Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever?

Friends, I am back from a very intense, thankfully short, bout with something I'm guessing was Influenza.  It came on rapidly Saturday evening and within 3-4 hours I could hardly lift my head off the pillow.  I'm a big believer in letting fever do its thing (unless you have other medical problems or are a small child or elder) and now, roughly 36 hours later, I'm 85% of the way back.  Was this a cold, a flu, something else entirely?  Who knows.  Suffice it to say I'm glad to be vertical once again and not shivering under three blankets, a ski cap, and a heavy fleece.

How did I entertain myself during this brief illness?  Fortunately, I had a few DVDs from the library I could watch on my laptop while lying down.

Readers, has there ever been a truly entertaining film about West Point?  Perhaps, but I'm afraid 1934's Flirtation Walk, starring Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, ain't it.



You may think, given the leads, that this is one of those big Busby Berkeley spectaculars, but you'd be wrong.  There's a lot of precision marching, sure, but it's all West Point cadets.  I am almost certain none of you have seen Flirtation Walk -- which unbelievably was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture  -- and if you never get a chance, don't worry about it.  That said, I think Dick Powell had an amazingly charismatic screen presence.

Have you ever heard of The Bell Telephone Hour?  These were musical shows made primarily in the Sixties featuring musical theater stars of the day, and this is a fantastic series if you find it at your local library.  Yesterday I watched one featuring two beloved TV moms, Shirley Jones and Florence Henderson.  

You may not know that Florence Henderson was a Broadway ingenue in the Fifties and Sixties and starred in the first national tour of The Sound of Music long before The Brady Bunch.  She's delightful on this DVD, and if you have roughly four hours to spare, listen to her multi-part interview for The Archive of American Television that starts here. 

This woman has had a sixty-year career (so far) and has never stopped working.  Poor Shirley fares much less well on her portion of the video, I'm afraid, sounding somewhat off key and ragged throughout -- these were recorded live so maybe she had what I have now -- but looking beautiful in a series of Grecian chiffon gowns.

The Daily Ditches continue!  I sold this Joe Colombo plastic cart (I had three) on Craiglist on Thursday, so even though I haven't sold any sewing machines, I now have space for all of them, sort of.



And now a very specific question one of you Blogspot bloggers might be able to answer.  Since I started MPB, whenever I imported an image into the blog through the "insert image" icon, the image would automatically end up in a Male Pattern Boldness file in Picasa.  Since last week, unfortunately, this no longer happens.  Each imported image ends up in its own Picasa file, which is extremely inconvenient.  Any idea how I can fix this, or if it's something that's changed in Picasa and/or Blogspot?

As you can see, the colder weather means the dogs are exercising on their treadmill again, which they can do for 45 minutes at a time.  They seem to like it; I mean, if they didn't they could always jump off.  In the background you can see that my Featherweight table sits in the far corner; I've placed a big teak tray over the hole -- there's something about the look of a gap in the middle of a table I don't love.



Readers, that's it!  I am drinking lots of tea and eating lots of citrus, and just taking it easy.  Sewing will have to wait but it's certainly on my radar.  I hope everybody's well -- fortunately flu viruses can't be transmitted over the Internet.

Have a great -- and healthy -- day, everybody!

Sing out, Florence...

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Peter Strips!

Readers, I hope you're not disappointed but I will not be disrobing today.  I will, however, be finishing my featherweight table, otherwise known as Miracle on 24th St.

Yesterday, with the encouragement and guidance of so many readers, I stripped off the old varnish with the aid of various grades of sandpaper -- no chemical strippers needed.  I sanded and sanded and sanded and finally got that old finish off.  And not just the finish: chunky paint splatters, pieces of mid century masking tape, and one rusty thumbtack.  I don't know what this table was used for, but it was a lot more than sewing!



I even discovered the old Singer stamp:



Today the table is (almost) ready to be painted with multiple coats of Minwax water-based Polycrylic.  I opted for the satin finish as I'm not a big fan of glossy furniture.  I've decided to leave the table unstained (sides included), which looks more modern and less like something you'd use on poker night.  I'm excited about finishing this!

Before:





After:





Big difference, no?

I realized as I was doing this that my Pfaff table could also use work (though I've been thinking about scrapping that machine -- space, you know) as well as my treadle table, but one thing at a time, right?

