7/31/09
7/30/09
7/29/09
Impersonal Computer
The company where I work bought some new computers, and it's about time. The old desktops and laptops were getting rather clunky. No one seems to invest in the proper amount of memory for such things, and they just get clunky and unworkable in no time. My home computer and my own laptop are jam-packed with gigs and gigs of memory and video memory, not for gaming, but just because a boatload of extra memory makes graphics, web surfing, and multi-tasking much easier. The powers that be where I work haven't gotten that message yet. (Except of course for the guys in the I.T. Department; their machines have plenty of memory!) Anyway, so we've got some new machines in the office. The problem is that they purchased a lot fewer machines, and they're making us share them. No longer will I have "my" laptop with a Pier Angeli wallpaper on it and all the settings just the way I like them. No longer will I be customizing my machine with TweakUI, which is a marvelous little program for simplifying your computer. Yes, we all have our individual "profiles" on the machines, but that's just not the same as having your own computer. I now have a desktop that I share with a download fanatic, who grabs stupid cursors and cute wallpapers from the Internet and blindly clogs up the hard drive with them. One of the other desktop users gets his personal email at work, including religious messages and hymns and stuff; he also leaves half-eaten sandwiches around the office. The third sharer of this desktop machine hates the idea of sharing so much that he carts around both his personal laptop and a netbook. And then there's me. Besides the new desktop computers, there are three new company laptops that we are supposed to share with nine people, several of whom like to touch the screens with their fingers (which drives me crazy). I like things simple. I like an uncluttered screen. I like to hide icons and taskbars and junk. I like a clean-looking machine with a simple black and white picture of Pier Angeli in the center of the screen. That's just me. Other people like tons of extra icons and chimes and dings and whistles and error messages. Every time I get a new computer, I go through the drive and eliminate junk I don't need; I delete a lot of it right off. But, with shared computers, I can't do that anymore. I suppose it's like sharing a kitchen and bathroom with nine other people; it's not the same as having your own. And, yes, I understand that the company can do what it wants with its employees and its computers. They can read our emails and spy on our web surfing; yes, that's their right. But it's just not the same. I would bring my own laptop or netbook, like my non-sharing techie co-worker, but he has to lug around a backpack filled with gadgets all day. And carrying my personal technology with me to work every day is not worth the effort. So I will quietly suffer with the clogged hard drives and finger marks on the screens and corrupted "user profiles" and so on. The company started this sharing nonsense last week, and it's already showing signs of breakdown. My old, lean, mean clunky machine never had these problems before. And it had a Pier Angeli wallpaper. I miss her.
Ctrl-Alt-Del indeed!
7/28/09
7/27/09
Hitchcock Looks Down #3
Blackmail (1929)
Young and Innocent (1937)
The Birds (1963)
The Pleasure Garden (1925)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Eleanor Boardman's Soul for Sale
Last night I watched Souls for Sale (1923) on Turner Classic Movies, the very best darn channel on all of television. What a neat movie! I enjoyed it and its color tinting. I loved all the 1920s aerial views of Los Angeles. What a treat! Those of you who did not stay up for TCM's Silent Sunday feature and those of you who don't get TCM, well, you can get a DVD of Souls for Sale from the Warner Archive. It is filled with style, fashions, architecture, movie stars, dresses, 1920s cars, Los Angeles landscapes, and other fascinating Hollywood tidbits. I liked it. One thing I really, really enjoy about silent films are the ones shot on location that show an ancient world that you and I can only read about in books. (Here is a YouTube example of a glimpse into that ancient world.) Anyway, I also enjoyed Eleanor Boardman. And now, you can enjoy her, too.
7/26/09
Gaborness
Just read Gaborabilia: An Illustrated Celebration of the Fabulous, Legendary Gabor Sisters by Anthony Turtu and Donald F. Reuter (2001). It's sort of a 15-minute coffee table book, but has tons of rare and cool pictures. Amazon has them real cheap (like $3) new or used. I recommend it if you're buying a few other books and want to tack it on to the end of your order. Check out Amazon's "Look Inside" feature for a small preview.
