Monday 22 September 2014

Beauty, brains, breeding and bounty





Oh dear, "back to work time" is here again...

On this Tacky Music Monday, by way of a little tribute to the lovely Miss Polly Bergen, who died on Saturday aged 84, here she is with her very own set of "safety gays" and the marvellous Two to Tango:


Facts about Polly Bergen:
  • She never seemed to stop working throughout her six-decade career, appearing in everything from The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse in the 50s to Move Over Darling and Cape Fear in the 60s, to The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives in the noughties.
  • Having started her career as a singer - she sang with Harry Belafonte, and even had her own TV show in the 50s - she returned to the world of musicals in 1999, appearing in Sondheim's Follies and in Cabaret.
  • She wrote three best-selling beauty books; founded a mail-order cosmetics business in 1965 which she later sold to Fabergé; and developed her own shoe and jewellery lines.
  • As the formidable Mrs Vernon-Williams in John Waters' classic Cry-Baby, she had some of the best lines: "Juvenile delinquents are everywhere. Right here in this community. Boys with long hair and tattoos who spit on the sidewalk. Girls who wear tight slacks. Hysterectomy pants, I call them. And if one of these creatures ever approach you on the street, you are to silently repeat to yourself the four "B's" you learned here at RSVP. And what are they, children, the four "B's"? Beauty, brains, breeding and bounty!"
RIP Polly Bergen (born Nellie Paulina Burgin, 14th July 1930 – 20th September 2014)

4 comments:

Please leave a message - I value your comments!

[NB Bear with me if there is a delay - thanks to spammers I might need to approve comments]