Near Misses

May B May B Not

May was quite a month for starlet birthdays. We had quite a variety, too. Joy Harmon, Mary Astor, Anne Baxter, Luana Anders, Senta Berger, Billie Dove, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Anny Ondra, Maureen O'Sullivan, Nancy Kwan, Barbara Parkins, Dorothy Lee, and Jeanne Crain. That covers a lot of Hollywood history and many different hair styles.

Excuse me. I just plugged Seether into my Buckcherry and Afghan Whigs mix at Pandora radio, and it's making my earphones bleed.

She's got nothing to say
She's got bills to pay
She's got no one to hate
Except for me

- "Gasoline" by Seether

Yesterday I got called into work a couple hours early, because there was a crisis. Actually, management only thought it was a crisis. Actually, they called me in to handle the routine work, while others went around, handling the crisis, and I went out and got myself an egg sandwich and a half-caf. And as the crisis slowly wound down, I finished my sandwich and had a couple cigarettes. And there were managers everywhere, wandering about, congratulating each other at their handling of the crisis. Attaboys all around. Later, one of them came by and thanked me for coming in during the emergency, lending a hand, helping out, being a "team player" and all that.
Yes, ma'am, no problem. I didn't mention the egg sandwich.
Crisis? What crisis? (Excuse the Supertramp reference. I hate them.)
I was reading somewhere about an even newer needledick management method called "nanomanagement," which takes micromanagement to a higher level. I suppose it's sort of a Japanese kind of thing where, when the office printer runs out of paper, they expect one of the cubicle drones to commit hara-kiri with a letter-opener. Having been in the business for a long time, I pride myself on being unflappable. I'm always telling younger members of the firm, "Don't panic until I do."
You lost that file? It's on the hard drive somewhere.
It's gone from the drive? It's probably on the server.
The I.T. Department says it's not on the server?
Dude, ya shoulda backed up your work on a disk somewhere. Putz!
That'll teach you.
There are hardly any office "disasters" that can't be solved with a long coffee break and a eight or ten cigarettes.
So, later, other employees asked me about the crisis-of-the-day, how it went, who freaked out, who fell on their sword, that sort of thing.
I shrugged. "Beats me. I went out for coffee."
If you're a younger employee where you work, you probably have an older employee somewhere who is irritatingly blasé about things. He or she may, in fact, be an idiot and a slacker. Makes ya wonder how they lasted so long. That's certainly possible. Or it might be that they've seen the crisis-of-the-day lots of times before, and they aren't freaking out at the Normally Expected Freak-Out Level. It very possibly could be that, while you're smarter than "the old guy" is, he is in fact wiser than you.
Next time you have a crisis at wherever you work, look around you. Who is the calmest person in the room? That person is worth watching. Why? Because the calmest person in any room is the person in charge. Try it. See if it doesn't work.
A friend of mine used to call it "The Head Motherf#%ker In Charge."
I've sort of got that mojo working for me at work.
When in doubt, get an egg sandwich. With cheese.

Alas, I ramble. It's a sign of age.
Have a nice Friday.

Raccoon BBs

Been a long day at work. G'night.

Screaming Vulnavia Color 2

Valli Kemp played Vulnavia in
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972).
The original actress, Virginia North
had gotten pregnant and was unable
to appear in the sequel.
In the first film, Vulnavia is seen
talking to a dog, and she gets to
scream at the end. In the second
movie, she has no lines whatsoever.


(Grayscale wouldn't have worked
for this post. We'll get back to good
old black & white photos tomorrow.)

Ring-Ring #9

When I look at you girl I get an extension
And I don't mean Alexander Graham Bell's invention
Switchboard Susan can we be friends?
After six and at weekends
I'm a long distance romancer
I keep on tryin' till I get an answer
Give me! give me! one more chance
She's a greater little operator
- Nick Lowe

Ava Gardner. . .Looking Good

There's a phrase, "She looks good in anything. She
would look good wearing a shower curtain."
Well, that's Ava Gardner for you.




Ava was bad. Really, really naughty at times.
But she looked good doing it.

Peekaboo!

There are several great pictures of Veronica Lake, the "Peekaboo Girl," over at Vintage Photographs. That's a great site. I don't really like Veronica Lake that much, but I love her in Sullivan's Travels (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), I Married a Witch (1942), So Proudly We Hail! (1943), and The Blue Dahlia (1946). She ended up in several dumb movies, drank herself sick, and worked as a waitress or barmaid toward the end of her days. I think I read in Edith Head's Hollywood (NY: Dutton, 1983) that Edith liked designing for Veronica, because she was so petite (4'11"). She's what some guys would call "a spinner." Go over to the Vintage Photographs site and check out the pictures, but hurry back.



This last one is my favorite scene from Sullivan's Travels.

Have A Drink On Me!

I'm dizzy drunk and fightin'
On tequila white lightnin'
Yes my glass is getting shorter
On whiskey ice and water
Yeah so c'mon have a good time
And get blinded outta your mind
So don't worry 'bout tomorrow
Take it today
Forget about the cheque we'll get hell to pay
-AC/DC

Helen Mack in Kiss and Make-up

The other night I watched Kiss and Make-up (1934), a great little Helen Mack movie. Helen's co-star is the wonderful Edward Everett Horton, a very funny character actor, notorious "sissy type," and the narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales from The Bullwinkle Show. Helen Mack is a secretary for Dr. Maurice Lamar, whose business is beauty. It's not really clear whether it's a cosmetic surgery practice or merely a health and makeup sort of office. The doctor is so busy with his female patients that he fails to notice that Helen is in love with him. Edward Everett Horton's incredibly vain wife (Genevieve Tobin) is made over by the doctor, divorces Horton, takes up with Helen's boss, and makes his life miserable. The doctor marries Edward Everett Horton's ex-wife, and they fly to the Mediterranean for their honeymoon, where the doctor is supposed to address a conference of beauty doctors. Naturally, they take Helen Mack along. And, naturally, the narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales shows up at the same resort. People sing songs. Helen and Edward sing a song called Cornbeef and Cabbage, I Love You, which is quite silly. Dr. Lamar tries to sing a song called Love Divided By Two, but his teeth get in the way. It's hard to sing with a frozen, toothy smile on your face. Comedy ensues. You've seen it all before. And, because Kiss and Make-up takes place in an Art Deco beauty palace, there are lots of scantily clad starlets roaming across the frame. And, of course, the best part is Helen Mack. You have Helen Mack walking. Helen Mack swimming. And basically Helen Mack just being Helen Mack. Kiss and Make-up is now one of my favorite Helen Mack movies, right up there with She (1935) and Fit for a King (1937).

