It was Mrs. White in the Billiard Room with the Rope

I just watched Clue again for the first time in years- and this is still the best part of the movie:

Madeline Khan was too too too good.

 

 

Ilona Royce Smithkin

She had me at “I make my own eyelashes”

This is from the blog Advanced Style -totally worth a look.

And you can see her art work here.

 

 

By Tomorrow

 

by tomorrow if you don’t love me, i’m a ghost.

Jane Russell

Goodbye Jane Russell

xoxo

 

 

Let’s Keep Dancing!

This song reminds me a little of  Zelda Fitzgerald and how she danced herself into insanity! I love it!

 

 

Vera Ellen

I’ve been working on a drawing of Vera Ellen today.

She was, possibly, the best dancer ever!

Here she is in White Christmas with Danny Kaye (in my opinion she MAKES this movie.)

She danced with all the great leading man dancers… and I have to say that as much as I love Gene Kelly, all I want to do is watch Vera Ellen when she’s on-screen with him. That’s no small feat because Mr. Kelly always looks like he’s defying gravity and who doesn’t want to watch someone who can defy gravity?

Here is a lusty Vera (sometimes confused with Cyd Charisse here) who dies a violent death. (and Gene Kelly)

My favorite number of hers is the Minstrel Number – also from White Christmas.

I’ve noticed that when they show this movie on TV they cut out the whole beginning when they sing about “minstrel shows of old”. And I must say I can see why. If you can make it past that part, the dance number is AMAZING. Here, Vera gets tossed around by dancing dudes in tuxedos and spins and spins all the while wearing red sequins and looking like she’s having the time of her life…. and I BELIEVE her! Another reason I lover her, I always believe she’s having the best time when she’s dancing. (I wish I could find a better quality version of this).

Vera suffered from anorexia in the 40s and 50s… she was known for having the smallest waist in Hollywood. She was married twice, had a child who died from SIDS. Almost all her costumes covered her neck and I’ve read that this is because the anorexia made her age prematurely and this was very evident in her neck. So maybe she really was having the best time while dancing.

I will leave you with a goofy number from “On the Town“- (which i highly recommend as a movie in general). This is about her being “Miss Subways” (in the movie called Miss Turnstiles), which is something that really did exist at that time.  Check out how Vera triumphantly dance/beats-up a whole football team at the end.

Laura Owens

Tommy took this picture of me being drawn into the land of

Laura Owens.

Her Paintings are so girly and full of falling leaves and spider monkeys and magic. She’s a special favorite of mine.

And She’s Smart! And based in L.A.! (two things i love).

Mostly, though, I just wanted to go swimming in this curly ocean and look up at the pink stars in the sky .

I’m always so pleased when I see her work here in NYC. (I should say here, this picture is about a year old so this show is over it was at  Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.)

Here are some slides of her retrospective at MOCA (she was just 32 at the time.)

And here’s a google image search for her paintings.

Giggling On The Subway

I saw this on the way to… somewhere, and LAUGHED.

I wonder how Laura Olson feels about this?

ONE for the money, TWO for the show….

THREE to get ready and FOUR to GO GO GO!

************

This Easter I found myself reminiscing about Nana’s egg hunts.

Holy Ruffles! It's Easter in 1978!

At one point the egg hunts grew to an UNFEASIBLE number of 300 easter eggs! Even with other kids in the mix we could never find all of the eggs. Nana would cleverly hide the pink eggs in the pink flowers, yellow with yellow…. etc. They always had candy and money in them (sometimes quarters, sometimes dollars, or grape bubble gum)- it kind of put Halloween to shame! And Nana was so sneaky at hiding the eggs that there would always be one or two eggs that would come rolling out from under a bush or something in , like, October.

UNBRIDLED EGG LUST!

Really, when I think about it, it’s my great pleasure to have grown up in a family that always assumed that bigger was
of course better. No question about it.

Spring Sprang

This makes me laugh (and slightly cringe)- I’m the second girl in this MAC cosmetics video thingy saying things about green and blue and wearing a hat.

 

It was back in 06 or 07….

 I was approached, post brunch and on 1st avenue, by someone who was looking for New Yorkers for this spring MAC video thing….. I think they wanted me because of my green hair… but when I got to the video shoot, it turned out they were using a green screen (so they could do all that animated flower blooming stuff)….. and my hair would have disappeared, and so, that hat.  funny, huh?

*********Also, that waiting room (for the video shoot) was filled with some awesome characters.  I don’t think all those people made it into the video- but I was so pleased to see that NYC is still filled with some stylish characters  and that I got recognized as one too!  It was just a little moment of  NYC Love  for me.