Black Don’t EVER Crack

In New York on March 5, the Fashion Institute of Technology hosted a special screening of Versailles ’73: American Runway Revolution, a documentary by Deborah Riley Draper. It focuses on the night of November 28, 1973 at  Versailles when, in an effort to restore the palace, a legendary benefit fashion show took place.

Five French designers – Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin and Emanuel Ungaro – and five American designers – Anne Klein, Halston, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta and Stephen Burrows were selected to represent their countries, and the highly competitive event soon became known as “The Battle of Versailles.” At the time, the French had relatively little to lose, with the event on their turf as well as their unquestioned domination of the fashion world. For the Americans, it was more of a gamble, both financially and in terms of the recognition they desperately wanted for themselves, having long languished in the shadow of the French couturiers.

It was a fraught evening in every sense, with ego-fueled bitchiness erupting and the Americans complaining about unfair treatment which kept them waiting around for hours for the French to finish their rehearsals, without benefit of rest, food or even toilet paper.

However, when show time arrived, it was soon apparent that the Americans had triumphed. The French presentation – although filled with beautiful garments – was stiff and old-fashioned, relying heavily on all sorts of gimmickry, like opulent, heavy sets, onstage rockets going off and guest stars ranging from Rudolf Nureyev and ZiZi Jeanmaire to a 67-year-old Josephine Baker. The Americans, who had to go on without a set due to a technical miscommunication about inches vs. meters resulting in a backdrop the size of a postage stamp, simply showed the clothes.   

And what clothes they were! From Bill Blass’s elegant “great Gatsby” retro glam to Halston’s trademark clean, sweeping lines to the joyous color and verve of tyro Stephen Burrows’ youthful concepts,  a breath of fresh air swept through the Royal Opera House. It is also safe to say that the carefully selected models, strutting their gorgeous stuff to the strains of Barry White, were largely instrumental for the clothes’ ecstatic reception, with the crème de la crème of international café society, led by Princess Grace, herself, going mad with joy, tossing their costly programs in the air like sport fans.

Draper’s exhaustively researched, irresistibly lively doc captures the drama and excitement of the night and throws a special spotlight on those models, specifically the gorgeous black girls who, in one night, literally changed the face of fashion history. At F.I.T., the screening was blessed with the presence of seven of them: Pat Cleveland (dubbed the greatest runway model of them all), Alva Chin, Norma Jean Darden, Billie Blair, Charlene Dash, Barbara Jackson and Bethann Hardison. One by one, they took to the stage for a q&a afterwards, and it was thrilling to hear the cheers erupting from the crowd of largely minority fashion students for whom these still stunning, ageless models were like rock stars.      

Through their verbal reminiscences, that night, which took place forty years ago, came vibrantly to life again, as we heard how Bethann Hardison stopped the show when she stalked right to the edge of the stage, looked straight out at the audience with the dramatic fierceness she was known for, and defiantly threw the train of her yellow Stephen Burrows dress down. (“I knew I was representing, not just Stephen, but America, and we had to win!” she recalled.) This was then followed by the final model, Cleveland, who pranced out in a white gown with an even longer, seemingly endless train, driving the audience into further frenzies. Cleveland had also delivered goose bumps when she entered, spinning non-stop in a chiffon dress so fast that everyone thought she’d topple right into the orchestra pit, although, of course, she magically stopped right at the edge of the stage.

Besides helping to finally put American fashion on the map, these models – each one with their own singular, dazzling personality – really broke the color line in fashion then and, starting with Givenchy who adored the black girls, they began to dominate runways. In this current age of cookie-cutter, sometimes barely adolescent white scarecrows robotically marching down the catwalk, an ethnic presence is definitely lacking. However, Alva Chin brought up the fact that today black models have far more opportunities besides the runway, appearing in a myriad of print ads, campaigns and even scoring lucrative cosmetic contracts, which were never possible before. They have all indeed come a long way from the time in the 1960s when, joined by legendary fashionista in-the-house Audrey Smaltz who led the movement, they picketed the offices of Harper’s Bazaar to have their pages finally reflect multiculturalism.

Brava!      

