Happy World Goth Day (22 May 2023)!
Girl in Washington Park, NYC, Photo by Rosalind Fox Solomon, 1986
Happy World Goth Day (22 May 2023)!
Adieu to Christian Aaron “Ari” Boulogne (11 August 1962 – May 2023), whose body was discovered yesterday in his Parisian apartment. He’d seemingly been dead for some time. His girlfriend and her 21-year-old son are now being questioned by French authorities. It’s a gruesome and tragic end for the troubled 60-year-old Boulogne, who’d long struggled with mental health problems, drug addiction and poverty. His parents were German fashion model-turned Warhol Superstar-turned gloomy heroin-ravaged chanteuse Nico (1938 – 1988) and European art cinema heartthrob Alain Delon (who’s consistently denied paternity). Boulogne’s story is vividly captured in the 1995 documentary Nico: Icon and his mother’s definitive biography, Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon (1993) by Richard Witts. As a toddler (while Nico was singing with the Velvet Underground), Boulogne was the indulged mascot in Andy Warhol’s Factory. I know it’s impossible to watch (I caught it years ago when the British Film Institute held a Warhol retrospective), but a nice way to remember him is via Warhol’s 1966 movie Ari and Mario. In it, busy single mom Nico calls on Puerto Rican drag queen / underground film starlet Mario Montez (pictured) to baby-sit her young son at her cramped room in New York's louche Chelsea Hotel. High jinks ensue. Cherub-faced Ari is adorable but so hyperactive he is virtually feral. Montez offers to read to him, sing to him and dance for him, but Ari is oblivious to her charms and more interested in alternately pretending to be a crocodile and a cowboy and shooting her with his toy gun (towards the end Montez finally snaps, "Can't you find something else to shoot at?"). Off-screen from behind the camera Warhol himself audibly encourages Ari to misbehave. Devoid of his usual cocktail of sadomasochism and amphetamines, Ari and Mario's emphasis on innocence and domesticity is a sweet exception in the Warhol canon.
“Cher: she’s so Early Rich! But to paraphrase Cher, “It’s better to be nouveau than no.” Cher as a superstar has an evolution that rests somewhere between the birth of the Barbie doll and the onslaught of Valley Girls. She is a money-to-burn celebrity.”
/ Andre Leon Talley on Cher in the book Mega-Star (1984) /
Happy 77th birthday to veteran show biz diva, glamazon, perennial gay icon, Academy Award-winning actress, plastic surgery enthusiast and the fierce Queen Mutha who will outlive us ALL - Cher (née Cherilyn Sarkisian, 20 May 1946)! Pictured: Cher (clad in a typically subdued and understated Bob Mackie creation) photographed by Harry Langdon in 1979.
A portrait of two punk survivors! Apparently, this shot represents the first reunion between 65-year-old Siouxsie Sioux and 67-year-old Billy Idol – two original members of the early Sex Pistols fanatics dubbed “The Bromley Contingent” – in 32 years. Two words: Punk. Royalty! This was taken in Los Angeles, where Sioux is due to perform in the Cruel World festival. Via the Louderthanwar website.
Grace Jones by Angelo Deligio 1981
"I was born … I came out of my mother feet first. I arrived kicking and pissed off, sticky with fury, soaked to the skin. I was what’s known as a stargazing fetus as well, my neck fully extended. From the very beginning I was going against the grain and making trouble.”
/ Excerpt from I'll Never Write My Memoirs (2015) by Grace Jones /
Born on this day: incomparable post-punk freak diva / Afro-Dietrich / Black Venus / futuristic dominatrix from outer space (and one of the greatest live performers I’ve ever witnessed), the perennially fierce Grace Jones (born 19 May 1948) may or may not be turning 75 in human years. (Jones disputes the birth year listed on Wikipedia. She is an ageless enigma!). I’ve had one single up-close encounter with The Jones Girl – when she was signing copies of her memoirs in London in November 2015. It was like coming face-to-face with Nefertiti! Best description of Jones ever is via the late Andre Leon Talley in the book Mega-Star (1984): “She was like a navy blue she-wolf crossed with a lush orchid …” Pictured: portrait of Jones by Angelo Deligio, 1981.
