Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Christmas Eve She Lit the Candles....

Well, not technically a holiday number, I suppose, but it's candy-colored enough to pass for one, and it does remind us of the importance of fire safety whilst celebrating...

Glamour: a Reminder

Hollywood, California, 59 years ago today:  Miss Edith Head revels in her own personal fabulousness - and (as was its wont) Life was there.

Birthday Girls: Elsa and Edith (Now with More Elvis)

Two of Hollywood's most interesting eccentrics were born on this date, both in one way or another ugly ducklings who made themselves into swans.  In this clip (although not, of course, in its screencap) we see one of them, Miss Elsa Lanchester, onscreen, wearing the work of the other, Miss Edith Head.  The film is a 1967 concoction called Easy Come, Easy Go, which stands as not exactly a landmark in that most undemanding of film genres, the Elvis Presley picture.  Even by those standards, this number, "Yoga is as Yoga Does" is at best a curiosity, however amusing it may be to see a veteran character actress, apparently in the absence of any better direction or choreography, improvise a few Bollywood moves right on the spot.

One wonders, in fact, how much Miss Head actually had to with Miss Lanchester's getup as a New Age guru-ess - these robes and beads look suspiciously like what one imagines Miss Lanchester's wardrobe in private life might have been like, and around the time this was filmed, Miss Head was engaged in a number of higher profile (and higher prestige) pictures, including Natalie Wood's very dressy Penelope, Barefoot in the Park, and gowns for the notorious stinker The Oscar.  At the time, her name went on Paramount pictures no matter how little she actually did - although one hopes she might have had a hand in Elvis's rather flattering little black number here.

Lanchester and Head worked on five of the same pictures between 1948 and 1967, but it's doubtful that any of the former's roles proved very taxing for the latter.  Lanchester played a sensible private-duty nurse in Witness for the Prosecution, for example, requring only a uniform and smart cape, while as a bohemian artist in The Big Clock, she wears more or less what she's seen in here, albeit with a modicum more tailoring.  The other two are a Martin-Lewis epic and a forgotten programmer called The Girls of Pleasure Island, neither of which sound especially promising.

Of course, there's really only one costume closely associated with Elsa Lanchester - her tattered bandages and laboratory sheet in Bride of Frankenstein.  While one can only dream of what Edith Head might have done with that in place of Universal house designer Vera West, it's hard to imagine anything more effective.  Perhaps, all those years later, reduced to playing a punchline for The Pelvis, Lanchester remembered her glory days; if nothing else, her Yoga schmatta has something of the same line...

Trailer Trash: The Dress Doctor is In

Well, okay - this is less a trailer than a featurette. And yes, you do have to sit through the annoying TCM intro. Still, I think you'll agree that it's worth the wait to hear the one and only Miss Edith Head introduce the sensational fashions that enlivened the otherwise not-so-sensational Natalie Wood vehicle Penelope.

This is the kind of movie that if you enounter a bit of it late one night, you think "Gee, why haven't I heard of this? It's kicky, fun, and great to look at! Why don't they make movies like this anymore?

Then one day, you set aside time to catch the whole thing, and you walk away thinking, "Oh. That's why."

So now you don't have to, because you've seen the most important parts - believe me: after that white gown, it's all downhill from there.

A Timely Reminder

I think it my duty, given the suddden reappearance of Miss Spears, to recall to all and sundry that this is what a star dressed as a ringmaster looks like.

Adiós, Amigo

The world is down another leading man; Ricardo Montalbán, king of the rolling Rs and urbane affability, has headed toward that Very Special Love Boat Two-Parter in the sky.

Before he became a television staple (and check out his IMDb listing - that man worked!) he was of course a bona fide movie star - seen here in the obligatory Paramount wardrobe session with Edith Head. He had the kind of aura that could lead one to believe he actually did wear an evening suit to a costume fitting.

I've rarely seen him look more engaging than here, though, hands clasping the waist of the delectable Lena Horne during the Broadway run of Jamaica, the 1957 Harold Arlen musical in which they starred.

He seems to have been a thoroughly decent person, a hardworking actor, and he even survived more than a half-century of being Loretta Young's brother-in-law, which can't have been a picnic.

Busy Gal

Hollywood, April 26, 1958: By 10:00 a.m., Paramount's top stitchmistress Edith Head is on her 16th cup of coffee and her 247th sketch!