My heart wants to sing every song it hears

She's practically perfect, in every way!

Yes, the venerable and venerated Dame Julie Andrews blows out 90 candles on her cake today, and the tributes are rolling in - not least this amusing one in The Guardian. Who knew she used to drive around Los Angeles with a “Mary Poppins Was a Junkie” bumper sticker on her car?!

But I digress... On with the show!

Julie Andrews - Saga of Jenny (from Star!)

Julie Andrews - Wedding Song (Trinkt le Chaim) (from Thoroughly Modern Millie)

Julie Andrews - A Spoonful of Sugar (from Mary Poppins)

Julie Andrews - Le Jazz Hot (from Victor, Victoria)

Julie Andrews - The Sound of Music Opening Scene

Many, many happy returns, Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (born 1st October 1935)

Ars Gratia Artis*

Another day, another centenary...

One hundred years today, three studio magnates reached a merger agreement - and the legendary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was born!

Famed for its glittering parade of stars over the decades - such icons as Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor, Rudolph Valentino, the Barrymores, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Judy Garland, Robert Taylor, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Lana Turner and Cyd Charisse (and so many more) all got their big break at MGM! - it was also the home of Tom and Jerry, Lassie, the Marx Brothers, and some of the biggest and campest Busby Berkeley productions.

This was the studio that was responsible for some of history's most-lauded films, including The Women, Doctor Zhivago, North by Northwest, Mrs. Miniver, Ben–Hur [both versions], National Velvet, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jailhouse Rock, Waterloo Bridge, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Forbidden Planet, Mutiny on the Bounty [both versions], How the West Was Won, The Philadelphia Story, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Shaft, Where Eagles Dare, Westworld, The Hunger, Moonstruck - and hundreds more besides!

It is, of course, as the production house behind some of the most wonderful musicals ever made that we love MGM the most! Its back-catalogue includes Easter Parade, Annie Get Your Gun, On the Town, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Show Boat, Gigi, Meet Me in St. Louis, and these...

Judy Garland & co - We're Off To See The Wizard [Wizard of Oz]

Gene Kelly - Singin' In The Rain

The Band Wagon trailer

Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron - An American In Paris

Ann Miller - Too Darn Hot [Kiss Me, Kate]

Lesley Anne Warren - Chicago, Illinois [Victor Victoria]

Following the death of Louis B Mayer in 1957, the demise of the original company was palpable - with a number of buy-outs, reshuffles and bits sold off to the likes of Ted Turner, the involvement of dodgy businessmen and accusations of illegal operations, it went bankrupt in 2010 - despite having acquired United Artists, and with it the distribution rights for such cinematic behemoths as the James Bond and Rocky franchises. It survived the humiliation with a major buyout by its creditors, and finally MGM ended up in the hands of none other than Amazon, who bought it in 2021...

Let's hope that bodes well for its future.

["Ars Gratia Artis" = "art for art's sake" in English]

Guapo del dia

[click any pic to embiggen]

Meet Mario Alcalde, Spain's first matador to "come out" (as "pansexual", whatever that is). Woof!

Whatever one might think of the bloodsport, it's a remarkable snippet of progress in the otherwise "strictly macho" world of the Torero.

In keeping with the theme [well, sort of...] - any excuse [as if I need one] to feature this marvellous routine from one of our all-time favourite films here at Dolores Delargo Towers:

Robert Preston - The Shady Dame From Seville [from Victor Victoria]

Roll on our Spanish holiday next weekend!

Rat-tat-tat a-door, bearing a rose

Today (scarily) marks the 80th birthday of Nancy Sinatra and the 60th of Mick Hucknall (of Simply Red). Time's a terrible thing.

However it is also a Tacky Music Monday, and as it would also have been the birthday of someone far more worthy of featuring by way of a pick-me-up at the start of - gulp - week twelve of lockdown...

...here is (in my opinion) Mr Robert Preston's finest cinematic moment - from one of our house fave films here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Victor, Victoria:

Robert Preston - The Shady Dame From Seville

Have a good week. "You bitches!"

My heart wants to sing every song it hears

Happy 75th birthday (yesterday) to that shining icon of Britishness, Dame Julie Andrews.

Possibly our best-loved singer-actress, everyone has fond memories of at least one movie or song by Julie - whether it be The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Thoroughly Modern Millie or Victor Victoria. Fewer people may recall that she worked with none other than Alfred Hitchcock in Torn Curtain, or was a Broadway star alongside Richard Burton in Camelot as well as Eliza in the original stage production of My Fair Lady.

She got a bittersweet revenge when Warner Brothers overlooked her for the film production of My Fair Lady in favour of Audrey Hepburn - Miss Andrews got the Oscar for Mary Poppins, and poor Miss Hepburn was not even nominated!

In her sixty-year career in music hall, theatre, film and TV, our Julie has won an Oscar, five Golden Globes, two Emmys, a Grammy and a BAFTA (among numerous nominations), as well as People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and other notable awards across the world.

