Queens at play

RIP, the beauteous Geneviève Page, who has departed for Fabulon, aged 97.

I wonder who won that card game, her or Sophia?

Oh, to be a fly on the wall - #943 in a series...

Romy Schneider and Sophia Loren

Jayne Mansfield, Liza Minnelli, Mitzi Gaynor, Kaye Ballard

Edith Piaf reading the palm of Django Reinhardt

Ramon Novarro and Robert Montgomery

Divine makes her thoughts known on the Trumps

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.

Inspired by Dolores Delargo Towers...

"Show Girl"


"Hollywood Affairs"


"Hollywood Hassle"

...these rather marvellous creations are the work of Robert "Bobby" Woods, a pop artist from London now residing in South Africa.

A little while ago I received a private message via my YouTube account from him: "I came across your blog Dolores Delargo Towers - Museum of Camp, as I am working on a new piece using Bette Midler as Deloris Delargo. I was having trouble trying to make this work until I saw your blog, it has lots of fabulous old star glamour. I would like to feature you and your blog in the tag.."

Of course, I said yes - and these are the result. I am flattered! They are gorgeous.

Visit Bobby's pop.art.place pages on Instagram for more.

You're born with it

"I think the quality of sexiness comes from within. It is something that is in you or it isn't and it really doesn't have much to do with breasts or thighs or the pout of your lips."

"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."

"Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner."

"I'm an actress. It's my passion. It's - I've always lived for acting."

"If you haven't cried, your eyes can't be beautiful."

Many happy returns to an icon, 80 years young today.

Sophia Loren (born Sofia Villani Scicolone, 20th September 1934)

Xmas with the Stars

Jane Greer


Ann Miller


Sophia Loren


Cyd Charisse


Rita Hayworth


Shirley Jones pretends to touch a Christmas tree made of Joseff jewellery


Bette Davis

This weekend I shall mostly be dressing casual...

...like Miss Sophia Loren!

"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."

Sophia Loren (born Sofia Scicolone, 20th September 1934)

Life is a party

"Only an expert fabricator could survive the public tightrope walk required of someone trying to portray herself as both the taste-making doyenne of European society and a self-effacing American nobody." - biographer Sam Staggs

If you weren't invited to an Elsa Maxwell party in the mid-20th century celebrity whorl, you were nobody. She knew something about everyone.

Elsa Maxwell injected a sense of fun into post-war society parties, and the great and the good came flocking to her door to lap it up, from royalty to Hollywood. The superstars of the entertainment world all carefully kept the grande dame on side, for fear she would launch a tirade against them in one of her syndicated newspaper gossip columns or numerous TV appearances.

She not only entertained in person and in print, she also wrote books on "etiquette", wrote and produced music for theatre and film (and appeared in a few) - and in 1959 she even recorded an album of her own, Elsa Maxwell - Her Voice and Music [oh, if only I had a copy of that!].

A bizarre mix of contradictions, Miss Maxwell was renowned for being coarse and vulgar yet aspired to mix with the highest echelons, and she was probably a lesbian (and quite possibly a stalker at that) yet publicly decried homosexuality. Certainly, by all accounts she was a much-feared harridan.

Her endless name-dropping and not-so-subtle snobbery belied the fact that she was (in her own words) "a short, fat, homely piano player from Keokuk, Iowa, with no money or background, who decided to become a legend and did just that."

Yet when she died, aged 82 in 1963, barely a dozen people turned up for her funeral. The party probably wasn't big enough, or fun enough. Or maybe the joke had simply run its course.

"Life is a party. You join after its started and you leave before its finished."

"I don't hate anyone. I dislike. But my dislike is the equivalent of anyone else's hate."

"Nothing spoils a good party like a genius."

"Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can."

Elsa Maxwell (24th May 1883 – 1st November 1963)

A brief tour around Dolores Delargo Towers

Boudoir


Sitting-Room


Reading Room


Home entertainment suite


Pool


Guest bathroom


Kitchen/Dinette


...and, of course - the Cocktail Lounge!

A tribute to Spaghetti

"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."

Sophia Loren (born 20th September 1934)