Showing posts with label Marilyn Monroe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marilyn Monroe. Show all posts

Monday, 1 June 2026

Boop-boop-de-boop!

Oh, fuck. Monday again!

As we brace ourselves for the deep, deep joys that await us in the week ahead, let's pay due homage to the greatest of photogenic icons, Miss Marilyn Monroe, shall we, whose centenary it is today!

On this Tacky Music Monday, it simply had to be this:

...and this!

Have a good week, dear reader...

Boop-boop. De-fucking-boop.


STOP PRESS:

This!


[click any Marilyn to embiggen]

Tuesday, 19 May 2026

Of floral abundance, prehistoric birds, the ultimate pin-up, sweet treats and Temptation


[click any pic to embiggen]

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

  • King Sniffs Beckham's Bloomers news: The world's greatest floral extravaganza, Chelsea Flower Show opened its doors today, but not before HM The King Charles and Camilla had a good old pootle around. Charles, Sir David Beckham and former Gardeners World host Alan Titchmarsh were co-sponsors/co-creators of the RHS and The King’s Foundation Curious Garden, designed by Frances Tophill. The show commands crowds of 40,000 visitors per day over five days - and tickets are currently completely sold out!
  • Pseudo-scientific hoo-ha news: A US biotech company that previously claimed to have recreated a long-extinct dire wolf by gene manipulation, and claims to be working on the "de-extinction" of the woolly mammoth, has announced it has taken the first steps towards doing the same with the giant Moa bird of New Zealand. A quote from Dr Louise Johnson, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Reading, on this announcement made me laugh out loud: "It sounds impressive but then it would, because it’s a press release. I look forward to reading more details when they’re published, but until there’s a peer-reviewed paper I might as well give expert commentary on a YouTube ad." More Jurassic Park than real science, then.

  • Boop-boop-bee-doo news: In celebration of her 100th birthday on 1st June, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait will explore the life, career and legacy of Marilyn Monroe through portraits created by some of the greatest photographers and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery {from 4th June - 6th September 2026} will also include personal belongings such as books, scripts and clothes to enrich understanding of the woman behind the image. [NB Coincidentally, it was on this very day in 1962 that Marilyn Monroe performed her famously breathy rendition of Happy Birthday, Mr President for JFK]
  • "All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening" news: We're in the midst of National Doughnut Week - and I didn't even notice... I am just going to have to buy a massive bag of Morrisons' finest jammy ones on my way to the office tomorrow, and scoff the lot!
  • And finally: Sharing the day, as he does, with a host of luminaries including Victoria Wood, Grace Jones, Alma Cogan, Lady Nancy Astor, Malcolm X, Pete Townshend, Dame Nellie Melba, Ho Chi Minh, Edward de Bono, Sandy Wilson, Nancy Kwan, James Fox, Sam Smith, Joey Ramone and (erm) Pol Pot - it's Martyn Ware's 70th birthday today! Co-founder of the original Human League, British Electric Foundation and Heaven 17, it is to the latter we turn by way of a tribute [and a song that, despite being an all-time favourite, I appear never to have featured here before! How?]

Utter genius!

And the weather? Blustery, showers, still too cold for mid-May. Grim. However, the forecast looks much improved for the end of the week and the Bank Holiday Weekend!

Monday, 21 June 2021

Hundred-year-old Broads


I'll have whatever Judy's having...

Monday again - and it's Midsummer's Day, to boot! Not that we've had much of a summer for it to be the "Mid" of, mind you. Typical Britain - a week of blazing sunshine followed by a storm. But I digress...

We have not one, but two centenaries to to celebrate today, dear reader!

Miss Judy Holliday was something of a "contradiction in terms" - she made her name portraying molls and ditzy blondes, yet had an IQ of 172. On screen, she was the "arm candy"; in real life she fought against the system (and fought off Daryl F. Zanuck's advances), to her detriment when she was blacklisted for alleged "communism". Notorious as the actress whose Oscar win in 1951 beat off competition from both Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis in All About Eve, had she not died tragically young (at 42) of cancer, who knows what more success she might have had?

This being a Tacky Music Monday, of course, here's a double-bill of the lady's song-and-dance and comedic talents:

Sharing the occasion is a far more familiar diva, Miss Jane Russell! As famous for captivating Howard Hughes with her impressive décolletage as she was for her numerous, usually humorous and sassy roles in films such as Bob Hope's The Paleface or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she inevitably ended up a gay icon, landing camp roles in Westerns and TV soaps, and even taking over from Elaine Stritch as "Joanne" in Sondheim's Company on Broadway. 

Of course, throughout her career she always was admired as a singer and dancer as well, so let's have another double-bill featuring the great lady herself [NB I have, of course, featured her many times before - see here and here for more]...

Class.

Have a good week, folks.

Sunday, 12 May 2013

I just adore conversation, don't you?



"This movie is all about two girls on the make, who are on a ship full of homosexuals who have no interest in them whatosever."

It's Tired Old Queen At The Movies (aka Steve Hayes) again, drooling over what is, in fact, one of the gayest mainstream movies of all time...

...Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!


A perfect way to fill a rain break from tarting up the gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers, methinks.

Saturday, 4 August 2012

A girl's best friend



We're all off to Buckingham Palace today to see the Queen's Diamonds exhibition!

What more appropriate song to play than this classic from our dear Marilyn?

Marilyn Monroe died fifty years ago tomorrow. RIP.

Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration

Sunday, 19 June 2011

That dress, that dress...



"I am not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful." - Marilyn Monroe

The white Travilla dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch sold for £2.8m at The Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Memorabilia Auction in Los Angeles.

Miss Reynolds, 79, was reportedly in tears as the auction closed.

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul." - Marilyn Monroe

Read more on the BBC

Sunday, 7 December 2008

The man who dressed Marilyn



"Billy Dear, please dress me forever. I love you, Marilyn."

William Travilla was a spectacularly successful fashion designer, who had the very good fortune in the 1950s to cross paths with the stunning screen icon Marilyn Monroe, for whom he designed some of her most famous frocks.



We went to see the exhibition of some of Travilla's most lauded costumes yesterday - and what a breathtaking ensemble they were. The red sequinned number from Little Girls from Little Rock, the pink dress from Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend, the beautiful gold lame frock that was considered too risqué for the American censors, and THAT dress - the white full-skirted one that featured in Marilyn's most famous scene in The Seven Year Itch.



Travilla's career out-spanned his seven films with Marilyn, and costumes he designed for Betty Grable, Judy Garland, Linda Grey in Dallas (he was apparently credited with creating that "huge shoulder pad" look of the big 80s soaps), Whitney Houston, and Rachel Ward in The Thorn Birds were all included in the exhibition, along with a vast collection of memorabilia, original sketches, photos and messages of thanks from stars as diverse as Errol Flynn and Jaclyn Smith...

We were very glad to catch it, as the touring exhibition leaves the UK for Oslo today. Beautiful!





William Travilla

Friday, 1 June 2007

I wanna be loved by you...

What is there to say about Marilyn Monroe that has not been said a million times before? The former Norma Jean Baker, sultry screen idol and surprisingly great actress, would have been 81 today, and I am certain that the column inches dedicated to her life and sad lonely death will far outweigh anything I could blog here...

So I'll just post a picture and wallow in the many many happy memories Marilyn Monroe gave to me, and to the world.



Marilyn on IMDB