Suddenly...

...I have two new favorite states...

Two new potential tourism destinations...

(Confession: I've actually visited both - but spent more time in New England than than the Middle West. Maybe we'll have to work on that!)

Two new favorite songs...

...Although until now the only Iowa song I knew was "All I Owe Ioway" from State Fair (and I'm probably pretty likely to be more loyal to dear Margaret Whiting)...

Even new favorite products...


Expected (but I do think I'll stop short of the maplewich)...

...and less so.

I'm even feeling rather warmer toward Our Nation's Capital. All in all a remarkable week, no?

Oh, Kay!

Fowever Wavishing.

Trailer Trash: Beyond the Valley of the Ultra-Cheapies

Herewith a new feature at the Café: the occasional look at Coming Attractions for films that, were I running a repertory cinema (remember those? Do you think there's any chance they'll come back?), would be in permanent rotation.

Today, the incomparable Miss Tura Satana shows us how it's done, Z-movie style.

An Incontrovertible Truth

Arguments to the contrary will be entertained, but will not be given much credence. We've seen too many, on top of being one ourselves.*

*That royal-first-person-plural never quite works out when used at length, does it?

Ten Things This Image Makes Me Think About

1. The Truman era was truly a time apart.
2. A time when first ladies appeared in public wearing novelty prints.
3. Perle Mesta (seen here departing for Luxembourg) looks to have been almost as much fun as Ethel Merman.
4. Margaret Truman looked an awful lot like her father. Her father in a black crêpe afternoon dress.
5. Nostalgia for hats may be slightly overvalued.
6. Even the firmest foundations could only do so much.
7. Daytime corsages: when exactly did they leave the scene completely?
8. I really, really wish we could see the shoes.
9. Especially if we could do so without having to see the calves.
10. Do public personages ever look this purely happy in photographs nowadays?

Earth Angel

Let's think good thoughts today for a lady of unexpected grace and courage, one who has spent the better part of 40 years proving that she's more than just a pretty face (even as the material she had to work from often made that a surpassingly difficult task) - from bit parts, through Myra Breckinridge, on to posters, TV superstardom, and a surprisingly varied later career.

Farrah Fawcett may never have been the critics' darling, but she was and is a lovely woman and always an entertaining star, and now she is fighting for her life. Where there's fabulousness, there's hope.

(Image cribbed shamelessly from the extraordinary Woody1969)

In a Perfect World

Dame Edna is Carlotta Campion!

Talk around the Café recently turned, as things are wont to do in these parts, from an appreciative remark about that Antipodean Girl With Something Extra, the one and only Dame Edna Everage, to the Broadway favorite of an elite subset of fans, the extraordinary creation that is Follies.

This gave rise, logically enough, to the idea of Dame Edna actually in the show - followed almost immediately by the creation, by deeply and importantly talented Café regular Bill, of the following adaptation of the piece's big number. Were the Dame to take my advice, she would immediately make it her signature song.

I reproduce this little piece of genius here, in genuine admiration and no small glee, with the author's permission.

Imagine the setting - the lights dimming as our lilac-tressed diva moves center stage; she hits her spot, and:

Good times and bum times,
I've seen them all
And, possums,
I’m still here...

Plush velvet sometimes,
Sometimes just Foster's - it's beer,
But I’m here...

I've glued the rhinestones on my specs,
Strewn gladioli, turned down sex -
Seen Salma H. disappear
But I’m here!

I've hawked some makeup,
Shilled for a company called MAC,
But I’m here;
Vanity Fair breakup
Take your advice column back,
But I’m here...

Vegemite sammies in Moonee Ponds
Watched while Madge Alsop sold war bonds
In the Depression was I depressed?
Nowhere near -
I bagged Sir Norman Everage
And I'm here!

I've been through Valmai,
Clifford and Kenny's affair,
And I'm here;
Dear Bruce 'n' Joylene,
Lois, wisteria hair,
And I'm here...

I got through Mel G's drunken blow,
Bridesmaid Madge Alsop,
Russell Crowe -
Had heebie-jeebies for dear Kylie Minogue;
I got through Cruise and Kidman,
And I’m here!

I've gotten through Norman's testicular murmur
Gee, that was fun and a half -
When you've been through someone's testicular murmur
Anything else is a laugh...

Been through Barry Humphries,
I’ve been through Beverly Hills,
And I’m here;
Kookaburras and gum trees,
rest cures, religion, and pills,
And I’m here...

Been called an Outback Aussie Fool,
got through it out back by my pool
I should've opened an acting school,
…and a bar -
Still someone said, "GigaStar",
so I'm here!

Purple mink one day,
Just can’t resist its allure,
but I'm here;
Top billing Monday,
out on the Dame’s Royal Tour,
but I'm here...

First you're an Aussie housewife name,
Then Kenny's mother,
then The Dame
Then you career from career to career
I’ll write my gorgeous memoirs,
and I'm here!

I've gotten through, "Hey, Edna, aren't you spooky?
Wow, what a looker you are!"
Or better yet, "Sorry, it's just kind of spooky
To meet such a huge GigaStar!"

Good times and bum times,
I've seen 'em all
And, possums,
I'm still here

Plush velvet sometimes
Sometimes just Foster's - it's beer,
But I'm here...

