Circus is coming to town

As it is a Monday (boo, hiss) and we all need a bit of "jollying up", here is the new video [featuring none other than Justin Trousersnake, heavily disguised] for the first single by Gnarls Barkley from their forthcoming album The Odd Couple.

Gnarls Barkley - Run

Run
Yeah its still the same
Can’t you feel the pain
When the needle hits the vein
Ain’t nothing like the real thing
I’ve seen it once before
And oh it’s something else
Good god

Cool breeze come on in
Sunshine come on down
These are the tear drops of the clown
Circus is coming to town
All I’m saying is sometimes I’m more scared of myself
You better
move
I said
move

Runaway
Runaway
Run children
Run for your life
Runaway
Runaway
Run children
Here it comes
I said run
Alright

Yeah I’m on the run
See where I’m coming from
When you see me coming run
Before you see what I’m running from
No time for question asking time is passing by
Alright

You can’t win child
We’ve all tried to
You’ve been lied to
It’s all ready inside you
Either you run right now
Or you best get ready to die
You better
move
I said
move

Runaway
Runaway
Run children
Run for your life
Runaway
Runaway
Run children
Ooh
Here it comes
I said run

Star Quality, indeed

"My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous. I am all I have to work with, to play with, to suffer and to enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but of my own. I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself."

We went to the very last day of the exhibition Star Quality: Aspects of Noël Coward at the National Theatre last night. I figured I’d lose too many Princess Points if I had missed it.

It was a fabulous collection of ephemera, photographs and letters relating to the incredibly creative life of "The Master" - from his early years as a young actor, through his early successes with Hay Fever, Cavalcade, Blithe Spirit and Private Lives, the War Years (when he was not only lauded for his morale-boosting films such as In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter but was also acting as a spy for HM Government!), his friendships with Gertie Lawrence, Bea Lillie, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, The Lunts and Lord Mountbatten, to his later reinvention as a top-billing cabaret artist in Las Vegas and his private life with partner Graham Payn.

Star billing went, of course, to that dressing gown...



An incredible display - but one of the revelations that came out of the exhibition was his lifelong friendship with a very remarkable pair of queens indeed. Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson were avid collectors of, and enthusiasts for, everything to do with the British theatre. Many of the items featured in the exhibition were in fact from their private collection, which apparently has at its heart two thousand or more archive boxes containing playbills, posters, programmes, engravings, cuttings and production photographs of London and regional theatres, with files on every actor and actress of note in the British theatre, and sections on circus, dance, opera, music-hall, variety, dramatists, singers and composers, together with many engravings, figurines and pictures.

The Mander and Mitcheson collection

Although the collection is only open to researchers, which is a shame, it is a tribute to these two that so much of the history of theatre - and indeed Noel Coward’s own - might well have been lost to private hands. Hopefully one day, someone might find a permanent exhibition space for this marvellous life’s work - a Theatre Museum, perhaps? (Oh no, I forgot - the last one closed down thanks to a lack of support from the rich commercial theatres!)

Anyway, here’s a treat from The Master himself.

Noel Coward - Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Article from The Independent: What’s inspiring the Noel Coward renaissance?

Noel Coward website

The brassiest of brassy ladies

"You never find yourself until you face the truth."

Today would have been the 90th birthday of the brassiest of brassy ladies - Pearl Bailey.

With her beautiful sultry tones and knowing use of innuendo, she was hugely popular on Broadway, in cabaret, and in Hollywood. Double-entendre was her forte - our favourite songs of hers include She Had to Go and Lose it at the Astor, Let’s Do It, Baby It’s Cold Outside and It Takes Two to Tango.

Pearl collaborated with some of the greats, such as Cab Calloway, Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Dinah Shore, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and (best of all) Carol Channing. She starred in Porgy and Bess with Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge, the film version of Carmen Jones, and even an all-black production of Hello, Dolly! A true star...

Pearl Bailey and Dinah Shore - Mack the Knife

When the shark bites, indeed.

Pearl Bailey on Wikipedia

Astleymania

I was reading today about a nerdy phenomenon that has caught on in hyperspace. Originating with students in America (which could explain loads about their education system), the recipient clicks on a link that purports to be something else - a comedy clip, joke or new online game perhaps - and what they get is a video of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.

Dubbed "Rick-rolling", it has brought seven million viewers to dear old Rick’s YouTube video, and I assume it is meant to force the unsuspecting victim to have this infectious classic locked into their brain for the rest of the day:

Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up

It works...