Adorable Arlene Martel
Although best remembered for her role as Mr. Spock's bride in Star Trek, Arlene Martel appeared in just about everything in 60s and 70s television, including Gunsmoke, Twilight Zone, Mannix, Route 66, My Favorite Martian, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and The Monkees. You can also find her credited under the names Arline Martel, Tasha Martel, Arlene Martell, Tasha Martell, Arlene Sax, and Arline Sax. She has her own web site, and there are several film clips here.
(She still goes to conventions and signs photos.)
What a doll!
7/25/09
Red House Girl
The Red House (1947) was Allene Roberts' very first film.
Red House - Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai
7/24/09
A Taste of Mary Anderson
Delicious Mary Anderson.
Mary Anderson in Dangerous Crossing (1953) above
and Behind Green Lights (1946) below. She seems to
spend a lot of time on the telephone.
7/23/09
Hitchcock Looks Down #2
The Pleasure Garden (1925)
Murder! (1930)
Vertigo (1958)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Downhill (1927)
Hollywood and Vine, 1944
These are from an August 1944 Life magazine
photo story about girls passing the intersection
of Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles.
7/22/09
7/21/09
Rich and Strange Joan Barry
British actress Joan Barry in Alfred Hitchcock's
Rich and Strange (1931). She dubbed the voice of
Anny Ondra in Blackmail (1929), reportedly England's
first talkie. Joan was a delightfully petite 5' 2" (1.57 m).
She got married and retired in 1934.
7/20/09
Hitchcock Looks Down #1
Murder! (1930)
Marnie (1964)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Champagne (1928)
7/19/09
Halfway Point
We're halfway home today. Our Blogger page tells us we are "currently using 512MB (50%) of our 1024MB," which means we only have maybe 6,000 more pictures and, say, a year and ten months left in this gig. And then I'm outta here. To paraphrase Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, "some day this blog is gonna end." It's nothing to worry about right now, but if you want to save certain starlet pictures, you might want to do it soon. Like some time this year or next. (And, no, we aren't going to pay for extra space or ask for donations or "monetize" the place. That's simply not in the cards.) So get 'em while they're hot.
(Frankly, I'm surprised it's lasted this long.)
Cruising Carabaas
It's always fun to visit Ветхие страницы, which means "Decrepit pages," according to Babel Fish. This "Carabaas" guy is from the Ukraine, and I can't read most of his entries, but he has great pictures and ideas. He visits here once in a while, so I know he can correct the Babel Fish translation above if he wants. He contributes mightily to the Vintage Photos page, but something seems to have happened over there regarding "Mature Readers Only" warnings. I hope that can be fixed. A similar things happened to the femme femme femme fine art site a while back, where someone imposed an "Adults Only" warning on his occasional fine art nudes, so he packed up all his toys and moved elsewhere (bless him). I love those full-color retro folks, like Farbror Sid ("Uncle Sid"), Vintage Ads, and Today's Inspiration. They make the Internet interesting again.
Driven to Distraction
Today's New York Times printed an article called Drivers and Legislators Dismiss Cellphone Risks by Matt Richtel (whose last name sounds like the name of a cell phone company). MSN reprinted it this morning and included a video of a texting bus driver crashing into a line of stopped cars. The article is all about why drivers continue to use cell phones when they know it's distracting. Texting is distracting. Hands-free phoning is distracting. Cell phone conversations in general are distracting. And it's costing lives. When you're on the road, you're surrounded by other driver's who are inattentive time bombs, just waiting to kill you. Like drunk drivers. Anyway, the article says, "Why do people, knowing the risk, continue to talk while driving? The answer, they say, is partly the intense social pressures to stay in touch and always be available to friends and colleagues...They also show signs of addiction--to their gadgets." The article quotes John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard, who says "...the modern brain is being rewired to crave stimulation." It is what he calls "acquired attention deficit disorder" and says, "We need that constant pizzazz, the reward, the intensity." Matt Richtel's piece is apparently part of a series called Driven to Distraction. Just thought I'd share that.
