Something happens to a woman when she isn't wanted... something dreadful!

After the promise of a nice weekend - with the brilliant sunshine yesterday while I was in the office - today it's grey and humid and drizzly out there. Of course.

Never mind, eh? A little visit from Steve Hayes, aka the Tired Old Queen at the Movies, is always a great pick-me up - especially when he's getting his teeth into a camp old Joan Crawford movie...

Tired Old Queen at the Movies - Joan Crawford in Possessed

Faboo!

Fact: Miss Crawford departed, to cause mayhem no doubt, for Fabulon 45 years ago on Tuesday.

It's Mommie's birthday today...

...have a slice!

And by way of a tribute...

Mark Gatiss and Frances Barber as "Bette and Joan" in Psychobitches

Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur, 23rd March 1904 – 10th May 1977)

Beauty in every form

"I have always known what I wanted, and that was beauty... in every form."

It's Mother's birthday again, bitches...



...so dance! She commands it.

Joan Crawford mega-mix

Thank Disco It's Friday - and thank Joan for everything else!

Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur, 23rd March 1904 – 10th May 1977)

A little bit of heatness

Oh bloody hell! It's Monday again, and after a lovely weekend pottering in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers, the very last thing I want to do is go back to work.

Never mind, dear Joan Crawford's birthday is today, and that's something that cannot be ignored. Thus, on this Tacky Music Monday, here is the immortal lady herself - blacked-up like some early RuPaul, and in a wig-tearing strop - with Two-Faced Woman [from the intensely tacky 1953 movie Torch Song, and, to add insult to injury, dubbed by India Adams]:

Joan Crawford - Two-Faced Woman

It's no wonder we queens all love her so!

Have a good week, people.

Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur, 23rd March 1904 (some sources list 1905, 1906 or 1908) – 10th May 1977)

"You're nothing but a railroad tramp!"

On this, what would have been the 98th birthday (and ten years this month since her death) of Miss Mercedes McCambridge - Oscar-winning actress for All the King's Men and nominated for Giant, and surprisingly also the voice of the Devil in The Exorcist.

But it is for her role as the bitter and twisted 'Emma', bent on the destruction of her small-town political rival ('Vienna', played to perfection by Miss Joan Crawford) in one of the most archly camp Westerns ever made, Johnny Guitar, for which we remember her most.

Here are just two of the magnificent sparring-matches between the grandes dames in the film. It helps the crackling atmosphere to know, of course, that the two women despised each other in real life as much as their characters hate each other on screen...

Johnny Guitar - The Final Showdown

Johnny Guitar - Piano Scene

And here - of course - is the sublime Miss Peggy Lee to sing the haunting title song:

Peggy Lee - Johnny Guitar

Wonderful...

Johnny Guitar on IMDB

Carlotta Mercedes McCambridge (16th March 1916 – 2nd March 2004)

I'm laughing at clouds so dark up above

Britain has been hit (as predicted) by hurricane force winds and torrential rain.

Our giant cosmos plants in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers are currently at a 45 degree angle, and a couple of the leafier pots were on their side this morning, but there's nothing surprising about that. Of course, the transport system across the South East of the UK is disrupted (that happens no matter what the weather - "wrong kind of snow", "too much sun", "leaves on the line"), and some people are without power. However it doesn't seem to have been Katrina so far.

As ever, with our stubborn "Blitz spirit" and - on this Tacky Music Monday - the combined forces of Dame Shirley Bassey and the Hollywood of 1929 superstar team of Joan Crawford, Lionel Barrymore, Marion Davies, Gus Edwards, John Gilbert, Buster Keaton, Marie Dressler, Anita Page, Norma Shearer and the rest, we shall see off this storm...

Dame Shirley Bassey - Don't Rain On My Parade

Various Artists - Singin' in the Rain (Hollywood Revue of 1929)

Storm latest

"I hope you weren't hurt..."

Mark Gatiss and Frances Barber as "Bette and Joan" in Psychobitches

Mark Gatiss stars as Joan Crawford and Frances Barber as Bette Davis in a new dark comedy Psychobitches, which features famous women from history in the therapist's chair (or, in this case, waiting room).

Look out, too, for "appearances" from Sylvia Plath, Audrey Hepburn, Eva Peron, Margot Fonteyn and the Bronte Sisters...

Psychobitches is on tonight (30th May 2013) at 9pm on Sky Arts 1 HD.

Utter, utter genius!

Miss LaSueur commands it...

It's her birthday... So Dance, Fools, Dance!

Joan Crawford in Dance, Fools, Dance

Lucille LaSueur aka Joan Crawford (23rd March 1905 - 10th May 1977)

More Joan

Even more Joan

Playing bitches

We went to see the first preview performance of a budding extravaganza last night - Anton Burge's new play based on the lives of two of the greats, Bette and Joan. It was superb!

Featuring the remarkable talents of Anita Dobson as Joan and Greta Scacchi as Bette, this is a tour-de-force of bitchery, as the two ladies play out a series of monologues (with the occasional meeting in between) in their dressing-rooms at the set for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. And play them they certainly do!

Miss Scacchi has Bette down to a "T", all her exaggerated twitches, her arrogance, her exasperated melodrama, her coarse swearing and her clipped vocal delivery. Never neglecting the pathos that lay behind the tough old broad - her need for a "good picture" in order to pay the domestic bills for her domineering mother Ruthie and mentally-ill sister Bobby, her bad marriage(s), her acceptance of the fact that she was never a great beauty - Miss Scacchi nevertheless makes the "monster" that was Bette really come to life.

