Who on earth has a "butt double" these days?

“The men may be the head of the house, but the women are the neck and they can turn the head any way they want.”

“I get a sensual feeling from my own singing voice. When I am right, whether I'm moaning or winging it, I just fly. I soar. I get all caught up in myself. And baby, when that happens, you just know the audience has to be with me, having a ball.”

“I had a butt double in Lust In The Dust.”

“I’ve reinvented myself over and over again. It’s hard work but I enjoy my career... I’m proud of my ability to survive.”

“In the 60’s you had to cover your breasts so that no cleavage would show. They would put gauze over my breasts. Dean [Martin] came on the air and looked down at my chest and said, 'Your net, doesn’t cover your gross.'”

The Matriarch of All She Surveys is 80 years old today.

Many happy returns, Miss Lainie Kazan (born Lainie Levine, 15th May 1940)!

[More of Miss Kazan here]

Man is the Hunter

"I don't care whether people like me or dislike me. I'm not on earth to win a popularity contest. I'm here to be the best human being I possibly can be."

Tab Hunter - movie icon, poster-boy-hunk for a whole generation of teenage girls and closet queens, latterly cult character actor and now out, gay and proud gay man - was born on 11th July 1931.

As we wish Mr Hunter (aka Arthur Andrew Kelm) a happy 80th birthday, it is worth highlighting the fact that the former teen idol starred in not one, but two of the campest films ever made, and both are well worth entering in the Museum.

He played the cinema owner (and love interest) "Todd Tomorrow" alongside Divine's troubled housewife "Francine Fishpaw" in John Waters' 1981 "Odorama" masterpiece Polyester:



From The New York Times:

Francine worries helplessly about household odors, and does her best to make sure her suburban house is furnished with all the velour, gilt and brightly colored plastic her family could want. Polyester is a movie that can get laughs out of a dinette set simply because it is a dinette set. The props, all through the movie but particularly in Francine's lovely home, are priceless. Mr. Hunter is certainly endearing, playing a man who runs an art-house drive-in, one with champagne and caviar at the refreshment stand and a Marguerite Duras triple bill on the screen. Divine, lovestruck and trying hard to please, is seen poring bewilderedly over a copy of Cahiers du Cinema.

From Prince Planet Movies site:

The biggest inspiration for Polyester comes from one of John Waters’ idols, the great Douglas Sirk. If you can imagine one of Sirk’s sumptuous Technicolor melodramas from the 50s but with a 300-pound drag queen as the female lead, you have an idea of what to expect.

Polyester trailer

Mr Hunter, evidently by now entirely comfortable with playing love scenes with a very large tranny, went on to appear once more against Divine (and that other archetypal self-parodist Lainie Kazan) in Paul Bartel's 1985 camp spoof Western Lust in the Dust:



From the film's sleevenotes:

Gold fever has struck the wild western town of Chile Verde, where hard-living cowboys and hot-blooded wenches all lust for wealth and each other. But when mysterious gunfighter Abel Wood and defiled singer Rosie Velez (Tab Hunter and Divine, reunited from "Polyester") come together with saloon owner Marguerita Ventura (Lanie Kazan), fiery passion and unbridled greed turns the town upside down. Do these two wanton women share the secret to a fortune in buried treasure? And how far south of the border will desperate men have to go to uncover it?

Lust In The Dust trailer

Not bad for the boy who sang Young Love. [Read my blog on Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle about Mr Hunter last year.]



Mr Tab Hunter, we salute you!

http://www.tabhunter.com/