Birthday Girl: Last Star Standing

This demure creature has turned out, against all odds, to have had one of the longer, more interesting, and certainly more varied careers of all the many ladies who've passed through these pages.  Joan Collins is an actress, author, pundit, philanthropist, and all around Personality.

If no one has ever accused her of being Helen Hayes, Margaret Atwood, Maureen Dowd, or Miss Alice Tully - well, nobody beats her on the Personality front, and today she stands almost alone, one of the last reminders of the heady days when stars were Stars, who dressed and acted and acted out like it every hour of the day and night.

It took the then-unlikely concept of a nighttime soap-opera to rescue what had never been an A-career from what had sunk to truly Z levels, and ever since her triumph as Alexis Morrel Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan (and yes, I did do that from memory, and only missed Rowan) she's had a perfectly marvelous time.  She's one of the reasons (along with Princess Michael and Sheikha Mozah of Qatar) that I'm addicted to Hello! magazine, as she seems to appear in almost every issue, often on the arm of Percy, improbably taut and evidently devoted, the fifth and longest-lasting (ten years to date) of the Mr. Collinses.

Miss Collins, of course, is ageless, but it is whispered that this year she hovers on the brink of octagenarianism.  I wish her many more, all of them mascara-ringed, gloriously bewigged, en-furred, bejeweled, and entirely convinced of her iron-clad allure.  We shall not see her like again...

When [Mature] Ladies Meet

Hot off the Twitterline, this piece of gripping news from @JoanCollinsOBE: "Leaving NY, I popped by a cocktail party and literally bumped into Dr. Ruth!"  With pic to prove it, no less.

I think the most salient fact about this riveting image is that the age difference between these two is (are you sitting down?) five years.  And that's if you believe that Joan's telling the truth about her age, which, given the modus operandi of fierce creatures such as she, might be a stretch.

Dr. Ruth fun fact:  during a lean period back in the late '80s, I was working switchboard (and oh, was I working it) in the office of a Noted Person.  One fine morning, I picked up the phone to hear a cheerful Teutonic "Good morning!  Eeees N.P. zere?  Eet's Dr. Ruth!" (and she sounded just as insanely cheerful as she did on her then-omnipresent radio show).  Sure it is, I thought, and promptly reamed out the caller whom I presumed was one of my more antic acquaintances making fun of my starry but pedestrian gig.  I hung up just in time for the N.P. to bounce into the room and let us (I the as it turned out quite temporary temp and his social secretary) know that he was waiting for a call but had to run out, and please tell Dr. Ruth he'd call back before lunchtime.

A time of day I never again saw in those very nice offices on the Upper West Side...

Birthday Beauties

I'm normally not very fond at all of February, but it's clear that there is some strange magic to that unpromising month, if only based on the extraordinary gifts it seems to have bestowed on what would appear to be a disproportionate number of children born nine months later.

Today, really, is an embarrassment of gorgeousness...

We start with the woman Cecil Beaton described as an "Asian Venus," the extraordinary Princess Fawzia of Egypt. Today she's a little old lady living quietly in Cairo, but in her time she was rather a handful, as well as being the Shah's first wife.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have art-film darling Tilda Swinton, seen here, I believe, doing an al fresco Carrie Nye impression. Or is it Cybill Shepherd?

Joel McCrea ended up a grizzled character player in Westerns, but in his youth he was a gleamingly handsome leading man at the dawn of the Talkies.

Ah, Lady Olivier. Mercurial, brilliant, and capable of inspiring, based on all one reads, almost boundless reserves of affection among friends and loved ones despite infinitely bad behavior, Vivien Leigh never quite recovered from the strain of being married to one of the few people on earth perhaps as lovely as she and yet more able than she to be regarded even more for his acting than his entrancing bone structure.

Speaking of which, bone structure would likely have carried this young man far (or at least further than sleazy Joan Collins TV movies) had not an unkind fate intervened. Somehow one feels there is an element of mercy in Jon-Erik Hexum's having been saved from a future as the David Hasselhoff of the 2020s...

If Hexum's presence here adds a note of the tragic, let's scurry right back to the ridiculous and consider the last of our birthday belles and beaux, the smoldering Miss Elke Sommer. Here we see her in full Scandinavian sexbomb bloom, in a still doubtless drawn from one of the almost endless number of All Star International Productions of the 1960s to which she contributed ... well, not very much at all.

The last I heard of her she was feuding with Zsa-Zsa over who was or was not a bigger has-been, but that was years ago. I'm sure it's still a question she's mulling over, but even so I hope she's having a happy birthday.