THOUSANDS of Starlets

That's right. According to my weird and unreliable

calculations, Starlet Showcase has more than 2,000

photos online. That's thousands. Literally.

And they didn't cost either of us a penny.

It helps that most of them are grayscale.

And it helps that this place isn't riddled with

ads and evil pop-ups. And you can help yourself

to any pictures you want. I don't have any rights

to them. Never did. You can create an Elke

Sommer wallpaper for your home desktop. You

can make a Claudia Cardinale wallpaper for your

work laptop. You can email your Dad a picture

of Maureen O'Sullivan. You can search the site

for Janet Leigh photos and start your very own

Janet Leigh website. You could start your own

telephone fetish blog. They're free. You're free.

God is in His oven, and all's white with the world.

Mind Reading #9

More, Like, Way Cool Earrings

Happy Birthday, Jeanne Crain

May 25th is Jeanne Crain's birthday.
I usually get Jeanne Crain mixed up with
Donna Reed. Not sure why. Anyway, my
personal favorite Jeanne Crain movie (as
if that really meant sh!t to a tree) is Leave
Her to Heaven (1945). The most annoying
Jeanne Crain movie I've ever seen (and if
I'd seen any of her musicals I'm certain
they would annoy me even more) is Hot
Rods to Hell (1967). Someone in that movie
needs a gun and a lot of ammunition.
(And, of course, you might remember that cool
pinup photo from the Crain Shots post.)




Happy birthday, Jeanne.

Fiendish Susannah York

Why do these fiendish blondes keep sneaking
back into the blog? I don't know. But they're
everywhere. Lurking. Waiting to pounce.
Damned annoying. Fiendishly delicious, too.

Hollywood Harem #10

Linear Thinking

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Lee

May 23rd is Dorothy Lee's birthday.
Jamie Brotherton's The Official Dorothy Lee, Wheeler and Woolsey Tribute is a great site for more information and pictures.
Keeping up with funnymen Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey must not have been easy, but Dorothy Lee managed quite well. Her interview in William M. Drew's book At the Center of the Frame: Leading Ladies of the Twenties and Thirties is a fascinating look back at pre-Code Hollywood.


Half the fun of Dorothy Lee is her voice.
You can watch her and hear her on YouTube
HERE
HERE
HERE
and
HERE


Happy birthday, Dorothy.

Ring, Romy, Ring

I had sort of an excess of Romy Schneider-
on-the-telephone type pictures, so I'm
dropping them off here.

If you like Romy, you might want to go back to
the Naughty Nurse post.

"It's for you, dear."

Happy Birthday, Barbara Parkins

May 22nd is Barbara Parkins' birthday.
There are even more pictures of her in our
Sixties Doll post from February.




Happy birthday, Barbara.

Thank God for the IMDb

Thank God for the Internet Movie Database. What a resource! Is it perfect? No, it's only human, like you and me. Does it contain mistakes? Yes, occasionally. Do I have it permanently bookmarked and refer to it all the time? Absolutely! Is it a lifesaver when you can't quite name that actress with Lee Marvin in Prime Cut (1972), the one who wasn't in Carrie (1976) and wasn't in Playboy magazine; you know the one, the girl with the handful of nickels. She was the sister of the Playmate of the Month who starred in Gator Bait (1974), the sister whose shotgun murder needs avenging, remember?

I am not encyclopedic in my knowledge of movie history. You know those guys, right? At the film festival intermission, they stand in the lobby and wonder aloud, "Was it Viola Dana's chauffeur who was left-handed? You know the fellow I mean, right? He showed up at Cary Grant and Randy Scott's Halloween party dressed as a giant pineapple." Makes you wonder if the guy has ever in his life held down a meaningful full-time job. Lots of people amaze me with their knowledge of film history. But nothing amazes me like the Internet Movie Database, which is an accumulation of real credits and dates and things that a single human brain cannot store.

As I get older, I find that the old hard drive in my skull simply isn't as big as it used to be. It's like a clunky old desktop with a 20-Gig drive in a world full of lightning fast laptops with 160-Gig drives. It's not nearly as quick, and it holds much less data. So I have to conserve space on my drive by forgetting things. If I meet a new employee at work and remember his last name, I have to forget my sister's birthday. If I have to remember the new employee's first and last name and where he's from, well, I'll have to forget the capitol of Rhode Island and the conversion factor of centimeters to inches. The old brain bag just won't hold it all. And that's where the Internet Movie Database comes into play. I don't have to remember all those facts and dates. True, the "Trivia" sections are often trite. And, true, the "User Comments" range from truly learned to truly retarded. But what a resource! I can't imagine anyone writing a term paper on cinema without once referring to the IMDb. I never said it was perfect, but I'm certainly glad it's here.

If you're wondering about Viola Dana's chauffeur, I can't help you.
If you're wondering about the actress from Prime Cut and Gator Bait, well, it's Janit Baldwin and, interestingly, the Internet Movie Database DOESN'T seem to know her birth date.
And I don't either.
I had to forget it when I remembered a doctor's appointment last year.
(You can learn more about her here.)

Vulnavia (In Screaming Color)

Virginia North, of course, from
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971).
She only made six movies.
(B&W pictures simply wouldn't cut it.)
Click on the pictures; they make
nice wallpapers.

Shiny Metal Tuesday Again

Festival de Cannes 2008

Holy Sh!t, I'm missing the Cannes Film Festival!
Where are my tickets? Where is my luggage?

I just can't make it this year.
No way. IM-possible!
Who would feed my cats?

Cannes 1959. Now that would've been the place to be.

Hands Up!

Happy Birthday, Nancy Kwan

May 19th is Nancy Kwan's birthday.
Here's a large photo of her.
And there are a bunch more HERE.
Happy birthday, Nancy.

A$$ Hats

A Handful of Yvonne De Carlo

Alice White, Picture Snatcher

Last night I watched Picture Snatcher (1933), a Warner Brothers-First National pre-Code programmer starring James Cagney. It's about an ex-con who becomes a photographer for a tabloid paper. Interestingly, Cagney's character sneaks a camera into Sing Sing Prison and snaps a picture of a woman being executed in the electric chair. This is based on an actual 1928 incident in which photographer Tom Howard, using a camera strapped to his leg, secretly snatched a picture of the execution of murderess Ruth Snyder. The famous photo appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News. The film gives brief lip service to the actual ugliness of electrocution as a mode of capital punishment and the morality of publishing such a picture.

