‘Comb-out’ cat fight in MGM hair salon

Fashion · Film
Memories of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio’s early-morning hair-and-makeup ritual as described by one of the era’s leading girls-with-curls, Leslie Caron.EXCERPTED FROM: Donald Knox, “The Magic Factory: How MGM Made An American in Paris” (New York: Praeger Publishers) 1973 One of the biggest fights between the ladies was in hairdressing. Sydney Guilaroff was the king of that ...

Death of a dancer: Kenneth Rinker 1

Dance
by 
ed. note: artsmeme wishes to especially thank dance writer Susan Reiter for her humanity in contributing this appreciation of the marvelous modern dancer/choreographer Ken Rinker. You may experience a taste of Kenneth in motion in this film’ed excerpt from “The Bix Pieces.” On a September evening in 1972, I had a dance epiphany that has ...

Call in The Police! Stewart Copeland & Re-Collective Orchestra in ‘derangements’ 2

Music
by 
stewart copeland, the police deranged ed. note: This story by music writer Kirk Silsbee was commissioned and originally published by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for the Arts. Excerpted with permission. No band electrified audiences in the 1970s and ‘80s like The Police. Omnipresent on the airwaves, they had arenas pulsing across the globe. ...

On Esa-Pekka envy & the glory of Ory Shihor

Dance · Music
Classical music notes … Esa-Pekka Salonen‘s departure after “helming” the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 17 years was sad. I’m not over it! But at least he’s been tucked away, out of range, in faraway London. Now, in a shock to the classical music world and a great coup for the city of San Francisco, he ...

Blonde on blonde @ Hollywood Heritage

Film
Alice Faye, Betty Grable Mitzi Gaynor, who worked at Twentieth Century-Fox in the ’50s (The I Don’t Care Girl, Golden Girl) knew what color her hair should be. Looking back at movies in which she appears in (her natural) mousy brown locks, she commented dryly, “Oh, that was before my hair grew in blonde.” We ...

David Crosby’s ‘freak flag’ flies in new documentary

Film · Music
rock-and-doc star david crosby, photo by amy graves David Crosby, who almost cut his hair but didn’t, ended up having it shorn in a Texas state prison. After serving time for drug possession, he exited the big house as a drab-looking middle-aged, balding man of no particular distinction. Then he grew back his hair. Now ...

Tales of neuroses from Roz Chast

Ideas & Opinion · Visual arts
New Yorker magazine cartoonist Roz Chast has a new book. That makes me anxious. It’s not that I’m jealous. I would be totally fine, but I couldn’t sleep last night. I think the waiter at that restaurant was looking at me funny. Then my neighbors were keeping me up … argh! Chast’s new book, Going ...

Bicoastal Jack Cole cross-fertilizes crazy hair Broadway-to-Hollywood

Dance · Fashion · Film
Actress Joan Diener, featured on Broadway in Kismet (1953 – 1955) shares a crazy-hair & headress look with Betty Grable, pictured below in “Down Boy” from Three for the Show (1955, Columbia Pictures). Jack Cole, who choreographed (first) Kismet then Three for the Show, took great care with the appearance of the women with whom ...

Jack Cole choreography for GILDA set to sizzle on UCLA Film Archive big screen 1

Dance · Film
Do you enjoy this classic image of Rita Hayworth as GILDA? It’s a capture from  Hayworth’s iconic high-end striptease, “Put the Blame on Mame,” choreographed by Jack Cole, the brilliant dance maker who rocked Hayworth’s world at Columbia Pictures in the 1940s. Cole’s dance numbers (“Put the Blame on Mame,” “Amado Mio“), taken together, raise ...

“Loves of a Blonde,” Milos Forman’s low-key masterpiece,@ UCLA Film & Television Archive

Film
About a month ago, perusing the library’s dvd offerings, I plucked from the shelf Loves of a Blonde (1965), director Milos Foreman‘s precocious 1967 Academy Award-winning film. A small romantic comedy, shot in black and white and only 90-minutes long, the film patiently unspools its minimalist plot, a droll dissection of life in a Czech ...