Since many of you were no doubt expecting some real stripping, here's Pepper Powell, aka, The Hot and Spicy Redhead.  Cute outfit, Pepper!



Happy Thursday, everybody --  two more days till 2012!

Ready, Set, Strip!  (...fifteen years of ballet for THIS?)

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Whither the Chorus Girl? + ASSIGNMENT

Friends, to say that the chorus girl was a popular stock character in old Hollywood movies (by which I mean the pre-Sixties studio days) is to state the obvious.  But have you ever wondered whatever happened to her?  Look around: she's nowhere to be found.

Showgirls, chorus girls, burlesque queens -- how many thousands of them danced across the screen in the golden days of Hollywood?  They all had one thing in common: curves.  The chorus girl represented sex, pure and simple, in the days when graphic sexuality wasn't just a mouse click away.

While there were chorus girls even back in the silent era, it really took sound to put the movie chorus girl front and center. With sound came the movie musical, and musicals started out as little more than an excuse to display beautiful, leggy young women in skimpy costumes.  Later, when "book" musicals became popular (whose songs were integral to the plot) movies that took place in a show business milieu grew scarcer, and we didn't really need quite so many chorus girls.  There weren't any in Gigi but there were plenty in backstagers like Forty-Second Street or Ziegfeld Girl.

Nearly every actress with the exception of Marjorie Main ended up cast as a showgirl at one time or other, even actresses better known for dramatic roles, like Barbara Stanwyck (in Ball of Fire) or Joan Crawford (in Dancing Lady or Flamingo Road).

The showgirl story usually told the tale of a poor girl getting plucked from obscurity (Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl), or rubbing up against social class distinctions (Ginger Rogers in Vivacious Lady), or both. Naturally, there were plenty of musical numbers thrown in just to keep it real.

Showgirls and chorus girls were beloved, not only because they were glamorous and sexy, but also because, like most movie audiences, they were working class -- invariably from Brooklyn or the Barbary Coast or Tenth Avenue or some other location associated with "low-down" living.  Showgirls were "good" and showgirls were "bad" but there's no question they were everywhere, especially during World War II, when leggy stars like Grable and Hayworth were at their peak of popularity.

Movies that revolved around chorus girls allowed Hollywood costume designers like William Travilla, Jean Louis, Orry Kelly, Irene Sharaff, Adrian and so many others, to indulge their wildest showbiz fantasies in sequins, feathers, fur, lace -- the works -- though sometimes there was dangerously little of these on display!

After the major studios broke up in the Nineteen-Fifties, there was television, and well into the Eighties designers like Bob Mackie were still creating spectacular showgirl creations for musical variety shows starring Mitzi Gaynor, Cher, or Ann-Margret -- the last of the true "showgirl" types.

Today we still have shows (on Broadway, in Vegas) and occasionally there's still a chorus of "girls," but the chorus girl as pop culture icon is as dated a type as the screwball heiress, the shopgirl Cinderella, and the teenage soprano.

Sadly, for the home sewer, there never were any commerical chorus girl or showgirl-type patterns, even back in the Nineteen-Forties.  A few costume patterns can be found for the occasional community theater production of Annie Get Your Gun or Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but that's about it.  It's a little sad, really.

What or who killed the chorus girl?  So many things, readers!  Before she died as a film icon, the chorus girl had faded away in real life.  The popularity of television meant that more people were staying home rather than seeking out the nightclubs, stage shows, and burlesque venues that gave work to so many showgirls.  (This echoes what happened to theater when motion pictures became popular decades earlier, and it's not a coincidence that so many movie musicals took place in the Gay Nineties or early decades of the Twentieth Century when most forms of entertainment were live.)

A slow loosening of censorship after WWII and more openness about sexuality in American culture meant that men could get their share of scantily clad ladies on the pages of Playboy or in porno theaters -- they didn't have to sit through The Dolly Sisters, waiting for Betty Grable to show a little leg.  Today, when images of graphic sexuality are a keyboard click away, a low-cut bodice or tightly fitted dance costume may be alluring, but it's not the stuff of most contemporary straight male fantasies.  A "burlesque" performer like Dita Von Teese is a sentimental throwback to an earlier era, but it's more homage than a true resurrection, even if it's meant to elicit a frisson.  Judging by what I read on the vintage sewing blogs, performers like Dita Von Teese are more of interest to straight women of an intellectual bent than to men.