Picture Snatcher has all the Warner players, rapid-fire dialogue, a frantic pace, and Alice White. She is not the good-girl love-interest. She is the naughty girl. Alice White (1904-1983) herself was a bit of a naughty girl, starting as a secretary and script girl for Charlie Chaplin and Josef von Sternberg. And she got around...sex scandals, divorces, being named "the other woman," and that sort of thing. When her career tanked, she went back to being a secretary. But, in Picture Snatcher, Alice White snatches the picture away from good-girl Patricia Ellis. Alice White also appeared in The Satin Woman (1927), Lingerie (1928), Naughty Baby (1928), Hot Stuff (1929), and The Naughty Flirt (1931), which are promising titles. In Picture Snatcher, she manhandles Cagney. He pushes her around. She gives as good as she gets, but he hits harder. Their wrestling matches would never have passed the censors a year later. The DVD commentary by Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta is entertaining, informative, and not overly serious.

Anybody For A Sunday Drive?

Manny's Girls #2

In the last month, I've watched three Edward G. Robinson movies. A Bullet for Joey (1955) was pretty bad. Seven Thieves (1960) was better. And A Slight Case of Murder (1938) was a riot!

Mind Reading #8

Into The Tub! It's Saturday Again!

Symmetry and Balance #6

The Mighty Sword

Today we will be married
And all the freaks that she knows will be there
And all the people from the village will be there
To congratulate us
I will carry her across the threshold
I will make dim the light
I will attempt to spend my love within her
But though I try with all my might
She will laugh at my mighty sword
She will laugh at my mighty sword
Why must everybody laugh at my mighty sword?
Lord, hep me if you will
Maybe we're both crazy, I don't know
Maybe that's why I love her so

Randy Newman
A Wedding in Cherokee County

Great Earrings of the 20th Century

Happy Birthday, Maureen O'Sullivan

May 17th is Maureen O'Sullivan's birthday.
The MGM Tarzan movies are to Maureen O'Sullivan
what King Kong was to Fay Wray
....and what The Best Years of Our Lives was
to Cathy O'Donnell
....and what Pretty Poison was to Tuesday Weld
....and what Dr. No was to Ursula Andress
....and what The Nutty Professor was to Stella
Stevens
....and what Fast Times At Ridgemont High was
to Phoebe Cates
....and what Metropolis was to Brigitte Helm
....and what The Abominable Dr. Phibes was to
Virginia North
....and what The Best Years of Our Lives was
to Teresa Wright
....and what Out of The Past was to Jane Greer.
The list goes on and on.
My point is (and my train of thought has run
completely off the rails by now), I always
think of "Jane" when someone mentions Maureen
O'Sullivan.
Hey, it just appeals to the jungle beast in all of us.




Happy birthday, Jane. . .uh. . .Maureen.

The Starlet Showcase Mind Map

The other day I heard someone utter the phrase "Mind Map," and naturally I asked WTF? It's apparently one of those managerial exercises in silliness like "mission statements," "goal champions," or "strategic planning." Basically, it's what bored desk jockey jagoffs do to justify their phony-baloney jobs and make life difficult for the rest of us. The world is cursed with such crap weasels. Anyway, I put together a Starlet Showcase "mind map," with pretty colors and random thoughts, and I didn't learn a thing. Perhaps because I'm a non-believer. Perhaps because it's futile. Perhaps because I am not the "goal champion" type. Hey, a working class hero is something to be, no?

Dressing Up & Dressing Down

Pretty wholesome, right? Hmmmmm.

Coffee, Tea, or Thee

This reminds me of our Steaming Hot Cup of Love post.

Happy Birthday, Anna And Anny

May 15th is Anna Marie Alberghetti's birthday.
(It's Anny Ondra's birthday, too, but we pretty
well took care of her last month.) Anyway, here
are the best Anna Marie Alberghetti pictures
I've found. You, of course, remember her from
that one spectacularly jazzy dance scene near the
end of the otherwise lame-oh 1960 Jerry Lewis
movie Cinderfella, right? You don't?
Okay, well, if YouTube is working, here it is. And
try to ignore that moron in the red jacket.

Isn't she lovely?
Imagine trying to dance in that dress.
Just imagine trying to hold your own while
sharing the screen with that show-off.



Happy birthday, Anna and Anny.

George Apperley

These lovely images are by George Apperley.
George Owen Wynne Apperley (1884-1960) was British,
had a way-too-long English name, and spent most of his life
in Spain and Tangiers, where he obviously found a better
brand of lovely women to paint and draw.
(How's that for a really dense and shallow summation of
an artist's whole life? Yeah, I never said I was a critic.
Ya wanna learn more, ya go to the link, right?)



Looks just fine, which makes it fine art.

Happy Birthday, Billie Dove

May 14th is Billie Dove's birthday.
I've really neglected this lovely lady, although
I seem to remember I've posted her pictures
once or twice on cigarette cards (see Smokers),
and she kicked off the first post in the Nearness
category.
(Note to Self: Need more Billie Dove photos.)

Happy birthday, Billie.

A Show Of Hands

It's REALLY too bad
that SOME starlets have
nothing BETTER to do
with their HANDS and
ears and mouths and
minds than chatter
on a cell phone.

Suggested better uses for those lovely hands...




See what I mean?
(If you have nothing to say, DON'T PHONE.)

Happy Birthday, Senta Berger

May 13th is Senta Berger's birthday.
We've already pretty much clogged the world's
bandwidth with Senta Berger photos HERE and HERE.



Happy birthday, Senta.

Silly White Eyes #5

Happy Birthday, Luana Anders

Actress Luana Anders showed a lifetime dedication to her craft, her talent touching several great little pictures and many future giants of the American cinema. Pictures like EASY RIDER, DEMENTIA 13, and THE LAST DETAIL. Giants like Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, and Dennis Hopper. She was born May 12, 1938 in Mar Vista, California, one of the contiguous Los Angeles suburbs south of Santa Monica. Her mother was Marina Anderson (nee, Martinez); Luana would later shorten the family name to “Anders” for her screen career. Her father worked for the Bank of America. After his service in World War II, the Andersons were divorced. She spent some time in foster homes, not all of them pleasant. As a teenager, Luana worked in a Culver City clothing store run by her mother and there learned how to sew. She became involved in local theater in Pasadena, California in the early 1950s, co-starring with Hazel Medina, who went on to become a stage actress and a close friend.

