DId you know?? June 29, 2006

• For her second film, Lassie Come Home (1943), Elizabeth was paid $100 a week. The dog who played Lassie, however, was paid more than twice that: $250 a week.

• Elizabeth attended school at the famous Little Red Schoolhouse on the MGM lot, which also educated the likes of Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Margaret O’Brien and Lana Turner.
• According to Richard Burton, “Her breasts would topple empires before they withered.”
• Taylor owns another piece of historic jewelry, an elaborate enameled bracelet once owned by Napoleon’s wife, Josephine Bonapart.
• ” Elizabeth has one of the foremost private jewelry collections in the world. Pieces she has owned include the 33.19 carat Krupp Diamond and the 69.42 carat pear-shaped Taylor-Burton Diamond, both gifts from Richard Burton.
• She never read an entire script, just her own lines.

Happy Pride Day!! June 25, 2006

It’s a Gay Pride in San Francisco today!!

Top 50 R&B LADIES 1942-1999: June 25, 2006

This list is compiled from the top 500 artist list in Joel Whitburn’s Top
R&B Singles 1942-1999, based on Billboard’s R&B charts (see point system below).
Included are solo women, girl groups and female lead singers who received
label credit along with their group.


Top 50 R&B LADIES 1942-1999:

1- ARETHA FRANKLIN
2- GLADYS KNIGHT
3- DINAH WASHINGTON
4- DIANA ROSS
5- JANET JACKSON
6- WHITNEY HOUSTON
7- SUPREMES
8- DIONNE WARWICK
9- PATTI LABELLE
10- NATALIE COLE
11- MARIAH CAREY
12- STEPHANIE MILLS
13- RUTH BROWN
14- MARY J. BLIGE
15- DONNA SUMMER
16- CHAKA KHAN
17- ROBERTA FLACK
18- MELBA MOORE
19- BETTY WRIGHT
20- MILLIE JACKSON
21- POINTER SISTERS
22- DENIECE WILLIAMS
23- ETTA JAMES
24- MARTHA & THE VANDELLAS
25- EVELYN “CHAMPAIGN” KING
26- EMOTIONS
27- ANITA BAKER
28- MARVELETTES
29- CANDI STATON
30- LAVERN BAKER
31- MARY WELLS
32- EN VOGUE
33- MONICA
34- ESTHER PHILLIPS
35- JODY WATLEY
36- ELLA FITZGERALD
37- S W V
38- STACY LATTISAW
39- TLC
40- PHYLLIS HYMAN
41- TEENA MARIE
42- SALT-N-PEPPA
43- TONI BRAXTON
44- FAITH EVANS
45- CARLA THOMAS
46- VANESSA WILLIAMS
47- BRANDY
48- KARYN WHITE
49- SISTER SLEDGE
50- SHIRELLES

June 23, 2006

Swing Out Sister – Waiting Game

1989 swing out sister
“Kaleidoscope World” still one of my top 10 CD

June 23, 2006

Swing Out Sister – Waiting Game

1989 swing out sister
“Kaleidoscope World” still one of my top 10 CD

June 23, 2006

Swing Out Sister – Waiting Game

1989 swing out sister
“Kaleidoscope World” still one of my top 10 CD

June 23, 2006

Swing Out Sister – Waiting Game

1989 swing out sister
“Kaleidoscope World” still one of my top 10 CD

Swing Out Sister – Waiting Game 1989 swing out sis… June 23, 2006

Swing Out Sister – Waiting Game

1989 swing out sister
“Kaleidoscope World” still one of my top 10 CD

Eva Marie Saint is Back!!! June 23, 2006

Academy Award Winner Eva Marie Saint Is Back as as Clark Kent’s adoptive mother in director Bryan Singer’s much-anticipated revival of the original comic book superhero franchise, “Superman Returns”

Played one of most famous female leads in movie history, opposite Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront (1954). She certainly brought “real acting” in a time when melodrama still ran rampant in the industry. Who can forget her memorable argument scene with Brando when she says, “I didn’t say I don’t love you, I said I want you to get out.” Eva Marie Saint is still going strong with her work. She takes the fact that she’s part of film history in her stride.

She was well-served by the gripping drug-addiction drama, “A Hatful of Rain” (1957) and her cool intelligence made for a very suitable Hitchcock heroine opposite Cary Grant in “North by Northwest” (1959). After a fourteen year absence, Saint returned to features as Tom Hanks’ mother in “Nothing in Common” (1986). Nine years later, she was in the cast of the as-yet unreleased film “Mariette in Ecstasy”.

