R.I.P.: Sculptress Superstar

The misty shores of Fabulon have gained a major dose of Pop glam this week with the passing thence of the artistic enigma once world-famous, like Madonna or Cher (or, for that matter, Charo), by only her first name: Marisol.

Miss and Madame

Perhaps it's just that I'm getting a little stir-crazy in this five-star gilded prison, but today I'm feeling literary.  Fortunately, there are not one but two significant moments of which to take note, and they have a certain unlikely symmetry.

Birthday Girl: The Beat Goes On

Cher by Avedon, Mononym to Mononym

She's been famous, in different ways in each, in six different decades.  She is perhaps the most self-aware of performers, one laugh ahead of her worst critics and always ready to admit that she's an unlikely bet to have become both one of the greatest and most durable of stars. 

Early on, before settling on her defining monosyllablism, she was briefly known profressionally as Bonnie Jo Mason, Cherilyn, and Cleo.  She's got her Oscar, not to mention a shelf-full of lesser honors, not to mention a fortune conservatively estimated in the hundreds of millions.  Notwithstanding that she headlined a multi-year, multi-continent Farewell Tour once upon a time earlier this century, she's getting ready to hit the road again this fall.  Just as well; the world could always use a little more Cher.

She's 66 today, and that seems like the most improbable thing of all.

Dark Lady Laughs...

...and lights her candles one by one - 123 of them, actually, for today is the birthday of French cinema's seminal femme fatale, the enchantingly mononymous Musidora. 

The original Irma Vep gave Theda Bara (and how often do you get two anagrammatical names in one sentence?  This kind of prose don't come cheap, kids) more than a run for her money in the vamp department, leavening her lethal allure with both stunts and humor, two things that weren't poor Theodosia's long suit, as it were.  She even outlived her American coeval by two years.  If so inclined, you can catch a brief but startlingly effective glimpse of her here.

Remember Her (One) Name

Little María Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y O'Donnell had clearly had enough of being so relentlessly polysyllabic by the time she made the long trip from Mexico City to Hollywood, for she became known to film fans simply as Margo. Under that clipped moniker, she was a reliable supporting presence for more than three decades, mostly in roles that called for a little exotic mystery.

She was, for even longer, Mrs. Eddie Albert, which is just about as far from being either exotic or mysterious as one can imagine. Although it does raise the distinct possibility that she got to hang out with Eva Gabor, which has to count for something. Also, she was Cugat's niece, which means that Charo was, at least for a while, her aunt. Which is kind of fabulous.

Here we see her working, as well as anyone could, the unlikely, unpromising glamour-shot combo of wicker and lamé.

Sculptrice

Marisol. Abstract Expressionist. Warholite. Enigma. Fabulous creature. Needless to say, we adore her.

Triple Threat

Celebrity widow, fashion goddess, Our Lady of the Flamenco Guitar - really, Charo is the complete entertainer. And I can stare at her for hours, wondering all the while: what do you suppose she stores in her hair?

Birthday Girl: Gallic Glamour

Glamourous French beauty, model, and actress Capucine would have been a mere eighty today, had fate been kinder.

If her American career never quite equaled the amount of publicity it received, she was nonetheless something more than merely decorative in a number of pictures, not least as madam Barbara Stanwyck's Number One Girl in Walk on the Wild Side.

Like so many lovely ladies, she was a Troubled Girl; I hope we all will judge her gently, and remember a time when it was expected that stars would be elegant, distant, cool, and often foreign.

Twilight on Fabulon?

Say it isn't so! Our dear Thombeau has announced the shuttering of his extraordinary corner of the Intertubes, the wonder that is Fabulon. There is no joy in Mudville - or in many a far more festive locale - at the prospect of a world without Mysterions, mantillas, and meetings of the Board of Directors.

The only reason you are reading this now is that at some point last spring, Fabulon forced us lurkers to stir ourselves and register an identity. And here we are now, proud proprietors of the Café, wondering what to do without a daily dose of the divine. Here's hoping that when life smiles again, perhaps he will reincarnate and return to us. In the meantime, I do hope he remains a visitor here, and I really do recommend his lovely, evocative, meditative music, Arcanta.

