Heat, Treat and Googie!

Our glorious Rosa Veilchenblau rather likes this weather! (Not bad for a cutting, eh?) [click to embiggen]

It's official! The UK is in the middle of a heatwave - and I love it.

Talking the edge off it a little, however, there was some sad news yesterday - the very lovely Treat Williams was killed in a motorbike accident in the US.

Mr Williams may not have been a household name, and certainly his on-screen career was somewhat patchy - although he did have starring roles in Hair, Prince of the City and Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, among others - but for us at Dolores Delargo Towers, it is for his part as "Michael Brick" in one of my favourite films ever The Ritz that we will forever remember him.

An excuse (as if I needed one) to revisit once again [see here for my original paean to this movie] a succession of highlights...

Simply faboo!

RIP, Richard Treat Williams (1st December 1951 – 12th June 2023)

Ebey'tings comin' up rho-ziz, por me and por chu!

A Public Service Announcement [click to embiggen]

The last Sunday before the madness kicks off again - although tomorrow is still a bank holday, so at least our first week back to work will be a short one - and I'm in the mood for some classy showbiz pizazz!

Here's the megastar Señorita Googie Gomez instead:

Rita Moreno - Googie Gomez Returns!

[live at the Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event (S.T.A.G.E.) in 2011, a gala raising funds for the AIDS Project Los Angeles]

Oh, how I wish I had been in the audience for this event..!

More about the camp classic movie The Ritz [from whence Googie originated] here and, of course, here.

Heeeere's Googie!

"I was born with this voice."

"So was Yma Sumac!"

What better way to lift the spirits on this miserable wet Sunday than with a trip back to 1976, and an interview (on the BBC's Arena Cinema) with the lovely Rita Moreno ("Googie Gomez") and Richard Lester (the director) about one of my fave films of all time, The Ritz?

Here's Doug! Here's Tiger! And heeeere's Googie!"

Gavin Millar interviews Rita Moreno and Adrian Lester

I feel better already...

The Ritz

"Direct from her record-breaking bus and truck tour"

Terrence McNally, Angela Lansbury, Terry's husband John Kirdahy, Alan Cumming

Happy birthday today to out-gay playwright Terrence McNally, one of America's greatest living powerhouses of the theatre. From camp to deadly serious, from repertory to musicals, he's tried his hand at them all.

As David Ng recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

Unlike some of his contemporaries, McNally hasn't developed a signature writing style or set of thematic obsessions. His plays are remarkably diverse, from the working-class romance Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune to his controversial gay take on the Gospel Corpus Christi to Master Class, his highly honoured drama about a session for aspiring opera singers taught by Maria Callas.

"I don't think I have a style. I have an aesthetic. I believe in a simplicity and fluidity of emotion — from tears to laughter," he said.

And [regular readers may well guess what's next, but I make no apologies for featuring this again] there is one particular production amongst Mr McNally's body of work which, even after all these years and many repeat viewings, can still bring those "tears and laughter" (generally "tears of laughter", actually) to us here at Dolores Delargo Towers.

It is, of course, one of my favourite films of all time - The Ritz!

Buy your copy of The Ritz from Amazon

Terrence McNally (born 3rd November 1928)

Good luck with your mouth!

Many happy returns to the multi-talented Miss Kaye Ballard, comedienne, actress and singer, who is 86 years old today.

Even though her face is probably more immediately recognisable than her name, Miss Ballard's contribution to many of our favourite entertainments - not least her cracking star turn as the "wronged wife" in the brilliant movie The Ritz - mean we have always had a soft spot for her here at Dolores Delargo Towers.

Any excuse, really, to feature some clips from one of my all-time favourite films!

Kaye Ballard in The Ritz

Here is Miss Ballard singing a remarkably good version of the Fanny Brice/Barbra Streisand torch song My Man:

Kaye Ballard - My Man

And here she is just two years ago, promoting her audio autobiography:

The Unbelievable Kaye Ballard

Facts about Kaye Ballard:

• In the 1940s, Miss Ballard sang and played tuba (!) with Spike Jones and his Orchestra.
• She played one of the Ugly Sisters in the big-budget 1950s TV version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, starring Julie Andrews.
• Hers (on Broadway in the 1954 musical The Golden Apple) was the first version of the classic song Lazy Afternoon, later to become one of Eartha Kitt's standards.
• She has never married, and has lived for more than thirty years with her "companion" the actress Myvanwy Jenn.

