on cooking!
This is the way to live!

Cook and cook and keep on cooking!
This is the way to eat!

Bon appétit!

If nothing else, thanks to the combined wonders of modern technology and the archival skill of our dear Thombeau (speaking of Great Americans), we now definitely know one thing: if she puts her mind to it (and with the help of a little AutoTune), Julia Child can easily outsing Gloria Swanson.

A Right Royal Birthday

For the past couple of decades she has been such a steady presence in the middle distance, increasingly dowdy, hard working, commonsensical, frequently glowering or just occasionally smiling under her formidable loaf of resolutely brown hair, that it can be hard to remember that once upon a time not really all that long ago, HRH The Princess Anne was rather a pretty girl. 

The Princess Royal is a woman in the tradition of her mother and her great-grandmother the late Queen Mary. She lacks the easy charm of her grandmother, as well as the Queen Mother's unique and specific glamour - although, especially after the death of her aunt, the late Countess of Snowden, there are few in the world so indisputably royal in their public manner.

Instead, its as if she were a distillation of all the House of Windsor's least flashy, mostly most admirable, virtues: dutiful, dedicated, uninfluenced by the buzzing of critics; occasionally tempery in a way that indicates a rather sharp brain operating behind the bland facade of royalty.  She's had her surprising moments - fighting off a would-be kidnapper, for instance ("not bloody likely!"), competing in the Montreal Olympics, and, apparently, quietly indulging an abiding interest in lighthouses.  She endured a wedding (successful) and a marriage (less so) in the bright glare of publicity while she was young, and has since more quietly pursued a second iteration of both.  She successfully raised two children (an accomplishment that recalls, now that I think of it, her more volatile aunt), and she endures.  With luck, she'll be doing more or less exactly the same thing for the next several decades.

Oh, and she's 62 today.  On the off chance you hadn't guessed, and although she's rather a change from the Dalidas, Garbos, John Abrahams, and other Fabulous Creatures who normally populate my feeble brain, I really do rather admire her.  Happy Birthday, ma'am!

Greta...

Miss Gustafsson if you're nasty.  Just because.

Unsafe at Any Speed

Modeling for secretarial-study album covers, Margie soon learned, was hardly a demanding job, but it gave her plenty of time for her twin hobbies:  enigmatic-expression cultivating and extreme eybrow grooming.

(I'm pretty sure this little gem must have been a follow up to my all-time favorite terrible present, here.  Keane Records must have pumped these out; I wonder if they had one for filing?)

Birthday Boy: The Greatest Showman on Earth

Today's birthday boy, who turns a youthful 131 today, is not in fact the glistening creature seen above; no, he is instead the director who gave birth to this and countless other memorable images and who, thanks in no small part to a movie in which he appeared but did not direct, is best remembered as "Mr. DeMille (I'm Ready for My Close Up)."

Cecil B. DeMille's legacy in pop culture is a funny thing, reliant on his own late-in-life self-promoted image (all jodhpurs, monocle, and riding crop) and his last few pictures, which were bloated, pompous things in comparison to many that preceded them over his long career.  Those who only know DeMille from his second go at The Ten Commandments would be amazed at the slick, cosmopolitan melos that first made Gloria Swanson a top star, with racy titles like Why Change Your Wife? and (the picture from which this still is taken) Male and Female, as they would be even by his earlier epic pictures like King of Kings or the first Ten Commandments, which managed to combine solemnity and salaciousness in a very audience-pleasing sort of way. 

When it comes to Male and Female, there's no question - even in that Ziegfeldian headgear - on which side of that equation the gentleman pictured, leading man Thomas Meighan, stands, is there? 

This high-toned lubriciousness was the kind of thing in which earlier DeMille excelled - giving moviegoers a touch of inspiration (from the Bible, often, or, as here a hit play by J.M. Barrie, of Peter Pan fame) accompanied by a hefty dose of sex and other thrills - Mr. Meighan, above, or Miss Swanson menaced by a lion in Male and Female; Claudette Colbert, in her alas too-brief exotic phase, eponymously as Cleopatra or as Poppaea in Sign of the Cross; a decadent Dirigible Ball in Madam Satan.  By the time you get to Chuck Heston parting the Red Sea or the odd spectacle of the, shall we say, disparate acting styles of Betty Hutton and Jimmy Stewart crossing paths in The Greatest Show on Earth,  that earlier DeMille seems very far away indeed.