Travel 101

As Mr. Muscato and I prepare for our summer holiday, I am of course looking for travel tips. Fortunately, reliably as ever, the Telegraph has come through with some thoughtful insights from their perennial go-to gal for common-sense help, Miss Joan Collins.

She may not break any new ground (she marvels at the "new craze" of buying counterfeit handbags on Canal Street, which I believe dates back to the Cretaceous), and sadly she doesn't really say much about our intended destinations, but she does provide some useful information for us to keep in mind:

Never underpack: Miss C. reminds us that climate is unpredictable. I'm so glad she brought this up, so that now I can be sure to bring plenty of resort togs and my mink. Overweight charges be damned! Or could this possibly have something to do with the fact that, as the article reminds us in tiny print as a postscript, that Miss Collins is a "brand ambassador" for a luggage forwarding company?

Be prepared: Dear Joan recounts for us a recent (! remember that part) vacation upset, when en route to friends' in Acapulco, her luggage, sadly not forwarded, went missing, and she was forced into a tragic situation that involved "replacing all my resort clothing and ... borrowing bikinis and make-up from my hostess." Some day, when the shaking and the sleepless nights have passed, you'll forgive me for having planted in your mind the image of a bikini-clad 21st century Joan Collins in borrowed make-up.

While Miss C. is sensible on the whole about where to stay - she expresses strong preferences for the Ritz in Paris and the Dorchester in London - she also claims to be eager to venture out to our part of the world in order to experience the wonder that is Atlantis. Well, you know how I feel about that. Perhaps I'll just have fall back on my old standby when it comes to useful travel tips; I know I have my copy of Joan Crawford's My Way of Life around here somewhere. Ermilia!

Pop Quiz: Score Card

Well, it didn't take long for the secret identity of our recent Pop Quiz subject to be revealed.

Dear Rick knew at a glance that this was no gender-bending Phyllis McGuire impersonator, but instead television soap-opera stalwart Eileen Fulton.

Still - I wonder... isn't there some sense that in answering the question "Drag or actress?", the most appropriate answer came from Miss Janey: "Both"? Think about it.

Even Rick admits that he knew the answer because he "saw her perform once on Fire Island." It's hard to conceive of a less ringing endorsement of genetic femininity, no?

And then there's the look: for better or worse, Miss Fulton has clearly staked out a fashion territory that puts her somewhere between Lypsinka and a TJ Maxx-reliant suburban Joan Collins acolyte.

Her choice of company hardly instils confidence - anyone caught frugging with Phyllis Diller in an outfit like that is, by definition, a drag queen, no matter what the chromosomes say.

Even the leg-art stills aren't reassuring - this is one big-handed soap-opera diva.

So, I think we'll close out the current query by saying that it was, in a sense, a trick question: Eileen Fulton is an actress who's made a career - and, apparently, a long and happy one - out of her very own, very special form of drag. And whyever not?

Have You Met Miss Joan?

Darling joe*to*hell points out a signal error in our previous post - the omission of perhaps the hairhoppiest Joan of all, the lovely and (semi)talented Miss Collins. Consider it an error rectified (and doesn't that always sound like a much dirtier word than it actually is?).

5 Non-Blondes

Pages from the Sydney Guilaroff Hall of Shame. Looks that never should have been.

Loretta "Goldie" Young

Bette "Cookie" Davis

Joan "Jayne" Collins

Norma "Torchy" Shearer

Cherilyn Sarkisian Bono Allman*

Kindest just to file these under "what were they thinking?" and move on. But first, gaze at the trainwreck that misguided glamour can be, and learn.

*A name that, when written out in full, is literally impossible to make any trashier. God knows I've tried.

Chronologically Challenged

The ever-surprising Dame Joan Collins takes on the role of pundit today, decrying in marywhitehousian tones the plague of vulgarity on British television (Pot? Kettle called - you're black.).

What makes the column stand out for me, though, is this: "my great-grandmother was, of course, a Victorian, and so my mother was brought up with strict moral values."

Honey, my great-grandmother was a Victorian. Joan Collins's great-grandmother must have been positively Elizabethan.

The Babes of Trek

As I've been known to observe, sci-fi has never really been my thing. Nonetheless, back in my fledgling days, even I wasn't wholly immune to the backcombed charms of the many, many actresses who came and went on Star Trek.

What is a surprise, though, is how very many of them there were, and how many of them are still names that ring a bell or two. Everyone, of course, remembers Uhura, and it was more or less an inevitable stop for someone like 60s freelancer Joan Collins:

Most, it seems, of the lower echelon of the starlet firmament made their way through one or another of the galaxies the plucky Enterprisers encountered. Most are utterly forgotten names: Alyce Andrece, Grace Lee Whitney, Lois Jewell.

