Fancy Running into You Here!

"Well, it is a season for chance meetings, isn't it?"

Up to the Glitter

Well, darlings, on the (I'm sure very) off chance that your weekend hasn't turned out to be quite as soigné as perhaps you were hoping, why don't we drop in on Mr. Hefner and see what's happening up at his place?  As it turns out, the marvelous soul queen Carla Thomas has popped by as well, doing something rather magical to "Where do I Go?" from Hair.

Fast Away...

...The old year passes.  As it does, we can only hope to be as festive as ol' Mickey here.  And maybe not as killjoy as Frieda there in between him and the guy in the wizard hat.  Sheesh - if looks could kill!

Say Cheese

I think, in the end, you're either a fondue person or you're not.

In Which We Entertain

We decided to mark this Columbus Day weekend by Having People In for the first time in our new digs.  Actually, that's a complete lie.

Overheard at the Garden Party

"Oh, no, Virginia - I simply can't believe it!"

Party Girls

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

Party Like It's 1954

Sixty years ago tonight, Life magazine, as was its wont, went to a party.

When Queens Collide

Oh, Dame Helen - ought one really point at the sovereign?  Well, the lady herself seems unperturbed, as, for that matter, she mostly has for most of the past seven decades or so.

Bye-Bye, Baby

Tonight is the first of several farewell parties that friends and colleagues are very kindly throwing for us, and I couldn't be dreading them more.

Rockbird Superstar

If the photo evidence is to be believed, much of the fashion worn by the preening guests at last night's annual Metropolitan Museum gala was pretty woeful.  Even so, the organizers of the celebration - in honor of the Costume Institute's new "Punk: from Chaos to Couture" show - certainly got one thing right: they hired Blondie as the evening's headliner, and it certainly looks like dear Miss Deborah Harry delivered.

I don't know about you, but I'm always touched by her presence, dear.  I bet Mrs. Vreeland would have been, too...

The Story of a Divorce

Today marks what would have been the 115th birthday of the "benevolent volcano," Miss Bette Davis.  In the process of thinking about this august anniversary, I believe there's a chance I may have uncovered a little bit of a mystery, which I've found rather amusing.

In 1950, Miss Davis's birthday must have struck the actress as something of a mixed bag.  She was turning 42, not the easiest of ages for a lady of that era, especially one whose meal ticket depended - even though she was never technically a glamour star - on her appearance.  She was working, true, but for the first time away from the familiar waters of Warner Bros; The Story of a Divorce was her first go at being a freelancer, and she must have found the comparatively modest scale of RKO rather a change.  At home, her always rather inexplicable marriage to artist William Grant Sherry was foundering; she had filed for divorce the previous fall, but the couple had since muddled through.

As her birthday approached, the cast and crew of the movie threw her a birthday party in the studio commissary, an event extensively covered by Life lensman J.R. Eyerman.  She received a couple of odd gifts:

I do not see Bette Davis carrying a wicker purse.

Was there some sort of vogue for ostrich eggs in the latter part of the Truman era?  And why does this snap remind me so much of Divine's birthday party in Pink Flamingos?

It all looks festive enough, but by all accounts it was the end of her marriage to Sherry.  And here's where things get more interesting.  Most published accounts, including Davis's own in the bio that she quasi-authored, Mother Goddam, say that the party happened on her birthday itself, and that after it was over Sherry came and found her in her dressing room, where they had a final dust-up.

Somehow though, I came across this clipping, which tells a rather different story:

 From the Sydney Morning Herald of Thursday, April 6, it's a wire service squib dated to the previous day (Bette's birthday), saying that the party happened on Monday (which would have been April 3), and that Sherry actually appeared at the party and caused a ruckus.

In the photos above, Bette (for Bette) looks pretty festive; even, by her standards genial.  But then...

She receives an embrace that one could argue she looks rather startled by.  The gentleman behind her looks apprehensive.

Coming out of the hug, she moves from startled to what could be the start of full-on glare.  That's not a look I'd care to be the object of.  Note that the bystanders have mostly skedaddled.  I think what we see here is the very moment that the Davis-Sherry ménage ceased to be.  I think he actually did show up at the party, and that he wasn't expected, and Eyerman happened to catch it all.

