Chic is...

From her book Always Ask a Man: The Key to Femininity" - "The Guide to Chic":

Chic is:	Chic is not:
An evening dress with long sleeves. A gay dinner hat. A man’s black umbrella when it rains. An accessory that matches your hair. A trademark too ingenious to be corny. Flexibility in appearance and attitude. English, beautifully spoken. Beautifully matched lingerie. Perfumed fans. The absence of a summer tan. The arts, appreciated. A bad habit, a stale passion, discarded. Taupe. Acting your age.	Diamonds at breakfast. More than three colours in an ensemble. White shoes, daytime. Plastic shoes, anytime. Being seen in curlers in public. The contrived. Ostentation. Sloppy grooming. Sleeveless dresses on overweight women. Tight pants on anyone. A strident voice. A fad that everyone’s adopted. Playing it safe. An aggressive manner.

Sad news. Another glittering star of "The Golden Age of Hollywood" has departed for Fabulon...

RIP, Arlene Dahl (11th August 1925 – 29th November 2021)

End of an Era

West Side Story
Gypsy
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Anyone Can Whistle
Do I Hear a Waltz?
Company
Follies
A Little Night Music
The Frogs
Pacific Overtures
Sweeney Todd
Merrily We Roll Along
Sunday in the Park with George
Into the Woods
Assassins
Passion
Road Show

RIP, The Maestro; the man whose creative genius was behind every one of these musicals.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim (22nd March 1930 – 26th November 2021)

We at Dolores Delargo Towers are distraught at the loss of our icon.

Life through a lens

RIP Mick Rock, "The Official Photographer of the 1970s".

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I think today should be...

Isabella Blow (19th November 1958 – 7th May 2007)

Gene Tierney (19th November 1920 – 6th November 1991)

Eleanor Powell (21st November 1912 – 11th February 1982)

Ofra Haza (19th November 1957 – 23rd February 2000)

Amanda Lear (born 18th November 1939)

Fenella Fielding (17th November 1927 – 11th September 2018)

Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad (born 15th November 1945)

Louise Brooks (14th November 1906 – 8th August 1985)

Veronica Lake (14th November 1922 – 7th July 1973)

...a "Say Something Hat Day", don't you?

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On the Jukebox this Weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers

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This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

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...like the irrepressible Mrs Shilling, doyenne of Royal Ascot Races' Ladies' Day (wearing the millinery creations of her son David) for three decades!

Gertrude Ethel T. Shilling (3rd March 1910 - 13th October 1999)

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Footnote:

I was prompted to post this arising from a comment exchange over at Inexplicable Device, where the lovely Dinahmow compared me to the dearly-missed Gertrude...

Britannia rules!

With one of the most remarkable voices in opera, Welsh operatic dramatic soprano Dame Gwyneth Jones, who is 85 today, gave many of the "bigger" names among Wagnerian divas - like Kirsten Flagstad, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Birgit Nilsson - a run for their money. Having begun her career as a stand-in for the great Leontyne Price, she progressed from operas by the likes of Verdi and Puccini towards more demanding roles in the works of Richard Strauss and Wagner - to huge acclaim.

Here she is in one of her most-remembered performances, the uber-dramatic "Brünnhilde" in Götterdämmerung:

Gwyneth Jones - Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene [Bayreuther Festspiele, 1980]

At the height of her powers, she famously undertook the roles of both Elisabeth and Venus in Tannhäuser at the Bayreuth Festival in the 1970s, and she has performed all three major female roles in Elektra on stage. As her voice matured, she took fewer of the diva roles and diversified into Lieder, recitals and character parts; she played the role of "Isolde" in the TV drama series about the life of Wagner, and became an adjudicator in the international Cardiff Singer of the World competition for the BBC.

By pure coincidence she shares a birthday with the late, great Dame Joan Sutherland - and here they are together, at the retirement of the opera manager chief executive of the Royal Opera House, David Webster in 1970:

Fairly recently, she played a retired opera singer in the major film Quartet, alongside Dame Maggie Smith, Sir Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, Sir Billy Connolly and Sir Michael Gambon, and received many plaudits from the critics for her role. Largely retired from singing, she remains President of the Wagner Society of Great Britain, a role she has held since 1990.

The last word, as always, goes to the Grande Dame herself - making one of the most memorable appearances as "Britannia" at the Last Night of the Proms in 1991:

Gwyneth Jones - Rule, Britannia!

Many happy returns, Dame Gwyneth Jones DBE (born 7th November 1936)

"Camp? Really?"

“Camp? Really? I prefer ‘flamboyant’, or ‘enthusiastic’. I’ve always been a bit over-the-top.”

Very sad news today, as another of the veterans of British variety showbiz television has tap-danced his way up the silver staircase to Fabulon - that great "all-rounder" Lionel Blair is dead, aged 92.

One of the original perma-tanned, perfectly-coiffured, brilliant-white-toothed all-singing, all-dancing entertainers, of a generation that spawned the likes of Bruce Forsyth, Frankie Vaughan, Des O'Connor and their ilk, he was loved and mocked in equal measure for his chirpy camp-but-not-gay persona; in his vast career he appeared as a dancer in a number of films including A Hard Day's Night, as a guest star on myriad variety shows from the 1950s onwards - such as those hosted by Dickie Henderson, Benny Hill, Mike & Bernie Winters, the aforementioned Brucie, and indeed the Royal Variety Show - as one of the inspired and unlikely "comic foils" for Kenny Everett in his Video Show and Television Show, a judge on talent contest New Faces, and as a mainstay of game-shows such as Give Us a Clue (from 1979 until the early 1990s, alongside the lovely Una Stubbs, who we also lost this year) and Name That Tune. Like so many other faded celebs, he also did stints in reality TV crud such as Big Brother, The Farm and The Real Marigold Hotel. Outside of his telly career, he also became known as the "King of Panto".

He quite rightly earned that oft-bandied-about moniker "national treasure"...

Facts:

• He was born Henry Lionel Ogus in Canada, but his family moved to Britain when he was just two years old, settling at Stamford Hill in North London. His family were of Russian Jewish origin but not orthodox and their habit of eating bacon was frowned upon by their neighbours [Stamford Hill is, to this day, a rather Orthodox neighbourhood].
• He began performing in plays when he was a child and attended the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford in 1944 before joining a touring company called the Savoy Players. After a stint on stage in the West End, he decided to swap acting for dancing and took the stage name Lionel Blair.
• He married Susan Davis at Kensington Register Office on 21st March 1967; they had three children together.
• At the Royal Variety Performance in 1961, he engaged in a "dance-off with the legndary Sammy Davis Junior.

Lionel Blair and Sammy Davis Jr- Royal Variety Performance, 1961

Madam Arcati and I saw him on stage way back in 2000 in the bizarre "drag-beauty-contest musical" Pageant, and he was as perfect an MC as you could possibly imagine...

There will never be another.

RIP, Lionel Blair (born Henry Lionel Ogus, 12th December 1928 – 4th November 2021)

Glamour, glitz and gore

Another Whitby Goth Weekend took place this Hallowe'en weekend!

Of course.