Professional cad and bounder

Heavens. It would have been the centenary of the remarkable "professional cad and bounder" Leslie Phillips, suavest-of-the-suave lotharios in the "Carry On" and "Doctor" film series, and on telly in Casanova '73, who carved out a later career portraying gentlemen and authority figures, always with his inimitable clipped accent and slightly "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" demeanor - and of course, the customary, breathy catchphrases "Ding, Dong...", and "Hell...oh!"

A true "national treasure".

Read my tribute on the occasion of his death in 2022.

Read the British Comedy Guide tribute on his centenary.

The Divine One

We have a centenary to celebrate...

One of the most distinctive and remarkable singers ever, the much-missed magnificent Miss Sarah Vaughan was born one hundred years ago today!

Suffice to say, her music speaks for itself:

Sarah Vaughan - The More I See You

Sarah Vaughan - Tenderly

Sarah Vaughan - The Nearness Of You

Sarah Vaughan - Fascinatin' Rhythm (live, 1988)

No-one else could do what "Sassy" did!

"I am not a special person. I am a regular person who does special things."

"When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don't even notice."

"There's a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste."

"As soon as I hear an arrangement, I get ideas, kind of like blowing a horn. I guess I never sing a tune the same way twice..."

"There are notes between notes, you know."

Sheer class.

Sarah Lois Vaughan (27th March 1924 - 3rd April 1990)

There is only one way, one voice. Yours.

"An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house."

"Art is domination. It's making people think that for that precise moment in time there is only one way, one voice. Yours."

"I don't know what happens to me on stage. Something else seems to take over."

"I don't need the money, dear. I work for art."

"I am not an angel and do not pretend to be. That is not one of my roles. But I am not the devil either. I am a woman and a serious artist, and I would like so to be judged."

"You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there."

"When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping."

One hundred years ago, the Diva to beat all Divas was born.

All hail!

Maria Callas (2nd December 1923 – 16th September 1977)

No better than I should be

It's a centenary today, dear reader - that of our eternally-revered matriarch/battleaxe/mainstay of the UK's favourite soap Coronation Street Elsie Tanner, aka Pat Phoenix!

Elsie Tanner quotes:

• (about Ena Sharples): "That woman's tongue. If it was a bit longer she could shave with it."
• "I've left home so many times me suitcases pack themselves every time I whistle."
• "You know, they used to call us good time girls... well, we did have a good time, and a damn good time at that"
• "Burglars in Coronation Street? It's like robbin' the blind."

"I was one of the first anti-heroines - not particularly good looking and no better than I should be."

The Unforgettable Pat Phoenix

Pat Phoenix (born Patricia Frederica Pilkington, 26th November 1923 – 17th September 1986)

A human being that has sung, always, all her life

"I never wanted to be a singer... I like what it is to sing, or to be with others singing, to make music. But the fuss, and all the things that are the exterior part of a career, has never interested me. So I don’t think in reality I am a singer. I think I am a human being that has sung, always, all her life."

We have a centenary to celebrate...

...that of the magnificent Victoria de los Ángeles!

Renowned as a "non-diva-like" Diva in the operatic world, she nevertheless beat the likes of Renata Tebaldi, Régine Crespin, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Kirsten Flagstad, Montserrat Caballé, Birgit Nilsson and Leontyne Price to be voted #3 of "The 20 Greatest Sopranos of all time" (according to BBC Classical Music magazine).

We adore her here at Dolores Delargo Towers, not least for this [probably the best recording of the Songs of the Auvergne ever made]:

Victoria de los Ángeles - Bailero [Canteloube: Songs of the Auvergne]

...and then, there's this...

Victoria de los Ángeles - Habanera [Bizet: Carmen]

¡Maravilloso!

Victoria de los Ángeles López García (1st November 1923 – 15th January 2005)

The Voice of the Isle of Dogs

We have a centenary to celebrate, dear reader! As quintessentially "London" as you can get, yesterday would have been the 100th birthday of one of this country's "national treasures" Queenie Watts!

Born and bred in the Isle of Dogs (more commonly referred to nowadays as part of the generic - but more marketable - "London Docklands") in the East End of London, she and her husband "Slim" became well-known local characters as landlord and landlady of two popular pubs in the area, the Iron Bridge Tavern and the Rose and Crown, and Queenie in particular became locally famous for her singing...

From an interview with my Nana's favourite (now defunct) gossip-mag Weekend [read the article scans here and here]:

"...if I've had a bevy on a Saturday and feel in the mood, I might stagger up and do something."

Bust she's not keen on pub songs or beer barrel music. Show Me the Way To Go Home is not in Queenie's repertoire. Basin Street Blues and Lonesome Road are.

"I only sing stuff that's got soul," she says. "If you can't sing with feeling, I don't think you should bother. My elder sisters were into jazz. I played their records and I learned them.

!I got hooked on Billie Holiday quite early. I don't style myself after her - let's say she influenced me."

Her mother, music hall singer Marie Gooding, refused to let her join a band when she had the opportunity at 15.

Queenie says: "She wouldn't hear of it. She said, 'I'm not having you chased round Paris by men.'" Apparently it happened to her on tour.

"Singing was all I wanted to do. I regret I never got into it at the right age."

It wouldn't be long until some bigger showbiz opportunities beckoned. She was one of the old-time performers" who appeared on the short-lived TV variety series Stars and Garters, the estimable Joan Littlewood cast Queenie in her film Sparrers Can't Sing, alongside Barbara Windsor, and she was cast as (surprise, surprise) a pub singer in Alfie. She gained her widest audience however, when she starred alongside Arthur Mullard in the prime-time ITV sitcom Romany Jones and its sequel Yus, My Dear in the 1970s.