Luana attended Jeff Corey's Professional Actors Workshop with young actors Jack Nicholson, Sally Kellerman, Dean Stockwell, Robert Blake, Shirley Knight, and Robert Towne. Having lost his career and livelihood to the Hollywood blacklists in 1952, actor Corey had created his little school as a source of income, when no other jobs were forthcoming. For $10 per month, students could attend two classes a week at Corey's own house on Cheremoya Avenue, about a dozen blocks northeast of Hollywood and Vine. Many of the students, including Anders and Nicholson, were but teenagers at the time. Corey had built a six-foot extension onto his garage to serve as a stage. Young director Roger Corman had a few no-budget films under his belt, including SORORITY GIRL (1957), when he realized how little he knew about directing actors. He attended Jeff Corey’s classes, learned a little about the acting, and came to appreciate the skills of several fellow students. “When I met her,” recalls Francis Ford Coppola, then an assistant to Corman, “Luana was part of a young acting crowd that included Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze, and Jack Nicholson.” With her breathy, kittenish voice and smiling eyes, her characters were often playful women with something sly just beneath the surface.
She was eighteen when she played a particularly vicious juvenile delinquent in American International Pictures' inaugural women-in-prison picture, REFORM SCHOOL GIRL (1957), with cellmates Yvette Vickers and fellow newcomer Sally Kellerman. Luana was Josie Briggs, the pony-tailed girlfriend of car thief and killer Edward Byrnes (77 SUNSET STRIP). Kellerman would remain a lifelong friend. In 1958, Anders had only a small role in THE NOTORIOUS MR. MONKS with Leo Gordon, but she had a starring role in schlock king Sam Katzman's LIFE BEGINS AT 17. Co-starring with Mark Damon, Dorothy Johnson, and Edd Byrnes (again), she portrayed a Plain-Jane wooed by a rich college kid, who is actually after her beauty queen sister. In this one, Eddie Byrnes is the good guy and Mark Damon the bad guy, who seemingly gets Luana’s character pregnant. Anders was active in television during this time, appearing in THE RIFLEMAN, THE RESTLESS GUN, and RAWHIDE (Incident of the Running Man). Three decades later, Luana herself would write a screenplay about these days of struggle in 1950s Hollywood, but more about that later. 1961 saw her as Vincent Price's sister, Catherine Medina, in Roger Corman's sixteen-day shoot of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. When PIT was deemed too short for network television broadcast in 1968, additional scenes were added using Anders, the only cast member available at the time, who related the story in flashback from an asylum. She played a young carnival worker in NIGHT TIDE (1963), a quirky little film about a lonely sailor who falls in love with a mysterious woman who may be a mermaid and a killer. Filmed in 1960, the picture was not released for three years, due to financial and legal troubles. Actor Dennis Hopper, who played the tragic sailor, would later use Luana when he began directing his own films. “I always had great admiration for Luana’s work as an actress,” says Hopper.

In 1963, she appeared with William Campbell, Mark Damon (again), and Patrick Magee in Roger Corman's THE YOUNG RACERS, filmed at Grand Prix racetracks all over Europe. When the film wrapped, Corman still had most of the players under contract and put them to work on a second quickie ax-murder picture called THE HAUNTED AND THE HUNTED from a script written by his soundman, Francis Coppola. Corman provided Coppola with $22,000, the cast of THE YOUNG RACERS, and a mansion in Dublin, Ireland. The novice director gave Luana the starring role as a mercenary widow, Louise Haloran, who seeks her husband's inheritance. In her most famous scene, Luana swims underwater in her bra and panties and learns a terrible secret. The film features some jolting parallels to Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960). “I had just seen her work in THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM,” says Francis Ford Coppola. “She was an enchanting, talented, lovable young woman.” The project’s Assistant Art Director, Eleanor Neil, remembers mixing fake blood for the movie’s gorier scenes. Neil would later marry Coppola, both of them becoming lifelong friends with Luana Anders. The film's title was changed to DEMENTIA, which had already been used as an alternate release title for the 1955 movie DAUGHTER OF HORROR, and finally became DEMENTIA 13, reportedly to capitalize on the Friday the 13th in the month it was released. Other than some earlier quasi-softcore movies, it was Francis Ford Coppola's first feature film.
In the first season (1963-64) of the sci-fi television series THE OUTER LIMITS, Luana starred with Gloria Grahame and Geoffrey Horne in an episode called The Guests. Anders played a young woman named Tess from out of the past who is trapped inside a strange old house; an alien brain monster has frozen time, so it can study the lives of several captive human subjects. In an episode of ONE STEP BEYOND called The Burning Girl, she played a lonely teenager who can’t understand why things around her suddenly catch on fire. “Burning Girl” would become a pet name for Luana among her closest friends. In 1964, she traveled to Puerto Rico to star in THE FUN LOVERS, which was re-titled SEX AND THE COLLEGE GIRL to cash in on the Natalie Wood-Tony Curtis comedy of that year, SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL. Sort of a poor man’s version of WHERE THE BOYS ARE (but without the talent, humor, or writing), FUN LOVERS is the story of a spoiled twenty-something playboy (John Gabriel) who drinks and gambles too much and manages to alienate his staid girlfriend (Anders). Young Charles Grodin plays his awkward buddy, who ends up getting the ravishing redhead (Julie Sommars) and all the best lines.