Here’s my FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL review of the film

http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/reviews/specialty-releases/e3i6b3228d040f6b2044191def6110cb128  

 with Alva Chin

 

Norma Jean Darden, Charlene Dash, Pat Cleveland hanging in the Green Room

 

with Audrey Smaltz, former model and founder of Ground Crew and star of THE DEVOTION PROJECT. She recently came out and married Olympic basketball star Gail Marquis. Their wedding was prominently featured in THE NEW YORK TIMES

Bethann Harison, agency owner and mother of actor Kadeem, holds court

 

with Norma Jean Darden, who has her own successful food business, Spoon Bread

 

with Deborah Riley Draper, lover all things 1970s and director of VERSAILLES ’73

Pat Cleveland, still beautifully striking a pose

 

with Barbara Jackson

Billie Blair

the panel at Fashion Institute of Technology

 

 

 

WHEN BLACK SUPERMODELS RULED THE WORLD

Oscar de la Renta’s show at the Palace of Versailles in 1973. | KAPLAN/ SIPA

 

A wonderful new film focuses on the legendary “Battle of Versailles” in 1973 which saw American designers triumphing for the first time over the French, largely due to the magical grace and beauty of the most stylish sorority of unforgettable sisters.

 

Read about it in GAY CITY NEWS here,

as well as my review of the film in FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL here

 

http://gaycitynews.com/the-battle-of-versailles/

 

 

THREE WONDERFUL ARTISTS: RACHELLE RAK, TITUSS BURGESS AND THE LATE ANTONIO LOPEZ

Tituss Burgess

 

Rachelle, Tituss, and Antonio

Added by admin on October 10, 2012.
Saved under Around Town, Gallery, Music & Dance, Nightlife, Theater

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Rachelle Rak, the ultimate Broadway gypsy, is finally playing Sheila in “A Chorus Line.”

A fashion study by Antonio Lopez exemplifying the style and often highly androgynous sexiness he was known for.

A series of Antonio Lopez’s Polaroids of Karl Lagerfeld.

 

Read all about ‘em in my column in the latest GAY CITY NEWS

 

http://gaycitynews.com/rachelle-tituss-and-antonio/

OFFENSIVE, RACIST, IGNORANT WRITING IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

I wrote this letter to the Times in response to Alastair Macaulay’s truly offensive, salacious and ignorant review of this hula performance, but of course they haven’t printed it – this critic needs to make an apology, as does the “Good” Grey Lady, herself, for printing it.

To the Editor:

In decades of reading the Times’ arts coverage, I have never come across anything so repellently misinformed as Alastair Macaulay’s Oct. 8 review of the hula performance of the Ka Leo O Laka I Ka Hikina O Ka La company, at City Center on Oct. 4.

The “jockstraps” Mr. Macaulay described in obnoxiously salacious terms are actually “malo,” traditional Hawaiian male attire that stretches back centuries, as does the art of hula itself. Mr. Macaulay continued to display his ignorance throughout his review, labeling the dancers’ moves part “martial arts,” which have nothing to do with traditional hula. His condescension towards the dancers’ other costumes, also fully traditional, which he described “high testosterone Christmas decorations,” again was unseemly, and his comment, “So this was traditional Hawaiian fare, and to be taken seriously,” smacked of the rankest kind of colonial patronization, undoubtedly similar to that of his British forebears, when first encountering native people, themselves.

Mr. Macaulay is clearly ignorant of the history, intricacies and depth of this magnificent art form of ancient hula, known as “kahiko,” which was accompanied only by chanting and percussive instruments. Kahiko is formed from a uniform movement of dancers, which evidently bored him, but which has viscerally thrilled more informed audiences, like at the annual Merrie Monarch hula festival in Hawaii, named for King Kalakaua (who helped reinstate the dance), which has long attracted international attention.

As for Mr. Macaulay’s stated preference for hula in grass skirts – more ignorant condescension – he should know that this more familiar genre is called “auana” (modern hula), which came into being in the 19th century, acclaimed for its lyrical grace, in contrast to kahiko’s aggressive starkness, and is accompanied by melodic singing, steel guitars and the like, familiar from Hollywood movies. Hula, it should be known, like the Hawaiian language itself, was long banned in Hawaii by repressive, emigrant missionary forces, preferring that the natives read the Bible, sing hymns and peacefully hand over their land.

Hula was not merely a dance – with ever-present, secret, gestural meanings which added complexity – but also a way of recording history in movement and through the poetry of its chants. I am frankly shocked that the Times would print such a purely offensive review, which is tantamount to a person saying that many of Alvin Ailey’s dances smack of the jungle and could be less wildly flailing and more formal, in the way, say, of Mr. Macaulay’s beloved classical ballet, in which field I fully give him credit as an authority.

