I think today should be...

...a "Say Something Hat Day"!

...don't you?

Hallowe'en..?

...no, it's the story of my life.

Thou comest, Autumn

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging eaves;
Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!
 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oh, no!

British Summer Time (for what it was worth) is over for another year.

No light evenings from now until March 2025...

I made my own lane

I made my own lane. I worked and still work as hard as anyone can, and I love each person who supported me and cares about me for me. I love performing. I still take dance lessons, and when I sing to people in the theatre, I’m not giving a performance - I’m sharing my love with each individual person. I’m asking, “This is how I feel. How ’bout you?” My work is real.

No! She's not dead...

Our Patron Saint of Pizzazz Liza's very much still with us - as this fabulous interview/conversation with her long-time friend Michael Feinstein confirms:

• Liza Minnelli in Interview Magazine, Fall 2024 edition

Razzle Dazzle no more

It is with tears in our eyes that we bid a fond farewell to our beloved Patron Saint of Bugle Beads Miss Mitzi Gaynor, who has razzle-dazzled her way off to Fabulon today.

The star to end all stars, she shimmied, shook and high-kicked her way through myriad musicals, TV specials and award ceremonies in her long, long career - her screen legacy includes such classics as My Blue Heaven, There's No Business Like Show Business, Anything Goes, Les Girls and, of course, South Pacific. We are going to miss her terribly!

Mitzi Gaynor - Honey Bun

Mitzi Gaynor - Limehouse Blues

Mitzi Gaynor - Let Go!

RIP, Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber, aka Mitzi Gaynor (4th September 1931 - 17th October 2024)

Diamonds are forever...

...unless you decide to sell them, of course.

Dame Shirley Bassey’s vintage 1960s Van Cleef and Arpels diamond ring with brilliant-cut diamonds, which was given to her by Sir Elton John.

Necklace featuring 52 graduated diamonds.

Ruby and diamond parure with heart detail.

Her 1905 diamond brooch, poss. Cartier.

A multi-piece set featuring aquamarines, sapphires and diamonds.

Van Cleef and Arpels emerald and diamond necklace, bought by her to commemorate her first Royal Variety Performance for Queen Elizabeth II.

Dame Shirley Bassey's jewellery collection has smashed a world record in a Paris auction with all of the lots belonging to the singer selling for a collective price of 2.2 million euros (£1.8m).

I would have placed a bid, but it's not pay day 'till next week.

[click any pic to embiggen]

Spectacular Spectacles

Lordy! The "Songbird of Athens", the woman who single-handedly made glasses a fashion statement, one of the biggest-selling artists in the world (with a seven-decade career and more than 200 albums in multiple languages under her belt) - the lovely Miss Nana Mouskouri is 90 years old today!

What a huge musical legacy - here's a mere sample of her repertoire:

Nana Mouskouri & Sacha Distel - Les Parapluies De Cherbourg

Nana Mouskouri - The White Rose of Athens

Nana Mouskouri & George Chakiris - Siko Chorepse Sirtaki

Nana Mouskouri - Ta Pediá tou Pireá/Never on a Sunday

Nana Mouskouri & Nina Hagen - Lili Marlene

Many happy returns, Nana Mouskouri (born Ioanna Mouschouri, 13th October 1934)

This weekend I am mostly dressing casual...

...like Signorina Lea Periconi, tennis maven, and style icon of the 1950s and 60s, who has departed for Fabulon. The higher the hair...

Each hath one, and is one

It's National Poetry Day! How about this one... As we used to say when I was studying for exams in school, "We done Donne!"

The Good-Morrow
By John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Sublime.

The Face

Our Patron Saint of Post-Punk Poise, Miss Debbie Harry - at the venerable age of [gulp!] 79 - is the face of Gucci's "We Will Always Have London campaign, in which the couture house has launched "The Blondie Bag"!

No words

It's the end of an era.

RIP, Dame Maggie Smith.

We adored you.

If you're born with it, you'll have it

"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."

"Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical."

"Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got."

"Everything you see I owe to spaghetti."

"You have to be born a sex symbol. You don't become one. If you're born with it, you'll have it even when you're 100 years old."