The struggling young actors’ scene in the Hollywood of the 1960s was a whirl of coffeehouses, Sunset Strip clubs, parties, and Sunset Boulevard restaurants. Luana’s friends and passing acquaintances drifted in and out, some struggling, some floundering, and some finding minor successes in the film business. There was The Unicorn, Pupi’s, The Old World, Ben Frank’s, Cosmo Alley, The Raincheck Room, Chez Paulette, the Sea Witch, Canter’s Deli on Fairfax, Schwab’s drugstore on Sunset, and Ash Grove on Melrose. There were people from Jeff Corey’s class, Martin Landau’s class, the West Coast Actors Studio, and the Pasadena Playhouse. “It was just actors talking about acting, classes, people, and films,” director Henry Jaglom recalls. Actress Carol Eastman, under the name Adrien Joyce, was writing THE SHOOTING. Jack Nicholson was juggling ENSIGN PULVER, BACK DOOR TO HELL, and a new baby named Jennifer by his then-wife, actress Sandra Knight. Monte Hellman, a UCLA film school graduate, was working with Fred Roos on FLIGHT TO FURY and RIDE THE WHIRLWIND. Peter Fonda was taking LSD with The Beatles and The Byrds in Benedict Canyon. Harry Dean Stanton and Bruce Dern were working on REBEL ROUSERS. Sally Kellerman was between HANDS OF A STRANGER and THE BOSTON STRANGLER. In 1966 Luana Anders had a microscopic role in the thriller GAMES with Simone Signoret, James Caan, and Katharine Ross and worked on the comedy HOW SWEET IT IS with Debbie Reynolds and James Garner. Her television work during these years included roles in THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW (A Visit to Barney Fife) and HAWAII FIVE-O (And They Painted Daisies on His Coffin).
In 1967, Luana Anders was featured in the spaced-out LSD film THE TRIP, directed by Roger Corman from a script by Jack Nicholson. The picture starred Peter Fonda as a world-weary television director on a first time experiment with a hallucinogenic drug, echoing director’s Corman’s personal plight at the time. The film co-starred Susan Strasberg, Dennis Hopper as a doper named Max who says “Oh, man!” dozens and dozens of times, and Bruce Dern as a sensible (sensible Dern?) doctor-friend who guides Fonda on his first trip. Many of the principals, excluding Dern, were themselves experimenting with LSD at the time. Luana plays a waitress who has to cope with the drug-addled Peter Fonda in one of the psychodelic Sunset Strip clubs. The film took in $6 million, a huge success at the time for such a low budget production.

Fonda, Dern, Hopper, Nicholson, and Corman had been making biker films like REBEL ROUSERS, THE CYCLE SAVAGES, and HELL’S ANGELS ON WHEELS with mixed success. After Corman, Dern, and Fonda scored a hit with THE WILD ANGELS (1966), Hopper and Fonda struck out on their own, trying to finance a script about two bikers who trip across America without a motorcycle gang. They found backing through Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider of Columbia Pictures, who had made their fortune with The Monkees television show. Fonda would later say, “The Monkees made EASY RIDER.” Dennis Hopper was the director, Peter Fonda was the producer, and afterward they spent years arguing about who actually wrote the script. They brought in actors from Roger Corman's stable, including Jack Nicholson as a drunken lawyer (in a role originally meant for actor Jack Starrett, not Rip Torn, as is often quoted) and Luana Anders as a hippie chick in a Southwestern commune. The commune girl, Lisa, takes a liking to Captain America (Peter Fonda) and goes skinny-dipping with him in a hot spring. The water was actually frigid, and Fonda, who was out sick with the flu at the time, had his scenes shot later and body-doubled into the finished negative. Anders was a young looking 30 at the time. The film, EASY RIDER, showed tens of millions in profit on a $355,000 budget, making Fonda and Hopper rich and Jack Nicholson famous. Filmmaker Henry Jaglom (TRACKS, ALWAYS) remembers Luana from that time. “On EASY RIDER, I was working in one cutting room with an editor and Nicholson was in the next cutting room with another editor. We’d show what we did to Bert Schneider, Bob Rafelson, Peter Fonda, and Dennis Hopper, then back to the editing rooms. It was really very much Hopper’s film, but the other four of us contributed quite a lot. Jack Nicholson introduced me to Luana at a screening, and we started hanging out in restaurants.”
Also in 1969, the Burning Girl was featured in Robert Altman's Canadian film, THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK, the story of a lonely older woman (Sandy Dennis) who takes in a hustling teenage boy (Michael Burns) and slowly comes to possess him completely. Anders played a world-weary prostitute named Sylvie who Sandy Dennis hires for her teenage friend. Burns was most famous for his part as Benjie "Blue Boy" Carver in an episode of the DRAGNET television series called "The LSD Story." About this same time, Anders appeared as the estranged wife of a missing and suicidal man in the DRAGNET episode, The Suicide Attempt. Her character is impatient, uncaring, and has big hair. Her suicidal husband’s only hope is his sister, Sgt. Joe Friday, and Detective Frank Gannon. She had appeared the year before in the Jack Webb production ADAM-12 in an episode entitled Log 111.

In 1971, Luana appeared as a girl kidnapped by a psychotic make-up artist (Mickey Rooney) in THE MANIPULATOR (aka B. J. LANG PRESENTS), a film that greatly embarrassed Rooney. The setting is a warehouse for props and costumes, where the madman hallucinates that he’s making a movie. Luana spends much of her screen time tied to a wheelchair as Rooney’s loony rants and raves at her. Rooney is over the top, as is most of the rest of the picture, but Luana has more meat to her role than any of her other films. That same year, she co-starred with Rooney and John Astin in a television movie called EVIL ROY SLADE, a western spoof that pre-dated Mel Brooks’ 1974 BLAZING SADDLES. Continuing in the western genre, she appeared in the Forever episode of television’s long-running show BONANZA. Her two 1972 films included WHEN THE LEGENDS DIE, a rodeo film with Frederic Forrest (as an Indian) in his film debut, and GREASER’S PALACE, Robert Downey’s very strange story of Christ set in the Old West. In WHEN THE LEGENDS DIE, she had a small but very poignant role as a warm and affectionate nurse. In GREASER’S PALACE, Luana was the demented Cholera Greaser, who sings, dances, vamps around her father’s saloon (The Palace), and seduces the zoot-suited Christ figure (Allan Arbus). Later Anders played the neighbor of an incestuous mother (Ann Sothern) and her psycho-killer son (John Savage) in THE KILLING KIND (1973). At the start, her character is a prude and a snoop, but later becomes attracted to Savage’s bad boy, like a moth drawn to a flame. Director Curtis Harrington (aka John Sebastian) had also directed her in NIGHT TIDE and GAMES.
The mid-Seventies found Anders in secondary roles in great movies made by her old friends from Jeff Corey’s acting school. Jack Nicholson and producer Robert Towne used her again in THE LAST DETAIL (1973), the story of two Shore Patrol officers transporting a prisoner cross-country to a Naval penitentiary. As the career sailors (Jack Nicholson and Otis Young) get to know their prisoner (Randy Quaid), they stop along the way to party and meet a sly temptress (Anders). Her character, Donna, oozes with mischievous sexual promise at first but later turns out to be a religious fanatic. The year 1974 found her playing in an episode of television’s LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE called The Blizzard. In 1975, Towne and actor-producer Warren Beatty featured her as an appointment girl who brings some very bad news in SHAMPOO. She played an embittered frontierswoman in Towne and Nicholson’s THE MISSOURI BREAKS (1976), looking much older than her 38 years. In 1978, she played Mrs. Anderson (Luana’s real name, although she was never married), the leader of three neighbor ladies who try to advise Mary Steenburgen about “relations” with her new husband, outlaw Jack Nicholson. It was the first film for both John Belushi and Mary Steenburgen, but was the fifth movie that Anders and Nicholson had done together.

