post

Pop Quiz #1: They Said What?

May 15, 2013 By 2 Comments

Book CoverLet’s see how well you know your movie stars past and present.  Identify the speaker of the quotes below.  It’s multiple choice – how hard can it be?

Answers can be found in Hollywood or Bust: Movie Stars Dish on Following their Dreams, Making it Big, and Surviving in Tinseltown (the page number on which the quote can be found follows the quote) or on my Hollywood or Bust website.

Let me know how you did.

1. I don’t use any particular method.  I’m from the let’s pretend school of acting. (page 59)

A. Harrison Ford

B. Robert Pattinson

C. William Shatner

D. Paris Hilton

E. Hugh Grant

2. I’ve always had confidence.  Before I was famous, that confidence got me into trouble.  After I got famous, it just got me into more trouble.  (page 43)

A. Don Johnson

B. Sean Penn

C. Bruce Willis

D. Clark Gable

E. Eddie Murphy

3. The secret of having a personal life is not answering too many questions about it.  (page 38)

A. Lindsay Lohan

B. Rock Hudson

C. Bill Clinton

D. Joan Collins

E. Barbra Streisand

4. I am not a demon.  I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther.  I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion. (page 119)

A. Charlie Sheen

B. Dennis Hopper

C. Quentin Tarantino

D. Will Smith

E. Nicolas Cage

5. I’m very fond of doing movies where men fight over me. (page 64)

A. Angelica Huston

B. Elizabeth Taylor

C. Kerry Washington

D. Megan Fox

E. Marlene Dietrich

6. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled. (page 91)

A. Elvis Presley

B. Johnny Depp

C. Peter Dinklage

D. Bela Lugosi

E. Esther Williams

7. I want to do something gritty, something real funny, a real smelly part. (page 83)

A. Gwyneth Paltrow

B. Meryl Streep

C. Joan Crawford

D. Hugh Grant

E. Meg Ryan

Filed Under: Culture Quiz Tagged With: , , , , ,
post

Mickey’s Best Friend

May 1, 2013 By 2 Comments

Annette Funicello passed away on April 8 from complications from multiple sclerosis.  She announced she was suffering from the disease in 1992 and spent the last fifteen years of her life out of the public eye.  But, oh, what a life.450px-Annette_Funicello_Former_Mouseketeer_1975

Those who are old enough, remember Annette as one of the original Mouseketeers on the Mickey Mouse Club.  Those soft eyes, that sweet smile, those big ears.  She was the last of the cast chosen for the popular children’s television show, handpicked by Walt Disney himself.  She became the one we remember best.

She could sing.  She could dance.  She did both in the beach movies in the sixties pairing up with Frankie Avalon.  There was Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo, and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.  And, yes, although she promised Uncle Walt to dress modestly, Annette showed off her navel in a pink two-piece from the get-go. That’s what teen idols do.

Annette had a crush on Fabian, but fell in love with Paul Anka.  The feeling was mutual.  When Disney, acting as a father figure broke them up, Anka wrote “Puppy Love,” singing rather melodramatically, but with true feeling, for millions of young people:

Someone help me, help me please

Is the answer up above

How can I ever tell them

This is not a puppy love.

Whatever fortune brought Annette, she never forgot whence she came.  Of her relationship with the world’s most famous rodent, she once proclaimed, “Mickey is more than a mouse to me.  I am honored to call him a friend.”

Annette married at 23 and had three children, occasionally appearing in commercials and making movies, including the 1987 spoof “Back to the Beach”. She divorced and remarried, settling down just north of Bakersfield, California, in a modest ranch.  She was survived by her caring husband, her adoring children, four stepchildren, twelve grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Annette led the good life, inspiring millions to do the same.  “Whatever dreams I have wished have come true,” she once declared.* May she rest in peace.

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

* As quoted in Hollywood or Bust: Movie Stars Dish on Following their Dreams, Making it Big, and Surviving in Tinseltown.