Signorina Sophia Loren, Diva-above-all-Divas, is 90 years old today!

All hail.

Words to live by

We try our best.

Betty

"If there was one thing I had never been, it was mysterious, and if there was one thing I had never done, it was not talk."

Shamefully overlooked by what laughingly passes for "the media" these days, 100 years ago today a true legend [although she hated the term] was born - Miss Lauren Bacall.

All hail!

"If goodness is its own reward, shouldn't we get a little something for being naughty?"

"Growing up takes longer than you think."

"Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life."

Such a gloriously beautiful and charismatic woman - her image is destined to live forever.

And she appeared to be a fun person, too!

Lauren Bacall - One of the Girls Who Is One of the Boys (Woman of the Year)

Lauren Bacall (born Betty Joan Perske, 16th September 1924 – 12th August 2014)

This weekend, I am mostly dressing casual...

...like today's birthday girl, Miss Gladys George! Not bad for 120.

The Bourne Identity

As I recounted in my post back in 2013:

On 9th September 1971 Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Longford, Cliff-fucking-Richard and various assorted clergy, god-botherers and other nutters convened a mass meeting of their Festival of Light, a movement dedicated to opposing "the permissive society" in all its forms, at Methodist Central Hall opposite the Palace of Westminster.

Unbeknownst to the assembled worthies, Bette Bourne, Lavinia Co-op, Michael James, Gretal Feather, Martin Corbett, Peter Tatchell and many other founding members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) had infiltrated the prayers. Many of Bette's coterie were disguised as nuns, and as the speakers tried to address the crowd they began slinging porn from the balcony. Others shouted, clapped and screamed at inappropriate moments. Mr Corbett, who had calmly pretended to be a Hall official and ordered technical staff out of the basement, brought the lights down.

As Peter Tatchell recalls: "On the night, mayhem erupted. When Malcolm Muggeridge, speaking out about homosexuals, declared, 'I don't like them.' The feeling was mutual. Mice were released into the audience; lesbian couples stood up and passionately embraced. A dozen GLF nuns in immaculate blue and white habits charged the platform shouting gay liberation slogans, and a GLF bishop began preaching an impromptu sermon which urged people to 'keep on sinning.'"

It all apparently ended, before the police and security were able to forcibly remove them, with the drag nuns doing the can-can on the stage in front of the astounded speakers!

The last word, of course, went to Bette, who, at her subsequent trial for her part in the protest, was asked by the judge to remove her hat, and said "No! It goes with the shoes."

The great avant-garde drag entertainer, actor, wit, creative genius and, above all, champion of the battle for gay rights in the UK, Ms Bette Bourne has departed for the highest echelons of Fabulon, where she will no doubt preside, bestowing her pithy quips on all who surround her.

We adored Bette Bourne. It was sixteen years ago that our gang first encountered him/her in person - at the Oval Theatre, portraying the lascivious Hollywood talent manager Henry Willson who made Rock Hudson a star, and afterwards being inducted into the "Homosexual Hall of Fame" - and fell under his spell. Two years later, we were overjoyed to be at Soho Theatre for the first run of his and Mark Ravenhill's partly dramatised A Life in Three Acts.

Then in 2013, a double-bill - not just a showing at the V&A of the film about Bette Bourne It Goes With the Shoes [see the link in the intro above for more on that], but he and his longtime partner and fellow Bloolips veteran Paul Shaw [who survives him] made a special in-person appearance at the venerable Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to perform an extract of the troupe's classic interpretion of the lives of Roman Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, Get Hur!...

He/she could turn her hand to anything - from Blanche DuBois to Lady Bracknell, Quentin Crisp to Queen Victoria, in drag or out of it. A remarkable individual.

We'll miss Bette!

A lot.

Bette Bourne - It Goes With The Shoes

Stuart Feather and Bette Bourne talk about Polari

RIP, Bette Bourne (born Peter Bourne, 22nd September 1939 – 23rd August 2024)

Thought for the Day

Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Iconic

Henry (Adrian) Arango, 93-year old drag queen, pictured in 2021.

Oh, Mr Rigsby!

The magnificent not-yet-a-Dame Frances de la Tour is 80 years old today!

All hail.