David Noh
(arts writer, born in Hawaii, contributor to GAY CITY NEWS, FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, etc.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/arts/dance/fall-for-dance-at-city-center-with-hawaiian-and-indian-work.html

WAVISHING KAY FWANCIS

Kay Francis, the star of the day on TCM (August 21), was the penultimate 1930s Hollywood star. Along with everything else, she possessed a strikingly exotic dark beauty which brought to mind George Bernard Shaw’s famous letter to Katharine Cornell, whom Francis understudied while on the NY stage:

“I don’t think I was ever so astonished by a picture as I was by your photograph. Your success as Candida, and something blonde and expansive about your name, had created an ideal suburban British Candida in my imagination.

Fancy my feelings on seeing in your photograph a gorgeous dark lady from the cradle of the human race–wherever that was–Ceylon, Sumatra, Hilo, or the southernmost corner of the Garden of Eden!”

Those twin luminous pools she used for eyes, that lushly curved mouth, white, white skin and startlingly contrasting jet black hair physically riveted audiences in a way that Elizabeth Taylor would two decades later. She was tall and deep-bosomed, with slim hips (and tiny feet she was always tripping over), which all made her the pre-eminent clotheshorse of her day, quite a title when such others as Constance Bennett, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Dietrich were swanning around in their dazzling Adrian/Travis Banton-designed creations.

Her wardrobes alone, most often devised by the brilliant Warner Brothers couturier, Orry-Kelly, were always a major draw for female audiences, who revelled in luxurious escape, along with the brow-knitting love problems which always seemed to beset her. There is a brief scene set at the opera, in Ernst Lubitsch’s luminous TROUBLE IN PARADISE, in which Francis effortlessly demonstrates about five different ways to wear a white-fox-trimmed satin wrap, that ranks as perhaps cinema’s chicest. She liked to tell a story on herself about a cabdriver who once told her how much he hated her, because “We kids wanted to go see Tom Mix or Hopalong Cassidy, but Ma always made us watch you and George Brent!”

Her voice was also unique, throaty and sensual, and marked by an endearing impediment -  that Baba Wawa confusion of r’s and w’s – which inspired the title of this post, and impersonations by gay men for years..  

As an actress, she has been seriously underrated. In even the most turgid of her vehicles, caught up as she might be with formulaic travails of unwed motherhood, adultery and, occasionally, murder, she is always highly committed, believable and surprisingly understated, with none of the overwrought campy theatrics that even Garbo was at times guilty of. (And let’s not even discuss the excesses of a Crawford or Shearer!) She was an absolute mistress of screen technique, knowing the almighty power of the closeup and how to convey everything through those enormous, hurt cow-like eyes. 

CONFESSION is her greatest dramatic role, and one of the very best “women’s films” ever made. Supposedly a scene-for-scene Hollywood recreation of a 1935 German film, MAZURKA, starring Nazi diva Pola Negri, Francis is again a deeply troubled and concerned mother, but the melodrama here is of the richest, ripest and most rewarding variety, steeped in a devastatingly watchable mood of fatalism. Francis runs the gamut, from innocent to a jadedly sophisticated actress to a destroyed mother in prison, in a manner which can only be described as heartbreaking, and is given magnificent support by Jane Bryan as her gullibly sensual daughter, and, especially, Basil Rathbone, at his most malevolently charismatic, as the terrifying recurring menace in her life. The climactic fantasy reconciliation scene in jail would normally be the height of hokum, but Francis’ acting defies any viewer not to tear up.  Directed with superb brio by Joe May, with every department at Warner Brothers operating at top, bustlingly lavish capacity, days after watching this, you’ll be haunted by it and find the propulsive music theme churning in your head.

Tay Garnett’s wondrously flavorful ONE WAY PASSAGE was Francis’ personal favorite among her films, and her greatest prestige and box offcie success. Again, an hypnotic air of fatalism – as dark as her beauty – pervades this shipboard romance tragedy, with her as a dying rich girl star-crossed with William Powell as a criminal on his way to execution. Powell was her best leading man, his natural suavity matching her own, and his deft playfulness lightened her natural moody gravity, charmingly. It’s one of the great escapist romances of the era, never more so than when the two of them bask in a paradisical Hawaii, under a full moon and swaying palms, of course, with Francis ecstatically wreathed in an unfathomably enormous lei of gardenias. The remake, TIL WE MEET AGAIN, with Merle Oberon and George Brent, doesn’t hold a candle to this, and it’s interesting that, in the course of instigating one of the numerous love affairs which dotted her sensually busy life, Francis, with a touch of Norma Desmond about her, would always run this film for her paramours.