Summer’s coming.  Let’s bring back the Jamaica Ska – for Annette:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RQ-iT_pLoo

 

Filed Under: Her Story Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
post

Hollywood or Bust: The Movie

April 17, 2013 By 1 Comment
Illustration by: Viktor Hertz

Illustration by: Viktor Hertz

Paramount’s 1956 Hollywood or Bust is a swingin’ musical travelogue starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in their last movie together.

It begins in New York City where fanatical movie fan Malcolm Smith, Lewis’s character, wins a hot red convertible that he plans to drive to Hollywood to meet actress Anita Ekberg, playing herself, on whom he has the biggest crush.

Dean Martin plays inveterate gambler Steve Wiley, wily as a fox, who convinces Malcolm that he, too, won, although he had stacked the lottery and plans to sell the car to pay his gambling debts.   Malcolm, being a trusting sort, as well as not knowing how to drive, lets Steve take the wheel, and they’re over the bridge and out of the city with Malcolm’s Great Dane, Mr. Bascomb, in the back seat.

“Sound the trumpets strike the cymbals

Boys from Bonwits and girls from Gimbels

Shaking off that old Manhattan dust

To get to Hollywood or bust.”

(From the song “Hollywood or Bust”.)

Traveling along two-lane back roads the pair pass red farmhouses, white picket fences, covered bridges, full service gas stations, golden pastures, and girls, girls, girls, riding a hay wagon, fishing from a rowboat, swimming in a pond, all enjoying the fresh air.

“Oh, there’ nothing as gay as a day in the country…

It’s quite a delightful surprise for a couple of traveling guys.”

(From the song “A Day in the Country”.)

Before reaching Chicago troubles abound.  Malcolm and Steve run out of gas, get held up by a hitchhiker, and meet up with a showgirl, Terry Roberts played by Pat Crowley, on her way to Vegas.  The duo becomes a singing trio plus dog.

“When you cross the Mississippi

Cross the Mississippi

You’re in the wild and wooly west.”

(From the song “The Wild and Wooly West”.)

The three continue to croon, as they pass through “old” Missouri, Oklahoma, and the state of Texas, “the largest in the union”. The song takes them all the way to Las Vegas, where they pass the Sands (where Martin and Lewis are performing), the Algiers, the Thunderbird, the Desert Inn, and El Rancho Vegas, among other luxurious desert resorts and casinos.

There are more sights to see and songs to sing once the group arrives in Hollywood.

“It looks like love

It could be love

But if it’s not it’s so darn wonderful it should be love.”

(From the song “It Looks Like Love”.)

The highlight takes place at Paramount Studios where Steve proposes to Terry during her audition for a part in the first Elvis Presley movie, and Anita decides to cast Mr. Bascomb in her next movie “The Lady and the Great Dane.”  In the grand finale, both couples plus dog walk down the red carpet at its premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

It doesn’t get any more Hollywood, except for the songs:

“Land of stardust and land of glamour

Vistavision and cinerama

Everyone considers it a must

To get to Hollywood or bust.”

(From the song “Hollywood or Bust”.)

And that’s why I named my book Hollywood or Bust.  Check it out: HollywoodOrBustTheBook.com.  Or go straight to Amazon.

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Hollywood, Movies Matter, Time Travel Tagged With: , , , , ,
post

Peeps Show

March 29, 2013 By 1 Comment

 

 

Peeps in the hand. Photo by: Nate Steiner

Peeps in the hand. Photo by: Nate Steiner

 

 

The days are longer and the weather is warmer. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.  It’s holidays and family gatherings and possibly a parade.  And Peeps – those yummy chicks and bunnies in a veritable rainbow of colors– are everywhere.

 

Who doesn’t look for Peeps in their Easter basket?  It’s that sugary marshmallow concoction made of sugar, corn syrup, and gelatin.  And don’t forget the carnuba wax, also known as Palm wax.  It’s perfectly safe.  Applied by pharmaceutical companies, it makes pills easier to swallow.  Used in cosmetics it thickens lipstick and produces a glossy finish.

 

For over ten years, Peeps celebrations have been held across the country.  In its honor, the Washington Post holds a Peeps Diorama contest, but the deadline for entries was in February.

