Two icons were born today: Barbra Streisand is 69 and Virginia’s own Shirley MacLaine is 77….
Of course, I have to put up a couple of clips:
A little prime Streisand:
And a little MacLaine:
Category Archives: Movies
Happy Birthday, Barbra Streisand and Shirley MacLaine
Filed under Broadway, Entertainment, Gay, Movies
Judy Garland: Over the Rainbow, and Then Some!
In recognition of her Carnegie Hall Concert 50 years ago tonight, there’s a lot of new interest in Judy Garland.
Here is a great article from this month’s Vanity Fair:
In December 1959, Judy Garland, only 37 but with a quarter-century of hard living behind her, lay near death in New York’s Doctors Hospital. Alcohol and pills were the culprits. When in reasonably good health, Garland, who stood an inch under five feet, weighed 100 pounds. Now she weighed 180. Her tiny frame was grotesquely swollen with fluid and her liver severely compromised. Her eyes were glazed; her memory was failing; her body was shutting down. Walking by Garland’s hospital room, a close friend overheard a clutch of doctors discussing her condition. One of them turned to the friend. “I have to tell you the truth,” the doctor said. “I don’t think she’s going to make it.”
She made it. “She had the constitution of an army,” Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft says. “She just knew she had to keep going.” But three weeks later, after 20 quarts of fluid had been drained from her body, her lead physician told Garland, “For the rest of your life, all your physical activity must be curtailed. You are a permanent semi-invalid.… It goes without saying that under no circumstances can you ever work again.”
Garland fell back onto her pillows. “Whoopee!” she cried, weakly.
50 Years Ago Tonight: Judy at Carnegie Hall
Judy Garland’s legendary Carnegie Hall Concert was 50 years ago tonight…
There is a new documentary about the night, “Stay All Night” currently in production.
Here is a another clip about that night:
Filed under Broadway, Entertainment, Movies
Rich and Famous
I can’t believe it’s been 30 years since this movie was released….
It’s not the best film in the world, but I do love it…
It’s a guilty pleasure…
Jacqueline Bisset, Candice Bergen, Hart Bochner….all in their prime.
It was the last film George Cukor directed and the first film for Meg Ryan….
Filed under Entertainment, Movies
Tyler Perry To Spike Lee: ‘Go Straight To Hell’
This is an interesting dynamic….
All I’ll say is that I tried to watch the first Tyler Perry Madea movie on HBO and thought it was just awful. I couldn’t believe the stereotypical characters and the bad acting and writing….
I couldn’t watch the whole thing it was so bad….
But this isn’t my fight…
From The Huffington Post:
The long-simmering war of words between Tyler Perry and Spike Lee is heating up again.
Perry, in both a message on his website and a press conference to promote “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” hit out against Lee, who in 2009 said, among other things, that Perry’s films “harken back to ‘Amos n’ Andy’.” While Perry’s website message was vague and resilient, defending his work as both spiritually uplifting and fun, his words for Lee were blunt and harsh in the press conference.
“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee,” Perry said during the press conference (via Box Office Magazine). “Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘this is a coon, this is a buffoon.’ I am sick of him talking about black people going to see movies. This is what he said: ‘you vote by what you see,’ as if black people don’t know what they want to see.”
Perry’s films are consistent high performers at the box office; all independently financed, they’ve taken in over $520 million in ticket receipts over the past six years. He recently extended his deal with distributor Lionsgate, with whom he has worked since 2005. Lee was critical in spite of that success.
“Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors, but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery,” he said in ’09. “I know it’s making a lot of money and breaking records, but we can do better. … I am a huge basketball fan, and when I watch the games on TNT, I see these two ads for these two shows (Tyler Perry’s ‘Meet the Browns’ and ‘House of Payne’), and I am scratching my head. We got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep ‘n’ Eat?”
Filed under Entertainment, Movies, Uncategorized
“The Help”: First Movie Trailer is here….
And it looks like it’s going to be good…
I’m so glad because I loved this book….
Here it is:
Michael Sarrazin: Rest in Peace
I read today that Michael Sarrazin had died…
He was one of my favorite actors when I was a pre-teen and a teenager…I had looked him up on IMDB.com not too long ago to see what he was doing…
He hit fairly big in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, but his career never really took off from there…
His eyes were unforgettable…
He missed his big chance when his studio would not release him to do “Midnight Cowboy” and Jon Voight got the part instead…
I remember Michael Sarrazin well from “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They”, “Sometimes a Great Notion” and the TV Mini Series”Frankenstein: The True Story”. He made many other films and TV appearances that will live on….
Filed under Entertainment, Movies
I’m sorry, but no man can look but so butch in espadrilles….
Not even John Wayne…
Pictures like this and films like “Red River” are why the gay whispers never die out about The Duke…
A new look for the conservative Icon:
John Wayne in espadrilles and other beach attire...
Filed under Broadway, Entertainment, Movies
Happy Birthday, Tim Curry. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s” Sweet Transvestite from Transylvania is 65
So many stars I grew up with seem to be ready for Social Security.
I must have been an infant when I saw this for the first time…
It was quite mind-blowing to see this in ultra conservative Danville, Virginia in the late 1970’s.
I’ll never forget one of my friends mother’s helping him with his panty hose before we went to see it.
He has two children now…
And another musical moment that’s a little more mainstream….
From “Annie” in 1982 with Carol Burnett and Bernadette Peters.
That really should have been a better movie….
Filed under Entertainment, Movies, Uncategorized
Happy Birthday: Hayley Mills is 65 Today
Ah, yes….
Another childhood star is ready to collect Social Security.
Hayley Mills made a lot of films in the 1960’s for Disney and other Studios….
Two of my favorites were the original “The Parent Trap” and “The Trouble with Angels”.
She still works today- she had a very successful tour as Anna in “The King and I” a few years ago…
I hope another certain young, actress who was in the remake of “The Parent Trap” gets her act together and becomes professional enough to enjoy a career as long and enjoyable as the original “Parent Trap” Star…
But there is only one Hayley Mills….
Scene from “The Parent Trap”:
And from “The Trouble with Angels”:
Filed under Entertainment, Movies
Lost in the 21st Century 