It’s a pity she didn’t do more comedy, for, as TROUBLE IN PARADISE indubitably proved, she was a delicious farceur, with the kind of grace and airiness of touch one imagines that penultimate high comedienne, Ina Claire, possessed onstage. Warner Brothers had bought the rights to the charming play TOVARICH for her, but, maybe as a sort of punishment, cast Claudette Colbert, who was delicious in it, but Francis would have been no less disarming. The studio did do right by her with JEWEL ROBBERY, one of the 1930s definite unsung delights. She’s an immensely rich Budapest wife here, swathed in Deco gemstones and lovers, who collides with Powell, again, here cast as a jewel thief.

“Oh, huwwy, huwwy, pwease!” she entreats her maid dressing her, in her rush to get to the bijouterie where a new gift awaits her. Her entire performance is a souffle of romantically entitled enchantment, right up to the irresistible final moment, when, sparkling new ring and man in hand, she advances to the camera with a divinely coquettish “don’t tell” finger to her lips.

TCM is showing my personal favorite, guilty pleasure film of hers, MANDALAY. In a little over an hour, this gloriously sleazy and glamorous Pre-Code wonder charts her fall and rise (or is it the other way around?) from duped innocent to the most infamous prostitute in Southeast Asia, making one wonder if she and Dietrich’s Shanghai Lily ever ran into each other. There’s murder along the way – as there always is when Ricardo Cortez is involved – and it has that star entrance of entrances for her, when she appears at the top of the bordello stairs, swathed in sequins and a feather boa, inciting someone to hiss, “That’s the notorious  ’Spot White!’” and another to riposte, “She should be called ‘Spot Cash.” A scene in, which, clad again in the ironic white with which Orry-Kelly attired this flower of the gutter, she successfully disposes of a government official bent on throwing her out of town, surely inspired a similar moment in Josef von Sternberg’s THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN a year later, between Dietrich and Edward Everett Horton. Francis was never more triumphantly alluring and confident than she is here, and if anyone wants to know exactly why she was such a big star, they need only see this.

In summing up this rare and treasurable nova,, perhaps no one said it better than the author of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, Manuel Puig, who once whispered to me in his thick Brazilian accent, “Joo know, Dabeed, sometimes I get thirsty for Kay Francees!”  

COPYRIGHT: davidnoh2012

 

SYLVIA SIDNEY: HUMAN CONUNDRUM

 

 

yesterday was the birthday of Sylvia Sidney, here photographed by Edward Steichen, who always knew how to take THE definitive portrait. She was one of Hollywood’s greatest, yet strangely under-appreciated actresses. She was only nominated for an Oscar once, and in the supporting category, late in her life (for SUMMER WISHES, WINTER DREAMS, in which you BELIEVE she has an actual heart attack). Her real life persona was strangely at odds with her universally known limpid image as the wistful down-trodden Depression proletariat heroine par excellence.”Redoubtable” only began to describe her: a fan approached her once at Bloomingdale’s to tell her he had hundreds of pictures of her. Her reply: “You must be fucking crazy! Your house must be a mess!” Of her films, she once said: “Burn ‘em! Burn ‘em all!” She played Auntie Mame on the stage, but it was maybe more Auntie Mean.

 

Portrait by Fletcher Martin

She did earn the respect of an actress who was surely as redoubtable as she, Bette Davis. Watching the Golden Globe Awards on TV one night, she commented that Sidney’s win was the most deserved of the evening.

 

Dressed by Howard Greer, for THIRTY DAY PRINCESS (1934)

I met her thru her greatest fan, publicist John Springer and she liked me well enough to tell me her biggest regret was not playing Cathy in WUTHERING HEIGHTS with Charles Boyer, due to Walter Wanger’s anger with her for refusing to be in ALGIERS (not wanting to compete with Hedy Lamarr’s beauty). A shame, because that role might have revealed more of her true range and possessed more real Bronte-esque madness than gorgeous but prim Merle Oberon was able to instill. Paramount’s great designer Travis Banton never liked working with her “as my chest was too big. I got Howard Greer to do my clothes and he was wonderful.” Greer dressed her beautifully in my personal favorite movie of hers, THIRTY DAY PRINCESS. With its Preston Sturges script, she showed what a delightful quicksilver comedienne she could be when removed from tenement dreariness.

 

Her best dramatic role was in Fritz Lang’s YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, in which she plays a definitive, heartbreaking version of Bonnie Barrow, just a few years after that gun moll’s actual death. She’s also superbly moving in Josef von Sternberg’s AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, playing the same sad role Shelley Winters later did in A PLACE IN THE SUN, but in a way that makes you feel her death was tragic, not deserved.