 

On this, the sixtieth anniversary of Peeps, candy maker Just Born put a survey on its Facebook page.  Before you turn the page, here are some things to ponder:

 

How do you eat Peeps:  head first, tail first, all at once, or in tiny bites?

 

What’s your favorite Peeps color: yellow, pink, lavender, green, and blue?

 

Does eating Peeps make you: proud, laugh, happy?

 

How many Peeps do you typically eat at once:  1 or 2, more than 10, or until you get a stomachache?

 

As a nation, we devour Peeps.  The candy maker hatches five million Peeps a day.  And they’re not just for Easter anymore.  Have some for Valentines Day, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Christmas, or an after school snack.

 

Some people like them warmed in the microwave, chilled in the freezer, or aged to perfection, so they’re slightly hardened or stale.  Have them your way.  You can always repent later.

 

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

Filed Under: Odds and Ends Tagged With: , , , , , ,
post

Mad About Alfred E. Neuman

March 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I was going through my tickle file looking for subjects for my blog, and I came across an article on the 60th anniversary on Mad Magazine.  I guess I had forgotten about the momentous occasion because it occurred in November 2012. Hard up for ideas I decided it wasn’t too late to write it up.  I certainly wasn’t going to worry about it.

That hair. That music. Are we mad? Photo by: Tim F. Bklyn

That hair. That music. Are we mad? Photo by: Tim F. Bklyn

I haven’t read the publication in years, make that decades, but Alfred E. Neuman still makes me smile.  Current editor John Ficarra described the mascot as “a kid who came to school and sneezed,” and the whole world caught a cold. I, for one, will always question authority.

In his first cover appearance in 1956 Alfred was promoted as a write-in candidate for President. His opponents were Dwight D. Eisenhower who was running for a second term and Adlai Stevenson.  Eisenhower won, if you’re shaky on your history, but in the next issue Alfred was pictured on Mr. Rushmore, along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.  So now I’m wondering when we’ll be seeing a movie called “Neuman.”

Nothing was sacred to “The Usual Gang of Idiots,” which is what the staffers and freelancers have long called themselves. If an insipid television show was a hit, a stupid product was hot, or a lame celebrity (politicians, too) said or did really insane things, it was sure to be parodied, mocked, or lampooned in a comic strip, all in good fun, of course.

Staying the course, in recent years Mad satirized The Walking Dead, Harry Potter, Facebook, and Justin Bieber. Last year the Twilight Series, Mike & Molly, Batman and Spiderman, and the election earned covers.

With everything happening today, it’s going to be a mad, mad, mad, mad world. And you can follow it online.

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Culture Quiz Tagged With: , , , ,
post

Boop-Boop-E-Doop-Oop!

March 16, 2013 By 1 Comment
Betty Boop, oh, what a doll - 2012. Photo by: Susan Marg

Betty Boop, oh, what a doll – 2012. Photo by: Susan Marg

Betty Boop had her comeback twenty-five years ago in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Oscar-winning live-action and animation comedy in which humans and toons mix it up.

Betty’s role was small, but effective.  She runs into Eddie Valiant, a private eye she knows, played by Bob Hoskins, in a Cotton Club-like nightclub where she’s working as a cigarette girl.

“Long time no see,” she says to him.

“What are you doing here?” he wants to know.

“Works been kinda slow since cartoons went to color,” she replies with a wiggle, “But I still got it, Eddie, boop-boop-e-doop.”

“Yeah. You still got it,” he says with a wistful smile.

Yeah, she’s still got it.  She’s in black and white, just “pen and ink / she can win you with a wink,” as in her cartoons from the thirties.

She’s wearing a strapless, backless dress that exaggerates her hourglass figure.  It’s two inches shorter than her garter belt that sits high on her thigh. Her long eyelashes frame her large expressive eyes, which she uses to great effect.