In 1982, Luana had a tiny, uncredited part as a hairdresser in ONE FROM THE HEART, the extravagant romance that just about sank Francis Ford Coppola and his recently formed Zoetrope Studios. One of the producers, Fred Roos, was a lifelong friend, who had once been Luana’s agent. Throughout the remainder of the 1980s, Luana worked with her close friend, Richard Martini, a writer, director, actor, and musician who had worked as an assistant to Robert Towne. Their work together included PERSONAL BEST (1982), MOVERS AND SHAKERS (1985), and YOU CAN’T HURRY LOVE (1988). Anders and Martini co-wrote LIMIT UP (1989), a comedy about an ambitious commodities trader (Nancy Allen) who sells her soul for success in the stock market. Dean Stockwell, from Jeff Corey's Actors Workshop, played an unscrupulous trader, Luana played a small role as a classroom instructor, and director Martini played a student. Luana’s good friend from acting class days and REFORM SCHOOL GIRL, Sally Kellerman, also appeared with her in YOU CAN’T HURRY LOVE, LIMIT UP, and DOPPELGANGER (1993).
Anders played a beauty shop colorist in Jack Nicholson’s TWO JAKES (1990), a sequel to his 1974 hit CHINATOWN, both written by Robert Towne. She returned to television work with appearances on the series SANTA BARBARA in 1991 and three made-for-television movies, SWITCHED AT BIRTH (1991), HEARTS ON FIRE (1992), and IN MY DAUGHTER'S NAME (1992). She had a small role as a file clerk in the HEART AND SOULS (1993), which starred Charles Grodin, Alfre Woodard, Kyra Sedgwick, and Robert Downey Jr., whose father Robert Downey, Sr. had directed GREASER’S PALACE 21 years before. Downey, Jr. had played a small boy in that same picture. Charles Grodin had also performed with Luana in THE FUN LOVERS and YOU CAN’T HURRY LOVE, although they had no scenes together in the latter. Bridget Fonda, daughter of Luana’s EASY RIDER co-star, Peter, was also featured in YOU CAN’T HURRY LOVE. Anders was almost an extra, playing a member of a town council, in the Jean-Claude Van Damme picture NOWHERE TO RUN (1993) and had a very small role in the Joan Severance potboiler CRIMINAL PASSION (1994). She is hard to recognize as the sanitarium matron who leads Wild Bill Hickock (Jeff Bridges) through the bowels of a women’s mental institution in WILD BILL (1995). Her last picture with friend Richard Martini was the 1996 CANNES MAN (pronounced “con man”), a film world spoof, in which she portrays a Hollywood agent on the telephone. One of the film’s numerous cameos is old friend Dennis Hopper, playing himself. Her final film was AMERICAN STRAYS (1996), an episodic black comedy about some diverse people, including several killers, passing through the desert. John Savage, playing a murderous door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, had also performed with Luana in THE KILLING KIND 23 years before. Luana played a sharp-tongued older woman with a shotgun and a bad attitude.
Anders spent her last years writing short stories and scripts and enjoying the fellowship of friends Fred Roos, Francis and Eleanor Coppola, B.J. Merholz, Sally Kellerman, Henry Jaglom, and Richard Martini. At 58, Luana Anders died of cancer on July 21, 1996 in Mar Vista, the same Los Angeles suburb where she grew up. “She had an odd, eccentric, comic slant on things,” Jaglom recalls, “very emotionally compelling and very funny.” The Coppolas remember her fondly as “a good writer, actress, and friend.” Luana Anders’ career touched the lives of Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Fonda, Vincent Price, Jack Nicholson, Jack Webb, Mickey Rooney, and Warren Beatty. And then the Burning Girl moved on.
[Thanks to Francis Ford Coppola, Eleanor Neil Coppola, Dennis Hopper, Henry Jaglom, and especially Richard Martini for their kind assistance with this article.]

Happy birthday, Luana.

Ravishing Revolvers

The Girls on Route 66

I've been watching Route 66 Season One, Volume One on DVD (from Infinity-entertainmentgroup.com). It's about two guys in a Chevrolet Corvette convertible, riding around the United States, working odd jobs, and becoming involved in other people's lives. Tod Stiles (Martin Milner) is a college kid whose father died and left him the Vette. Buz Murdock (George Maharis) is an orphan and a tough guy from Hell's Kitchen and Tod's best buddy. Tod is the brains and the conscience. Buz is the heart and muscle. The hour-long show ran from 1960 to 1964 and played on Friday nights. I barely remember the original show but, like a lot of kids who grew up in that era, I remember the theme song by Nelson Riddle. I think I also remember all the waitresses and girlfriends and secretaries and sisters and barmaids and farmgirls and fishermen's daughters who were played by young starlets like Anne Francis, Anne Helm, Barbara Eden, Brooke Bundy, Deborah Walley, Diane Baker, Donna Douglas, Elizabeth Ashley, Fay Spain, Inger Stevens, Janice Rule, Jessica Walter, Joanna Moore, Joey Heatherton, Julie Newmar, Lynda Day, Martha Hyer, Ruth Roman, Stefanie Powers, Susan Kohner, Susan Oliver, Suzanne Pleshette, Tina Louise, Tuesday Weld, and Vera Miles. Which is probably why I may be somewhat fixated on these women and women like them.

Anyway, Tod Stiles tended toward nerdishness and buttoned-down short-sleeved shirts. Buz Murdock was cocky and a bit of a beatnik, uttering things like, "We just drive, and we find what we find, whatever's out there." Stuff like that. Nowhere was it implied that these two were gay. Things like that didn't exist on television. They just wandered 1960 America.

It was an America without seat belts, cell phones, or Microsoft. Sometimes they used a map. Sometimes they just got lost on shortcuts. They strayed to places where the actual Route 66 never went. And they didn't seem to need credit cards. Murdock would utter one of those Buzzisms like, "Connecting (with people) means strings, and strings mean you're a puppet, and who wants to become a puppet?" And then they'd drive off. They met people with problems. They met friendly, somewhat careless girls. They never went "all the way," but they were fun girls.

A lot of the show was filmed on location. A very unique thing was that the opening and closing credits (with that famous theme music) were filmed on location, specifically for each show. There was no set piece opening. Offhand I can't recall another television show that did that. They used lots of local extras. They featured a lot of local color. But the show was in black and white. If you watch it, you'll notice lots of now-famous actors in small and sometimes uncredited parts, guys like Edward Asner, James Caan, Bruce Dern, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, Martin Sheen, Jack Warden, and Lee Marvin.