Oh l’amour, l’amour...

We went to see a showing of the classic film The Women last night at the British Film Institute on the South Bank. Despite the fact that it was announced as being introduced by Maureen Lipman, who never showed up, we had a whale of a time revisiting what must be one of the bitchiest films ever made - with leading ladies Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell and Paulette Goddard and an all-female cast of stars, it couldn’t be anything else...



If you’ve never seen this masterpiece I cannot recommend it enough. In the hands of master scriptwriters Clare Boothe Luce (founder of Life magazine) and Anita Loos (famous for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), the dialogue is as sharp as a razor, as the spoilt rich bitches catfight in their gowns by Adrian, and the wronged wife (Shearer) tries to recapture her husband from the clutches of an evil vamp (Crawford).

For its time, it is remarkably modern - so many comparable films of the pre-war era were over-sentimental, moral and puritanical - and remains a genuinely brilliant tour de force.

Some of the best quotes from the movie include:

• "You simply must see my hairdresser, I DETEST whoever does yours."
• "She’s got those eyes that run up and down a man like a searchlight."
• "Get me a bromide - and put some gin in it."
• "He almost stood me up for his wife!"
• "Isn’t that (nail polish) divine? Jungle red!" "Looks like you’ve been tearing at somebody's throat!"
• "Oh, poor creatures. They’ve lost their equilibrium because they’ve lost their faith in love. Oh l’amour, l’amour."
• "Where I spit no grass grows ever!"
• "Oh, she can’t help it. It’s just her tough luck that she wasn’t born deaf and dumb."
• "When anything I wear doesn’t please Stephen, I take it off."

And my favourite of all:

• "There is a name for you, ladies, but it isn’t used in high society... outside of a kennel!"

The Women

Read more about The Women

Apparently some idiot is producing a remake of this brilliant film - even with such names as Carrie Fisher, Bette Midler and Candice Bergen on board you just know it will be pants!

I mean - Eva Mendes trying to play a Joan Crawford character?! And wouldn’t the entire audience side with the man-stealing vamp if the wronged wife is played by Meg (somebody slap her) Ryan?

The Godfather of haute couture

"I’m rather pro-prostitution. It avoids frustration, and I admire people who do it. We can’t all afford a mistress or an expensive friend. People need relief, or they become murderers. Is that a moral position?"

Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is a wonderfully camp old-school eccentric, with his trademark expensive shades and chalk-white ponytail. He is not just a renowned haute couturier in his own right, he is also credited with saving the House of Chanel from imminent bankruptcy - and the revealing documentary film about his life, Lagerfeld Confidential, has now been released on DVD in the UK.

Described as "an intimate and rounded portrait of a man prone to bouts of quiet introspection and sadness, yet who exudes a disarming sense of humour; a man whose adulation for the arts is manifest in everything he touches", the film gets right to the heart of what makes this extraordinary man really tick.

Evidently, Lagerfeld considers sexual preference to be no more complicated than hair colour or fashion sense. He expresses the wish that gay people would return to their old proclivity for outraging bourgeois social norms, rather than aping what he feels are outmoded institutions like marriage. And who could honestly argue with that?

Read more about Lagerfeld Confidential

The DVD is available from Amazon now

An epic talent

Today is the centenary of the birth of the incredibly talented David Lean, film director and producer of such classics as Lawrence of Arabia (one of the most homoerotic films of its genre - featuring hardly any women actors in its cast), Bridge On The River Kwai and Dr Zhivago, as well as classic early film productions of Dickens stories such as Oliver Twist.

In his time, he collaborated with the greatest of writers - including Noel Coward and Terrence Rattigan - and a cavalcade of top actors, including Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Katherine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole, John Mills, Trevor Howard, Omar Sharif, Jack Hawkins, Celia Johnson, Ralph Richardson, Kay Walsh, Ann Todd, Stanley Holloway, Robert Newton and Claude Rains.

He was indeed a towering talent. His instinct was for epics - in cinematography, music and casting - and, given the taste in Hollywood nowadays for quantity not quality, we are unlikely to see his like again. A dreadful shame, in my opinion...

Peter O'Toole and Anthony Quinn in Lawrence of Arabia

Doctor Zhivago trailer

The Bridge on the River Kwai trailer

David Lean filmography on IMDB