Kaye Ballard and Carol Channing, September 2011

Happy birthday to one of the greats!

Kaye Ballard official website

I know what's going on in here

"I know what's going on in here, with all of you men going "Hee hee hee, boo boo boo, hah hah ha!"

We went to the BFI (British Film Institute) again last night, for a not-to-be-missed occasion - a rare showing of one of my all-time favourite films, The Ritz!

Adapted by Oscar-winning director Richard Lester from a 1970s theatrical production by the out-gay playwright Terrence McNally (who famously collaborated with Kander and Ebb on The Rink and Kiss of the Spiderwoman, received huge critical acclaim in the 90s with Love! Valour! Compassion! and in the noughties for his adaptation of The Full Monty for the stage), this is an extraordinary comedy indeed!

For those who have never seen this magnificent movie, the plot revolves around heterosexual Cleveland businessman Gaetano Proclo (Jack Weston) taking refuge from his homicidal Mafia brother-in-law Carmine Vespucci (Jerry Stiller) in "the one place no-one would think to look for him", a gay bath house! In this fabulously tacky place, he gets pursued by chubby-chaser Claude Perkins (Paul B Price), befriended by the wise-cracking slut Chris (F Murray Abraham), and ineptly followed by private dick Michael Brick (Treat Williams). Farce follows farce, as the characters try to dodge the hit-men, the goings-on in the steamroom, and of course, the wrath of resident "diva" Googie Gomez (played to absolute perfection by the fantabulosa Rita Moreno)...

I won't go on, just watch some of the clips for yourself. I can highly recommend it as a real uplifting tonic - we were crying with laughter (despite having seen it many times), and the audience was hooting! Enjoy...

Buy your copy of The Ritz from Amazon

"Margaret Dumont, we thought you were dead"

Discovering that today is the 120th anniversary of the birth of the classic character actress Margaret Dumont (the larger lady who always provided a foil for Groucho's jokes in the Marx Brothers movies) provides me with a perfect excuse to post one of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite movies - the hilarious Terrence McNally film The Ritz:



All about the real Margaret Dumont

For those of you who haven't seen the film yet (why not?!), it is available on Amazon

I like to be in Americaaaa

Ah, Rita Moreno! The queen of Puerto Rican sirens was 76 years old yesterday.

born Rosita Dolores Alverío, Rita has had a long career in movies, starting out as a child actor. But it was her role as Anita in West Side Story that brought her the fame and fortune she deserves.

Notably the first (and only Puerto Rican) actress ever to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, she manages to maintain a magnetic screen presence whether she is dancing, singing or playing a comedy part such as Googie Gomez in The Ritz.

Or indeed as a guest on the Muppet Show...

Rita Moreno and Animal - The Muppet Show

Rita Moreno on Wikipedia

Puttin’ on The Ritz

Wow! Just discovered the fact that a production of Terrence McNally's fabulous comedy The Ritz has been revived on Broadway...

A camp classic (and the movie is one of my favourite films), The Ritz is the story of Carmine, a member of a mob family who, on the run from hitmen ordered by his own dying father-in-law, takes refuge in the one place he thinks the killers will never find him - a New York gay bath house!

Inside, the interplay between the characters is one long farcical (and hilarious) romp of innuendo and mistaken identities. The lead gay character is the uber-camp Chris, whose one-liners I still quote today:

• (Bumping into a big butch queen in the lift) "Margaret Dumont, we thought you were dead!"
• "Well, if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a queen without a sense of humour. You can die with your secrets, honey!"
• "There will be an orgy in Room 340 in approximately four minutes! Orgy in 340, four minutes!"

But among the eccentric mix of characters in The Ritz , the star of them all has to be that epitome of all dire cabaret acts, Miss Googie Gomez! Played in the movie by the supremely talented Rita Moreno, Googie Gomez is anything but... Her hilarious "tribute" to Cole Porter, her violence when someone thinks she is "tacky drag", her pursuit of Carmine when she thinks he is a music producer - all priceless!



And so Terrence McNally's play returns to the stage, and hope one day the producers will have the good sense to bring it over here - I will be first in the queue for tickets!

Read all about the Broadway production at Studio 54

Footnote: And for any of you bizarre people out there who have never even seen The Ritz there is the perfect opportunity coming up, as the DVD is (finally) released in the US in January! No sign of a UK release as yet, but I wait with bated breath...

Order your copy from Amazon