Sunday, March 1, 2009

Masquerade

Miss Debbie Allen impersonates Josephine; Miss Ann Jillian, Mae. It must have been a long and rather trying evening all around.

Actually, I'm afraid they were working; every stitch of those costumes screams "mid-80s TV movie," demonstrating a breathtaking disregard for historical accuracy not seen since the Fox musicals of the 1940s.

5 comments:

  1. A little snap of 1983's "Texaco Star Theater: Opening Night."

    Miss Allen appears to be impersonating Miss Baker quite badly, much as she has been badly impersonating an actress and choreographer for decades...

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  2. At least she's struck an authentically Bakerian pose (albeit in what appears to be the collision between a Catalina bathing suit and a flamingo).

    Miss Jillian, by contrast, looks less like Miss West than like Jo Ann Worley in a cheap Eva Gabor-knockoff wig impersonating the Empress Josephine!

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  3. I thought Miss Jillian looked like Renee Taylor dressed for press appearances for one of her touring boulevard comedies with husband Joe Bologna.

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  4. Have you ever seen The Carpetbaggers with Carroll Baker? Now that was some serious sixties period costume abuse! Then the Jean Harlow biopic that followed.

    I think with the above photo it’s only historically interesting from the point of view that it was this actual moment in time that simultaneously killed both of their careers.

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  5. I've always thought the worst period costumes, bar none, were likely in Nicholas and Alexandra; in my memory, poor Janet Suzman played the last Tsaritsa of the All the Russias in bangs and spider lashes, wearing a vaguely Edwardian dress in a fetching pastel double-knit.

    And while Jillian does look a tad Renee Taylor, she's equally Liz Renay...

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