Blyth Times

About that dress!!!!

What’s meaner than negative campaign ads?  Fashion reporting!  Here's some dish.  Oprah Winfrey, Obama’s earliest superstar supporter, already knows what she'll be wearing to the Inauguration Balls. She bought it last February.   And she was so confident of the election's outcome she said,  “Last week I said to the stylist, ‘Take it out of the closet. Let’s take it out. Let’s hang it up, and let it air out.”

Another fashion note: What exactly was Michelle Obama wearing on the night of the election.  No matter how happy one was with the election's outcome even Obama's supporters must have thought her red and black dress and black cardigan  was a little strange.  The blog Wonkette dubbed it “hell-colored” and declared the color combination was  “Red, the blood of angry men!  Black, the dark of ages past!” referencing a rousing battle song  from the score of “ Les Miserables.” Another fashion commentator said it looked like a lava lamp.

The dress was designed by Narcisco Rodriguez, who was Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s favorite designer. It was based on a design from  his Spring 2009 fashion show.    A bit pricer one assumes than the simple $160 cotton dress in which Michelle appeared  on The View or the J Crew outfit she wore on Jay Leno.  

She was also bedecked with bling including $10,000 diamond earrings and several diamond bangles.  Were they a gift from Oprah?  Or from the President-elect ?

Now that Sarah’s back in a parka and on ice for awhile, Michelle will be in the view finder  for exactly this kind of analysis from on.  Women’s Wear Daily is already reporting that  Vogue editor Anna Wintour is trying to get her to pose for the magazine’s cover.    Be assured,  fashion reporting can be every bit as mean as a negative campaign ad.  Maybe even meaner.     

 

Gossip (old) Girl: Mamma Mia

So how did Mamma Mia!, the fun chickflick of the summer really do.   Yes, I know it wasn't as good as the show but if you love Abba like I love Abba it was a great couple of hours.    Well, I am happy to say that the somewhat menopausal Mamma did just fine.  Worldwide it brought in a half a billion dollars.    Lots of "Money, Money, Money! " to quote an Abba song. 

The movie  was especially popular in the UK , taking in more than $125 million dollars and that doesn't include soundtracks and T-shirt sales.  It is in striking distance of overtaking "Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone" as the second highest grossest film in the UK ever.   It was also widely in popular  in Greece where the story is set and, of course, Sweden, home of Abba.   Check out the quartet's memorable version of "Dancing Queen" on YouTube.  They are in 18th century  royal dress and sang it for the King of Sweden in 1976. 

The movie was such a hit that Universal Pictures is considering a sequel.   But Judy Craymer, the force behind the stage show and film, says to put together such a project would take a considerable amount of time.   Here's hoping  even if it will be Grandmamma Mia!

Gossip (Old) Girl:Liza Minnelli Plays the Palace

I am not exactly a wild and crazy fan of Liza Minnelli.   But I am pleased that  the 62-year-old Diva is about to sing and swing at the Palace, the theater where her mother, Judy Garland,  had one of her greatest triumphs.  "Liza at the Palace" opens on December 3rd and runs through December 14th.   While ticket prices range from $55 to $125, Minnelli has requested that $25 front row seats also be made available daily at the box office by lottery.     The iconic singer/dancer/actress has promised to fill the evening's performance with hits from her extensive catalog like "Cabaret," "Maybe This Time," and "New York New York," as well as personal stories, anecdotes and reminiscences.

Liza is one of those performers who, it seems, I have known about my whole life.   I saw her in her first off-Broadway performance in a show called "Best Foot Forward," which played at a tiny off-Broadway theater at the Jan Hus House on the upper East Side of New York.  Even at seventeen, she was pretty good.  Good enough to win a Theater World Award.     I remember her '60's movies playing off-beat characters in one movie called "The Sterile Cuckoo" and another in a movie, based on a best-seller of the time caled "Tell Me That You Love Me Junie Moon." She played the kookie girl, a type I knew and emulated in that era.  Hey, I went to Bennington and  I think, the girl in "The Sterile Cuckoo" was just like a Bennington girl.

Liza has suffered up and downs, coping with addiction, weight gains, and a couple of crazy marriages.   She is a favorite of New York's real Gossip (old) Girls Cindy Adams and Liz Smith, who are always cheering her on.    You have to hand it to her she seems once again to have pulled it all together, lost the weight, keeps fighting the addiction, and is still able to sing "Liza with a Z."  Certainly she can make all Baby Boomers feel if she can reinvigorate once again so can they.   And wouldn't we all rather see her at the Palace than  on "Dancing with the Stars?" 

Gossip (old) Girl

Occassional updates on celebs over 50 just in case you care.   