She gets to deliver some of the best Bette Davis lines, too!

• "Sex. God's biggest joke on human beings." (to which Joan allegedly quipped, "I think the joke's on you."
• "Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life."
• "I've always liked men better than women."
• "I was known as the little brown wren. Who'd want to get me at the end of the picture?"
• "Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies."
• "She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie." (on Joan Crawford)

Anita Dobson, however, got the juicy (and somewhat more difficult) role, in portraying Miss Crawford. Simultaneously sugary-sweet (her catchphrases "Bless You", and "Eternal thanks, Dear", and her insistence on "good manners" are sublimely irritating - imagine what Bette made of them!), yet ruthlessly driven by ambition, resentment, control, and an obsessive desire to be loved (by fans, by directors, by co-stars, by men), Joan was a conundrum.

From her early escape from rural Kansas via the casting-couch to stardom, to perfectionist obsession, to pure evil, Miss Dobson captures Joan Crawford perfectly - particularly in the malicious way she wore a weighted belt in the scene where Bette has to drag her out of bed, knowing that Miss Davis had a bad back. Superb!

She also delivers some classic lines:

• "If I can't be me, I don't want to be anybody."
• "I was born in front of a camera and really don't know anything else."
• "If you’ve earned a position, be proud of it. Don’t hide it. I want to be recognized. When I hear people say, ‘There’s Joan Crawford!’ I turn around and say, ‘Hi! How are you!’"
• "Nobody can imitate me. You can always see impersonations of Katharine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. But not me. Because I've always drawn on myself only."
• "I have always known what I wanted, and that was beauty... in every form."
• "Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words, and what have you got? She's phony, but I guess the public likes that." (on Bette Davis)

Despite some first-night glitches, this was a great show, and very me, dears...

I highly recommend this show - it is booking at the Arts Theatre to 25 June 2011.

And just because...

Whatever Happened To Baby Jane (Drag Mix) - Mixed By Jacqueline Hyde

It's Joan Crawford's birthday, bitches...

... so smile!

Tired Old Queen

I stumbled across this little slice of brilliance last night. The title alone was enough to draw me in!

Tired Old Queen At The Movies is the creation of actor Steve Hayes, who we loved as "God" in the Big Gay Musical, and he certainly has a way with words...

Here he is giving his unique take on possibly one of the campest of all Hollywood classics, Mildred Pierce - enjoy!

Tired Old Queen at the Movies - Mildred Pierce

But ya are, Blanche!

105 years ago today, a certain Miss Joan Crawford was born. Former soft porn star, starlet, vamp, Hollywood luminary and eventually Grand Guignol melodrama star extraordinaire, Miss Crawford was indeed one of those rare individuals worthy of the name "legend".

Yet it comes to pass that we remember her most, not as Lucille LeSueur the dancer, not for her 50+ films before Mildred Pierce, not for her Oscar nominations as an actress, not for her clever command of the Pepsi Cola company after her husband's death, but for this most marvellously camp piece of cinema history...

Bette Davis, Joan Crawford - What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

The Best of Everything: A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia website

Oh l’amour, l’amour...

We went to see a showing of the classic film The Women last night at the British Film Institute on the South Bank. Despite the fact that it was announced as being introduced by Maureen Lipman, who never showed up, we had a whale of a time revisiting what must be one of the bitchiest films ever made - with leading ladies Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell and Paulette Goddard and an all-female cast of stars, it couldn’t be anything else...



If you’ve never seen this masterpiece I cannot recommend it enough. In the hands of master scriptwriters Clare Boothe Luce (founder of Life magazine) and Anita Loos (famous for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), the dialogue is as sharp as a razor, as the spoilt rich bitches catfight in their gowns by Adrian, and the wronged wife (Shearer) tries to recapture her husband from the clutches of an evil vamp (Crawford).

For its time, it is remarkably modern - so many comparable films of the pre-war era were over-sentimental, moral and puritanical - and remains a genuinely brilliant tour de force.

Some of the best quotes from the movie include:

• "You simply must see my hairdresser, I DETEST whoever does yours."
• "She’s got those eyes that run up and down a man like a searchlight."
• "Get me a bromide - and put some gin in it."
• "He almost stood me up for his wife!"
• "Isn’t that (nail polish) divine? Jungle red!" "Looks like you’ve been tearing at somebody's throat!"
• "Oh, poor creatures. They’ve lost their equilibrium because they’ve lost their faith in love. Oh l’amour, l’amour."
• "Where I spit no grass grows ever!"
• "Oh, she can’t help it. It’s just her tough luck that she wasn’t born deaf and dumb."
• "When anything I wear doesn’t please Stephen, I take it off."

And my favourite of all:

• "There is a name for you, ladies, but it isn’t used in high society... outside of a kennel!"

The Women

Read more about The Women

Apparently some idiot is producing a remake of this brilliant film - even with such names as Carrie Fisher, Bette Midler and Candice Bergen on board you just know it will be pants!

I mean - Eva Mendes trying to play a Joan Crawford character?! And wouldn’t the entire audience side with the man-stealing vamp if the wronged wife is played by Meg (somebody slap her) Ryan?