Everyone loved Betty, sometimes a little too much.  But no worries. The “Poleece” rescued her when her boss made unwarranted advances. The Seven Dwarfs saved her when the Evil Queen tried to destroy her. The animals circled around to protect her when the old man in the mountain chased her up a tree.

Regardless of the situation there was always humor.  One late night her friend Bimbo came calling.

“I can’t open the door now,” Betty informed him.  “I’m in my nightie.”

“All right,” he replied, “I’ll wait ’til you take it off.”

In 1934 the Production Code Administration was established with authority to enforce the “Don’ts and Be Careful” guidelines prohibiting licentious or suggestive behavior.  This was a game-changer, and Betty was forced to dress as a conservative housewife.  But the music played on.

Such greats as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Don Redman, and Rubinoff and their orchestras recorded the sound tracks for the cartoons, making an appearance with their orchestras during the opening credits.  No matter where Betty was – at home, down the block, or around the world  – or whom she was with, she sang and danced.

Betty Boop’s popularity declined through the decade, and she retired in 1939.  Jessica Rabbit, voiced by Kathleen Turner, became the sexiest animated film star on the big screen. As for her character, she proclaimed, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”

The same could be said of Betty.

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Her Story, Movies Matter Tagged With: , , , , ,
post

80 Years Ago: At the Movies

March 8, 2013 By 1 Comment

1933 was a stellar year for Hollywood.

Mae West on her way to the top.

Mae West on her way to the top.

Mae West and Cary Grant became superstars that year.

West and Grant first appeared together in She Done Him Wrong, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and then I’m No Angel.  Both movies were big moneymakers for Paramount Studios, saving it from bankruptcy.

By 1935 West was the second-highest paid person in the United States after William Randolph Hearst.  Hearst, by the way, a media tycoon, also tried his hand at making movies.  He founded Cosmopolitan Pictures, a production company, and created starring roles for his long-time girlfriend Marion Davies.

Grant became one of Hollywood’s most debonair leading men, performing with such leading ladies as Katharine Hepburn, Myrna Loy, Claudette Colbert, Ingrid Bergman, Eva Marie Saint, Doris Day, Leslie Caron, Sophia Loren, and… Ginger Rogers, the latter in Once Upon a Honeymoon in 1942.  She plays a burlesque queen married to a Nazi in pre World War II Europe.  He’s a radio correspondent who saves her.

Rogers, herself a screen legend, is most famous as Fred Astaire’s romantic interest and dancing partner in Hollywood musicals, the first of which was Flying Down to Rio in 1933.   Did you ever see a dance routine on the wings of an airplane? It’s amazing. “She had guts,” Astaire wrote of her in his autobiography.

Katharine Hepburn had a career that spanned over sixty years.  In 1933 she earned her first of four Oscars for her third film Morning Glory, a story of a young stage actress who becomes a star when she replaces the prima donna who walks off the set.  42nd Street, another musical released that year, also paid tribute to Broadway.

Busby Berkeley was at the height of his popularity when he directed Gold Diggers of 1933. As a choreographer, his professional goals were to constantly top himself and to never repeat his past accomplishments.  He probably never did. Isn’t a kaleidoscope a never-repeating series of patterns?

The first King Kong movie starring Fay Wray was released.  It’s been remade twice, giving Jessica Lange and Naomi Watts their big breaks.  There’s something about being chased by a big ape through Times Square that makes an actress irresistible.

And then there are the good guys.  Joseph Yule Jr. signed with MGM as Mickey Rooney, although the first Andy Hardy flic didn’t open until 1937.  Popeye the Sailor made his first appearance on the big screen in a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon, beginning his long and illustrious career chasing Olive Oyl, thwarting Bluto, catching bad guys, and encouraging children to eat more spinach.

It was the Great Depression, but no one was depressed at the movies.

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

Quite a trick:

Filed Under: Movies Matter Tagged With: , , , , , ,
post

Pie are not Square

March 2, 2013 By 1 Comment

Ang Lee’s Pi Day was February 24 when he won the Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi at the Academy Awards.

