#doomed blonde

[bitter69uk]

Debuted on ABC fifty-one years ago tonight (17 September 1974): The Sex Symbol, a thinly disguised made-for-TV faux Marilyn Monroe biopic starring ultra-kitsch sex kitten Connie Stevens. The Sex Symbol is inept, tasteless, exploitative, deranged – and irresistible! The premise is that we’re witnessing a dark night of the soul for doomed movie goddess Kelly Williams (Stevens) in her Bel Air mansion. In fact, the final night of her life. We’re presumably meant to find Kelly a tragic figure, but she’s insufferable. Her breathless babydoll voice quickly grates. Kelly rages, “Canned from one stinkin’ movie! Anyone would think I was dead!”, swills booze, pops fistfuls of pills, smashes the TV screen, goes on crying jags and lashes out at her Spanish-speaking maid (“No! I’m not hungry!”). Much of the time she’s in bed shrieking into a pink telephone, like the worst-possible adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine. In terms of acting, Stevens’ guiding principle seems to be: “Patty Duke didn’t go nearly far enough as Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls.” The Sex Symbol was clearly made “on the cheap”. Minimal effort is taken to conjure the forties or fifties time periods. As Kelly, Stevens always resembles what she was at the time: an early seventies Vegas headliner with a shaggy frosted blonde coiffure, frosted blue eye-shadow, frosted pink lipstick and costumes (and wigs and hairpieces) straight out of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. Still, as far as speculative Monroe biopics go, The Sex Symbol is a LOT more fun than Netflix’s divisive 2023 misery-a-thon adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ book Blonde – plus the cast includes Shelley Winters hamming it up as a vicious gossip columnist! As John J O’Connor of The New York Times concluded at the time, “Every once in a while, the swamp of prime‐time entertainment gurgles up a product that sets its own memorable standards for trashiness.” The Sex Symbol is on YouTube.

[bitter69uk]

Born on this day: impudent film noir bad girl Veronica Lake (née Constance Frances Marie Ockelman, 14 November 1922 – 7 July 1973). The sultry pocket-sized Venus was 4’11” of pure badittude with an onscreen persona that set the template for later noir blondes like Lauren Bacall and Lizabeth Scott. She was also a temperamental hard-drinking troublemaker who’d burnt her bridges with Hollywood by the early fifties. Lake’s second act is fascinating to contemplate: once she was deemed unemployable in films, she turned to summer stock theatre. Considering Lake was routinely dismissed as a “glamour girl” who couldn’t really act, she demonstrated admirable durability. Lake clipped her famous peekaboo curtain of hair to play the title role of Peter Pan in a stage production in 1950. She performed the “Kim Novak” role in Bell, Book and Candle in ’56. And she acted in multiple Tennessee Williams plays: Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1958, Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire in the UK in 1969 (Ty Hardin was her Stanley Kowalski!). In her 1969 autobiography, Lake mentions in passing “I worked in I Am a Camera during its summer run on the New England coast” – so she also played Sally Bowles! And later, she toured theatres reciting the poetry of Carl Sandburg. (Once her film career fizzled out, Lake’s noir contemporary Gloria Grahame also turned to stage work: in the UK, Grahame tackled Lady Macbeth, Amanda in The Glass Menagerie and Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The thought Lake playing Blanche Dubois or Grahame as Martha onstage makes the mind boggle!). Lake returned to the screen one last time for the no-budget horror flick Flesh Feast (1970) (tagline: “Living bodies used for the most vile experiments ever devised!”) before dying aged 51. In her memoirs, she’d reflect “Obviously, I think of legitimate stage work with more fondness than motion-picture work … the stage is so of the moment, so new each evening that the human factor comes much more into play.” Portrait of Lake by Jack Mitchell, 1967.

[bitter69uk]

Born on this day eighty years ago: the ethereally beautiful, hauntingly memorable and funny transgender Warhol Superstar dubbed “a subculture Lana Turner” by the Village Voice’s Arthur Bell and the world’s biggest Kim Novak fan - Miss Candy Darling (24 November 1944 - 21 March 1974)! (Yes, the Candy “from out on the Island” immortalized in the 1972 Lou Reed song “Walk on the Wild Side”). I particularly love Darling’s delicate performances in the Warhol-produced, Paul Morrissey-directed Flesh (1968) and The Death of Maria Malibran (1972) by Werner Schroeter. For anyone interested in Darling’s brief, tumultuous life (she died aged 29 of cancer), reading Cynthia Carr’s exemplary recent biography Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar is a must. My favourite anecdote from the book (much of it is heartbreaking, to be honest): when a cinema in Toronto wanted to present their 1971 film Women in Revolt, Andy Warhol dispatched Darling to promote it. The theatre booked Darling into the posh four-star Sutton Place hotel (“where stars like Elizabeth Taylor stayed when in town for the Toronto Film Festival”). Darling and her friend immediately started charging wine and expensive meals to the room. Liberace happened to be staying there at the same time. Candy crashed his glitzy private rooftop champagne reception: “She kept trying to approach him, while he kept trying to avoid her. Finally, she managed to corner him and said, “We have so much in common.” Liberace was horrified and complained to hotel management” – and Candy was evicted! Pictured: 1971 portrait of Candy Darling by Jack Mitchell when she was appearing in the play Vain Victory.