Sex Pistols
God Save The Queen
EMI
Holidays in the Sun
Problems
Anarchy in the U.K.
(This won't last; listen while you can.)
7/18/09
Steamy Pat Crowley
The very hot PAT CR0WLEY and NAP0LE0N S0L0 find themselves
trapped in a room filled with steam in 1964. (Also in color.)
HAWT!
My Very First Branka Katic Movie
I saw my very first Branka Katic movie today. Johnny Depp was in it, too, and I usually like him (when he's not being a stupid pirate). Anyway, someone told me that Public Enemies was worth watching. So I went. Unfortunately, the director and cameramen and editor were all apparently on methamphetamine, and the Steadicams weren't functioning properly. And the cameras never seemed to hold more than 23 seconds of film at a time. So the picture basically swam all over the screen constantly. And almost everything was filmed in Extreme Mega Monster Close-up, so that the actors' nostrils and eyebrows were 80 feet tall. And the way the screenplay was written, I had no idea who most of the characters were for the first hour of the movie. And they took a lot of liberties with the historical facts. I was about ready to walk out of this swimming, jump-cut, micro-focus nightmare, when Branka Katic (as Anna Sage) appeared and lent a little class and quiet to the whole jumbled mess. It might have been her period hair style and dress. It might have been her pretty eyes. It might have been her accent. I don't really know. But she was the one bright spot in an otherwise unwatchable movie. Is it really imperative to move a camera constantly? Is rapid cutting the only way to go these days? Maybe when Public Enemies comes out on DVD, I'll watch it from across the room so that the pores in the actors' faces aren't the size of Oldsmobiles. Maybe I'll freeze-frame the scenes where Branka Katic appears. I might have appreciated Public Enemies more if I were near-sighted and suffering from Attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder and had no idea who John Dillinger was. I don't know. I kinda doubt it.
(Oh...and the buttered popcorn was good.)
7/17/09
7/16/09
7/15/09
How to wear rolled stockings
Search for Beauty (1934) has this extra, wearing
rolled stockings, for about two and a half seconds
in a locker room scene. Mmmmm.
Here's a clip:
I told you the Universal Pre-Code Hollywood Collection
would be fun.
7/14/09
Mary Had a Little Star
Ok, so I'm staggering blindly around cyberspace this morning, right? And I'm trying to find which side of Vine Street actress Mary Anderson's Hollywood Walk of Fame star is on. Like that's important or something. I can hear you asking yourself, "Parker, what the phuck possible difference can it make to me, sitting here alone and drunk again in my broke-A$$ mobile home in Fanbelt, South Carolina?" Well, kiddies, if relevance were important here at Starlet Showcase, uh, heck, I mean, there'd be a whole lot fewer posts, now wouldn't there? And I can hear a couple of New York dudes hissing, "That b!tch sure has a lot of extra time on his hands." And, no, I am not here for anyone's relevance. And, yes, I obviously had some time on my hands. No, so, anyway, I look up 1645 Vine Street, Los Angeles, where her star is supposed to be, and I find a wine and liquor dealer, a law office, a locksmith, a film company, a yogurt place, a writing business, and another film company called Three Lions Pictures, which has a link to something called The Rebel Pinup Page, which is where all these delightful pictures came from (and there are tons more, if you go there).
