Ok well, everyone from Buzzfeed to the goddamn New York Times is paying tribute to FRIENDS considering today marks the 20th yes, 20th anniversary of the airing of the 1st episode after which, TV was never the same again...feel ancient yet?
I remember we fell in love with so many things, and incorporated them into our culture, style, and lexicon, but perhaps none was more significant than that of Jennifer Aniston's hair...later to be known as 'The Rachel'. A few things to preface this. Thing 1: The Rachel didn't actually come into popularity until Season 2, when it was properly blow-dried and quaffed for the show. Thing 2: The Rachel was actually an accident because Jennifer (being broke at the time) asked her friend to cut her hair with a razor for the show. Don't you just love those? Thing 3: The Rachel was just one look, but whatever happened to Jen's hair (which was a lot) she was able to rock it. So here we go, a celebration of Jen's beautiful locks throughout 10 Seasons of FRIENDS!
This is actually how Jen wore her hair throughout most of the 1st season, very little is done to it, and because the show was on a shoestring budget (if you can believe it) the character of Rachel Green was written as someone (whom though spoiled) was very 'dressed down and casual' as you can tell by her very 90's casual wardrobe.
Now this is where 'The Rachel' comes into being and turns into its own character. I remember I got one too and the stylist totally cut it wrong and mine looked like shit because at 10 I couldn't properly use a blow-dryer. Seriously, I can't even tell you how many of my friends went through the same thing. All it is is blow-dried layers. And yet none of us could get it quite as cute as it was on Jen.
This is Season 3 Rachel, and probably the hairstyle I dislike the most. It's not awful, she just outgrew the Rachel, kept the layers and dyed her hair auburn, a color which does not look too good on her. Keeping with her casual roots, and a style that frames her face, but it was more or less...blah.
By season 5, some drastic changes can be seen in darling Rachel. Jen had shed a considerable amount of weight and dyed her hair way more to the blonde side of things (both good moves) and had grown out her quaf even more so that now she didn't have any layers and the locks just fell off the wayside. It's actually how I've worn my hair for years now.
As you can see, not much changed in Season 6, but a lot of viewers wondered how the hell she was able to grow her hair that long in that short period of time. Well, they were extensions she decided to keep from her role in Rock Star (1999) And they looked pretty damn good.
And by Season 7, good gawd! She chopped it all off! And returned more so to the Rachel than she'd been in years, and you know what even with a little pixie-bob kinda thing going on she looked fabulous, though she called it a 'big mistake'.
In Season 8, Rachel get's pregnant, and her hair grows out a bit, it reminds me of the times her hair was boring and you know whatever...but as ever, she rocked it.
By season 10, when Rachel was working for Ralph Lauren, and a fashionista, the writers had to not only give her a wardrobe but a hairstyle that matched her now elevated tastes. So They went full on sandy blonde with the color, and put some streaks in there as well, and also (Gasp!) gave her bangs, and in my opinion, it's an awesome look. These days she's even blonder, so come on, it's true people...Blondes have more fun!
Below: A very funny clip and in my opinion one of the hottest looks Jen's had.
Now that the grand innovator and genuine artiste Alexander McQueen is no more and Sarah Burton is basically butchering his legacy by dumbing down the fashions until it's not haute couture but something your grammy wore that now belongs in a consignment shop, it's time to look for that other British bad-boy designer who is going to revolutionize the industry and hopefully take enormous risks with an effortless fearlessness that makes us all stand up and take notice.
for inspiration, Pugh works with themes like cubism, bondage, and the Avant-Garde
British fashion never had a Jean Paul Gaultier, or a John Galiano, or a Betsy Johnson, but they did have iconoclasts like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen who threw Burberry's tweeds and stripes right back into their face with their innovative designs and devil-may-care aesthetic. Now there's another bad boy of textile on the British scene who is setting the stage to bring the Brits back to the forefront of high fashion.
a dress made completely out of safety pins, a nod no doubt to Vivienne Westwood.
His name is Gareth Pugh, he's barely out of his early 20's and is killing it in every piece of clothing he lets walk the runway. His themes include androgyny, bondage, S&M, and what looks like every German Avant-Garde film from the 30's I've ever seen. Every one of his models looks like walking art and he is now being recognized by the likes of Lady Gaga (of course), Beyonce, Rihanna, and others. He is truly a force to be reckoned with considering 30 years ago, his clothes wouldn't even be legal.