Hollywood director Sherman dies at 99 June 22, 2006

Vincent Sherman, who directed — and romanced — Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth and Joan Crawford during his heyday as a leading Hollywood filmmaker in the 1940s and ’50s, has died. He would have been 100 on July 16.

His death Sunday night at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital was announced by his son, Eric Sherman.

Vincent Sherman, whose film career was seriously damaged by Hollywood’s communist “red scare,” later became a successful director of such television series as “The Waltons,” “Doctors Hospital,” “Baretta,” “Trapper John, M.D.” and “77 Sunset Strip.”

Because of his ability to evoke powerful performances from strong-willed female stars, Sherman became known as a woman’s director, a title he hated. He was quick to point out that he also directed Errol Flynn in “The Adventures of Don Juan,” Paul Newman in “The Young Philadelphians,” Bogart in “All Through the Night,” Richard Burton in “The Ice Palace” and Ronald Reagan in “The Hasty Heart.”

Sherman also gained a reputation for romancing many of his famous actresses, and he wrote about them in his 1996 autobiography, “Studio Affairs.”

No More Wire Hanger June 22, 2006

We all “ve heard a lot of “wire Hanger story” is it true or not ..We didn’t know but most of the time there came from Christina ’s story… Here what I just read from http://joancrawfordma.tripod.com/id115.html

The years following JoJo’s death were punctuated with the publication of “Mommie Dearest” by Aunt Christina. My mother appeared on Good Morning America in May 1981 to defend her mother. I realized that day that JoJo was a tremendous Hollywood star because my classmates and teachers interrupted the morning’s lessons to watch the broadcast. That also marked the day I began keeping the name of my grandmother a secret. I had a belly full of Mommie Dearest jokes. No one but my closest friends I grew up with knew who I was. To most other classmates, teachers and neighbors, I was just another suburban kid.

Upon reflection of my grandmother’s life, she left nothing to chance. That included her resistance to being called “grandmother,” “grandma” or any of the many names children bestow on grandparents. She preferred a self-created nickname, “JoJo.” It was a natural nickname, derived from her first name. It rolls off the tongue and was easy for a child to remember and master.

To me, JoJo was a loving and caring grandmother who lived in exciting New York City. To the rest of the world, she was Joan Crawford. Yes, The Joan Crawford, star of over eighty films and dozens of television appearances. Oscar winner, Pepsi diplomat and grandmother.

I knew her during her last years and while she was in failing health. But did she still shine! There was a spark even I as a child could see in her eyes. The same eyes that dazzled in “Rain” and “Mildred Pierce.”

Read full story Here

J

Leave her to Heaven ****1/2 June 22, 2006

Leave her to heaven was one of the fabulous movie I’ve seen lately. It’s one of the rare noir type that has a color in it . It also one of the most beautiful orgasmic color cinematography every been in a history of cinema.

” Leave Her to Heaven shares a closer kinship to Michael Powell’s British-made Black Narcissus (1947), where color similarly acts as a breathing character amidst turgid, denied emotions of lust, covetousness, dislocation, and death. If it sparks a memory of Douglas Sirk’s lush dramas, there’s a reason. Stahl directed Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession in the 1930s. Sirk remade both in the 1950s.”

“The success of Leave Her to Heaven belongs foremostto Gene Tierney. She was much more than Hollywood’s most beautiful overbite. She had the preternatural ability to be alluring and icy at the same time; she could change emotional colors with magnificent yetsubtle clarity. Wasn’t she sweet and warm a moment ago? Maybe, but now she’s ready to kill. She was at the top of her game in Leave Her to Heaven,and alongside Laura, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Heaven Can Wait,and The Razor’s Edge, she amassed a list of credits to stack against any
others of the late 1940s.”

read a full article at http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/48/leave.htm

In a Lavender Limelight June 21, 2006

“Truman Capote Is a Republican housewife from Kansas with all prejudices”

Gore Vidal

“Gore Vidal has never written a novel that readable with the exception of Myra Brekenridge, which you can sort of thumb your way through.. His novel are unbelievably bad . His essays is quite good… If he doesn’t hate somebody much”

Truman Capote

“I took drug not a lot back then . I did it to please Cary Grant. He was trying LSD back then when it was legal. He had notion that he could become heterosexual with it ….He didn’t want to do this thing solo…He was very lonely man ..Very insecure.. Obviously ..I am so secure ..It’s ridiculous”

Truman Capote

June 19, 2006

Young Man With A Horn (soundtrack) by Doris Day

June 19, 2006

Young Man With A Horn (soundtrack) by Doris Day