Personally, I think it's no accident that the end of his more interesting phase coincides with his experience directing my least favorite of all the Hollywood ladies, Miss Loretta Young.  Perhaps once he survived her Berengaria of Navarre in The Crusades, to which role her blonde-banged wig brings more verve than the lady herself, he'd had enough, and decided it was easier to direct pyramids and herds of circus elephants than actors.  You can hardly blame him.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Dream, Girls

The death this week of Tony Martin, MGM crooner and serial star-marryer (if two - Alice Faye and Cyd Charisse - can put him in that rank; it's not like he's a Mdivani or anything), provides the excuse for this week's SSCE.  It's less obscure than most to date, but instead an opportunity to see what the very toppest-of-the-top in Hollywood could pull off when no expense was spared, and how Metro did things differently.

Integrating the number into the story, for one thing:  this is the first big moment in Ziegfeld Girl, giving some stage time to all three of the picture's heroines:  Hedy Lamarr, Lana Turner, and Judy Garland (we catch a bit of the last two in the dressing room right at the beginning - maybe Hedy was already off dealing with her imposing headpiece).  It makes it clear that Hedy and Lana are in it for the glamour, to be Real Ziegeld Girls (eventually, one flies and one falls), but that Judy has Talent (you can tell because she's one of the dancers, as opposed to being a showgirl, the most elite of whom didn't even have to walk).  It also means that she trades a stunning Adrian gown (just look at Hedy in hers - it's what she was born to wear!) for what is essentially a tinsel poncho, but there you go - it's the singers and dancers, if they're lucky, who become the biggest stars.  Just ask Miss Brice.

The other MGM difference, of course, is scale - no other studio could pull together all the resources required to do so much, so lavishly, so consistently.  Warner's went big with its Gold Diggers numbers in the mid-30s (it is, after all, where Mr. Busby Berkeley, at the helm on this movie, learned his trade), but had pretty much passed on large-scale musicals by this time (1941, by the bye).  RKO had taste and glamour, and certainly their big numbers (think Fred and Ginger) are ravishing - but few were sustained spectacles like this.  Paramount had fun, but couldn't throw this many stars into one mix - Bing Crosby pictures didn't need a raft of leading ladies the way this story did.  Fox never had taste, and the sustained tone of this number is utterly beyond the studio's reach - Zanuck's boys would inevitably have thrown in a dance break for the Albertina Rasch troupe or a Dubious Comedy Interpolation from the likes of the Ritz Brothers or worse.  After that there's pretty much only the also-rans, like Universal (which mostly dispensed with big numbers in favor of The Many Moods of Deanna Durbin) or Columbia, which had Ann Miller for fun and Rita Hayworth for glamour, but did all of it on the cheap.  Of what's left, the less said the better.  Anybody up for a Vera Hruba Ralston tap number over at Republic?

No, this is pretty much the State of the Art, MGM at its MGMiest: vast staircases, lush orchestrations, armies of Beautiful Girls, and fabulously demented costumes (look out for Eve Arden at about 5:00, managing not to look too mortified in one of the most celestially ludicrous, a Moderne explosion in an angora factory).  Adrian clearly relished these opportunities - who else could have come up the passementerie madness that precedes Miss Arden?

Over it all soars the voice of Tony Martin, a slick '40s update to the traditional Irish tenor.  Watching him, I can see why he was a better fit for Charisse than for Faye - he's a bit too solemn for the Girl from Tenth Avenue, a little too replete with self-regard (something I've always thought, too, however divine she was in Singing in the Rain, about La Cyd, so they worked).   He was originally meant to be a kind of singing Gable, and if that didn't quite come off over the long haul, he's still a pleasure to watch here.

Birthday Girl: Just Like Ronnie Sang

On this, the 69th birthday of Miss Ronnie Spector, girl-group diva and Phil Spector-survivor, one thing seems certain:  in an all-girl-group, no-holds-barred catfight, the only ones who might not be totally trounced by the Ronettes would be the Shangri-Las, and that's only 'cause then it would be four-on-three.  Oh, sure, the Vandellas would hold their own for a while, but you don't want to get Ronnie mad.  The Supremes?  Don't make me laugh - Diane wouldn't stand a chance, not least because Florence, if she knew what was good for her, would switch sides halfway through.