Walking art. Don't you wish your man dressed like this? Well, every once in a while. It's like a viking and a pterodactyl went to an S&M bar together.
He invented the concept of inflatable clothing and yeah you might not wear it to the office on a Tuesday, but damn isn't that interesting. He's restored art back into fashion, and fashion back into the general folds of entertainment. He's shocking, outlandish, and creative, as well as being a completely genuine article.
Gareth's now famous inflatable clothing line.
I believe that his contribution to the British fashion idiom is as important as that of Vivienne Westwood who with a few safety pins and inline zippers completely changed the look of the whole country 30 years ago. Gareth Pugh is doing the same now. To look at his designs and think 'that's too much' is exactly what he's going for and I think that Alexander McQueen were he around today would be proud, not to mention extremely jealous.
So tonight I'm keeping it mellow and settled in for a Criterion film, and one which I have shamefully never seen in my life was And God Created Woman (1956) directed by Roger Vadim and his then 21 year old wife Brigitte Bardot who he basically made into the most desired woman on the face of the earth, even for those who didn't speak French.
Brigitte's introduction to the world. Much like what would later be done in Kubrick's Lolita (1962), a childlike seductress sits outside sunning herself in next to nothing waiting for a man to fall in love with her at first sight.
Not a natural blonde, but then again nobody was, this was the era of being blonde meaning being the end all be all in sex symbols, now a days, it's being a red-head, but whatever. I would blog about Marilyn the ultimate blonde, since it is her birthday, but I've blogged about her mmmmm a million times, so I just want to give a shout out to the most statuesque French-looking french actress who later turned into a psychopath but we can negate that. On the screen she is absolutely magical. If aliens landed tomorrow and asked what the female species was, you'd have to show them a picture of early 60's or late 50's Brigitte Bardot, the only sex symbol that we think of outside the American idiom.
French poster for the film.
The film is about a waif in a small town near the French Riviera that all men are obsessed with but none can actually have, even when they exchange marriage vows. Her devil-may-care attitude spawned the sex-kitten phenomenon of the 60's and everyone from Vadim to The Beatles were completely obsessed. The story goes that John Lennon himself was so enamored with her that he made his then wife Cynthia dye her hair blonde and do her make-up a certain way to resemble the great Brigitte. Pretty chauvinist no?
But back to the wonder that is her, it's hard not to go crazy when you marry a heel like Roger Vadim at 18 and then he runs off with Jane Fonda, and for the rest of your life, all men want from you is sex rather than conversation, so you join PETA, and blame everyone in the world except yourself for all of your crazy insecurities.
Another picture of Bardot, just because. She's fun to look at isn't she?
The only person I can think of that in any way reminds me of Brigitte is Claudia Schiffer, she is basically her reincarnation, in body, but not spirit, and perhaps that's a good thing. We don't have to listen to her speak and meander about her politics and bizarre musings on the ways of the world, just turn on one of her films and you'll be completely mesmerized, I don't care if you're a man or a woman, you want it. She is the ultimate vamp of that era, but in a childish Lolita-esque way which makes it even more enticing, and what she created in the film that made her; And God Created Woman will always be copied by ingenues to come. She is a mystery wrapped in exoticism, wrapped in raw sexual prowess, wrapped in heaps of black eye liner. It's fantastic.
As some of you know, I'm writing a play about Joan Crawford, not particularly to dislodge all of the 'wire hangers' rumors or discredit her daughter Christina's novel 'Mommie Dearest' which for all of it's sincerity was highly and almost comically sensationalized.
I want (for some reason) to help people know and appreciate Crawford for who she was, and that was the 'ultimate movie star'. I'm sure that when the term was being coined, she was whom they thought of first. Not only was she a consummate professional studying constantly, taking allocation lessons, losing and gaining weight for roles before it was a thing, and even know which eye to cry out of when she needed to for a scene, but as an iconic figure head of old Hollywood, she's one of the most recognizable. She only won one Oscar, but had always stuck to her guns. She played the game until she could play it by her own rules and that's what makes her unique.
Joan Crawford the flapper under contract at MGM
Aside from the alcoholism, obsessive behavior, abusiveness, chronic infidelities and other personal bullshit, Joan was a true professional, and completely focused, which is exactly how she became what she became. All that other stuff lead to her eventual downfall, but if anyone had a good run and fought the good fight it was her.