But that doesn't really tell me on which side of Vine Street one might find actress Mary Anderson's star. So I go to Google Street View, and I see the famous Capitol Records building on the other side of the street about two blocks north. And Google tells me that Capitol Records at 1750 Vine Street is on the east side of Vine, which makes the 1645 address on the west side. And it's like half a block south of Hollywood Boulevard (in case any of you want to drive out there after work tonight). So I pull up Bing Maps, and get a 3D view, then borrow a picture of Anna May Wong's Walk of Fame star from the Big Orange Landmarks blog. And I Photoshop in "Mary Anderson," and yank the map and counterfeit star into a non-Adobe vector graphics program, and label everything. And then, back in Adobe Photoshop, I fix some contrast levels and crop it, and now we have our basic, approximate guide to where the heck actress Mary Anderson's star is. Simple, right? And, of course, this teases your curiosity about just who Mary Anderson is. And that, my Fanbelt, South Carolina, Notre-Dame-de-Bondeville, and New York City pals, is what you'll be learning in the next few weeks. In the meantime, enjoy the Rebel Pinups. (Like you really thought all this was actually going somewhere?)
Irma Harrison
This is Irma Harrison in director Roland West's 1929
film Alibi from those nice folks at Kino. Some describe
it as "the first expressionistic crime film."
There's more about her midway down this page at
Vitaphone Varieties, including a song.
7/13/09
The One and Only
Because I'm personally not much interested in musical theatre, divas, Broadway, or New York, New York, you will not find any other pictures of Liza Minnelli at Starlet Showcase. (Sorry, dudes and dudettes.) In any case, I found this picture of her in a 1950 Photoplay magazine, and I thought some of you might enjoy it. Borrow it. Steal it. Post it on your own blogs, Tumblr pages, Facebooks, Twitters, LiveJournals, and so on. Start spreading the news...
7/12/09
1939, The Year of Thomas Mitchell
I was watching the Turner Classic Movies documentary 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year, which is all about how the studios seemed to release some of their finest movies in the span of one memorable year. There's Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, of course. And The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gunga Din, Of Mice and Men, The Roaring Twenties, and Stagecoach. It was a busy and incredible year, the likes of which we will never see again. But what I noticed was how often character actor Thomas Mitchell appeared in the film clips. Five of Hollywood's greatest 1939 films feature Thomas Mitchell. They are The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Only Angels Have Wings, and Stagecoach. He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in Stagecoach. He also had roles in Lost Horizon (1937), The Hurricane (1937), Our Town (1940), Moontide (1942), Bataan (1943), Buffalo Bill (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), High Noon (1952), and Pocketful of Miracles (1961). What a career! What a Character!
7/11/09
Hello There, Big Eyes
Big Eyes
Hello There ("All Right, Tokyo!")
The House is Rockin'
Cheap Trick
(This won't last; listen while you can.)
7/10/09
Video Ephemera
I've noticed that many items on U-Toob (especially classic film clips, music, and such) tend to disappear rather quickly. Which means that our links to them become useless. I've had to go back and delete a lot of links from old posts. I think what I'll do now is tag these items as "U-Toob" posts, so I can more quickly find them again and see if the videos are still up. It'll reduce the number of dead links and confusing posts. So bear with me here, and enjoy these. While they last. (Almost looks like a NSFW Deadlicious post here.)
7/9/09
Staying Ahead of the Game
We try to stay prepared here at Starlet Showcase.
I like to stay a few days ahead of the game. Those
of you with blogs out there know what a pain it
can be sometimes. Anyway, I'm ahead this week.
If I get run over by a truck or something, y'all
won't know until a week from next Sunday.
(Of course, I often spontaneously post something, too. Like this.)
7/8/09
Liberté, égalité, décolletage!