Guess who has osteoporosis, too?  Fitness freak and former 007 arm candy Ursula Andress, now 72, admits she too is suffering from  the bone loss that plagues so many women.  Andress who played bikini-clad Honey Ryder in 1962 says she still exercises, walks, and gardens.  Her entrance in “Dr. No” was voted #1 in the “100 Greatest  Movie Sex Moments.” by the BBC in 2007.    Ursula says that nowadays instead of getting under the covers she is glad she can still get out of bed!

She’s Still Hot: Meryl Streep

It’s a romantic triangle you never thought you might see onscreen in the days when movie comedies are all about twenty and thirty somethings looking for love.   According to Variety, Steve Martin has joined Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin in an untitled romantic comedy written and directed by romantic-comedy veteran Nancy Meyers.    Meyers and Martin go way back, as she wrote and produced both of his “Father of the Bride” films.   Glad to see that Meryl can still turn the guys on.

No Fool Like an Old Fool: Madonna

Muscular  Madonna , 50, and Brit film directorGuy Ritchie, 40,  to the surprise of no-one have called it off.   But what is surprising is that the supposedly shrewd Material Girl did not have a pre-nup.   The London-based tabloids have already reported that Madonna has lined up a top London divorce lawyer and QC, which  may mean  she’s ready for a court battle to hold onto as much as she can. She doesn’t seem ready to meet him halfway.In many ways it could be a reversal of the Paul and Heather McCartney divorce – only with the wife looking to preserve as much of her cash as possible.

Yikes! Paul McCarthy

Yikes!  Macca has lost his head and not over another woman.   According to A frantic search was launched yesterday for the waxwork head of Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney.    Auctioneer Joby Carter accidentally left the head in a cardboard box on a train.     The model, in which Macca has his 1960s mop top, began its Magical Mystery Tour after he had it valued on Thursday ready for auction.   He left his London studio and boarded a train at Ealing Broadway but got off at Maidenhead in Berkshire, leaving the waxwork under a seat bound for Reading. Joby, 33, said: "Somebody must have the head or know where it is - it's quite distinctive."Distraught Joby told the train guards but there was no sign of it at lost property.    The head, thought to have been made in the 1960s as part of Louis Tussaud's museum in Great Yarmouth, was valued at £5,000 to £10,000. Joby added: "I'm really gutted that it's gone. "We're putting up a £2,000 reward for anyone who hands Macca's head in."

Paul Newman & Robert Redford

I never met Paul Newman but I did once put him on the cover of the Ladies’ Home Journal.   I think it was a desperate move when I had no one to put on the cover, a problem that magazine editors frequently face.   So I found some picture of Paul and cobbled together a story about him.   He may have been a terrific guy but he didn’t do much to move that issue.   Certainly not as well as the actor who in those days--the late 80’s ---could really rack up sales on the newsstand.  That was, believe it or not now, Tom Selleck.  Yes, magazine newsstand buyers of the time ought to be ashamed.  Newman did nothing, Selleck sold.

I did meet Newman’s pal, Robert Redford once.  In fact, Redford was one of my serious movie star crushes. I had liked Redford in "The Way We Were” with Streisand, liked him in "Out of Africa” with Streep,  just plain liked his golden boy good looks whenever I saw them.  So I was delighted when his longtime agent, Lois Smith, an old pal, wanted the magazine to interview him.   I didn’t assign a writer.   Heck, no, I would do it myself.    Shoot, the editor ought to get some perks. 

I arrived at the interview in his office with a box of chocolate chip cookies the food staff had baked because I heard he like chocolate.  Redford looked okay but just okay.   He was wearing a short-sleeved tee- shirt and khakis, not a great look for him. .  I knew he wasn’t very tall but what I didn’t know was that his arms were quite short, oddly short, it seemed.  Like the sleeve of his tee-shirt ended just above his elbow.   And his skin?  Ruddy, yes, but more than that.   Kind of like he had forgotten his sun block for a decade or two.  The interview was okay and Redford talked.  And talked.  And talked.   And yet nothing he said seemed particularly quotable.  When doing an interview you are always trying to find a few sentences that are worth quoting, that make a point. Redford kept talking. It wasn’t easy.

At the end of the interview, maybe realizing he wasn’t charming me as easily as his agent had told him he would, he suddenly smiled flirtatiously and said, “Why don’t you give me your phone number?  I might like to call you if I think of anything else.”   I was a bit startled and gave him the number.  Maybe he wasn’t that cute but wouldn’t he be cuter in a long sleeved shirt. When I went home I told my husband that Redford just might be calling.

“Oh, really,” my husband said.   “Well, if he does, I’ll say there is some actor on the phone.  I think it is Paul Newman.”