Dita Von Teese

Finally, the Pill meant that there were flesh-and-blood women to engage with, rather than just a celluloid or print fantasy.

Meanwhile, in the movies, films like the much-hyped Christina Aguilera vehicle Burlesque or the infamous cult classic Showgirls have ended up feeling dated, exploitative, or just plain embarrassing. 

We're about as far from the risque charms of Gold Diggers of 1933 as we could be.  Joan Blondell never gave a lap dance and Marilyn Monroe never licked a pole.

Finally, the demise of the showgirl reflects a culture in which it is no longer officially acceptable to objectify women.  Most women don't want to be considered objects and would probably judge the role of the showgirl as she was depicted in movies of the past to be demeaning.  We don't "glorify the American girl" anymore, even if we still have beauty pageants and the leggy-but-wholesome Rockettes.

 

Lindsay Lohan may be in this month's Playboy, in an homage to Marilyn, but the whole thing feels forced and joyless.

I had the privilege of watching a most fascinating film about chorus girls last night, Ladies of the Chorus from 1948.  Cheaply made and just one hour long, it's nevertheless fascinating, hilarious, and highly entertaining, not the least because it's Marilyn Monroe's first starring role and we get to see her before she'd developed her dumb blonde persona.  Here she seems like a normal young woman, or as normal as a woman can be playing a character who's the "Queen of Burlesque."

The entire film can be viewed on YouTube, and if you have an hour to spare today, please do take a look, if only to hear such hilarious showgirl pearls as "Why you gray-haired old hag, shut your mouth or I'll slap it shut!" and "I'm quittin' -- this turkey can fold for all I care!"  

Your assignment, friends, is to watch Ladies of the Chorus (it's in roughly seven parts) and report back.  Anything seem strange about this film, which occasionally has the feel of a high school health film and the production values to match?  

What do you think of Marilyn, or "old hag" Adele Jergens, the woman who plays her mother (Jergens was just nine years older than Marilyn)?

In closing, do you have a favorite film featuring or focused on chorus girls?  Do you find the chorus girl/showgirl of yore entertaining, demeaning, or a little of both!

Ever sewn a chorus girl outfit -- or wanted to?

Jump in!

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Mae West Style + GIVEAWAY!

She wasn't thin, she wasn't young (not at the height of her fame anyway), and she wasn't particularly beautiful, yet there's no denying that Mae West was a true sex symbol in her day.

What do you make of Brooklyn-born Mae West -- actress, playwright, singer, comedian, sexual trailblazer?

Many excellent biographies of Mae West have been written in the last decade and she wrote her own autobiography in the late Fifties, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It.   Outspoken about female sexuality (and sexuality in general), she was a feminist before feminism had a name.  And yet, especially toward the end of her life, she seemed trapped in the campy caricature she herself had created -- the raunchy, ever-sexually-available woman.

Apart from her movies, the best of which were made in the Thirties for Paramount, she's best known for her endless witticisms, among them,  “Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere,"  “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted,""It's not the men in your life, it's the life in your men," and  “When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better. ”

Mae started performing around 1900 and was still performing in the Nineteen-Seventies!  To see Mae West in her last film, Sextette, however, wig piled atop wig, is to watch someone who seems to have lost perspective on how they come across.   In her mind, she never changed -- which in one way (her taste) was true, but in another (her allure) was terribly false.  I guess you can argue that it's heroic that she never dropped the mask in public; I'm not so sure.

I love Mae West, and in her early films she seems more like a real person than the lip-smacking, hip-rolling stereotype she became.  Before the so-called Hays Code in 1934 forced her to censor her more explicit material (which she wrote herself) she was one-of-a-kind bawdy.  She was still one-of-a-kind after 1934, but tamed, she was much less fun.  She eventually stopped working in films to perform on stage in successes like Catherine Was Great (she played Catherine).  She also had a touring stage show with loincloth-clad musclemen and was an occasional guest star on TV (Mr. Ed), usually playing herself.  Her return to films in Myra Breckinridge in 1970 was a big comeback for her, and she was back in the limelight till the end, recording albums of rock music (The Doors!), giving interviews, and promoting new projects.

