Who wants to wallow in champagne?

Today, one of the great survivors of the classic Hollywood era Celeste Holm celebrates - remarkably - her 95th birthday!

Hers is indeed a remarkable career. She won an Oscar for Gentleman's Agreement (in which she played opposite Gregory Peck), and was nominated for both Come to the Stable (in which she starred with Loretta Young, Hugh Marlowe and Elsa Lanchester) and of course All About Eve (in which she more than held her own against the remarkable Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders and Thelma Ritter). She played opposite Frank Sinatra twice - in High Society and The Tender Trap.

Before her screen success, she was fêted as the original "Ado Annie" in the Broadway smash Oklahoma!, and, after All About Eve she had a long and successful US television career - including a memorably camp and villainous appearance in Falcon Crest.



Facts about Celeste Holm:

• Apparently Bette Davis said of her: "There was only one bitch in the cast of All About Eve - Celeste Holm." Ouch.
• At the age of 87, she married opera singer Frank Basile, 46 years her junior. Following their marriage, the couple have had a long and protracted legal battle with Miss Holm's sons over the control of her money (which was held in a trust).
• Miss Holm successfully sued Pedro Almodóvar for using film footage of her from All About Eve without her permission in his film All About My Mother; her contract from the film stipulated her image could not be used.
• She still (despite being diagnosed with Alzheimer's) makes occasional cameo performances on stage and screen (including a part in a 2012 movie called College Debts), and continues to act as a spokesperson for UNICEF.

Here is the redoubtable Miss Holm, starring as the Fairy Godmother opposite another house favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Miss Lesley Ann Warren, in a 1965 American TV production of Cinderella. Just right for a Sunday...

Celeste Holm, Lesley Ann Warren - Cinderella - Impossible

But, of course, it is for this classic routine that she is perhaps most fondly remembered...

Celeste Holm & Frank Sinatra - Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? (High Society)

Who wants to be a Millionaire?

I DO!!!

Celeste Holm official website

Nothing I know brings on the glow like sweet applause

Many happy returns today to one of the few remaining composers from the classic era of musicals - the 83-year-old Charles Strouse.

With a back catalogue of Broadway productions that includes Bye Bye Birdie, Golden Boy, Nick & Nora and of course the timeless classic Annie, as well as numerous revues for stars such as Chita Rivera, film soundtracks for Bonnie and Clyde and The Night They Raided Minsky's, and standards such as Once Upon a Time and Born Too Late, he certainly has a track record to be proud of!

Not least for this, in my opinion his campest meisterwork:

Lauren Bacall in Applause

Applause, written by Mr Strouse, Betty Comden and Adolph Green with Lauren Bacall in mind, is of course a musical adaptation of every queen's favourite Bette Davis movie All About Eve. A delight...

http://www.charlesstrouse.com/

The CD of Applause is available from Dress Circle (of course!)

An icon speaks

"Everybody has a heart. Except some people."
Bette Davis

It's Miss Bette Davis's birthday!

Let's duck and cover...

Poor Eve! Poor Eve!

We happened to catch a repeat of one of my all-time favourite films tonight on Film Four - All About Eve, starring the incomparable Bette Davis, the smarmily brilliant George Sanders and the sinister Anne Baxter (with able support from the future Mr Bette Davis Gary Merrill, plus Celeste Holm, Hugh Marlowe, Thelma Ritter and even Marilyn Monroe). What a joy!

We were reciting the lines, booing and cheering all the way through. How camp! But when you have lines like these what else can you do?

Margo Channing:

• "I detest cheap sentiment."
• "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!"
• "Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be."
• "I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut."
• "The only thing I ordered by mistake is the guests. They're domestic, too, and they don't care what they drink as long as it burns!"

Addison DeWitt:

• "Is it possible, is it even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on?"
• "Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours."

Sublime....

All About Eve