I've just made it through Season One (1960), and I'm pretty impressed with it. Later I guess there were personnel changes and script problems, but right now it's very compelling stuff. And I recommend it. If only as a time piece, a brilliant sampling of early 60s Americana, Route 66 is well worth the time.

Inger Stevens in The Beryllium Eater.

Janice Rule in A Lance of Straw.

Joey Heatherton in Three Sides.

Suzanne Pleshette in The Strengthening Angels.

Susan Kohner in The Quick and the Dead.

Anne Francis in Play It Glissando.

Deborah Walley from Ten Drops of Water.

Donna Douglas (above) and Zohra Lampert (below) in
Layout at Glen Canyon.

Elizabeth MacRae was also in Layout at Glen Canyon.

And, finally, Anne Helm from The Clover Throne.

Happy Mother's Day

That about covers it.

Smoking Section Available

The way it's going, what with the smoking bans,
the workplace no-smoking laws, and the various
"secondhand smoke" scares, it's starting to get
really difficult to commit very stylish suicide by
cigarette smoking. What a pain! I like to see signs
that say, "Smoking Section Available." Seems like
a cool place to meet women. (You might want to go
back to the Bathing Your Heart in Orgasms
post just for grins.) I dunno. Seems like if you go
to a bar to meet women who drink or you go to
a church to meet women who pray, ya really oughta
be able to go to a smoking section where you can
meet women who smoke. That makes sense, right?
Works for me.




It's only fair.

Starlets on Posters #5

Silvery And Sexy

What's this...early Space Cowboy?

Happy Birthday, Anne Baxter

Happy birthday, Anne.

NOT Gone With The Wind

I stopped at the grocery store this morning for some low-fat milk, mayonnaise, cranberry juice, and. . .well, it's not really critical to this story that you know all of those details. So I purchase my nameless groceries, and I go out to my car in the parking lot. This guy pulls in next to me with his somewhat older, somewhat rustier maroon Pontiac Grand Am. There are untold billions of old rusty Pontiac Grand Ams here in the Rust Belt. The guy gets out and goes into the store. He's sort of a generic late-20s or early-30s unshaven white male with baseball cap sort of Rust Belt guy. His name is probably Jeff or Al or Randy or something. So on the right side of Jeff's older rusty Grand Am is a spray pattern of dried puke that runs from the rear edge of the now-closed passenger window all the way back across the right rear door, the fuel door, and the right rear fender. Probably from a party last night. Ah, I remember those days. The dried spray is sort of yellow and sort of greenish and brown. Very possibly that fatal mix of Taco Bell "Fourth Meal" late night drive-thru food and one of the standard varieties of Budweiser or Miller. The spray can take on a reddish hue if you mix in tequila and a knife wound. But this was just your routine beer-and-fast-food chunk-hurling stuff. Been there, done that. I've been the frantic driver. I've been the helpless puker. You can't quite pull over before the action begins. You somehow hope that the window blowing on your drunken friend will make him or her (your barely conscious date or your stoned little sister) feel better and maybe settle their stomach. But it never works. You're driving, but you're drunk too, of course, and it all just makes sense. You hope your passenger's stomach contents will simply be gone with the wind, but it never quite works out that way. And, of course, it's worse if it's a white car or your dad's car or a convertible. It's also bad if you've borrowed somebody's car, done this awful thing to the whole right side of it, and then returned the car without really noticing the incriminating color change you've made. But Jeff and his rusty maroon Grand Am have probably been through this baptism a dozen times by now. Which may explain some of the rust. And I got into my un-puked-on grandpa car and thought of that dream date where you're doing 85 down Pacific Coast Highway at four in the morning while a barely dressed Scarlett O'Hara, her hair an insane tangle, her shoes in the back seat, leans out her side of your milk white Packard convertible and lets go with all the rum punch and Polynesian appetizers you bought her at Don The Beachcomber's. And you, filled with desire and tequila, think it's fine. Just fine. Life is good. As Ernest Gantt, the real Don the Beachcomber used to say, "If you can't come to Paradise, I'll bring Paradise to you." Things never quite work out that way here in the Rust Belt, but it's the thought that counts.

OOPS!

Several of you have rightfully pointed out a mistake in my last two posts, namely that I had included the keyword "Zippo lighter," and yet failed to provide any pictures of said lighter. This post should remedy that situation. Thanks again to all of you sharp-eyed readers.

Controversy: Leni Riefenstahl

The mere mention of the name "Leni Riefenstahl" creates controversy in classrooms, film forums, chat rooms, and anywhere else that film scholars and serious students of cinema history gather. This, however, is neither a political nor a philosophical blog, so we will forego the in-depth discussions and get right to the photographs.

Leni Riefenstahl poster

Leni Riefenstahl portrait

Leni with Adolf Hitler

Leni Riefenstahl pinup

KEYWORDS: angst, antinomianism, diachronic, dolchstosslegende, ecofeminism, ennui, essentialism, fascism, feudalism, fotographie, gynocriticism, juxtaposition, mesmerism, metanarrative, nationalsozialistische deutsche arbeiterpartei, nazi, phallocentric theory, post-feminism, pontiac firebird hubcaps, reverse minimalism, sozialdemokratische, zippo lighter.

Controversy: Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS

The mere mention of "Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S." creates controversy in barrooms, locker rooms, coffee shops, and anywhere else that feminist historians and gender post-structuralists gather. This, however, is neither a political nor a philosophical blog, so we will forego the in-depth discussions and get right to the photographs.

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975) poster

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS portrait

Ilsa with Adolf Hitler

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS pinup

KEYWORDS: angst, antinomianism, diachronic, dolchstosslegende, ecofeminism, ennui, essentialism, fascism, feudalism, fotographie, gynocriticism, juxtaposition, mesmerism, metanarrative, nationalsozialistische deutsche arbeiterpartei, nazi, phallocentric theory, post-feminism, pontiac firebird hubcaps, reverse minimalism, sozialdemokratische, zippo lighter.

