Check-Out These Awesome Pin-up Glasses!

Isn't this the best retro ad for George Petty pin-up glasses?  Judging from the font and style of the ad this has to be from from the mid-to-late fifties.  I can just imagine a bunch of blue collar Joes smoking cigars, playing a game of poke using pornographic playing cards (at least as pornographic as playing cards got in those days) drinking hi-balls from these glasses.  Wouldn't it be great to track down a set of these?

Me-thinks I have a date with e-bay...

A Bombshell for the Ages: Esther Williams

Today's Bombshell for the Ages made waves in Hollywood as the first lady of the aqua-musical.  Esther Williams rose to fame in the forties and fifties through a series of films which featured her either performing in a wide variety of synchronized swimming routines or underwater ballet sequences, swimming the English channel, or even taking part in the odd water skiing number; essentially any sort of aquatic spectacle creative brass at MGM could come up with.  There was no other actress in Hollywood did what she did.  Let's take a closer look MGM's Million Dollar Mermaid.

Esther Williams was born in Inglewood California in 1922 to Louis and Bula Williams.  She was the youngest of five children.  As a young girl her older sister took her to the beach and swimming pools where she discovered her love for the water.  When she got older she began working as a towel counter at the pool in exchange for the five cent entry fee.  There she began taking lessons from the male lifeguard in proper stroke technique.  In those days strokes like Breaststroke and the Butterfly were only taught to men, however young Esther convinced the lifeguard to impart his knowledge on these strokes.  Before long Esther was setting  national records in freestyle an breaststroke.  She set the national AAU record in the 100m freestyle in 1939 and would have competed in the 1940 Olympics, had the second world war not broken out.

Once she graduated high school, Esther began attending Los Angeles Community college and working at a department store where she started as a stock girl, and eventually moved into modelling for the store.  While working at the department store she was contacted by an agent about appearing in the Billy Rose's Aquacade show (basically a big synchronized swimming extravaganza).  While performing with the Aquacade Esther was spotted by MGM scouts who were looking for a female athlete to mould into the next Sonja Henie (a 1930s Olympic figure skater turned Hollywood star).  She signed with MGM in exchange for a guarantee that she could swim in the Beverly Hills Hotel pool everyday.   She took part in studio training to mould her into a singing, dancing, and acting superstar.  As with most burgeoning starlets of the era much of her early time with the studio involved taking plenty of pin-up photos and visiting wounded soldiers in army hospitals as a part of the war effort.

Esther's first film role was opposite Mickey Rooney's eponymous character in Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942).  Her first aquatic role would occur two years later in Bathing Beauty (1944).  She went on star in several other aquatic themed films, each with a bigger better aquatic set piece to outdo the last.  Among her most popular include The Thrill of Romance (1945), Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949),  Neptune's Daughter (1949), Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), Easy to Love (1953), and Dangerous When Wet (1953).  In spite of her athleticism and skill in the water the underwater feats performed by Esther in her films often took their toll on this aquatic bombshell.  She almost drowned on more than one occasions, once due to improper swimming attire (a heavy flannel bathing suit that became so heavy that it dragged Esther to the bottom of the pool) and from not being able to find the trap door to exit an enclosed water tank.  She also ruptured her eardrums on several occasions and even broke her neck after attempting an 115 ft drive for the movie Million Dollar Mermaid (1952).  This spinal injury left her in a body cast of 7 months.  By the mid-fifties she had fallen out of favour with MGM and left the studio.  She signed with Universal International, and made a few non-musical dramatic films.  None of the Universal films came close to the success that her films with MGM, and by the sixties she retired from acting.

In the years since her retirement, Ms. Williams has been anything but idle.  She is the namesake of both a retro swimwear company and pool manufacturer.  She has also created a series of Mom and Tot swimming instructional videos.  She currently lives in Beverly Hills with her fourth husband of 16 years.

Here's a little taste of an Esther Williams aqua-musical:

The Women is a Pretty Entertaning Film

I've never been much of a girly, girl.  Truth be told, I would rather get into a discussion about the fine art of cheese-making than gossiping about the exploits of some girl I barely knew ten years ago.  Mind you, if the women who moved in and out of my life were anything like the women or George Cukor's 1939 classic, The Women, I might be willing to pull up a seat at the beauty salon to listen to their exploits whilst the manicurist paints my fingernails jungle red.     

The Women stars Norma Sheerer as Mary Haines, a blissfully married women who is completely unaware that her husband Steven has been carrying-on with Crystal, the predatory perfume-counter girl played with snide glee by Joan Crawford.  Her cousin, and notorious gossip, Sylvia Fowler (played by Rosalind Russell at her shrill best) finds out and delights in informing everyone in their social circle, while cruelly arranging for Mary to find out from her manicurist.  A devestated Mary decends first into denile, and then eventually defeat, deciding to get a quicky Reno divorce.  While in Reno, she befriends an asortment of divorcees including the unquenchably romantic Countess De Lave (Mary Boland), tough-cookie showgirl Miriam Aarons (Paulette Goddard), and the timid Peggy (Joan Fontaine) who is part of Mary's social circle back in New York.  They all settle in a Reno ranch owned by salt-of-the earth Lucy (Marjorie Main) to wait out their divorces. A cat-fight breaks out, duplicitous Sylvia is knocked off her high horse, and Mary realizes that she was a fool to lie down so easily and let Crystal make off with her man.  Fortuantely, as in all Hollywood comedies of the era, Mary ulitmately triumphs and everyone gets their just desserts. 

Notice that I haven't pointed out any noteworthy actors from this film?  That's because there are none. No man ever appears on camera in this film, and the filmmakers went to great pains to make sure that everything up to the animals on the ranch were female.  When it was originally released the tagline of the film was It's all about men, as a tongue-and-cheek way of juxtaposing the fact that there are no men in the film with the fact that the film is all about the joys and woes of hertosexual relationships.  Pretty cute.