Alongside them are ladies only vaguely familiar, just from having popped up on the scene often enough over enough years. Nancy Kovack, for example, co-starred with Elvis, did this guestshot, was almost Samantha in "Bewitched," and ended up swanning around LA society as Mrs. Zubin Mehta.

Lee Meriwether made her mark as Barnaby's Jones's faithful secretary, but first she joined the bat-browed sisterhood for an hour.

Mariette Hartley's episode must have been mercifully surpressed; otherwise, 80s viewers would have been horrified to realize that, in her commercials with James Garner, she was nearly as old as he...

Some familiar names are quite hidden under the makeup. Yvonne Craig, for example, looked more sophisticated (and photosynthetic) on ST than ever she did as Bat Girl.

While another Gotham City regular, Julie Newmar, looks positively demure compared to her usual feline persona.

We're apt to forget now that someone like Sally Kellerman was, for a while, a very Grade A name; even the worst of ST's jewel-toned velour creations couldn't hide why.

While of all her sisters, Teri Garr looks most like she, like me, is wondering what on - not earth, of course, but some place requiring boldly going - she is doing there.

Even so, those pastels, on her, are truly flattering, although her hair appears to be in danger of disappearing, Beautiful Chrissy-style, back into her head.

The lesson I, as a baby viewer, took away was clear: no matter how distant the planet, how exotic the galaxy, inevitably the inhabitants had the best and latest in haircare and makeup. Today, that's not even true of the average local mall; another little victory for classic television over that overrated phenomenon, Real Life.

(Gallery of Star Gals courtesy of the very fetching Eeknight)

Trapped in the Seventies

You know, it wasn't a moment too soon that she met Nolan Miller. She needed him. Badly.

LOLJoan

Cats, dogs, pundits, presidents - why not celebrities?

Unlikely Incarnations

Behold:

Barbie Streep.

You slog away for decades to become one of the world's most successful Big Serious Actresses. Then, one day, for a lark, you take a silly, showy part in a comedy that turns out to be a runaway success, and what happens?

Some queen goes and makes a doll out of you. Although to my untrained eye, the whole effect is more evocative of Alexis/Nolan Miller than Miranda/Prada, but then I suppose it's hard to get the leopard skin just right at 11 1/2" scale.

And all of of this only because I felt like running a couple of shots of Miss Streep, just because.

I love her in her classics:

Here, as, in Bette Midler's memorable impression, "the French Leftenant's Whoooooooooooore...", or equally, as she so often admirably is, straight up, no make up:

I've been thinking that whatever one thinks about the current crop of Hot Young Things (Misses Johansson, Portman, et al), we are, in a few year, in for an amazing crop of fabulous Old Lady Actresses: just think of the movies that could be made by bringing together Streep, Close, Hawn, Sarandon, and more as they move in a decade or two toward their eighties and beyond.

Plus ça change...

Even in this far-off Sultanate-on-Sea, rumblings from the media jungle ring through loud and clear - rogue pastors, desperate comeback attempts, Austrian basement horrors, you name it - but this week's tweens-gone-wild madness regarding someone I've never, until now, even heard of, one Miley Cyrus, set me thinking.

First, of the unlikeliness of the daughter of the wearer of the Worst Haircut in History AND singer of possibly the worst pop song this side of "Oh My Papa" becoming a sensation in her own right.

But second, and mostly, of how incredibly little historical perspective or cultural savvy most people (well, people who are public commentators these days) seem to have even in this information-saturated time. I thought this, because I've been trying to think of what, exactly, Ms. Liebovitz's now infamous image of young Miss Cyrus reminded me, and it finally came to me:

Isn't she lovely?

Evelyn Nesbit.

She was 16 when she was New York's leading "art model" (with all that entails), and only a few years older when she became the Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, a central player in the century's first great murder press frenzy. She's not exactly forgotten - she was played by Joan Collins in one of her better (for her) pictures, and she turns up in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime and the film thereof.

As far back as 1901 - and far, far beyond - there have been sexualized teens. They've had vaguely naughty pictures taken of them, odalisques painted of them, nudes carved of them. They've turned into media sensations. And we've all survived, as have, frequently, the subjects of all the nonsense. Evelyn had some bad times - the usual showgirl/bad marriage/addiction sort of thing. But she ended up an old lady teaching ceramics in Santa Monica.

We'll survive.