Although she was married four times, she said that the love of her life was ultimately someone she never exchanged vows with; the very Catholic-bound to his marriage Clark Gable. They were too much alike, both from poor obscure families who came to Hollywood when no one would take them seriously and people had to fish their headshots out of the extras pile. They never gave up and before they knew it they were Hollywood gods, having quickies in dressing rooms between takes. They did 5 films together, but the relationship unfortunately dissolved. Gable's wife wouldn't give him a divorce and Joan was too obsessed with herself to care.
Joan and Gable always had great chemistry on film. Wasn't hard when the two were in love behind the cameras as well.
Here's another thing you might not have known, Joan was bisexual. One of her most famous conquests was Marilyn Monroe, 22 years her junior, whom she incessantly hit on usually in a drunken stupor when Marilyn would spend the night at her Brentwood mansion, and for some reason Marilyn eventually decided to reject her advances, perhaps because she was not her type, or perhaps because Joan was kind of scary at that point, who knows. Anyway, can you only imagine how hot that would be?
I love Joan because she adapted to every single thing asked of her. She started in Hollywood as a contracted dancer, not an actress, and appeared as a chorus extra in mid-level films where she was nearly unrecognizable. But with limitless drive and determination she learned everything about the business and made friends with the right people until she was number one on her studio boss' L.B. Mayer's list for his next projects. By the time she had achieved that, she had come into what people like to refer to as her 'face' that very recognizable look of the giant eyes, exaggerated eye-brows, and those crazy lips which Max Factor invented calling it 'the smear'. By the time she was declared box-office poison from playing too many shop girls who make good but still manage to wear designer gowns, she decided to keep fighting and told her boss L.B. 'no more goddamn shopgirls'. After that they fought over parts and she was one of the first to move out of her studio and fly solo. Back then, a hugely risky move, but it payed off because rival to MGM (where she got her start), Warner Bros. was inclined to hire her for a little project sitting on the shelf for two years called Mildred Pierce (1945) which one her her first and only Academy Award.
Joan Crawford still gorgeous in her 40's in Mildred Pierce (1945)
At that point, she was close to mid-40's herself, a battle year for any actress, but she decided to reinvent herself again; had her teeth recapped, cut her hair short, and wore mannish clothing, making herself into some kind of warrior identity which worked perfectly for Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954).
Basically after that, it was a slow decline, but the legacy was cemented. That is of course until her adopted daughter Christina wrote a scathing tell-all called 'Mommie Dearest' and tarnished Joan's reputation forever. No one would give you an argument if you said that Joan was not mother of the year, but the book is not exactly fully accurate. Books need to make money too, and I'm not saying I'm agreeing with it one way or the other. As Joan historian William Schoell said 'it's a great tragedy that when people hear the name Joan Crawford the first thing they think is 'no more wire hangers', because there is another Joan Crawford that people should remember.' Which is just exactly what I'm trying to do. Wish me luck!
Andrew Rennells and Justin Bartha play dads-to-be in new comedy series The New Normal (2012) on NBC
I was watching the aptly named The New Normal (2012 - ) on Hulu because I had woken up an hour and a half before I have to start getting ready for work (for the love of god why) and I was actually pleasantly surprised. Like most new comedy series, it has some big names (Ellen Barkin, Justin Bartha) and then a bunch of nobodies, building their career with television (Andrew Rannells, Georgia King). It concerns a gay couple who stumble upon a preggers lady who's kind of a quirky ditz because being at all like Zooey Deschanel is a fucking velvet goldmine these days, and decide they want the baby inside of her because they are desperately ready to be daddies...well, mommies who don't breastfeed. Hilarity ensues. Turns out the oven their using to cook their bun has got a conservative grandmother (oh snap!) who is not going to let a couple of Oscar Wilde reading, sweater-vest wearing, marathon knit-club presidents make her grandchild carrying their baby vote for Obama. When usually this is a tired comic ploy, the writers actually made it work pretty brilliantly when Jane (Ellen Barkin) accuses Bryan and David (Justin Barha and Andrew Rannells) that they don't even have any Afro-American friends, so to prove that they aren't hypocrites they have basically what can be referred to as Look-at-How-Many-African-American-Friends-We-Have party. They implore the only African-American person they know, one of their co-workers, to show up and bring her friends. She is played shockingly well by, wait for it...Nene Leaks of Real Housewives of Atlanta fame. If you're having trouble placing her, just think of some of the following catchphrases; 'I'm rich, bitch' and 'close ya legs to married men'. Got it now? But when she shows up at the party and all of her 'friends' are a bunch of white skinny bitches who probably had 'ambien sex with Tiger Woods', it creates quite an awkward situation.
film veteran Ellen Barkin and reality star Nene Leaks make surprisingly awesome additions to the cast.