La Caduta degli Dei, Helmut Berger directed by Luchino Visconti, 1969
Auf Wiedersehen to kinky, dissolute and sexually ambiguous Austrian heartthrob of sixties and seventies European art cinema, Helmut Berger (né Helmut Steinberger, 29 May 1944 – 18 May 2023). Berger’s wayward career encompassed collaborations with his then-lover Italian director Luchino Visconti (most notably, The Damned (1969) (pictured). In one eye-popping sequence, Berger drags up as Marlene Dietrich), portraying Oscar Wilde’s titular character in Dorian Gray (1970) and co-starring as Elizabeth Taylor’s younger studmuffin in Ash Wednesday (1973). In the 1980s, he even cropped up in a recurring role in TV soap opera Dynasty! Berger’s reported lovers are a who’s who of the international jet set, numbering Rudolf Nureyev, Ursula Andress, Tab Hunter, Jerry Hall – and Mick AND Bianca Jagger!
Born on this day: flamboyant bejeweled pianist, “Mr Showmanship”, candelabra enthusiast and perennial kitsch icon, Liberace (né Władziu Valentino Liberace, 16 May 1919 – 4 February 1987). The smiling, dimpled brunette pictured with him is … Betty White!
Born on this day: dancer turned actress Yvonne Craig (16 May 1937 - 17 August 2015) - immortalised in popular culture for her role as Batgirl in the campy 1960s TV series Batman. Interestingly, the podcast Gayest Episode Ever recently celebrated Batgirl as an LGBTQ icon, persuasively arguing, “the final season of the 1966 live-action Batman series saw the debut of Batgirl, a twirling, high-kicking female hero created to get more girls invested in the series — and more dads to keep paying attention. But Batgirl’s creators didn’t count on the fact that they were creating the exact kind of character that little gay boys would become obsessed with. Thanks in part to Yvonne Craig’s spot-on performance, Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl) became one of the most queer-friendly aspects to an already queer series.” And no one ever looked better in a sparkly purple catsuit! Pictured: Craig in 1967.
Born on this day: fabulous African American rhythm and blues nightclub chanteuse and transgender pioneer Jackie Shane (15 May 1940 – 21 February 2019). The regal and enigmatic soul diva (who often looked and sounded like a fierce hybrid of Little Richard and Eartha Kitt) originally hailed from Nashville, Tennessee but had to relocate to Canada to find acclaim and acceptance in her adopted city of Toronto, Ontario. Disillusioned with the music industry, by the early 70s Shane retired and vanished off the radar. Luckily, she lived long enough to be re-discovered and embraced by a new generation of admirers as a LGBTQ icon and for her long out-of-print recorded work to be compiled and reissued on CD. (You can listen to the 2017 album Any Other Way on Spotify – and I highly recommend you do!).
To commemorate North American Mother’s Day: a tender maternal moment between show biz mama and daughter duo, Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.
Happy 45th, January Jones.
To commemorate North American Mother’s Day 2023: my favourite fictional / television mutha, the problematic and complicated Betty Draper from Mad Men as unforgettably portrayed by January Jones.
Happy Mother's Day from the Flintstones and the Rubbles!
Happy (North American) Mother’s Day!
82-year-old veteran sex kitten Ann-Margret dropped Born to Be Wild, her first new album in over a decade, last month (her previous one - God is Love: The Gospel Sessions 2 – came out in 2011). My notes!
This is being referred to as Ann-Margret’s “first classic-rock album”, but her early sixties recordings brim with delights like the girl group-style “I Just Don’t Understand”, her sultry cover of Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” and her interpretations of R&B songs like “Roll with Me, Henry” and “Jim Dandy”. Ann-Margret has always rocked!
On the wailing title track (a cover of the 1968 Steppenwolf song), A-M is backed by The Fuzztones – and it’s genuinely ferocious! (This isn’t her first foray into garage punk: “It’s a Nice World to Visit (But Not to Live In)” - her 1969 collaboration with Lee Hazlewood - still slaps hard).
The musical backing is grittier, brasher and more rockabilly than you might expect. (On “Volare” A-M is accompanied by Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats). “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” belongs on every festive Spotify playlist! Her efforts at doo wop (“Earth Angel” and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”) and “Son of a Preacher Man” are credible. (The latter won’t make you forget Dusty, but it compares favorably with Bobbie Gentry and Nancy Sinatra’s versions).
Best of all: “Somebody's in My Orchard” is slinky cocktail jazz loungecore with “blue” lyrics (“Somebody digs my fig trees / Someone loves their juice / That someone with that sweet juice / Ain't nothing but bad news ….”).
