Just Sayin'

Miss West

Mr. Milstead

Compare and contrast.

Birthday Girl: Funny Woman

Hilarious Wanda Sykes is forty-something today, which is depressing to me only because it reminds me how many fabulous famous people these days are anything from one to thirty years younger than I am (she's the former, by the bye). She's amazing, whether doing the heavy lifting of making Julia Dreyfus look good on New Christine or free-associating (in a razor-sharp kind of way) in her own act.

Somewhere in Time...

...it's the early 70s, and Leslie Caron and the girls are holed up in her bedroom, smoking, drinking brandy Alexanders, and comparing pantyhose. The husbands are downstairs, smoking, drinking Chivas, and trying to decide if they really should all go downtown and see Deep Throat.

With a Miniskirt On

Oh, my. I... found... this. And I'm not sure if... or when... all will be well again. It's just... Oh, good lord. Watch it.

Was her delivery always so reminiscent of Edith Massey? Was this the moment that The Music Died? What were they thinking? So many questions, so few remaining brain cells...

After and Before: Movin' on Up

In her Park Avenue drawing room, a kind of timeless monument to a very specific kind of New Yorkiness, Kitty Carlisle, Mrs. Moss Hart. The society lady as showbiz survivor who was there when it happened and lived to tell the tale.

Young Kitty Conn, freshly minted as Kitty Carlisle and setting out on Life Upon the Wicked Stage, the creation of a genteely (if not gentilely) poor, ravenously MammaRoseische social-climbing mother and a vague ambition to succeed, if only to escape her.

Sometimes the unlikeliest stories have happy endings...

Identity Issues

Four of them, in fact...

Were you in some doubt, darling? I understand they can do wonders with that these days...

Whatever you say, dear...

Of course you are. Even so, if you don't mind, I'll pass on hearing you roar...

I suppose this is the healthiest attitude; it's certainly the most all-encompassing. But frankly, I'd like to hear more about Osaka Monaurail, if you please.

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.

Splendour on the Catwalk

To be frank, I really don't see all that big a fashion future for the turtleneck sleeve. However, if anyone could ever put it over, it would be Indofabulous Sensation Upen Patel.

As for low-slung, revealing raw-silk trousers? Those will always have a fashion future. On my floor.

Just for Kicks

One of my goals in life is to spend my Golden Years doing something that ensures I remain as flexible as Miss Charlotte Greenwood.

This might, however, be something of a (you should pardon the expression) stretch, as I doubt that - aside from a very brief period sometime during the first Reagan administration - that I was ever as flexible as that lovely lady.

Rarely has a performing artist created such an enduring career out of so singular a gesture, but that high kick (oh, and I supppose her perfect comic timing) kept her in embroidered, full-skirted evening gowns for a very long time...

Tiho, Tiho!

I don't know about you, but I can never get enough of that Olivija de Hevilend. She's my idea of a skvělá herečka...

Meanwhile, on Stage...

Well, since it seems we're on kind of a terpsichorean roll today, let's keep up the theme by paying a quick visit to Gay Paree, circa 1979, and see what Dalida and the boys are up to. We know there's one guarantee: it will be fabulous.

Everybody Dance Now!

The mating rituals of the era will be of vast interest - and considerable bafflement - to anthropologists of the future.

And the Planet Spins...

After a good night's sleep, we're ready for our big number.

Isn't this, by the way, exactly where she belongs? I happened on New York, New York the other night just as the "Happy Endings" number, a still from which is seen here, was starting up, and it absolutely blew me away. At her best, Minnelli was unstoppable.

Funny thing, too; there's an odd parallel here with Mama's Star is Born and its "Born in a Trunk" number. Both excised from films alternately loathed and venerated but often seen as flawed masterpieces, and both later seen to be about the best things in each picture. It might be instructive to see them back to back, although I'm not sure I'll ever have that much concentration...

Mood Check

So how's your day going?

Time Stands Still

...in the presence of greatness. From the Telegraph comes this remarkable juxtaposition of a recent concert photo of Miss Deborah Harry (so recently on my mind) with a T-shirt from her gloriously misspent youth.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't get away with a single item of clothing I wore in 1978. But then again, I probably wouldn't want to, given that I wasn't dressing exactly like that back then, more's the pity...

Fun with Finance

Ah, madam, you are not alone. It was another era that the divine Helen Hokinson was invoking in this, one of her immortal New Yorker cartoons, but it does strike home. We're hardly starving at the Villa Muscato, but things do seem a bit grim out there in the Great Wide World, no?

Westward, Ho!

And elsewhere, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn...

Cocktail Hour

Mr. Salvador Dali, having a drink with Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Terry, finds himself in the distinctly unusual position of being the least surreal person at the table.

Masquerade

Miss Debbie Allen impersonates Josephine; Miss Ann Jillian, Mae. It must have been a long and rather trying evening all around.

Actually, I'm afraid they were working; every stitch of those costumes screams "mid-80s TV movie," demonstrating a breathtaking disregard for historical accuracy not seen since the Fox musicals of the 1940s.

A Legal Entanglement

The original caption on this enigmatic snap reads in full, "Countess Talala leaving lawyer's office." We may never know anything more, and perhaps some mysteries are best left unsolved.

One thing, though, is clear: the Countess has left an impression on at least one associate of Keesing & Keesing, Colwin, and Schwartz. The poor man looks somewhere between transfixed and stunned. Apparently, she had that effect on people.