I've run the gamut, ‘cause I care
Three cheers and quick sticks,
Where is Cher?
I got through all of last year,
and I'm here!

Possums, at least I was there,
and I'm here
Look who's here,
I'm still here!

And fade to black as the audience goes wild.

Somewhere, I'd like to think, Yvonne de Carlo, Eartha Kitt, and Ann Miller are having a right chuckle over their cocktails.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving...

...depression. I mean, seriously - wouldn't this be the most atrocious present ever to receive?

Because what it means is that either: you are in fact a secretary, but your loved one/gift giver thinks you're not a very good one, or, perhaps even more harshly, you have some other line of work, but your loved thinks that learning stenography would be a step up.

I'm quite confident that the sting of finding this under the Christmas tree was the death knell of more than a few Johnson-era relationships.

A Millinery Mystery or a Questionable Coiffure?

With the current Café poll more than half over, I thought it might be useful to have another, closer look at the Great Mystery. It is undeniably hairlike, and yet equally ottomanische in construction. It has all the hallmarks of a hat - and yet, and yet.

I've always been ambivalent about Constance Bennett, and somehow this fashion choice makes me all the more so. She seems like she might have been fun at a dinner party, but you wouldn't have felt good about yourself later.

But the question remains: what the hell is this? Let your voice be heard!

Morning has Broken

Mumbailicious screen king Upen Patel at his morning toilette. For no other reason than the play of light down his back. And possibly for the proof, in his intent expression, that despite his endless protestations of devotion (to which I remain, as ever, wholly impervious), his deepest affection is reserved for what he sees in the mirror.

But then again, given what he does see in the mirror, can one really blame the dear boy?

Strangers on a (Victorian) Train

"Ah," thought the Rev. Grimscrabble, "more than ninety minutes 'til we pull into Fantods-on-Wye. Such opportunities are not to be wasted."

Little did he realize that Jimmy Worthingon was all-school wrestling champ and not without a plan or two of his own.

Twenty years later, they ran the poshest pensione in all of Firenze and were still happy as clams...

Sequelmania

Sadly, missing from this series are the posters for Caligula Takes a Trip, Swing Shift Caligula, and Caligula and Messalina Meet a Brooklyn Gorilla.

Why Ask Why?

A man, in sock garters, standing on a chair. There must have been a reason, but I don't particularly care to hear it.

After and Before: The Gigastar

Dame Edna Everage, philanthropist, mentor, author, entrepreneur, pioneering feminist theorist, diva, and international sex bomb;

Mrs. Norman Everage, at home in Moonee Ponds, 1955. Spooky, isn't it, where time and destiny can take one, possums?

Pick a Card...

...any card, from the dainty hand of silent screen siren Carmel Myers, one of the era's more plausible vamps.

Carmel Myers fun fact: she was a cousin of our beloved Broadway Lady Betty Comden!

And now is the time on the Café Muscato when we namedrop: I know this because Miss Comden told me so herself. We haven't always been stranded out here on the Indian Ocean, you know!

A Word From Our Sponsor

Glamour, the Bucharest way!

The grim joy with which the various beauty-professionals carry out their task is scary enough - but not even the prospect of being as lovely as Elena Ceauşescu would persuade me to undergo a Galvanoderm treatment.

The Chief of Pickfair

In The Thief of Baghdad. Really, one rather sees what Mary saw in him...

Forty years after he retired, Douglas Fairbanks could still make Grandmother Muscato a little misty when she mentioned him. Oh, there was Valentino, and Novarro, and all sorts of others - but Fairbanks? He was the one, for her and for millions of others. For some, he still is...

Everybody Cha Cha!

Ah, yes. As opposed to all those dirge-tempo cha-cha-chas out there, dragging down the radio waves with their droning horror.

I've lived long enough to know better than to make too many blanket statements, but I think this is a safe bet: "Shine On Harvest Moon" is not, should not, and never really will be a cha cha, no matter what Manuel Rivera, his orchestra, or his excitable cover model try to do to it.

New and Possibly Improved

Café regulars with an eye for detail may notice that I've had a little work done, and as a result look a great deal less like faded 30s diva Kay Francis and a great deal more like this Portrait of a Man by the suavely cosmopolitan French painter, patron, and general bon vivant Gustave Caillebotte.

No special reason for this avatar-update, although I do admit to a certain creeping gender dysmorphia (well, more than usual) as a result of several years of hiding behind the blasé face of Miss Francis and thought it might be nice to present a public face to the world that at least slightly more closely approximated reality.

I have to admit, though, that while I may often look as quizzical as M. Caillebotte's gentleman friend, I may not be, at least on an ongoing basis, quite as intimidatingly dapper.

I had thought of opening the New Look for a competition, or at least a vote on a selection of possibilities, but at the moment I think it far more important to solve the great question of just what that was that Constance Bennett thought appropriate to wear to a family wedding. Vote early and often!

Aren't They Lovely?

No snark. Just pure admiration, along with not a little pleasure at what fun it now is to watch coverage of presidential travel. That eight years of wincing really took its toll.

Oh, and the outfit? It really is, at least in part, from J. Crew:

Couldn't find the fab cardigan, although I did have fun trying, and there's a distant possibility that I may have accidently bought a sweater set...