This is catching unto the idea of gay couples becoming domesticated on television since Modern Family (2009 - ) began the trend a few years ago. While in th 90's it was taboo to even show a gay couple together on primetime, now television execs are taking it a step further and finally bringing us gay parents, albeit it seems like they are always male gay parents. I suppose it's assumed that gay males are naturally very maternal because of the stereotype that they're effeminate, but does that mean that if there was a show about lesbians raising a baby, there would be scenes of the child being strapped to the front of a motorcycle and trying on leather pants at the Baby Hot Topic?
Justin Bartha and Andrew Rannells do play characters somewhat similar to Mitch and Cam (Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler-Ferguson) in that one is uptight and obsessive-compulsive, while the other is highly effeminate and sensitive, but the light somewhat sarcastic humor makes it work, even though they are constantly feeding into gay stereotypes like obsessions with gift-wrapping and frequent trips to the Farmer's Market.
Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cam (Eric Stonestreet) are the prototypes who paved the way for domesticated gay couples on television with Modern Family.
This is just one in the growing trend of domesticated same-sex situation comedies. Another one along somewhat similar lines is Partners (2012) with David Krumholz and Michael Urie that premiered yesterday but is not quite as interesting. If you think about it, any show that follows this trend has something regarding this in the title MODERN Family, The NEW Normal, I guarantee the next one is going to have the phrase 'now-a-days' in it. It's a niche in TV that is working very well these days, and just like Will & Grace (1998 - 2006) had done almost 15 years ago, shows like The New Normal are helping tear down the remaining few taboos about the gay community, and doing it tastefully, sweetly, and comically. It's a good thing.
Still from the infamous Katz's Deli scene in When Harry Met Sally, if you haven't seen it then shame on you sir. (I say sir because every ma'am on this planet has most definitely watched that movie).
When I first started writing, short stories and mini-plays about god knows what...anything, there was one person who I wanted to be exactly like. That was Nora Ephron. The woman who wrote cinema's most famous deli scene, wrote two Academy Award nominated performances for Meryl Streep, and for three decades had the market cornered on romantic comedies and dramadies.
It breaks my heart to hear that she died today, because so much of my childhood was learning how to speak, feel, and be as a woman the way that Nora wrote them. She was eponymous of dry, witty humor, and plenty of heart, and wrote both sexes down as if she had them completely pegged, and she did. What really was appealing about her from my point of view was just how fearless she was. She was a screenwriter at a time when the movie business was very much a man's world, particularly behind the cameras. A woman screenwriter? who'd have thunk? Nora did, and she really did pave the way. And everyone knew to take her seriously after the landmark romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally (1989) came out and Nora ripped the sheets clean off the sex-relationship table and gave 'I'll have what she's having' a permanent place in perfect joke history.
To be such a trailblazer couldn't have been easy, but Nora remained at the top of her game all throughout her career, and we never lost sight of just how insightful, bright, and brilliant she was when it came to the challenges, however awkward and comic, that we all face in our stupid relationships.
Though many people didn't enjoy it, and by 'many people' I mean the pretentious critics at the Village Voice who turned up their noses at a lighthearted and sweet-as-fuck romantic comedy, but I thoroughly loved Julie and Julia (2009), Nora's last film. For a film basically sans plot, it was still interesting, unique, and fun to watch, which is a gift that only a rare few have, Nora being one of them. As a writer, she's up there with the likes of Anais Nin, Margaret Mitchell, and what the hell, Emily Dickinson. She was truly an original, and the screenwriting/directing world is lesser because of her loss. But we'll always have her legacy tainted in the films she wrote straight from her heart (as corny as that sounds), because she always remained true to herself, and always completely and utterly fearless, and for teaching me at a very young age that men are literally the dumbest species on earth, an invaluable lesson, I say thank you.