Confidential to T.: please please please don't take it down too soon. Please?

Mononym to Nononym and Back Again

The auteur of Under the Cherry Moon raised the one-name stakes a few years ago, when he tried to move to having no name at all, but rather an epithet ("The Artist formerly known as Prince", of course), accompanied by a symbol that looked rather like an Egyptian ankh mating with a trombone.

Well, that went over about as well as New Coke, and soon he was once again just plain old Prince. And still is.

But who knew that once upon a time he sported a Farrah-do? Actually, it looks rather like he borrowed a wig from Valerie Bertinelli. Perhaps she borrowed his shirt, which thus explains this dewy-eyed shot in full.

New Wave Mononym

It's easy to forget, all these years later, that once upon a time Sting was just about the hottest thing around. It's a look that doesn't age particularly well, no?

One Name, Many Syllables

Björk Guðmundsdóttir

Björk is, among other things, something of an acquired taste - one I don't believe I have acquired.

With a profound admiration for either her native creativity or her choice in stylists, I'm willing to give her big props as a visual object (I even liked the swan dress!).

The real test comes when she opens her mouth. I think she generally sounds like a sick and rapidly weakening cat, which sort of ruins the gamine general effect.

Can't fault the outer-space geisha drag, though, no?

Joyzelle, Redux

I came across this just now and thought y'all might like a look at the glamourous Miss Joyzelle, referenced below, in motion.

She's seen here in one of her rare two-named performances: in this unique little number, she is billed, eponymously, as "Panther Lady".

Enjoy. And then go thank heaven you didn't have to pay MGM's physiotherapy bills...

Remember My [Singular] Name!

Our little tour of stars so nice they named them ... once, having so far encompassed Acquanetta, Movita, and the incomparable Charo, continues with an enigmatic lady known to film goers of the early thirties as:

Joyzelle!

She is seen in the fabulous snap above in the film - and costume - for which she is perhaps best remembered. In 1930's Just Imagine, she carries over her penchant for the short and snappy by portraying not one but two single-named characters, BooLoo and LooLoo (they're twins, you see, one good, one evil)...

Just Imagine is one of those little-screened, much-discussed films that, based on the stills, you think is going to be earth-shattering. Our girl, for example, is wearing in the shot above what was described as the screen's first all-mica gown! How could that not be riveting?

Well, it's not. Yes, there are lavish sci-fi sets - reputedly more elaborate than those used a couple of years earlier in Germany for Metropolis - and costumes to match, and an early appearance by Maureen O'Sullivan; but there is also way, way too much shtick that was old when Vaudeville was a tot, pacing that outdoes the creakiest pictures of even just a few months later, and - most fatally - El Brendel (about whom I have nothing to say except to warn you to avoid him like the plague. He's the kind of performer who can make you want never to see a movie older than six months).

As for Miss J., she is very, well, busy, in that way early Talkie performers sometimes are. Like Clara Bow at her worst, you're never quite sure if she's just peppy, or if there's some kind of neuromotor problem coming on.

During her brief vogue, Joyzelle seemed to specialize in characters in search of surnames. A quick check of the good old IMDb reveals that in a film career spanning only nine years (1926-1935), she managed to play: Saida, Salome, Conchita, Carmelita, Chanda, and Vavara, as well as LooLoo/Booloo (try saying that over and over again; it's quite diverting), and several iterations of just plain "dancer").

Beyond Just Imagine, there's really only one other moment of note for Joyzelle. In 1932, Cecil B. DeMille dropped her into his epic Sign of the Cross, where she plays a seductive pagan charged with leading virtuous Christian Elissa Landi down the primrose path.

It stands as one of the most humid moments in Pre-Code Hollywood:

It's good to know that even in Ancient Rome, she stays true to form; her name is Ancaria.

Uncoupled Cognomens: Mrs. Xavier Cugat

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I give you - Charo!

Mondo Mononymia: Movita

One of the erstwhile Mrs. Marlon Brandos...

One Name Wonders: Acquanetta

Née: Mildred Davenport