Foursomes

Tailgating

Susan Oliver, Slave Girl

There are five Susan Olivers in the IMDb, but I don't know anything about them. I'm talking about the Susan Oliver who did Star Trek (clip), The Disorderly Orderly (1964) with Jerry Lewis, The Green-Eyed Blonde (1957), The Andy Griffith Show, Your Cheatin' Heart (1964), and almost every 1960s television series you can name. For some reason, good quality photos of her are scarce as feathers on a frog.
The Trekkies, who never seem to forget anything, have trading cards and even an action figure for Slave Girl Vina, the character she played on Star Trek TOS (The Original Series). Boy, those dudes really need to get a life. Anyway, to get an idea of the Susan Oliver saturation during the 1960s, check this partial list of her television appearances:
The Twilight Zone
The Untouchables
Naked City
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
Rawhide
Route 66
77 Sunset Strip
The Fugitive
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.
I Spy
Peyton Place
T.H.E. Cat
The Wild Wild West
The Invaders
The Big Valley
Mannix




You'd think there'd be more photos out there somewhere.

Clint's Girls #4

Ya ever notice that Clint Eastwood always seems
to get his a$$ kicked somewhere in the middle of
his movies? He gets shot or hanged or stomped or
otherwise mutilated, and in the end he kills all
the people who harmed him. Are all Clint Eastwood
movies "revenge westerns"? Are all westerns really
about revenge, period? Is the phrase "revenge drama"
redundant? Is revenge what all human entertainment
is about? Maybe revenge is the central theme of all
existence on Earth. Ah, I digress. Here are three
photos of a somewhat damaged Clint being tended to
by some lovely ladies.
(My mind wanders on Sundays.)

Hollywood Harem #9

Elke Sommer Choking My Hard Drive

Damnit! That's all there is to it.
Elke Sommer is filling up my hard drive.
Somebody out there simply has to take these
15 Elke Sommer photos off my hands, right?
Help yourself. (Especially if you're a blonde fan.)




The photo above is from the 1969 Dean Martin
movie The Wrecking Crew. The movie is worth
renting or buying, because it features Elke Sommer,
Sharon Tate, Nancy Kwan, and Tina Louise.
Holy Cow! What a lineup!
The Wrecking Crew is also worth watching simply
for the one scene where Elke walks across a room
toward the camera in this dress. It just screams.

Whewww! Thanks for taking these off my hands.

Cat People And Dog People

Me, I like cats. Lots of you out there like dogs.
No problem. A lot of my friends like dogs and hate
cats. No problem. Some of my friends hate all pets,
period. Dog people sometimes describe cats as "sneaky"
and vaguely untrustworthy. Cat people tend to see
dogs as subservient and cloying. Cat people refer to
their sneaky cats as "independent." Dog people refer
to their subservient dogs as "loyal." Cat people have
to deal with cat boxes. Yuck. And dog people have to
walk their dogs and pick up their dogs' turds with
scoopers and little baggies. I imagine that being a
dog person was a lot easier in the days when the world
was bigger and less crowded, and you could walk your
dog, and he could poop just about anywhere he damn
well pleased, and you could ignore it, because
there weren't a lot of really complicated dog poop
laws. Life was easier back then. The world was our
ashtray, and we could throw beer cans out of our
car windows. Alas!
A friend of mine, who is the proud owner of one cat
and one dog, once described the central difference
between cats and dogs thusly:
When you have a heart attack and die in your lonely
house, your dog will feel guilty for more days than
a cat would, before he starts eating your corpse.
I thought that about summed it up.

Happy Birthday, Mary Astor

It's Mary Astor's birthday. Like many people,
the first time I saw Mary Astor she was playing
Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon in
1941. And I really, really wondered what Sam
Spade (Humphrey Bogart) could possibly find
attractive about her. The second time I saw
her was in Dodsworth (1936), and I was quite
surprised how she looked with longer hair.
Then I saw her in the pre-Code Red Dust (1932)
where, in comparison, she makes Jean Harlow
look like a cow (you Harlow fans will just have
to face it). And Mary was really something in
the silent Don Juan (1926), although June
Marlowe was the TOTAL BABE in that one.
And then I saw her in The Bright Shawl (1923),
when she was only 17 years old, and I think
I fainted. Amazing! Whoever phuctup her hair
for The Maltese Falcon should have been shot.
Anyway, here she is in her loveliness.



Happy birthday, Mary.

Girl-Girl #6

Knife Fight on Film Criticism Street

I've been reading a thick blue book called 501 Movie Directors, which is arranged chronologically by each director's date of birth. The "General Editor" is Steven J. Schneider. There are 46 contributors, including several very knowledgeable people and a few film studies type closet queens with PhDs in Petulance. The entries usually run one page, sometimes two, and every so often three whole pages. Each entry contains a photo of the director, an abridged filmography, and usually a scene or poster from one of the director's films. I skipped reading the entries for directors from Brazil, Thailand, and Nigeria who have never made an English language film. I got the impression after a while that the 640-page book might better have been titled 301 Movie Directors. And I get to page 180, which is about director Elia Kazan (On The Waterfront, Boomerang, Splendor in the Grass), and the entry describes Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957) as "a Southern populism, based on a cult of authentic personality and its sexual allure that might threaten hegemony of the northeastern white Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment." In the next sentence, Kazan's Baby Doll (1956) is described as "a cynical, comic look as sexual pieties with the neorealist stylizations of European realism." I looked up the contributor for this particular entry and saw that he is a professor of film studies and literature somewhere. Lord, save us all from "Lit. profs" and the terrible swift sword of academia. Alas, such micro-tyrants are frightening to the captive audience of 19-year-olds in their Literature 201 class. And other, like-minded professors sit in rapt attention while they spray the dead semen of their vocabulary across literary roundtables. And they make the readers of Film Quarterly and Bright Lights Film Journal wish they hadn't fallen asleep during last summer's Fellini retrospective. But out here on Internet Street, those literary limpdicks don't stand a chance. Actually, I understand there is a bit of a war going on between serious movie bloggers and seriously "legitimate film critics" right now regarding which of them really has the right to write film criticism. I'm not part of that, of course, mainly because I am not that serious. On the other hand, I am very serious about starlets. And I don't have to sit in Literature class. And I can skip whole pages in a fat blue book like 501 Movie Directors. And I can open a new book, a biography of Joan Blondell. And I can ignore the Moving Image Institute in Film Criticism and other movie misfits.


Where would you rather be?

Happy Birthday, Joy Harmon

It's Joy Harmon's birthday today. You remember
Joy's famous car-washing scene from Cool Hand
Luke (1967), right? Everybody remembers that.
There's a very interesting interview with
actor George Kennedy about the filming of
that particular scene at TCM.

Finally, there is the Joy Harmon page at
Brian's Drive-In Theater.

Happy birthday, Joy.