Why Don't You...

...take up a hobby, like dear Miss Dinah Shore here?  Prolific!  While you're at it, be sure to match your palette to your sofa cushions, for that little something extra.  There's simply no such thing as Too Much Williamsburg Blue.

Birthday Mermaid

The one and only Miss Esther Williams is 90-something today (her exact birthyear being lost in a discreet, MGM-imposed haze - my money's on 91).  She may not have been the rangiest star ever, but how many performers can say that an entire genre was created around them, and that when they were done, so was the kind of film in which they starred?

No one was more pleased with her stardom than she herself, and when she'd had enough, she went on to other things.  Add her name to the Graceful Exit Club (even though, among other things, audience satiation and third husband Fernando Lamas played their parts) and think her of the next time you take a swim...

It Was All So Simple Then

Marvin Hamlisch, RIP

Meanwhile, in the Garden...

It's now official:  I've been home long enough to want nothing more on earth than to be back in Provincetown, land of twee garden corners just ripe for the snapping.  I'm not sure what I found more dispiriting today: the sandstorm, the Ramadan driving, or the sheer backload of drudgery that builds up in one's absence.  In my mind, I'm still there, off Commercial Street, taking portraits of lawn geese...



A Reminder from Miss Ruth Chatterton

I'm not Mitt Romney (lord knows), but I suspect he'd approve this message.

Bombshell

What's getting headlines today, of course, is that it is, unbelievably, 50 years today since the death of Marilyn Monroe.  Many, many others have written and will write about her today - her incandescent beauty, the ups and downs of her tangled, messy life, and the amazing way in which today, when she's been dead for more than a decade longer than she lived, she's a still a bigger star than ever she was alive.

No, I'd like to think a little about the other bombshell who left us on an August 5, seven years before Marilyn.  In many ways, Marilyn and the woman born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha, who became in her prime the best-paid woman in the U.S., have more in common than one might think.  Principally, each became trapped, in different ways, in a popular image that threatened to overwhelm the woman within.

It would probably suprise Carmen Miranda's contemporaries that she remains such a vivid, present, immediate figure, someone who still turns up on campy greeting cards and in impromptu impersonations (put some fruit on your head, strike a pose, and bam, you're Carmen Miranda - who else can be evoked so effortlessly?).  She was seen primarily as a novelty star, someone to drop into a plot (such plots as they were, in the mostly shambolic 20th Century Fox musicals that immortalized her) for a couple of numbers and a few zingy one-liners.  Today, she's often the best (and sometimes the only) reason to watch more than a few of her pictures.  Whatever the billing in 1948 or so, now she's the star.  Consider:  anybody up for a Jeanne Crain film festival?  Sheila Ryan? June Haver?  I thought not.

Like Marilyn, too, she cemented this indelible image in a short time - less than a decade of top stardom - and in surprisingly few movies, just a dozen or so features.  Both capitalized on and exaggerated their features, until at their most extreme both are nearly unrecognizable.  It's almost startling, as here, to see Carmen turned out more or less like other stars (although even here, the trusty Fox wardrobe department has seen fit to add a little Miranda-esque bling to one glove).  

Most of all, like Marilyn, Carmen left too soon, too suddenly, and in a way - a sudden heart attack after bouts of depression and addiction - that highlights, perhaps unfairly, the sadder, darker side of what, mostly, is a pretty fizzy tale:  little girl from a Portuguese village becomes in turn the top star of Brazil, a Broadway sensation, a pop phenomenon, and the toast of Hollywood.  I've told the story before, but I think it applies here, too:  I once asked a Star Who Was There about knowing Judy Garland, and the response - immediate, unpracticed - was:  "What everyone forgets is that an awful lot of the time she had an enormous amount of fun."  I hope we don't forget, in the hyperbolic, elegiac tributes to Norma Jeane Baker, superstar, that much the same could be said of her, and I hope, too, of Carmen.

I wonder if they ever met, the Blonde and the Brazilian Bombshells, and what they might have had to say to one another...