Below are some clips of the gifts of blissful moments Nora left in her films:
Current house-on-fire on Cougar Town and BFF to boring beyond boring Michelle Williams, Busy Phillips has the world wrapped around her long claw-like fingers. When I was in my 'teen rebel' phase, I was meandering the rows of Hollywood Video and one VHS tape caught my eye. On the cover right next to Dominique Swain, with bright red volleyball socks and a white plait skirt, mouth half open as if to say 'what do you want from me bitch?' was Busy Phillips. It was her first 'major film role' which is laughable considering that film barely attained straight-to-video distribution. It was called The Smokers (2000) Busy was 21, I was 16, and I answered 'bitch I want to rent you'. And then she kind of disappeared off the radar until reappearing as Courtney Cox's slutballs hedonistic assistant on Cougar Town with a mouth on her the size of drunk trucker and the rack of two ripe cantaloupes from the farmer's market.
But not to worry, constricting clothes and platform pumps do not hinder one's comic ability, and Busy slowly transitioned into what we in the soft sciences refer to as the Jenny McCarthy territory. Hot and funny at the same time? Only comes around once a millennium...well apparently not. You want to laugh at her jokes and then throw her on the couch and have your dirty way with her which she would totally be in to until she texts you that it's over and tweets your reaction to all of your followers. How can any man resist?
Soon enough, no matter how the characters on the show have nothing but disdain for her character Laurie, one by one, they are taken in by her wit, charm, and huge boobs. You could argue that she is not a lady, but I would counter that with saying that she actually is. She has respect for her elders, is always dressed impeccably, and will always make sure you get the orgasm that you wanted all along. Sounds pretty lady-like to me. The Downton Abbey sisters should be taking some notes.
We are all glad the Busy back in the spotlight and acting pretty normal considering on her current show she does everything from sharking a car to beating a woman to a pulp with an umbrella. Busy, if you're listening, be my BFF. I don't have a drinking limit and only wear heels, and I love a guy with a cool tribal tattoo.
Another thing, gotta give props where props are due. We all know our girl Busy is no size 2, and we don't give a shit. She looks fabulous as a tall voluptuous, vixen and I can't get enough of her, especially her crazy horse teeth. I even love those.
If you know me, you know I love musicals. I grew up watching Singin' in the Rain, Oliver!The Band Wagon, West Side Story, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, South Pacific, Meet Me in St. Louis, basically everything Judy Garland/Barbara Streisand ever sung, everything Bob Fosse ever choreographed, and everything Andrew Lloyd Webber ever put on music sheets. If you have to ask your self how come every man I know is gay? it's because you love musicals as much as I do, and yes all of my male friends are gay.
This is why I'm thrilled to have someone I actually know personally undertake such mammoth task as writing and directing a musical. That friend is a wise-cracking, sassy, bubbly, and lovely French Canadian named Dominique Lefebvre, who's name we really will be seeing up in lights on the Great White Way. I have no doubt about that. An extremely gifted lyricist and budding filmmaker, Snickers (as I like to call her) has already made her mark by writing the wildly hilarious and beautifully put together short called Brand New Day (2010) a musical about Herpes. You heard me right.
Below are a couple of stills from Brand New Day (2010) (directed by Mark Raso)
She has much respect for her musical predecessors and gives due props to those trailblazers, which you can see in the way she utilizes what she's learned in her own work. Her new musical short The Gossip Queen (2012) is going to be nothing short of amazing, and I'm not just saying this because we're friends. She has the potential to take comedy filth and ironic humor and marry it with the glitz and bravado of a perfectly crafted musical performance very beautifully and it appears, seamlessly.
I'm so excited about the identity as a filmmaker that she is cultivating for herself, and think she'll fall neatly into place with the rest of the musical greats who aren't afraid of a little dirt, and a little scandal because they'll just turn it into something endlessly fabulous.
Let me give you some more information on the film. The Gossip Queen tells the story of a high school...you guessed it...gossip queen who finally ends up getting her comeuppance for the choices that she's made. Sounds rather dark doesn't it? But not to someone like Mrs. Lefebvre, who can turn even the most awkward and unpleasant moments of life, from catching Herpes to being ostracized by the only people that matter when you're in High School - other people in High School, into brilliant parody, with music. So prep your jazz hands, dust off that top hat, drink a bottle of Chardonnay, and please make a donation whether it be big or small to help her reach her budget goal and make The Gossip Queen a reality. You won't be sorry!
Click below to contribute. Every little bit helps!
Left to right: Jacqueline (basically the sweet nice one who just happens to be an awful parent), Teresa Guidice (everyone's new favorite girl we love to hate) Caroline (The mother hen 'we are family' should be tattooed on her face) Kathy (the crazy hot and at times smart new edition from last season who loves belly dancing) and Melissa Gorga (the youngest and prettiest of the bunch who has been in Teresa's cross hairs for a while now)
Put on your bling and spray tan the shit out of yourself because Real Housewives of New Jersey is back bitches, and this time 'It's all about family'...if you don't get the joke, it's just something that the cast constantly says verbatim in every single episode. Like: 'Mommy, I want to go to the bathroom' response: 'It's all about family.'