[bitter69uk]

“What was Harlow really like? She was the star who didn't know when to stop!” Actually, if you want to know what 1930s screen goddess Jean Harlow was really like, DON’T refer to the 1965 biopic Harlow! But if you’re in the mood for trashy so-bad-it’s-irresistible cinema, this ultra-kitsch hot mess – directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Carroll Baker (pictured) in one of least convincing wigs in celluloid history – Harlow really delivers! And you’ll enjoy it even MORE over frosty £6 cocktails when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room club (committed to Bad Movies for Bad People) presents Harlow in the appropriately plush Art Deco (and air conditioned) surroundings of Fontaine's in Dalston on Thursday 17 July! All you need to do is reserve a seat in advance via [email protected] or go to . Full putrid details here.

[bitter69uk]

Recently finished Cynthia Carr’s exemplary recent biography Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar. The trailblazing transgender Warhol Superstar (dubbed “a subculture Lana Turner” by the Village Voice’s Arthur Bell) couldn’t have hoped for a savvier, more empathetic biographer. Carr zeros in on the contradictions of Darling’s brief, tumultuous life (she died aged 29 of cancer): she was captured by photographers like Richard Avedon and Francesco Scavullo; starred in underground films on both sides of the Atlantic; papped attending parties alongside Andy Warhol; immortalized in the Lou Reed song “Walk on the Wild Side”; feted in the hippest nightclubs and acted in a play by Tennessee Williams. But the lonely, misunderstood Darling was also usually destitute and homeless (she “couch surfed”); faced relentless prejudice as a trans woman (even from ostensibly sympathetic quarters - Darling was turned away by the bouncer at Stonewall! When visiting her mother in Long Island, she was instructed to hide from the neighbours); and there was no unconditional love or intimacy in her life nor serious boyfriends (Carr notes that the men Darling pines for in her journals were often casual acquaintances). Towards the end, when ANYONE shows kindness and generosity toward Candy, you want to cry in gratitude. (Lauren Hutton and Warhol himself both emerge well). Carr also points out that while we love the friendship between the iconic trio of Darling, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn, these were also volatile characters competing for scraps. Peter Hujar’s famous deathbed portrait of Darling only happened when other photographers turned it down. They’d never met before, but Hujar sure understood the assignment. One enduring mystery: to the bafflement of Darling’s friends, Julie Newmar (TV’s Catwoman) delivered a eulogy at her funeral (there’s no evidence the two women knew each other). Funniest episode: Warhol dispatched Darling to promote their film Women in Revolt in Toronto. The cinema booked her into the four-star Sutton Place hotel (“where stars like Elizabeth Taylor stayed when in town for the Toronto Film Festival”). Liberace happened to be staying there too. Candy crashed his champagne reception: “Finally she managed to corner him and said, “We have so much in common.” Liberace was horrified and complained to hotel management.” Portrait by Fred W McDarrah, 1970.

[bitter69uk]

It’s been fascinating to read the mixed reviews by Hollywood Reporter and Variety for Netflix’s new exposé Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me (which follows hot on the stiletto heels of the recent documentary about Smith’s contemporary, Pamela Anderson). Is director Ursula Macfarlane’s show biz cautionary tale about the tumultuous, ruined and abbreviated whirlwind life of the Playboy playmate, pin-up and reality TV star guilty of precisely the kind of prurience and voyeurism it criticizes? I watched it last weekend and found it mesmerizing. Like many Gen Xers, my introduction to Smith came via her dazzling 1990s Guess jeans ads, where she evoked golden age Hollywood bombshells like Mansfield, Monroe and Anita Ekberg (in the same way Claudia Schiffer did for Bardot). Who then could have anticipated she was doomed to die by 39? Some of the doc’s revelations: it depicts Smith as someone whose identity was always in flux. Long before she adopted the name Anna Nicole Smith, when teenage single mom Vickie Lynn Hogan from the shitkicker town of Mexia, Texas first started dancing in topless bars, she asked to be called Nicky. Smith’s painkiller addiction began pre-fame: her breast implants caused her a lifetime of agony. (Towards the end she was taking the heroin replacement methadone for pain management). I’m already inclined to sympathize with Smith for how she was exploited by the sneering tabloid press, but You Don’t Know Me doesn’t shy from her darker side. Smith cynically exaggerated and fabricated aspects of her childhood to garner press coverage. Her relationship with her 86-year-old billionaire husband J. Marshall Howard was – um - problematic. (His forlorn answering machine messages beseeching Smith to call him are a painful listen). For better or for worse, Smith was the closest I’ll ever get to a Jayne Mansfield equivalent in my lifetime. Now Let’s hope her 16-year-old daughter has a happy life out of the limelight.

[bitter69uk]

I don’t know the details behind this photo, but Marilyn Monroe apparently left her lipstick kiss imprint on a cocktail napkin 59 years ago this month. What a holy artifact! On a melancholy note, she would die roughly three months later (on 4 August 1962).

[bitter69uk]

“She was the successor to Clara Bow and a kind of bridge to Marilyn Monroe, and she was more good fun than both of them combined …. there is no part of sex or the sexual instinct that Harlow doesn’t openly enjoy on screen, and that’s what made her such a radical presence in the early 1930s, and that sexual radicalism hasn’t dated … She harnessed all of her sexual energy and put it on screen without any inhibitions, and it still makes for a hackle-raising spectacle.” 

From “Jean Harlow: Bombshell”, a lyrical analysis by Dan Callahan for The Chiseler. 

Born on this day 111 years ago: Depression-era platinum blonde sex goddess Jean Harlow (née Harlean Carpenter, 3 March 1911 – 7 June 1937). Pictured: portrait of Harlow by Clarence Sinclair Bull, 1932.