Less happily: duets with Pat Boone and Cliff Richard represent bad kitsch rather than fun kitsch. There’s frequently a whiff of Branson, Missouri and karaoke. Can’t help but wish A-M would find hipper collaborators and material. Not a fan of his but consider how Jack White produced late-period Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson albums. Not that A-M ever worried about “credibility” – her priority is to entertain. Finally: with the recent deaths of her contemporaries like Stella Stevens and Raquel Welch, the time to appreciate Ann-Margret is NOW! Next, we need comeback albums from Joey Heatherton and Connie Stevens!
Portrait of Ann-Margret by Chantal Anderson for The New York Times, March 2023
Bea Arthur, 1955 (33 years old) <3
Born on this day 101 years ago: ineffably dry American actress, baritone babe and the queen of the slow burn comedic delivery Bea Arthur (Bernice Frankel, 13 May 1922 – 25 April 2009, aka Maude Findlay, aka Dorothy Zbornak). Pictured: Bea Arthur in 1955, aged 33.
“There are many shades of cool and different ways to come by it … but only Chet Baker was able to make cool jazz sound like the purest expression of self-love … Baker uses his voice like a horn, abstaining from any vocal inflection that would suggest real emotion or even the existence of anything outside his pretty boy dreamworld. Baker’s singing on “I Fall in Love Too Easily” is the music of exquisite dysfunction. Here is where he differs from his fifties twin, James Dean, whose cool wasn’t designed to contain the hot, troubled emotions that seeped out around the edges. Chet Baker was cool jazz carried to its logical, even pathological, conclusion.”
/ From “Cool jazz: the sound of one finger snapping” by Joseph Hooper in Details magazine, May 1993 /
Died on this day 35 years ago in Amsterdam under murky circumstances: doomed, ethereal and heroin-ravaged jazz trumpeter and crooner Chet Baker (23 December 1929 – 13 May 1988). For anyone curious about Baker’s story, reading James Gavin's haunting 2002 biography Deep in A Dream is de rigueur. Pictured: portrait of Baker by Richard Avedon taken on 16 January 1986. As Gavin recalls, Avedon’s photo shoot “depicted a ghastly vision of death in progress. The harsh black-and-white close-ups gave Baker the appearance of a man lying on the operating table, light blazing down on him.”
Born on this day sixty-six years ago: doomed Sex Pistols bassist, ultimate punk pin-up and half of punk’s most infamous couple, Sid Vicious (né John Simon Ritchie, 10 May 1957- 2 February 1979). Pictured: portrait of Vicious by Bob Gruen, 1978.
"She was crafted as meticulously and as fervently as any sculpture by any great artist. Picasso could not have made her any better. She was an engine of sex and glamour and industry. Crafted by ambition and revenge and the need to survive. Art has vengeance at its soul, which would make her one of the most soulful among us. We're wrong to scoff at what she did with what she had."
Marlon Brando pontificating on Joan Crawford in an interview with author James Grissom (who is writing a new Brando biography). Isn’t his praise for Crawford unexpectedly generous? Received wisdom would hold that by the fifties there was a generational line in the sand and that the Stanislavsky-trained maverick Brando would have disdained Crawford as old-fashioned and too “Hollywood.” Clearly not.
Died on this day forty-six years ago: mesmerizing fierce-eyed Golden Age Hollywood screen diva, Miss Joan Crawford (23 March 1904 – 10 May 1977).
The Merv Griffin Show (1969) with guest Wayne Cochran
Born on this day: outrageous big-pompadoured blue-eyed soul singer Wayne Cochran aka The White Knight of Soul aka The White James Brown (10 May 1939 - 21 November 2017). The self-described “hillbilly with a sixth-grade education” had a profound influence on his friend Elvis Presley, who adopted aspects of Cochran’s style and wardrobe for his own Las Vegas extravaganzas. (Cochran and his band The C.C. Riders and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue opened for Presley during his residency at the International Hilton in Las Vegas in 1969 – which surely represents a high point in Western civilization). In later life Cochran embraced religion and worked as a minister in Miami.
In Memoriam: remembering his royal highness, “Show Business Personified” and the artist praised by soul diva Etta James for having “the guts to be a king and queen all at the same time” - the divine Little Richard (aka Richard Wayne Penniman, 5 December 1932 - 9 May 2020) on the third anniversary of his death. I saw the flamboyant “Bronze Liberace” give one of his final concerts at Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender in 2013 (he retired from performing shortly afterwards). I won’t lie – by that point, the Georgia Peach was a hot mess, but a fascinating, charismatic and regal hot mess. The man was magnificent! We’ll never see Little Richard’s like again. Pictured: backstage portrait of Little Richard in the UK in 1962 by Harry Hammond.