Even by the time the star regained her composure and sat down with her gifts for a bite in a commissary booth, she wasn't a happy lady:

Either moments earlier or moments later, she gives a look of absolutely Tallulavian disdain:

Sherry wasn't photographed all that much (his stint as Mr. Bette Davis, 1945-50, being pretty much his only time in the public eye), but he was handsome in a bland and very period sort of way, and the hugger/booth partners looks like him.  I think that's Davis's co-star Barry Sullivan on the right, standing, but there's a resemblance between the two that, not having seen Payment on Demand (the only middlingly successful movie that Divorce turned into), that means I don't know quite certainly. That could be Sullivan in the booth.  What do you think?

The one thing that isn't a mystery about all of this is that it was right about the time of this party, when, with her marriage falling apart and her current movie, whatever the merits of the earnest script, rather a comedown from her days as Queen of the Lot, Davis might have been justifiably feeling rather blue, she got some marvelous news.  Claudette Colbert had injured her back and was dropping out of a film, which meant that Davis could sail from the dowdy of set of Divorce/Payment and the dubious charms of W.G. Sherry right into the arms of 20th Century Fox, All About Eve - and Gary Merrill.  Of course, that started her down another matrimonial trail of tears, but that, as they say, is a whole 'nother story.

Party Girl

On a fine Manhattan evening just 54 years ago, Zsa Zsa Gabor went to a very swish soirée hosted by Prince Aly Khan.  That's Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. there, sitting on her right.  Dear Mr. Eisenstadt appears to have caught her in a pensive moment.  Well, she was a bit at loose ends (in between two of her lesser husbands, a Mr. Hutner, who'd lasted four years, and a Mr. Cosden, who only eked out one) and so was her host.  Perhaps she was wondering whether it might be worth trying to become the third Princess Aly.  Such an alliance would, if nothing else, have been a great deal better than the sordid semi-royalty with which she eventually did became embroiled.

The '50s really were the sisters' glory years, and in her opulent serenity, Zsa Zsa has no idea just how unkind, to her and to the very idea of Gaborismo, the following decades would prove to be.  Just as well; let her enjoy her moment.  I'm guessing those are emeralds.

And what are you up to?

Later, on the Dance Floor

As the years passed, it was decreasingly clear whether the widowed Lady Shufflehampton knew for certain if she was actually at a costume party or not.  Tonight, for example, she introduced her date to everyone as Sun Yat Sen, which is just silly; who here doesn't know he's Herman, the Tranquil Palms Retirement World's janitor?

Even so, I say that as long as those two kicky kids are having fun, let the music play...

'Round Midnight

Trust dear Miss Ann Miller to be the one to lead us on our way out of this old year - if there were anyone from Olde Hollywood with whom I think it would be a kick to spend New Year's Eve, I suspect it would be she.  Katharine Hepburn would want to do something improving - recite Longfellow, perhaps; with Bette Davis, the evening would surely end with recrimination and the furious tossing of barbed insults; Joan Crawford would make us go upstairs and ooh and ah over those damned twins; and, of course, Miss Garbo would really rather that we weren't there at all.  Ann, though, would meet us at the door with a nice cold glass of champers and the latest dirty joke, and isn't that how any New Year's Eve party should start?  Also, by 1:00 a.m., I don't believe it would take much to persuade her to put some Cole Porter on the hifi and recreate her big number from Kiss Me, Kate, which would certainly be a hoot.

Which brings us to an anniversary, for it was just 64 years ago today that Kate bowed on Broadway, starting on the journey that took it through a run of more than 1,000 performances there, a national tour that may still be rattling around somewhere, the splashy 3D MGM spectacular in which Ann stole every scene she could, a 1968 TV version starring the singularly unappealing combination of Carol Lawrence and Robert Goulet (they were married, but I can't imagine it helped any), and regular revivals from here to Tashkent.

As for New Year's Eve, we're running up the coast a principality or two and spending the big night with our pals The Teacher and his very fetching partner - if nothing else, it should be more festive than last year, when Mr. Muscato and I sat, each with a terrier on our lap, waiting for midnight so that we could for God's sake go to sleep.  I feared then that terminal middle-age had set in, but perhaps there's life in the old girl yet.  We shall see.

How about you?  To steal a line from dear Miss Whiting - what are you doing New Year's Eve?