Mae nearly always appeared in spangly Gay Nineties-inspired gowns or variations thereof -- many designed by Paramount costume designer Edith Head -- that showed off her hourglass figure.  Ostrich plumes, sequins, and huge hats were all part of the look that she stuck with throughout her career.   She wasn't a tall woman, and she wore shoes like these for extra height, hidden under her gown.  Can you imagine?

I have a wonderful Mae West giveaway today for all you Mae West fans out there, the Mae West Paper Doll book by Tom Tierney.  It's full of beautiful color illustrations (and detailed information) of many of her most famous costumes from stage and screen, as well as biographical information about Mae herself.









If you'd like to be considered for the Mae West giveaway, just leave a comment below before Wednesday at midnight, EST.  I'll announce the winner on Thursday, December 15, and will try to ship it out to you in time for Christmas.  (If you want to comment but don't want to be entered in the giveaway, just let me know.)

What are your thoughts about Mae West?  Do you find her inspirational and empowering, or embarrassing?  Role model or relic?

Do tell!

Here's Mae still going (semi) strong, somewhere in her mid Eighties, speak-singing Captain and Tennille as only she could.

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Peter's Thursday WIG-A-PALOOZA!

Readers, I believe when we've reached the point that we're sewing men's pants flies closed, it's time to take a break.  Of course, this means that I'm imposing my break on you.  So no pants today.

Instead, I want to talk about something altogether different -- wigs!  I've written about wigs before (most extensively here), and it's no secret that I'm a big fan.  To me, there's very little difference between a wig and, say, fur.  It's a luxurious, hairy accessory.

After jewelry, any woman who isn't a member of PETA would be delighted to receive a fur coat as a gift, don't you think?  (Or is this a woefully dated belief based on too many re-runs of I Love Lucy?)  And yet buy a woman a wig for a gift and you'll likely be scorned.  Buy a woman a used wig....well you can just imagine.  To me, on the other hand, there's nothing more fun than a used wig, and no better place to find them than eBay.  For some reason, there are many people selling used wigs -- perhaps due to the death of an elderly relative or neighbor -- and not many buyers.

Among my many weaknesses, one is an indisputable tendency to buy multiples of things.  I pick up a vintage Ken doll on a lark, and only a few months later I own a small vinyl army of them.





Remember the vintage Samsonite train case  I bought last winter?  Not one week after receiving it, I bought another -- the same identical case!  One I use for makeup and one I use for Ken doll clothes and how often do you think I'm reaching for a tiny suit and end up finding eyelash glue?





This unusual quirk is the same reason why I own three Chrissy dolls, two Singer Featherweights and, oh, I could go on and on.



Anyway, one recent evening I somehow stumbled into the wig category on eBay, and I simply couldn't resist picking up a few lots (yes, lots) at prices so low they were practically paying me to take them.  I'm sure each of these wigs has an interesting story to tell which I'd rather not know.  Think of them as miniature fur coats.  I bought the two groupings below.  I love how each wig style has a romantic name -- among my first group is Petite Secret (which is anything but), Brussels (no doubt modeled on the sprouts), and Sensational (uh...not quite).





The first lot is here, and the second should arrive today.  Exciting, no?

I thought it would be fun to model each wig alongside the celebrity the wig most immediately calls to mind, and ask you to identify him/her.  One wig, however, doesn't make me think of anyone (other than Michael's Aunt Mary) so I'm going to ask you to think of somebody.

Here goes:

Wig #1





Wig #2





Wig #3





Wig #4 -- Friends, this is the mystery wig.  Whom does this wig remind you of?  Valuable prizes await the lucky winner -- perhaps a fur coat of your very own!





Any ideas, folks?  I know I look like somebody famous, but I can't figure out who.  A singer on Lawrence Welk perhaps?

Please leave your ideas below, as well as the names of the first three celebrities.

In closing, how do you feel about wigs?  Why does the obviously wiggy wig often invite scorn -- unless it's being worn by, say, Tina Turner -- when nobody for a moment believes women actually have blue eyelids or crimson lips?

Wig out with me today!

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