This installment is in my opinion the best of the whole franchise. ...of Atlanta was just a wee bit obnoxious and unrelatable (Thanks for nothing, Kim and NeNe), ...of Orange County was and still is rather boring, ...of Beverly Hills made me want to put panty hose over my head and sit with an assault rifle at a tower, and yes it's a very close second best, ...of New York I just never got into, nor into any of the millions of spin offs so fuck it altogether. ...of DC was actually quite interesting but they cut it loose after housewife Michaele Salahi and scumbag hubbie Tareq infamously crashed the White House State Dinner back in '09. Now, even that's too low for Bravo standards. Don't fuck with Obama, Andy Cohen.
So now we're back to the Garden State which the media milks like the fattest cow in the pasture with shows like Jersey Couture, Jerseylicious, and of course, my personal fave Jersey Shore. And Bravo is staying on the tattooed, fake tanned, skanky, and sweaty dumb-as-fuck bandwagon if it kills them.
No new characters since the uberbitch Danielle Staub left the show (thank god) and was replaced with new token uberbitch's Teresa's sister-in-law Melissa and Teresa's cousin Kathy. So basically, more MILF's.
In the season premiere Teresa explains to her former allies why exactly she's been such a cunt and betrayed all of them for attention. She actually looks sincere in this photo, no?
Teresa's had a pretty hard last season - she filed for bankruptcy, her husband was cheating on her (what? guys totally jacked up on steroids with little to say other thank 'fuck off' to their 9 year old kids are cheaters too? why I never), and he was arrested for drunk driving. So basically living up to the Jersey reputation which enrages regular New-Jersian's even more, but she's come out of it a few buckets of botox later emerging in the premiere of the 4th season last week looking fantastic, whory, and a bit more mellow. I'm sure her doc doubled her xanax dosage.
Teresa's husband, Joe Guidice or as she refers to him 'Juicy Joe' (no joke) doing what he does best...weightlifting.
More than anything, she's threatened by the meteoric rise of unlikely lovable character Melissa who is a mommy of three and still in her 20's. She looks like the poor-man's version of J-Lo/Eva Longoria which is ironic considering she's probably richer than the two of them combined. As like the rest of them classy broads in Jersey her hair and make-up are well off the Richter scale and every day she manages to look like a high end prostitute that a governor or major athlete gets busted with.
With the premiere, it's looking like the friction between aging hag Teresa and hottest-mom-in-Jersey Melissa will be the focal point as they fight it out for the soul of Joe Gorga (Melissa's juicehead hubby and Teresa's juicehead brother). So when you think about it, it's very A Streetcar Named Desire, except with morons. Teresa is Blanche, Melissa is Stella, and Joe is Stanley with (if you can imagine) even more muscles and more of an oaf.
Anyway, Season 4 promises all that sun-burnt drama served in marinara sauce on a plate of diamonds, with a luscious side-dish of hair extensions and an extra helping of shameless self-promotion. Dig in America. Third episode runs this Sunday, May 6th. Please watch it and then feel vengeful hate for me because I recommended it to you.
Below is Melissa's 'first single' called 'On Display' (of course it is) don't expect too much. It's actually kinda funny I wish I could show you how it first ran on Bravo last season when she performed it 'live' because it was so auto tuned it was ridiculous.
And here is the season 4 promo. It should just be subtitled 'Lots of Drama happens for no particular reason'
Since today is International Women's Day, I'd like to do a total gladiator champion death-match between the two queens of cinema and movie stardom that ever cemented what it was like to be a female on screen. I'm speaking of course of the grand dames of old Hollywood: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, rivals, bitter enemies, evil bitches both of them, and fabulous as all fuck. Each brought their own reverence into the spirit of womanhood and shoved everyone else aside so she was the only one left standing; proclaiming, 'I'm queen here, bitches. Now get me a large scotch.'
Let's have a clean fight ladies...who am I kidding it's going to be an all out glorious blood-bath, so let's not stand on ceremony and start the show.
