Whom no man will ever possess

And so, farewell to that most waspish American of film critics and television host Mr Rex Reed, who has swished off up the glittering stairway to Fabulon. Who? I hear you say...

Largely an unknown quantity over here in Blighty, Mr Reed's controversial and much-vilified take on movies, the arts and the cult of celebrity have not exactly endeared him to generations of film-makers in the States [he was once described as "the hazel-eyed hatchet-man"]; and he has certainly rubbed the braying "Twitterati" up the wrong way on many an occasion [no bad thing!]. His nearest British [albeit somewhat more high-brow] counterpart might have been Brian Sewell. I am certain we at Dolores Delargo Towers would adore him.

It is also the perfect excuse (if any were needed!) to wallow in the man's most (ahem!) famous [and rare] on-screen appearance: as "Myron", Raquel Welch's male alter-ego - alongside an idiosyncratic cast that included John Carradine, Kathleen Freeman, Tom Selleck, Jim Backus, Farrah Fawcett, John Huston... and Mae West - in the camp cult classic Gore Vidal adaptation, Myra Breckinridge!

A tribute to Myra Breckinridge

Rex Taylor Reed (2nd October 1938 - 12th May 2026)

Myra Breckinridge, dissected

Sweetie, darling!

...it's Dame Joanna Lumley's 80th birthday today!!

All hail!

Many happy returns Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley (born 1 May 1946)

[More here]

I say unbelievable shit and no one ever gets mad

Photo by Christopher Myers

It is - remarkably - the 80th birthday today of "The Pope of Trash" Mr John Walters, creator of the outrageous classic films Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Polyester, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom and, of course, Hairspray, and icon for transgressives, outsiders and weirdos everywhere - me included.

All hail!

From an excellent tribute article by Max Weiss in his home-town's leading journal Baltimore Magazine:

Eighty-year-olds are not supposed to be cool. Wrinkles aren’t cool. Bad knees aren’t cool. AARP memberships are not cool.

And yet, on the eve of his 80th birthday, John Waters remains eternally, ineffably, indisputably cool.

He’s not the only old guy who’s cool, but he’s the rare old guy who has the ability to constantly reinvent himself...

...So what is it that inspires such devotion in Waters’ fans? And why do young people still think he’s cool?

“I don’t get up every day and try to be cool,” Waters says. “But I think as long as you continue to be in touch with young people, they’ll think you’re even cooler.” Another key, says Waters, is not to trot out the old “we had so much more fun in my day” canard.

“No, we didn’t,” he says. “They are having just as much fun.”

And he should know. Yes, Waters goes out to nice restaurants and goes to galleries and does fancy things with his fancy friends, but he also still loves to hang out at the Club Charles, with its famous motto, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” and go to heavy metal bars...

...And somehow, despite the edginess of his humour, he has never been cancelled. “I say unbelievable shit and no one ever gets mad,” Waters says.

This is partly because the audiences who attend his performances are self-selecting. “If you’re coming to see me you want me to [go there].”

Also, he says, “My whole show is about going to that edge. But I always make fun of myself first.”

It goes back to that inclusivity thing. Waters’ work is always about bringing people together - the squares and the outlaws, queer and straight, Black and white.

Even his tour merch displays that ethos: “Join the Cult.” He wants you to be a part of his joyful, iconoclastic club.

And honestly, who wouldn’t want to be a member?

I certainly would!

Many happy returns, John Samuel Waters Jr. (born 22nd April 1946)

A meeting of true minds?

Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep wearing Prada on the cover of Vogue. [Photograph: Annie Leibovitz/Vogue - click to enlarge]

Read more in The Guardian

This blaze of growing

The Enkindled Spring
by D.H. Lawrence

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

Yes, today marks that long-awaited moment: the Vernal Equinox, known in some parts as "The First Day of Spring".

It all gets better, and lighter, from now on!

Why on earth would I ruin a perfectly beautiful shoe?

"Ideally, I’d like to date an older elegant man who speaks beautifully and is filthy rich. Then I’d like to date a 40-year-old guy who is passionate about something. I don’t care what. Then I’d like to date an 18-year-old who I see twice a week and whose name I don’t know.”

It's a "diva milestone" - Miss Liza Minnelli is 80 years old today!

Our "Patron Saint of Pizazz", Liza was simply born to become a gay icon - all that talent, all the trauma of being brought up with the tragically troubled Judy Garland as a mother, all the doomed relationships, heartaches, addictions and comebacks, and still standing defiant against it all the moment she takes centre stage. Her natural "home" is in the spotlight, like all true divas.

I have loved her for all my adult life. Indeed, her By Myself show at London's Apollo Victoria theatre way back in 1983 was one of the first live concerts I ever went to! Cabaret - for which she won the Best Actress Oscar - is my all-time favourite film. Her collaboration with Pet Shop Boys, the album Results is in the Top Ten of my fave albums. She was the subject of one of my very first blog posts, way back in the MySpace years nineteen years ago - and since moving to Blogger in 2010, hers has been my header banner photo on my Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle blog ever since...

