Thursday, April 09, 2015
Mr. X Blind Item #5 - Old Hollywood
What A/B-list theater actress who dabbled in film but is best known for her raunchy personal life and her campy witticisms once used a drag queen to fill in for her during a later-career stage play when she was too sick to go on? Her explanation?: "Nobody can tell the difference anyway"
Mae west
ReplyDeleteTalulah Bankhead
ReplyDeleteshe was once as pure as the driven snow
ReplyDeletethen she drifted
She was a hot mess! Funny as heck tho
ReplyDeleteTalulah was my first thought, she's another that studios didn't think was pretty enough to be a leading lady. She preferred the ladies, but would sleep with men for her career or if they were availalble. She ended up having to get a hysterectomy due to an STD, and almost dying.
ReplyDeleteAnd re-invented herself as an early television talk & game show guest...what. a. voice!
ReplyDeleteBTW, for those who are unfamiliar w/Ms Bankhead, one iconic performance was in Lifeboat which is often in rotation on TCM.
ReplyDeleteOk Im really curious. How old are you guys? Im like 30 and I dont know these people on Old Hollywood blinds!!!! Except the iconic ones. But seriously, today's blinds got me stumped. No idea even after the guesses. Im like who are these people? How come you know them and I dont?
ReplyDeleteAnd for those interested in seeing the camp side, there's one of her final TV appearances on the original (Adam West) Batman as "Black Widow".
ReplyDeleteI'm 50 but I heard a lot about some of these oldies from my mom, grandmamas and aunts.
ReplyDeleteThis! I grew up listening to my mother and stepfather gossiping about Rock Hudson being gay, Joan Crawford's "quirks", etc. I couldn't pick Veronica Lake out of a lineup, but I can tell you that I apparently look like her.
ReplyDeleteI'm 50 but have been watching old movies for 30 years.
ReplyDeleteDon't feel bad. That's how I feel when this page talks about "tweeners".
I'm 25.
ReplyDeleteMy mom is close to 50, & loves old movies and has a collection of biographies of old Hollywoodland.
58 and most of the actors/actresses were before my time. But I've always loved old movies and can also remember my parents and grandparents talking about them.
ReplyDeleteRaquel Welch costarred with Mae West in "Myra Breckenridge", and has gone on the record saying that she wasn't sure that Mae West was actually a woman.
ReplyDeleteFor any one who is interested here is a great, somewhat morbid site that has some interesting gossip and dish. This link will take you straight to Mae, and does address this rumor:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/w/Mae%20West/Mae%20West.htm
I'm only 51, but I've been watching old flicks all my life and I read biographies from time to time, with a particular fascination for the Silent Era...although I do plan to read a bio on Barbara Stanwyck I bought a couple of months ago.
ReplyDeleteAnyone in or visiting Washington, DC, there's a great painting of Tallulah at the National Portrait Gallery on the third floor in the mezzanine balcony.
ReplyDeleteDunno about the drag queen bit, but the rest has Bankhead written all over it! For those that haven't heard of her, be careful, she's more addictive than she was an addict, and that's saying something. Shame there isn't more videos of her online. They don't come like that anymore. I love going back in time to when I wasn't even born, that's real escapism, or the best kind of it. You get a real idea of how the world has (de)evolved by watching old movies and t.v.
ReplyDeleteCarol Channing.
ReplyDelete