In this corner, weighing in at 105 pounds, she's the queen of shop-girls, a superbitch on the set and at home. Her daughter might despise her, but we can't get enough of that that my-way-or-the-highway attitude. She hates wire hangers, but she loves her some married men. The former Lucille Fay LeSuer, Miss Joaaaaaaaaaan Crawwwwwwwwford!
And in the other corner, right out of the blue-blooded east coast, coming in at 120 pounds, but sometimes more, with legit D-cups and a crazy-large pair of peepers, she's been married and divorced four times, and loved every minute of it. Don't get in her way or she'll go Of Human Bondage on your ass. It's the First Lady of Film and the Fifth Warner Brother, but don't call her that to her face or she'll throw her drink at you, Miss Bette Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaavis!
Ladies, let's have a good fight, no slapping, no biting, no hair-pulling, and no scratching, no backstabbing, no manipulating, and definitely no attitude...yeah right.
These two queen bees would have a life-long battle for all to see in both their public lives onscreen and their private lives at home. Always one-upping each other, they were destined to be competition from the word go. For two women that were constantly contending against one-another, it's almost astounding at how fundamentally different they were.
both had how shall we say it delicately, a plain jane past. This is Joan at 15 before the glossy glitz of the MGM style machine took hold of her aesthetic.
Let's review. Crawford was poor white trash from San Antonio, Texas who moved to New York and developed a reputation as fast and loose party-girl whom F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term 'Flapper' for. She packed her bags for Hollywood when she was 19 and came to MGM as a dance extra for hire. In the next 5 years she transitioned from floozie to bona fide leading lady, and became her studio's hottest commodity next to Clark Gable. That same studio would betray her when she was labeled box office poison around the early 1940's and dumped her like a stray dog. But she had her revenge when she stooped to audition for MGM rival Warner Bros. hot new property Mildred Peirce (1945). But guess who was at Warner at the time and didn't like that one bit?
If you can believe it, this is Davis at 19...not 90.
Davis came from an upper-middle class family from bumblefuck Massachusetts, with a determined starry-eyed stage-mom that chose Bette over her sister to be the cash cow of the family. She didn't exactly look like a knockout, so began training as a 'serious actress' of the stage. She moved to Hollywood at 19 with mommers and scored mere extra work also until some genius casting agent fished her head shot out of the garbage and handed it to John Cromwell who was getting ready to direct Of Human Bondage. From then on Jack Warner latched on to Mrs. Ruth Elizabeth Davis and milked her career for close to 15 years, but he had no idea Ms. Davis had a pair of cast iron testicles and no one was going to tell her what she could and couldn't do. Becoming a royal pain in Warner's ass, also in the late 1940's, Davis splintered from her home studio and became one of the first high-ranking movie stars to fly solo without a studio deal.
Crawford and Davis both in they're 50's in the climactic art-imitating-life showdown circus that was the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962)
The friction between Crawford and Davis goes far deeper than just competition over film roles, and started decades before when Davis first started appearing on the scene playing tough and independent young ladies with a gritty realism; a role Crawford had been honing for quite some time at that point, but her boss Louis B. Mayer never gave her quite enough of a punch in the parts she played quite like Davis got. Ironically, Crawford always seemed softer, quieter, and more subservient in comparison with Davis' fiery and staunch personalities.
A masculine, tougher Joan Crawford emerges in the 40's, none so better illustrated than her character of Mildred Peirce, with the exception of Johnny Guitar of course.
Both were 'resurrected from the dead', as Davis once put it, after each had been divorced from her respective studio family, Crawford with Mildred Peirce (1945) for which she won the Academy Award, and Davis 5 years later in All About Eve (1950) both characters at odds with their age and subsequent place in the world while leading extraordinary lives of both extreme success and failure, and coping with the societal and personal struggles of being a woman with power.
The quintessential Bette Davis role was as Margot Channing in All About Eve (1950) who was pretty much an amalgam of Davis herself, the tough exterior, but vulnerable core, arrogant and loud, but tender and romantic; a woman that does everything in excess, drink, perform, and love.
Backtracking for a moment: when both hit their mid-30 mark and started settling down and having kids (in Crawford's case adopting kids...well in all fairness, buying kids off the black market because adoption services all over the country saw that she was too crazy to be a candidate) anyway! The competition only intensified, when Hollywood leach and supercunt Louella Parsons, a devoted slave of William Randolph Hearst, and basically the inventor of the tabloid reported that Bette Davis' newborn daughter B.D. was the most beautiful baby the world had ever seen, Joan promptly showed up to a press conference the next month with not one but two newly adopted babies. That's just one example.