Facts about Dame Julie Andrews:

• she was born of an affair between her mother and a family friend, while she was still married to her first husband.
• her big break was due to theatre impresario Val Parnell, who cast her in his revues at the London Palladium, and she became the youngest performer at a Royal Variety Performance in 1948.
• she appeared regularly on American TV specials with lifelong friend Carol Burnett years before she got her big-screen success.
• Julie has starred in no less than seven films directed by her husband Blake Edwards (not all of them successful - notably Star!, and S.O.B. in which she famously whopped her tits out!).
• she apparently won her battle with the surgeons whose botched surgery on her vocal cords cost her her wonderful voice to the tune of £21 million!

Despite criticism of her recent O2 "concert" (at which she did not actually sing, as many of her fans believed she would), Dame Julie Andrews remains a "national treasure", and here at Dolores Delargo Towers we love her!

Julie Andrews - A Spoonful of Sugar

Julie Andrews - Le Jazz Hot

Julie Andrews - Trinkt le Chaim

Julie Andrews - The Hills Are Alive

Dame Julie Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (born 1st October 1935)

Olé

As we reach the almost final countdown to our holiday, it is worth focusing on one of the more controversial cultural traditions in Spain - the bullfight. Barbaric, brutal and incomprehensible it may be, but it has a stylistic and very sexy association - the Matador, of course!



With its bulls, balls and braid, the cult of the Matador has certainly inspired some interesting musical tributes too..

Here's the wonderful Eleanor Powell with her own inimitable tap-dance take on the art of the Torero:

Eleanor Powell - Matador

Here's one I have probably posted before, but it is fabulous (Fabulosos Cadillacs, in fact)!

Fabulosos Cadillacs - Matador

Not quite so fabulous, but here's Japanese boyband "News" (who seem to have 126 members) with their catchy little tribute:

News - Ai No Matador

Then there is this infectious dance number by another group no-one's heard of, Kasenetz & Katz Allstars [sic]:

Kasenetz & Katz Allstars - Matador

To finish, I just had to post this fantabulosa number from Victor Victoria, featuring the eternally-missed genius Robert Preston:

Robert Preston - The Shady Dame From Seville [from Victor Victoria]

Vamos a estar de vacaciones en breve...

A town so smart it's spelling starts with: C - H - I - C... Chic!

Many happy returns today to the lovely Lesley Anne Warren, dancer, actress and - at the age of 62 - still a beautiful lady.

It is for one major (Oscar-winning) role that we particularly love Miss Warren - and here she is as "Norma" in one of my favourite movies, Victor Victoria:

Lesley Anne Warren - Chicago, Illinois [Victor Victoria]

Lesley Ann Warren on IMDB

A nun with a switchblade

"I am very proud to be British. I'm very conscious of carrying my country with me wherever I go. I feel I need to represent it well."
Julie Andrews

That marvel of twentieth century musicals Dame Julie Andrews is 72 years old today!

A product of the British Music Hall theatre and a radio star at a very young age, Julie came to international attention when she played the role of Eliza Doolittle in the original stage production of My Fair Lady. With her four octave range and crystal clear diction, she was widely applauded on both sides of the Atlantic, and tipped for stardom.

However, she was cruelly robbed when she lost out on the part in the big-screen adaptation of the musical to the more established screen beauty Audrey Hepburn. But Julie's time came almost immediately and she hit the big time with her performance as Mary Poppins, which won her a Best Actress Oscar in 1964, followed soon after by her timeless role as Maria in the multi-award-winning The Sound of Music in 1965.

Famously described by her co-star Christopher Plummer as "Like a nun with a switchblade" for her tenacity, this massive success led Julie to make many other films during the 1960s, including one of my all-time favourites Thoroughly Modern Millie, as well as Star!, Torn Curtain and Darling Lili. Although never quite the "glamour girl" in the traditional Hollywood style she was adopted wholeheartedly by the public in the USA, and went on to make several extremely successful TV shows, many in collaboration with her long-term friend Carol Burnett.

In 1969 Julie married director-producer-writer Blake Edwards, who had produced her film Star!, and they worked on several other films together including The Tamarind Seed, 10, S.O.B., That's Life and - best of all - Victor/Victoria.

This most wonderful musical broke new ground with its convoluted plot about a woman who masquerades as a man impersonating a woman (whew!) to become famous, and its completely unsensational inclusion of gay characters alongside gangsters and molls led our Julie even more into the role of a fully-fledged gay icon than ever before!

Julie Andrews- Le Jazz Hot

Julie Andrews has been one of the most popular of British actresses for more than five decades and in 1989 she was awarded the British Academy for Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Special Tribute - the first actress ever to receive this prestigious award. In 2000 she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire for lifetime achievements in the arts and humanities. And just last year (2006) she received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild of America.

Despite continuing difficulties with her singing voice - an operation in 1997 to remove a small polyp from her vocal cords caused serious damage, which led her to withdraw completely from singing for more than seven years - Dame Julie Andrews continues to brighten our lives, and lent her voice to the role of Queen Lillian in Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third.

Gawd bless you Ma'am - and happy birthday!

Julie Andrews on IMDB