Saturday, March 14, 2009

Gloria, Janis, and Dick

The bad girl of 1968 meets the bad girl of 1918. The latter outlived the former by a dozen years, which ought to tell you something. Gloria's seventy-odd here, and I'm deeply jealous of her shoulders. Janis appears vaguely to know where she is, but not much more. Dick is in plaid, which may not be a good idea.

This was the kind of thing that we once got to see on television all the time. Now people shout at each about their octuplets and their investments and, for all I know, their octuplets' investments.


5 comments:

  1. you hit the nail on the head! i loved the dick cavett show...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Both those gals have a feral quality that I find unnerving.

    If I'd known how far television quality would slide between my childhood and now, I would have watched more back then...though it would have been nigh on impossible for me to watch more unless I dropped out of school.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "A feral quality"... I think both of them would have relished the description.

    Gloria's amazing. She was, for a while, the most famous woman in the world (back when that really meant something), and she was uniquely able both to hold and laugh at her own pretensions.

    I think she knew full well, for example, the impression that she would make in her platinum pageboy and black and white Norma Desmond frock opposite Janis, just as she was very, very aware that not everyone her age could - or should - show that much shoulder.

    And she loved every minute of it - all the bands playing her theme ("Love, Your Magic Spell is Everywhere") every time she made an entrance, all the single roses and carnations artfully deployed as props, all the posing and charming that she did so well. Which is awfully endearing, even if it made her a bit of a handful.

    ReplyDelete
  4. i think they both were a bit of a handful...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've said it before on my blog, and I'll share it here again...I think Dick Cavett is awfully cute. So sue me.

    ReplyDelete