...And Marion Never Looked Lovelier

I think Marion Davies must have enjoyed the late 'thirties more than any time in her life.  She didn't have to worry about getting up at the crack of dawn to pretend to be a movie star any more (hell, she hardly bothered to brush her hair), WR was getting old enough that he'd let her out on the town on her own every once in a while, and even if she was getting a little chinny, she still had the best rocks in Hollywood.  What did she care if stuck-up posers like Connie Bennett gave her the high-hat?  Doug Fairbanks still thought she was good fun.

Look at them.  You just know that the second the photographer finished, they ditched Miss B. and her lapdog, Gilbert Roland (she'd marry him, eventually, but here she's still the Marquise de la Falaise de la Coudraye, thank you very much), and headed back to the bar.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Well, it may not be the most practical of last-minute costume suggestions (and given that this photo was snapped in 1955, it's distinctly avant la lettre), but isn't this just about the most fabulous Nell Carter costume you can possibly imagine?

The Perils of Nightlife

Not long after midnight, Trent's evening took a turn for the worse.  By dawn, nothing was ever the same again.

Yesterday, When We Were Young...

Ah, time in its flight...31 years ago today, this trio - Robby Benson, Joan Jett, and Rex Smith - joined forces - and Life was there.  The whys and the wheres are lost in the mists of time, but I confirm that within 18 months or so of this snap, I very likely owned and wore most or all of these clothes, not to mention sporting most or all of those haircuts (which are, I suppose, really only variations on a single, blow-dried, theme).

Since when, by the bye, did Joan Jett ever go around looking so femme?  1981 is kind of an in-between time for her, after the Runaways but before the Blackhearts, but she never at all struck me as an eyelet-and-ankle-sox kind of gal (frankly, I would have thought that was more up Rex's alley, but that's just me).

All three, now, are more or less in the "Whatever Happened To...?" category.  Jett did Broadway a couple of years ago, well-reviewed in Rocky Horror;  Benson has become an activist for cardiac research and just self-published an e-memoir recounting his four open-heart surgeries, I'm Not Dead ... Yet! (cheerful); and Smith's website, in the "Rex Right Now" section, touts his undoubtedly smash tour of the Philippines - in 2009.

STOP THE PRESSES:  I just realized something.  I was going to add, as a Fun Fact, something that I can't believe that I did not know:  that Robby Benson has since 1982 been married to fab '80s backup thrush Karla DeVito.  Then I thought to myself, recalling endless midnight viewings of the "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" video (which played, along with "I do the Rock," before screenings of Rocky Horror - back to that again, how odd - at Philadelphia's lamented TLA):  "Self, we have just discovered a major Time-Life error:  that woman in this picture is not, in fact, Joan Jett (who would not, in fact, be caught dead in New Wave Shepherdess drag) - that's Karla DeVito!"  Benson took over from Smith in Pirates of Penzance - in which DeVito understudied and then replaced Linda Ronstadt (talk about your "Whatever Happened To"-s!) - on Broadway right about that time, so there are the whys and the wheres, too.

Oy.  Can you tell I have too much time on my hands?

Surprise!

I hate surprises.  Perhaps it was a childhood that veered between the idyllic and the volatile, with not quite enough in between.  Perhaps it's just that I'm a dedicated, unregenerate, evil control freak.  Whatever.  It's the just the way it is.

Still, we had a surprise party last night, and by that I mean that two weeks ago, Mr. Muscato sat me down and told me he was having a party for my birthday, that he'd organized it to start while I was off at yet another office-sponsored cocktail extravaganze, that this was the caterer's menu and that that was the guestlist, and would I please find a way to not come home until I received a missed call at about 7:30 p.m., and for God sake's try and look surprised.

Which I did, in a far more convincing way than any of the stiffs that Philips hired as party-guest record-cover extras (and there's a narrow corner of the show-business, no?) for the LP above.   It all came off quite well, and while I still loathe being surprised, my cold heart was really rather touched by the glee that so many of the guests (a great many of whom had come on from the earlier, business fête) enjoyed at having "fooled" me for the past week.  Now, of course, I have to go back to work tomorrow and undoubtedly spend a great deal of time congratulating them ("boy, you really did get me, didn't you?") on their cleverness.

The rest of the time I'll have to spend planning my revenge on Mr. Muscato.  Oh, he told me about the party, yes - but he didn't run either the flowers or the music by me in advance.  Have I mentioned that I might, just might, have a few teeny-tiny hospitality-related control issues?