Pi to 74 digits. Photo by: mag3737

Pi to 74 digits. Photo by: mag3737

For mathematicians Pi Day is March 14, as 3 – 1 – 4 are the first three digits of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter and represent a good approximation of its value.

Pi has been a source of fascination throughout the ages. It is an irrational number in that it continues ad infinitum without repeating. It’s been proven useful when solving geometry problems, such as the area of a circle or the volume of a cylinder.

The concept of pi was mentioned in the Bible.

In the third century BC Archimedes scientifically calculated pi to about 3.14.

A value equivalent to 3.1416 dates from before AD 200.

In the sixteenth century the German mathematician Ludolph Van Ceulen spent his entire life calculating pi to 35 places.

In 1706 William Jones, a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, first designated the Greek letter “π” to represent the ratio, as part of his work in differential calculus

Until computers less than a thousand digits in pi had been calculated.  Two years ago a researcher claimed he had produced 2.7 trillion digits.

It’s not too late to either see Life of Pi or celebrate Pi Day.  Bake a pie or visit Princeton, New Jersey, which celebrates Pi Day and Albert Einstein’s birthday, also March 14, with various activities.

For example, there’s a contest to see who can recite the most digits in pi.  A recent two-time champion reeled off over two thousand numbers – in order!

There’s also an Albert Einstein look-alike contest.  But unless you have wild and wooly hair and a thick, overgrown moustache, fuggedaboutit.

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Odds and Ends Tagged With: , , , , ,
post

Here Comes Oscar

February 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment

220px-Wings_posterThe 85th Academy Awards will be held this Sunday night at the 3,400-seat Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center on Hollywood Boulevard. A worldwide audience of over a billion people is expected to view the proceedings.

Anticipation is building, and for weeks the odds for Best Picture have been changing daily.

Experts predict that Argo will be the winner, despite the fact that director Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated. As a thriller with humor dealing with the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, it’s pure entertainment in the context of a fairly recent historical event.

Lincoln, more of a moral history lesson, is second with twelve nominations while Silver Linings Playbook, a romantic comedy with dark undertones, is third, with its four stars for best and supporting actors and actresses all nominated.

The critically praised Zero Dark Thirty has fallen to fifth place behind Life of Pi with only a one in ten chance of taking the grand prize.  The buzz is that its depiction of torture in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden is too politically incorrect for industry liberals.

The first Academy Awards presentation was a completely different affair.  Two hundred seventy guests paid five dollars each to attend the private dinner and ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.  It was the only time that the event was not broadcast over radio or television, nor, possibly, lasting only fifteen minutes, went into overtime.

Louis B. Mayer, head of M-G-M, had created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to bring together actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers.  As for the awards themselves, he commented, “I found that the best way to handle  [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them.”

Wings won Best Picture.  It was a silent drama about two friends in love with the same girl who serve together as combat pilots in World War I.  Only one makes it back.

There were no surprises that year as the winners had been announced three months earlier.  That didn’t keep fans from crowding the entrance to the hotel to cheer on their favorite stars.

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

Filed Under: Movies Matter Tagged With: , , , , ,
post

To Stay Young, Act Young

February 16, 2013 By 1 Comment

You have to hand it to Joan Collins.  She looks good.  She wears red. She’s 79 years old.220px-Joan_Collins_in_Stephane_Rolland_(1)_cropped

And she tweets.

I don’t know how long Collins has been tweeting, but last month she started issuing diet tips.  For a while, she issued one tip a day.

January 8: #1 best exercise – push yourself away from the dining table.

January 9: Ditch all white food, anything made with white flour, rice, pasta, milk, sugar.

January 10: Try just eating eggs only for every meal: hardboiled, scrambled, poached. Very filling, but do it 1 day only.

January 11: Between meals (no snacking) eat an apple.

Really, eat an apple?  Who knew?

I’m going to have to try this one from January 17: If you MUST drink, have vodka or tequila with ice & water, instead of wine.

This one is pretty good, too, from January 20: You must eat life or life will eat you.  And it’s only 39 characters with spaces!

© 2013 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved

 

Filed Under: Odds and Ends Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 29 other followers