Returning to the 1960s, however, Queenie and Slim (remarkably) were featured in a short documentary about their East End lives Portrait of Queenie, and it featured several clips of Queenie performing:

Queenie Watts - The Isle of Dogs

Queenie Watts - The Best is Yet to Come

Queenie Watts - I Remember April

A remarkable woman, with a remarkable voice.

Queenie Watts (born Mary Spenton, 21st July 1923 – 25th January 1980)

[More Queenie here]

Peek-A-Boo

Another day, another centenary!

Sharing her celebration with a whole cornucopia of unconnected "names" such as our current King Charles III, Claude Monet, Louise Brooks, Letitia Dean, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Freddie Garrity, Barbara Hutton, Dick Powell, King William III, King Hussein of Jordan, Fanny Mendelssohn, Wendy Carlos, Astrid Lindgren, Michael Robbins, Aaron Copland, Russell Tovey, Condoleezza Rice, Paul McGann, Big Daddy, Michael Dobbs, and fellow centenarians Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the first BBC radio news broadcast...

...it's one hundred years today since the birth of the exotic Hollywood screen icon, the "Peek-A-Boo Girl", Miss Veronica Lake!

Facts:

• Her trademark "one-eye-draped" hairstyle was a (happy) accident on set for her first film They Wanted Wings.
• She was famously the model for "Jessica Rabbit" in the 1980s, and her image inspired many "femmes fatale" over the decades like Lizabeth Scott and (later) Kim Basinger.
• She had numerous affairs (many while she was still married), including with the likes of Howard Hughes, Aristotle Onassis and Marlon Brando.
• She didn't (ahem) get along with a number of her leading men, however: Joel McCrae refused ever to work with her again; she and Frederic March despised each other and fought throughout filming I Married a Witch; Eddie Bracken referred to her as "The Bitch". The esteemed Raymond Chandler called her a "Moron" ("Moronica Lake") during production of the film version of his The Blue Dahlia.
• Her hair may have become a fashion sensation, but during WWII she had to make a public broadcast warning women working in war munitions factories who had copied her style to tie their hair back to avoid it being trapped in machinery.
• Her high-flying career during the "Golden Age of Hollywood" didn't last; she went bankrupt at least once, was "rediscovered" working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, and tried her hand at television and on stage in both Broadway and the West End, but never regained her iconic status.

Hers was an archetypal rags-to-riches-to-rags-again tale of the perils of stardom - but by heavens! Her "look" is immortal, and for that we are grateful.

Veronica Lake (born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, 14th November 1922 – 7th July 1973).

[More Miss Lake here]

The pioneer

One hundred years ago today, the divine Miss Dorothy Dandridge - the first black woman to be nominated for a "Best Actress" Oscar - was born.

All hail.

A perfect pearl

On this day one hundred years ago, the magnificent Yvonne De Carlo was born.

All hail!

[Read more about Miss De Carlo in my tribute to the lady on the 90th anniversary of her birth.]

A Cinematic Maestro

Blake Edwards (born William Blake Crump, 26th July 1922 – 15th December 2010)

Judy, Judy, Judy!

Oh, wow - a very special centenary indeed almost passed us by - that of Miss Frances Ethel Gumm, better known, of course, as the immortal Judy Garland!

I'll have what she's having...

From an article by Christina Newland in I news:

Frances Ethel Gumm was born, 100 years ago, to a pair of entertainer-musicians in Minnesota, with an unprepossessing name that did not deter her from the stage. By the time she was 12, she had changed that name to Judy Garland. By the time she was 17, she had changed the world...

...Nicknamed “Baby”, the youngest of the three Gumm sisters sang and danced with her siblings constantly, and her showbiz-savvy parents moved to Los Angeles when she was just shy of four years old.

Enrolled in children’s talent schools from a young age (her ambitious mama embodied the stereotypical stage mother, even feeding her girls “pep” pills to keep them dancing and auditioning when they were tired), Judy auditioned in front of studio execs in Hollywood to little effect, until she was coached to sing a sentimental old Yiddish tune to the head of MGM himself, mogul Louis B Mayer. He hired the adolescent to a then-standard seven-year studio contract on the spot.

In a series of standout roles over the next decade, Garland would distinguish herself not only with that unmistakable voice, but with her ability to transmit a wholesome girl-next-door persona so believably: real innocence and wide-eyed vulnerability. She would later prove that her dramatic abilities were up to the task of less lighthearted fare, as she did with her comeback film A Star is Born (1954) – George Cukor’s classic tale of one rising and one falling star, locked in a doomed romance...

Humble, Midwestern and perhaps not unlike the sweet 16-year-old girl in plaits and pastoral gingham who sang Over the Rainbow in that lush, tremulous voice, Garland would strike deep into the vein of small-town yearning. The Wizard of Oz – which of course sees sepia give way to a Technicolor fantasyland – must have only transmitted that yearning more in 1939, an era when technology had not yet spanned vast distances in the way it now can. The film would become one of the greatest box-office hits of all time.

She was, for very many reasons, probably "The Greatest Star" - and she certainly ascended the pantheon of "Patron Saints" to be the original, the most famous "gay icon" of them all...

We adored her.

Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm, 10th June 1922 – 22nd June 1969)

More Judy here and loads more here

To Bea or not to Bea

Speaking of Gay Days - how on earth could I have missed the fact that it was the centenary of one of the greatest "honorary gayers", and our Patron Saint Miss Bea Arthur last Friday?!!

All hail!

Beatrice Arthur (born Bernice Frankel, 13th May 1922 – 25th April 2009)