Strangely, or perhaps not strangely at all, both BD and Crawford's daughter Christina later wrote scathing tell-alls against their mothers alleging all kinds of abuse and mistreatment. Christina's of course being the more famous of the two, and one has to wonder if that competitive air between Crawford and Davis transitioned into a competition between their daughters.
Bette Davis with daughter and mini-me BD Hyman on her wedding day. (Bette let her marry when she was only 16 by the way). BD's memoir about her mother (titled My Mother's Keeper) was, unlike Christina's, published while Bette was still alive, and had such an affect on the elder Davis that it caused her to have a second heart attack. Needless to say Davis later severed all ties with her daughter. and I for one like to think of BD as an ungrateful bitch. but that's just me.
I can tell you're getting bored and/or lost at this point, so I'll just leave it at the following:
Both Davis and Crawford created a female persona of unfathomable standards back in Hollywood's golden era. They were absolute consummate professionals of their craft and each defined what it was to be a star, what it was to be powerful, and what it was to be a woman. Both exuded qualities of extreme toughness and yet raw vulnerability, and every woman working in Hollywood right now owes those two a debt of gratitude.
Honorable mentions would of course include Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, and Katherine Hepburn, but when I think of a female movie star, I think either Crawford or Davis, and I usually think of both at the same time, because even though each had very different technique, style, and aesthetic, there's no winner to me. They are both just an inch above the rest.
If you want to see their bitchfight truly culminate, you have to check out Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), where they basically play themselves in the autumn of their lives; former child actresses, now completely discarded, still at odds with each other and ready to destroy one another...quite literally. In a nutshell Bette has to take care of sister Joan because earlier she had injured her enough to cripple her so out of guilt becomes almost her servant, resents it, cooks her a dead rat. Then there's drinking, bondage, and gruesome fighting. It's absolutely fantastic.
Below are some clips from both Crawford and Davis that I thought you might enjoy, more for people that are getting a crash course in the two. If you know your shit you can skip over them. Actually don't, watch regardless.
Unlike Bette, Joan got her start in silent film. Before she was everyone's favorite shop-girl, she was the wild and flirtatious nightclub dancer, this is way before she polished the 'Crawford persona' and developed her trademark, which is why she looks so different. She's considered 'the ultimate movie star' because she covers the entire spectrum; started out as a chorus girl, moved up to the flapper of the silent era, then transitioned successfully into sound. After which crested for a bit, and made a huge comeback in her 40's, a battle year for any actress. She was the personification of resilience.
Bette in her big break as Mildred Rogers the sluttish cockney waitress that ruins an idealistic young man (Leslie Howard) in Of Human Bondage (1934) (based on the classic novel by W. Somerset Maugham). She later said her career had two periods: before-Maugham and after-Maugham.
The trailer for that classic bitch movie The Women (dir. George Cukor, 1939) where Joan is the villain but somehow comes out everyone's favorite.
Bette Davis was actually the frontrunner for the wildly contested and coveted role of Scarlet O'Hara, but what kept her from eventually landing the role, which Warner Bros. was slated to give her was that she had only the year before done a part very similar to it, that of the lovelorn Southern Belle Julie in Jezebel (1938), for which she won her second Oscar.
Crawford made many films with the other giant MGM star at the time Clark Gable, with whom she had a longstanding passionate affair. This is one of my favorites, Strange Cargo (1940) a lot of the roles they played back in those days were along the same lines, but it's awesome to see those two commanding personalities duke it out. It's something I never tire of.
A very Crawford Christmas. A radio broadcast Crawford did with her children in 1949 which wreaks of being staged to the point where it's almost ridiculous. Christina Crawford would later cite how much she hated Christmas because of how stifling and unspontaneous the whole affair would be.
Bette Davis in perhaps her best role as uber-bitch Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1941) directed by long-time collaborator and some-time lover William Wyler. No one has yet pulled off being so deliciously evil.
Joan Crawford parodies herself and her onscreen persona (particularly the kind she culminated with Mildred Peirce) for It's a Great Feeling (1949)
The infamous 'lunch' scene from the ubiquitous camp opus Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) When tensions between sisters Blanche (Crawford) and Baby Jane (Davis) come to a disgusting head.
An old and wise, cynical, profound, and courageous Davis reflects.
Joan in a wonderfully ridiculous outfit in her last televised interview reminisces about her golden years in the industry and about the great loves of her life: Gable and Tracey.