So last night I watched Scaramouche (1952) on Turner Classic Movies, the best darn channel on all of television. The MGM Technicolor extravaganza plays fast and loose with French political history with British and American actors and actresses playing all the French folk. There is a lot of sword fighting and Robin Hood kind of adventure stuff. Much more importantly, wasp-waisted Janet Leigh can be seen in a number of remarkable dresses. And creamy Eleanor Parker dances, fights, and flirts in several delightful costumes. Poor Stewart Granger has to choose between them. Eleanor plays a bawdy, self-assured clown theatre actress. Janet plays a blonde damsel. For most of the film, Stewart Granger thinks he is Janet's illegitimate brother, which somewhat dampens his romantic interest in her. So he pursues Eleanor Parker. I don't have a problem with that (not that anyone asked me). Anyway, so that Stewart Granger would not end up sleeping with his sister, it turns out that Janet is in fact not related to Stewart, and they can live happily ever after. And Eleanor Parker, sexy, delicious, bawdy Eleanor, gets dumped. That I've got a problem with, but again no one asked me. Anyway, speaking of Stewart Granger and incest, I was reminded of his role as Old Testament dude Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah (1963). This time it's Twentieth Century-Fox who's playing fast and loose with the story. But this time good old Stewart chooses Pier Angeli (credited under her actual name Anna Maria Pierangeli), which is of course the correct choice. And she wears some nice outfits, too. Anyway, God (according to Genesis 19:13) decided to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their careless living, which apparently included non-vaginal sex and improprieties with barnyard animals (and stuff), but he let Stewart Granger, Pier Angeli, and Stewart's two grown daughters from a previous marriage walk away from the area before He blew everything up. And they, of course, had been warned not to look back at the burning cities. But Pier Angeli (Mrs. Lot), of course, looks back (I mean, who wouldn't?), and she is turned into a pillar of salt (don't ask). And Stewart Granger wanders out into the wilderness with his grown daughters, Shuah and Maleb, played respectively by Italian actresses Rossana Podestà and Claudia Mori. And the movie ends. But the story in Genesis doesn't end there with that cool pillar-of-salt trick. Instead, and this is where the incest rears its ugly head again, Shuah and Maleb, who aren't named in Genesis, get their father drunk and jump his bones, because they are under the false impression that he is the only sperm donor left alive on the planet. Anyway, both daughters get pregnant and so on, and one daughter's offspring become the nation of Moab, and the other one's offspring become the nation of Ammon. And the Quran (AKA Koran) doesn't believe any of this, and the Muslims call Lot "Lut," and say he would never have done that daughter thing. And so the Jewish world is p!ssed off at the Islamic world, which is p!ssed off at the Christian world. And it's all basically Stewart Granger's fault. You can't really blame him. I mean, Stewart Granger's real name was James Stewart, but when he came to Hollywood, he found that name was already taken, so he had to become "Stewart Granger," and that probably left a bad taste in his mouth, and so he disrupted the whole world's religious and philosophical balance. Which is no reason not to check out Janet Leigh's wonderful dresses in Scaramouche. (I'm thinking of maybe starting a Monumental Digression post category. I'm also thinking this post will get me on some religious fanatic's hit list. Alas!)
7/7/09
Cats were not made to be useful
I talk to my cats in a sort of enthusiastic baby-talk, like some people talk to their children. I talk to children like they were adults, and I know they usually appreciate it. And I talk to adults, well, I guess it depends on the adult. Some guys are really dense. Some chicks are really difficult to reach, communication-wise. I like people who are funny, which is not to say that I really like "funny people." No, so, anyway, I'm outside, sitting in a porch swing, soaking up some evening sunshine. And my cats are watching me intently from behind a screen, because they're indoor cats. And I didn't have my wristwatch on, so I asked them what time it was, and they can't tell time yet, and I'm not going to spend the rest of their lives and my life teaching them, and they have no idea what I'm babbling about, but they know I'm talking just to them, and they like that a lot. I also asked them what the 8 PM Stewart Granger movie on TCM was, and they couldn't answer that one either. It's Scaramouche (1952) with Eleanor Parker, who will be visiting Starlet Showcase next weekend. You'd think cats could say a word like "Scaramouche." Alas, they just enjoyed the conversation, as one-sided as it is sometimes. And I enjoyed the sun. Gotta go watch Stewart Granger and Eleanor Parker and Janet Leigh. Later...