 Two things, not including than the cleaver writing and delivery of all the catty lines, stood out to me the most aabout this film during my last viewing: the fashion and Paulette Goddard.  During the film the viewer is treated to a ten minute sequence of a late thirties high society fashion show, featuring the most dazzling array of the era's haute couture.  Similarly, the ladies spend the entire film in some truly jaw dropping numbers- my favourites being Paulette Goddard's riding outfit, which makes her look like she's in some sort of Wild West cheerleading revue and the intergalactic hat and tulle number that Rosalind Russell dons in the final climax.  On the subject of Ms. Goddard, why have I never noticed her before? She plays the street-wise girl brilliantly, ranking up there along with some of Barbara Stanwyck and Jean Arthur's best tough talking dames.  I smell a future bombshell for the ages subject.

I recommend this film for anyone who enjoys some good catty fun.  Oh... and please do not go anywhere near the dismal 2008 remake.  Here's the trailer.

A Bombshell for the Ages: Pam Grier - A Whole 'Lotta Bombshell

If you were to look up amazonian beauty in the dictionary, you would probably find a picture of Pam Grier.  The first lady of seventies blaxploitation films and one of cinema's all-time badasses, Ms. Grier has led a remarkable life and has left an indelible legacy on the world of film.

An army brat, born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on May 26, 1949, Pamela Suzette Grier spent most of her childhood on the move, living in various locales in the United States and spending some time in England.  At the age of 6 she was raped by two boys while left unattended at her aunt's house.  She spent many years dealing with the pain and it could be argued that her anger this experience helped her to form the take no-prisoners attitude that many of the characters she would go on to play in her films exhibit.  Her family finally settled in Denver, Colorado during her high school years, and she spent much of this time taking part in various stage productions.  She also took part in a beauty pageant to help raise tuition money for college.

In 1967, Pam decided to try her luck in Hollywood.  She found a job as a receptionist at American International Pictures (AIP), a production company that focused primarily on the production of low budget drive-in movies, B-movies, and exploitation films.  While working for AIP, she was soon discovered by director Jack Hill, who cast Grier in his women-in-prison flicks, The Big Doll House (1971) and The Big Bird Cage (1972).  With the emergence of blaxploitation films, Ms. Grier soon became of staple of the genre.  Her larger-than-life statuesque beauty combined with her bold, assertive persona made her a natural for the titular role in Coffy (1973) where she played a vengeful nurse trying to take out a crew of drug dealers.  She would go on to play similar roles in Foxy Brown (1974), Friday Foster (1975), and Sheba Baby (1975).

With the demise of the blaxploitation genre in the second half of the seventies, Ms. Grier moved on to play a number of one-off character roles in various films (such as 1981's Fort Apache the Bronx, 1988's Above the Law, and 1991's Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure) and television series (The Cosby Show, Miami Vice, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air to name a few).

It was Quentin Tarantino who launched Pam Grier back into the spotlight when he cast her as the lead in his low-key (for Tarantino) crime thriller Jackie Brown (1997).  Since this resurgence Ms. Grier has worked steadily in film and television.  Though she has had dalliances with many notable men including Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Richard Pryor, she never married and has no children.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a Pretty Awesome Film!

With the recent death of Jane Russell, I decided to revisit her best film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and was struck by the charm of this screwball comedy/musical.  Not that I have ever had any ill-will towards the film, but I forgot how genuinely entertaining it is, and what a great portrayal of female camaraderie it demonstrates.

Directed by Howard Hawkes and released in 1953, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes stars Russell and Marilyn Monroe as Dorothy Shaw and Lorelei Lee, two showgirls who are best friends with very different preferences in men.  Lorelei (Monroe) plays her typical ditzy blonde who is obsessed with millionaires and diamonds, while Russell's Dorothy despises men with money and is basically out to find a guy who can show her a good time.  Lorelei has captured the heart of a nerdy millionaire whose father disapproves of their union, and is going abroad to France to elope with her intended; Dorothy tags along to play chaperon and have a good time with the men's Olympic team who are travelling on the same ocean liner.

Their trip hits a snag when Lorelei's fiance's father hires a private eye to get some dirt on the blonde man-trap.  While trying to get to Lorelei he starts romancing Dorothy, and soon he and Dorothy fall of each other.  Meanwhile, Lorelei discovers that diamond mine owner Sir Frances "Piggy" Beekman (played by the always wonderful Charles Coburn) is on the ocean liner and starts plotting to seduce the old man into giving her his wife's diamond tiara.  The private dick gets the dirt on Lorelei and the girls have to hatch a plot to get it back from him.  Several misadventures and misunderstandings follow before the girls get their men and the happy ending they desire.

As mentioned before, the film really is all about the relationship between these two women and the way they constantly put their heads on the line for each other in difficult times.  The chemistry between Russell and Monroe is undeniable and the film is at its best when the two are playing off each other.  Other than Piggy, the male characters are pretty unremarkable and serve more as plot devices to explain the hijinks these girls get into.

As with the plot of the film, the musical numbers that work best are also the ones where both Monroe and Russell are together.  To most people who are familiar with the film, the number that immediately comes to mind is Monroe's often imitated, indelible  Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend.   Russell does a similar number with the Olympic team dancing along in flesh coloured shorts when she performs Ain't There Anyone Here For Love, and both numbers are great but together the ladies bring down the house.  Unlike many other musicals every song works in the film and pretty much every number is memorable.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ranks pretty high on my list of favourite movie musicals.  It's light, doesn't take itself too seriously, and is a lot of fun to watch.  I really recommend that people who have never seen it take a look.  Here's a sample of the Russell/Monroe magic.