THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN!

Alright... Indulge me one more time whist I wallow in my old Hollywood binge. Here we have Warren Beatty in his prime, paired with Liz Taylor (on the verge, but still looking good). Circa 1970, set in Las Vegas, when The Sands and The Nevaden still stood.

I loved this film. Warren plays a piano player/degenerate gambler who has a gig on the strip. The piano music stopped me in my tracks. WHO was dubbing this exquisite piano? It most certainly wasn't Warren doing the playing. I found the films credits on line, but no mention of whose talents were used for the piano. This makes me crazy! Anyway, an aging Las Vegas woman, Fran Walker (Elizabeth Taylor) drifts into an affair with Joe Grady (Warren Beatty) while waiting for her married lover to finalize the divorce he has been promising to get for the past five years.

By the time he keeps his word and is free to marry Fran, she's fallen in love with Joe. But here's the interesting part: When the married lover comes back to get Fran, he shows up with the following:

A finalized divorce decree, signed, sealed and hand delivered
Two airline tickets to New York where they'll be marriedThen on to Paris for a honeymoon
A bottle of champagne
A 10 carrot diamond ring and
A promise to have her belongings sent to where ever they settle. "Just pack the minimum, and what ever you need we'll buy in New York".

Fran backs out at the last minute because she realizes she's in love with Joe. Newly divorced lover accepts this, and is heading for the door when Fran stops him. "Wait", she says with a little tear in her eye, and hands him back the 10 carrot ring.

Meanwhile, adorable Joe is out pawning his old convertible to try to re coop his losses at the craps table.

And this my friends is Hollywood at it's best. Girl meets loser boy. Girl dumps Mr. Right to stay with loser boy. Why? For the sake of true love. BROTHER!

THOSE FACE!

Alive and well, my love/obsession with vintage Hollywood keeps the DVR full of TCM classics. Viewing them over and over again, I favor stories with lots of great dialogue and sophisticated humor like The Philadelphia Story, All About Eve, How to Marry a Millionaire, and too many others to fathom.

These early directors, producers and players INVENTED the art of movie making, and something about black and white film resonates with me on levels beyond nostalgia. I find movies like Father Of The Bride and The Thin Man films incredibly comforting.

Beneath drama which at times seems over the top, there lies the glam factor and sense of style that speaks of an era forever gone, yet living on through the fabulous films and phenomenal faces that brought life to each story and character. They don't make faces like these any more. Or do they?

Kate Hepburn

Audry Hepburn

Lauren Bacall

Sophia Loren Natalie Wood Elizabeth Taylor

Vivien Leigh Grace Kelly

AURA OF AN ERA!

I woke around 3:30 this morning to let the dogs out for a minute. When I got back into bed I turned on Turner Classic Movie channel thinking I'd fall back to sleep with a comfortable old movie. "Bachelor in Paradise"was on, circa 1961 with Bob Hope, Lana Turner, Paula Prentiss and the guy who played Gidget's Father in the TV series "Gidget". For a little over an hour, I was riveted, in spite of this being a "B-Movie" it was a fascinating feast for these old eyes.

The story was set in one of the very first residential tract-home communities in the San Fernando Valley. Lana played a Real Estate Broker who owned one of the tract homes which she rented to Bob Hope who played A.J. Niles, an author of Kinsey-type studies, sent by his manager to suburbia to write a similar book about the sex lives of middle America. Yes, sex had been invented by 1961. Anyway, A.J. Niles found plenty of sex being had in the peaceful subdivision of "Paradise Village", but that wasn't what compelled me to stay awake and watch the movie. It was the LOOK, designs, materials and color schemes. This movie epitomizes that unmistakable 50s-60s, mid-century modern, space age aesthetic when women dressed like the wives of astronauts, and as mentioned in my previous post (All Stirred Up), everyone drank martinis.Strangely, I found myself looking at the decor with disdain. Everything seemed cheap, mass produced, tacky and cheesy looking. But that's my 2010 eye. I'm sure back then, it was all fabulous.

Then I remembered the way we dressed in the 70s and decided that the magical man-made fabric of Polyester must have been a product of the same sick sense of style. It's no wonder we needed drugs and alcohol to get us through those decades. Or maybe bad taste was the product of a gigantic hangover we were all suffering from then.

Go back just nine years before that and watch a film like "The Bad and The Beautiful", 1952 and see what a difference a decade can make in the minds and the taste of a culture. Oh well, at least we got the martini part right, right?

SO MUCH FODDER, SO LITTLE TIME!

Hey PH, next time you're sitting in the police station, it's probably not good idea to reach into your Gucci bag for anything. I mean, the fact that you didn't have handcuffs on didn't mean you should go fishing for your lip balm. There was a good chance no one would have searched the bag at all. Let me get this straight. You were looking for lip balm and not the cocaine that came flying out of the purse, right? Are you sure you weren't going for a little bump to get you through another police interigation? Girrrrrl... you need to check yourself.

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Last night I was on CNN's website and drifted over to a comment section where readers were asked if now that one member of the cast is gone they would continue to watch the show.

Amazed at the steady stream of comments coming in on the topic, I read a bunch of them. It's amazing how invested some people are in the lives of these "real" women. I'll admit that I don't watch the shows, but have seen the commercial clips that promote them. Yikes.

REAL Housewives? REALLY? Are you sure, people? Are they really that shallow and vicious? Who ARE these people, and why are they so popular. I'm not being rhetorical, I really want to know. What am I missing?

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Hey Kate Gosselin! We get it, you want to be famous. But famous for what? Unlike the "real housewives", you actually had the chance to be famous for something REALLY worthwhile. Being a great Mommy.

I used to marvel at the way in which you handled your children, their needs, the home you provided for them, the love and praise you gave them. You could have become the go-to person for anyone raising children and that would have provided you with an enormously decent income whilst giving other Moms a role model for raising kids. you were good at it!

Instead, you're all about being a glamazon. striving to be famous for being famous. In my estimation, you blew it. You have drunk the koolaid, girlfriend, and that ain't KOOL!