Contrary to some reports, despite having been through a shitload of health scares, Liza isn't "on her way out" yet! She has in fact, coinciding neatly with her 80th year, released a new "tell-all" autobiography Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! - and it sounds like it will be a hoot to read. [It's on my wish-list already!]

On David Gest:

“If I could wave a magic wand, I would have avoided this creep like salmonella. I’d have kicked his bony ass to the ground wearing stilettos - which is something he later accused me of doing. How absurd. Why on earth would I ruin a perfectly beautiful shoe?”

One of the highlights [from the news coverage so far] (for me anyhow) was her debunking of that "poor Liza" moment with Lady GaGa that was televised at the Oscars:

"I was inexplicably ordered - not even asked - to sit in a wheelchair or not appear at all. I was told it was because of my age, and for safety reasons, because I might slip out of the director’s chair, which was bullshit. I will not be treated this way, I said. My co-presenter insisted she would not go on stage with me unless I was in a wheelchair.

"I was heartbroken.

"I was much lower down than I would have been in the director’s chair. Now I couldn’t easily read the teleprompter above me. How would you feel if you were wheeled out, against your will, to perform in front of a live audience, and unable to see clearly? So when I stumbled over a few words, Gaga, who was at my side, didn’t miss a beat to play the kindhearted hero for all the world to see. 'I got you,' she said, leaning down over me."

[Afterwards Gaga came to her dressing room and asked:] “Are you okay?”

"I looked at her and said simply, “I’m a big fan.” I learned this lesson years ago from Mama and Papa. At a moment of high stress, you stay gracious."

Ouch.

Still our Liza!

Liza Minnelli - Cabaret

What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret

Put down the knitting, the book and the broom
It's time for a holiday
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret

Come taste the wine
Come hear the band
Come blow your horn, start celebrating
Right this way, your table's waiting

What good's permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away?
Life is a cabaret, old chum
So come to the cabaret

I used to have this girlfriend known as Elsie
With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact, she rented by the hour

The day she died the neighbours came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes from too much pills and liquor"
But when I saw her laid out like a queen
She was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen
I think of Elsie to this very day
I remember how she'd turn to me and say:

"What good is sitting all alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret!"

And as for me, ha, and as for me
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go
I'm going like Elsie

Start by admitting from cradle to tomb
It isn't that long a stay
Life is a cabaret, old chum
It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret!

All hail!

Many happy returns, Liza May Minnelli (born 12th March 1946)

A dressing-up box beyond compare

"We entered Cosprop as ourselves and walked out as the person we were playing." – Helena Bonham Carter

The genre known as "costume drama" has been an absolute mainstay of the entertainment world, in the theatre, in film and on television, since time immemorial. In latter years, we've lapped up the likes of Great Expectations, The Duchess of Duke Street, A Passage to India, A Room With a View, Out of Africa, Poirot, The House of Elliott, Howard's End, Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth, Sense and Sensibility, Downton Abbey, Peaky Blinders and Gentleman Jack - and original costumes [many of them never exhibited in public before] from all of these (and much, much more) were on show at the ever-fascinating Fashion and Textile Museum, in the exhibition Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop that we went to see en famille on Saturday.

Cosprop was founded by Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer John Bright in 1965, and ever since then his company's peerless work has appeared in thousands of film, television and stage productions.

We should let the clothes speak for themselves, really...

Costumes worn by [l-r]: Dame Maggie Smith and Hugh Bonneville in Downton Abbey; Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth; David Suchet in Poirot; Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in Pride and Prejudice.

"Actors walk in with just a script and the name of their character. They walk out with that character fully formed in their mind, having brought him or her to life through the angle of a hat, the fabric of a coat or the feel of a pair of shoes." – John Bright

Costumes worn by [l-r]: Helena Bonham Carter and Dame Maggie Smith in A Room with a View; Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean; Ralph Fiennes and Liv Tyler in Onegin; Leslie Manville in Mrs Harris Goes to Paris.

"It’s a beautiful exhibition where you will want to take in every perfect little detail, and has been arranged so you can see the costumes from several angles." - Lucy Sutton-Long

Costumes worn by [l-r]: Meryl Streep in Out of Africa; Vanessa Redgrave and Emma Thompson in Howards End; Kiera Knightley in The Duchess; Suranne Jones in Gentleman Jack.

By the end, we were utterly boggled by the sheer array of items associated with films and TV series we loved! The most gorgeous ones of the lot were, however, from some less familiar productions.

[l-r] A pair of embroidered jackets worn by Basil Henson in War and Peace (BBC, 1972); evening gown worn by Natasha Richardson in The White Countess; fancy-dress costume worn by Uma Thurman in The Golden Bowl.

Simply wonderful. So pleased we caught this on its last weekend before the exhibition closed.

Fashion and Textile Museum - Costume Couture trailer