A picture paints a thousand words

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Conundrum of the day

We must be told!

Every Hollywood he-man

From Modern Screen, 1950:

Women have the monopoly on beauty treatments. Men generally take the faces that God gave them and do the best they can. Mud packs, permanent waves, facials - they’re for the girls. Probably the biggest disadvantage of all this is that there are no beauty parlours where men can get together and gossip.

Imagine the male delight when 13 years ago a fellow name of Sam Amundsen opened a Finnish bathhouse – for men only. Here at last was a place where the boys could let off steam, and improve their physiques at the same time. It was a natural. Before long every Hollywood he-man worth his weight has made a habit of Finlandia, which is located in the basement of the Bing Crosby building. The Crosby brothers, Kirk Douglas, Humphrey Bogart, Cornel Wilde, Zachary Scott, Paul Douglas - they all drop in for the treatment, and the talk...

...photographers Bert Parry, Bob Beerman, and I were only too happy to go somewhere nice and warm. We hustled over to Finlandia and there found Scott Brady, John Bromfield, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis and Hugh O’Brian in various stages of undress...

Oh, so very manly.

The gorgeous, and eternally closeted, Hollywood heartthrob Mr Rock Hudson (born Roy Harold Scherer Jr., 17th November 1925 – 2nd October 1985) would have been 95 years old today...

Hey There

I am aching from digging and potting and planting the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers (before the downpour - typical UK Spring), and completely not in the mood to get up and about for work this morning. Never mind, it's only for a couple of days - I'm off on leave from Wednesday (yay!) ...

Let us not forget that today would have been the 91st birthday of one of our ultimate Patron Saints, Miss Bea Arthur - and this Tacky Music Monday, we have not only the great lady herself, but also Rock Hudson, Melba Moore and Wayland Flowers and Madame to cheer us along! Hey There Good Times, indeed!

Bea Arthur featuring Rock Hudson, Melba Moore and Wayland Flowers and Madame - Hey There Good Times

RIP, darling Bea.

Show me that smile my heart adores

After a beautifully sunny (if not yet quite sizzling) weekend in the gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers, it's grey and cold again just in time to make us feel really good as we head back to work.

Hey ho. It's another Tacky Music Monday, and here to cheer us up are the eternally gorgeous Mr Rock Hudson "singing" with the irrepressible Miss Nancy Walker (who would have been 90 years old last week!), in a rather unusual dance routine...

Rock Hudson and Nancy Walker Dancing

We miss them both.

Have a good week!

Between a Rock and a hard place...

"It's a gay Pygmalion. My character turns this gasoline attendant into the highest paid movie star on the planet. He takes a callow youth and turns him into Rock Hudson, who was the perfect, ideal man - or so everyone thought."

What a great evening's entertainment Rock turned out to be!

This was not only a rather good play by Tim Fountain about the Machiavellian world of 50s Hollywood - personified in the bravura performance of Bette Bourne as Roy Willson, agent to the stars and supreme influence over the young Rock Hudson, manipulating the closeted gay hick into the macho "straight" star he became - but also a small-theatre extravaganza.

Advertised as a "red carpet event" we all went togged up, to be greeted with a lovely man in a sari, several queens with glitter in their hair, a six-foot drag queen, cute boys with braces - and Fenella Fielding!

Fuelled with complimentary glasses of Kir Royale and copious trays of mini cup-cakes, courtesy of the management of the Oval House Theatre, we and the rest of the audience (including Paul Burston, David McAlmont and other glit-lit-erati of the gay world) adored the play, Bette, and the sexy Michael Xavier (as Rock) in a frequent state of undress...

But it was the epilogue to the evening that provided the most fascinating entertainment.



Inducting Bette Bourne into the "House of Homosexual Culture Hall of Fame", Rupert Smith encouraged Bette to share with us some anecdotes of his extraordinary life - friendships with Ian McKellan and Quentin Crisp, his life in a drag commune ("the second floor was the make-up room - 270 shades of nail varnish"), and as founder of the infamous Bloolips drag theatre troupe. His recollections of a world long gone, of people who really made a difference during the time of the Gay Liberation Front right though to the tabloid-hate-filled AIDS era, provided a magical end to a magical evening!

The making of "Rock" - part 1

Read the review in the Evening Standard