 

At a NY Public Library appearance, she was devastatingly dramatic in a real life way, recounting the tragic death of her son, something from which she never recovered and might account for the way she was. On the way out, another fan approached her with a super-rare lobby card from her MADAME BUTTERFLY for her to sign. “Can I have it?” she asked.
Photo: yesterday was the birthday of Sylvia Sidney, one of Hollywood’s greatest, yet strangely under-appreciated actresses. She was only nominated for an Oscar once, and in the supporting category, late in her life (for SUMMER WISHES, WINTER DREAMS, in which you BELIEVE she has an actual heart attack). Her real life persona was strangely at odds with her universally known limpid image as the wistful down-trodden Depression proletariat heroine par excellence.”Redoubtable” only began to describe her: a fan approached her once at Bloomingdale’s to tell her he had hundreds of pictures of her. Her reply: “You must be fucking crazy! Your house must be a mess!” Of her films, she once said: “Burn ‘em! Burn ‘em all!” She played Auntie Mame on the stage, but it was maybe more Auntie Mean. I met her thru her greatest fan, publicist John Springer and she liked me well enough to tell me her biggest regret was not playing Cathy in WUTHERING HEIGHTS with Charles Boyer, due to Walter Wanger’s anger with her for refusing to be in ALGIERS (not wanting to compete with Hedy Lamarr’s beauty). A shame, because that role might have revealed more of her true range and possessed more real Bronte-esque madness than gorgeous but prim Merle Oberon was able to instill. Paramount’s great designer Travis Banton never liked working with her “as my chest was too big. I got Howard Greer to do my clothes and he was wonderful.” Greer dressed her beautifully in my personal favorite movie of hers, THIRTY DAY PRINCESS. With its Preston Sturges script, she showed what a delightful quicksilver comedienne she could be when removed from tenement dreariness. Her best dramatic role was in Fritz Lang’s YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, in which she plays a definitive, heartbreaking version of Bonnie Barrow, just a few years after that gun moll’s actual death. She’s also superbly moving in Josef von Sternberg’s AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, playing the same sad role Shelley Winters later did in A PLACE IN THE SUN, but in a way that makes you feel her death was tragic, not deserved. At a NY Public Library appearance, she was devastatingly dramatic in a real life way, recounting the tragic death of her son, something from which she never recovered and might account for the way she was. On the way out, another fan approached her with a super-rare lobby card from her MADAME BUTTERFLY for her to sign. “Can I have it?” she asked, redoubtable as ever.

1SAGE

This has got to be Barbara Stanwyck’s sexiest, raunchiest and most entertaining film. Made just under the wire before the Hays Code, and largely responsible for that puritanical outfit’s creation, it is a breathlessly paced tale of a smart, ruthless girl’s rise in a grim Depression world. With lip-smacking relish, Stanwyck’s appropriately named Lily Powers attacks the 1933 1% and milks those horny old fat cats for everything they’re worth, clad in sensually flattering Orry-Kelly gowns (one which makes her look like a wet seal) and a less flattering sleek helmet of hair. She has her way with an impressive number of men, including a very young 5th-billed John Wayne, but receives her staunchest support from the delicious Teresa Harris, as her BFF/sometime maid, Chico, described at one point as “that fantastic colored girl.” Fantastic she is indeed, so much so that she inspired Lynn Nottage’s brilliant play BY THE WAY MEET VERA STARK.

If you’re in the NYC area this Friday at 4pm drop in and join us for the wildest cinematic ride you’ll ever take.

DOING WHAT THEY ADORE: LAURA OSNES, MARILYN SOKOL & DAVID LEDDICK

with Laura Osnes at Joe Allen, NYC, where we DEVOURED that obscene hot fudge brownie dessert

Of course, the major perk of being a NYC journalist is the incredible people you get to meet. This particular human treasure trove included Broadway’s brightest new anointed princess, Laura Osnes, a show biz veteran I’ve worshipped since seeing her on the Johnny Carson show as a kid, Marilyn Sokol, and David Leddick, a man for whom the adjective FAAABULOUS might have been invented. I want to be him when I grow up!

Read all about ‘em here

IMPERISHABLE GEORGE FAISON

Suite Otis, choreographed by George Faison

Read my interview with this inspirational theatre legend here

THREE SUPER ACTRESSES

Why do I live in New York? One of the fundamental reasons: the talent of gorgeously diverse ladies such as Hallie Foote, Jane Houdyshell and brand new nova, Lauren Hoffmeier. Read all about ‘em here

Lovely Lauren Hoffmeier, a Modigliani come to life, with a Broadway belt to match that of Patti LuPone, at her very first interview, conducted by yours truly.