(Pictures are from WannaSmile.)
Following the Followers
If I had one of them Follower widget thingies, it might look like this. Those things are kinda unpredictable and slow down the page loading, so I don't use them. At least not right now. Anyway, thanks for tagging along with me.
7/6/09
7/5/09
Las Chicas Bond
While I was out and about, searching for photos of Lois Chiles, I ran across the SuperMegapost de Las Chicas Bond page, which has oodles and gobs of Bond girl photos. Don't ask me who they all are; I haven't seen any of the newer Bonds.
7/4/09
Photoplay Fashion, July 1950
For you vintage fashion ladies.
Key words: Advance, apron, Burda, Butterick dress pattern, DuBarry, Hollywood, McCall vintage dress pattern, McCall's, Paris original, Photoplay, retro fashion, sewing pattern, Simplicity, vintage dress, vintage fashion, Vogue dress pattern, zippo lighter
A Matter of Tasty
I don't want to start a huge debate here or anything, but...
The dude that runs the She's Got Legs! blog is, of course, providing a valuable public service with his "no gimmicks, no pop-ups, no watermarkings" leg site, which he updates "almost daily" (bless him). Ya gotta respect him for his efforts. He's got modern ladies, full-color pictures, upskirts, lingerie, pantyhose, panties, string bikinis, the works! He gets lots more page hits than I do. I, myself, have even linked to his site before. The thing is that so many of those modern ladies seem to lack curves, basic muscle tone, shapely thighs, and, well, uh, hips! If ya know what I mean. Me, I like thighs. Every time I visit Kentucky Fried Chicken, I order thighs. Thighs are dark and juicy and tender. They go good with biscuits and gravy. I like 'em! And I'm not talking about fat birds here. I'm just talking about...uh...shape. Compare the photo of Gisele Bündchen above with the photo of Grace McDonald below. I mean, come on, Grace's legs beat Gisele's hands-down. For modern legs, definitely go visit She's Got Legs!. For some classic dames with classic gams, you can stick around here. Or, for the best of both worlds, bookmark both of us. Anybody that's ad-free is all right in my book.
I'm just saying...
7/3/09
Electrical Heroin
Been doing a little scanning. Some old Photoplays, a Movieland magazine, and several stills. I hate scanning, because I have to sit on the floor to do it, because it's really the only place my scanner can rest properly. And I can't listen to music while I scan, because I have to unplug the speaker power cord to insert the scanner's power cord, because my power strips don't have any outlets free that'll fit the clunky power supply box at the end of the scanner cord, and the whole thing is a pain in the A$$. So I sit on a rolled up blanket and, yeah, I know that's not your problem. And I really could buy a few more power strips. But that road never seems to end. In our world, there never seem to be enough outlets or Double-A batteries to run all our phones and laptops and speakers and scanners and clocks and cameras and DVD players and wide-screen monitors and flat-screen TVs and modems and routers, not to mention the lamps and fans and chargers and electric toothbrushes. We had a power outage the other day for about six hours, and every time that happens, I always think of that Elisabeth Shue movie, The Trigger Effect (1996), about how the power goes out and the world goes crazy. (I suppose there are worse things than sitting in the dark, thinking about Elisabeth Shue. Mmmm?) Alas, I digress.....again! The point is...well, I don't really have a point here. I got my scanning done, and y'all will be enjoying the fruits of my labor in the coming weeks. In the meantime, check out these little goodies.
(We're all addicted to electricity.)
7/2/09
The White Go-Go Boots Post
Backward Glances
SGCollect Forums
PRWeb
Kotaku
Guido 1953
Fashion in Focus
And, once again, The Revelettes. (Love this clip!)
(It's either the earrings or that hip shake.)
7/1/09
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