The Ladies in Red

Is it just me, or does it seem a little World Turned Upside Down to see a photograph in which Liza Minnelli is significantly more tastefully dressed and looks calmer and more self-assured than Audrey Hepburn? She must have, for once, have gotten the meds just right.

Wisdom from the East

The first and, to date, only time I saw Charade - rising forty years ago, children - I was simply too young and found it entirely mystifying (if clearly memorable). It was gratifying to find this Japanese poster for the picture, as it conveys incredibly clearly exactly what my confusion felt like. Although it omits one element I found fascinating: Audrey's shoes.

Figures, no?

Ladies and their Tigers (and Spots, and Fluffies...)

What accessory is more versatile, offstage or on, than the right animal? Generations of stars have known it, from Josephine Baker, who heightened her exoticism in Parisian eyes by walking in the Bois with her pet cheetah...


To Kim Novak, whose innate chilliness was only enhanced by the presence of a minatory Siamese..

Joan Crawford's pack of poodles, by contrast, were carefully marshalled to warm up her image (and at least poodles can't inadvertently use wire hangers).

Today, stars still clutch their four-legged friends, although one senses it's in many cases as much for comfort as promotion. Elizabeth Taylor, for heaven's sake, has no need to raise her profile any further, but remains devoted:

It's hard to imagine some stars romping with animals. Nonetheless, most do, at least on film, as in this touching exchange between Miss Golightly and her pet cat, Cat.

I believe there are lessons in each of these images; what they are, I'm not so sure.

Birthday Boy: Somebody's Perfect

102 years ago today in a little town in Austria-Hungary, Mrs. Eugenia Wilder, née Dittler, had a baby boy. She must have been a remarkable woman, for her little Billie grew up to be Billy Wilder.


Looking through his owlish round spectacles, observing Mama Eugenia, what did he pick up that allowed him to create a gallery of some of the screen's greatest - and most diverse - women?

Is there part of Eugenia in Nina Yakushova Ivanoff, whom a combination of Paris and Melvyn Douglas transform into Ninotchka?



Somewhat more disconcertingly, is there anything of her in the predatory Phyllis Dietrichson, queen of the blank face and the world's only ominous bangs?

Perhaps that's the part that let him bring to life so entirely the vast and tragic mess that is Norma Desmond:

(I think Boulevard Crepuscule is if
anything a better title, don't you?)

I would like to think she's there in Ariane Chavasse, Hepburn's most sophisticated gamine in Love in the Afternoon (and if the December in any May-December is Gary Cooper, who's to say it nay?):

But, to my mind, the proof that Eugenia did good by her little boy is that he grew up to be able to imagine two such creatures, equally improbable, as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk and the man who transforms himself so happily into the fetching bass player Daphne:

He did well by his leading ladies, that's for sure: two of Stanwyck's defining roles (Double Indemnity and Ball of Fire), two of Monroe's (Some Like it Hot and The Seven Year Itch), two of Audrey Hepburn's (Love in the Afternoon and Sabrina) making Garbo laugh and Swanson immortal - not bad for a boy from Sucha Beskidzka.

I do think some of it had to be Eugenia.