RIP, Dame Beryl Grey CH DBE FRSA (11th June 1927 – 10th December 2022), pioneering dancer, producer and director in the companies of English National Ballet, the Royal Ballet and London Festival Ballet.
CAMP: "A cornucopia of frivolity, incongruity, theatricality, and humour." "A deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love." "The lie that tells the truth." "Ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to or characteristic of homosexuals."
Sunday, 11 December 2022
Saturday, 3 December 2022
Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Sunday, 20 November 2022
Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Bolly, Stolly, sweetie, darling?
Good grief. I missed a significant cultural anniversary last weekend!
The first episode of Absolutely Fabulous, otherwise known as The Campest Programme Ever, appeared on our screens on 12th November 1992.
Happy 30th birthday, sweetie, darling!
An inpiration.
Monday, 14 November 2022
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).
Wednesday, 9 November 2022
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.
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