via.
Waiting For Guffman (Christopher Guest, 1996).
According to the figures provided by Castle Rock, this film lost $1,107,418. Meanwhile, in the same summer, Face/Off, which everyone knows is my favorite movie of all time, grossed around $245,676,146.
Photographed by Peter Basch.
La donna é mobile. Women are changeable. The write-up for this lovely and talented Playmate of the Month (and surprise celebrity mother) featured her in three different hair colors: blonde, brunette, and redheaded. Browse through the spread and pick your poison!
Time was you could make a date with a brunette on Wednesday and, when you picked her up Saturday night, be certain a brunette would be waiting for you.
(“La Donna È Mobile.” Playboy, October 1957.
These days, thanks to quickie hair-dyes, your brunette may have metamorphosed into a redhead or a boysenberry blonde.
(Ibid.)
Click to enlarge any ol’ pic, any ol’ time, but I strongly recommend the one on the right up there. It’s great. She was a lovely ham in this spread.
And just what in the name of easter baskets would a boysenberry blonde look like? Did the person who wrote that ever even see a boysenberry? They’re so deep purple that they’re virtually black. Strawberry blonde is a shade, yes. Boysenberry blonde? Not so much. Those two things do not work together.
I find the pairing weird and it makes me curious to see such a thing in real life. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible outside of food coloring on a junior high girl. Back to the likely made-up story of quickie hair dyes and their metaphorical relationship with the vagaries of the vapid gender.
This sign of the times was dramatized for us recently when photographer Peter Basch sent us a test shot of prospective Playmate Colleen Farrington, a New York TV model*.
(Ibid.)
*In fact, Colleen was at this time modeling on television and doing high fashion on runways. She worked frequently with designer Oleg Cassini, who would go on to permanent international fame in about three years as Jacqueline Kennedy’s favorite designer and the architect of her “look” in the Camelot heyday.
My favorite shot of the spread.
We found her a pert, well-turned brunette, and we wired Pete to go ahead by all means. When the first Playmate photos arrived, however, Colleen (having dyed her crowning glory for a TV show) was a blonde.
(Ibid.)
We liked her better the other way, so she obliged by becoming a brunette again and Pete, in a puckish mood, persuaded her to try a temporary head of red, too, in the interest of utter confusion.
(Ibid.)
On these pages, therefore, Colleen is available in three smart decorator colors. Which do you prefer?
(Ibid.)
Red, over here. I’ll put the poll at the bottom for easy voting.
I’m curious to see how this one comes out. I think the red suits Ms. Farrington, who sometimes went by Ms. Prince, best, but then again, the pictures of her with red hair are the best done in my opinion, too, so that could be clouding my judgment. If she’d been blonde in the pink corset by the bar pictures, maybe my feelings would be different.
As far as that series of this shoot goes, I’d spotted and saved it a few years ago, just saving it as Colleen Farrington 1, 2, 3, etc. When I started putting together pictures and bios for these winter posts, I was pumped to see I’d be able to include her.
Then when I found her original spread, I was tickled by the prospect of a poll for which hair color was the most pleasing to readers. I’ve been meaning to return to the idea of regularly putting up Showdown!s and this was a perfect opportunity to get back in the swing. Not only that, but Ms. Farrington had one more surprise up her lovely sleeve —
— She is the mother of unbelievably beautiful and talented actress Diane Lane.
I’m sure you’re thinking what I’m thinking — this amazing fact means that Colleen Farrington was, at one time, the mother-in-law of The Highlander. I know, right? There can be only one! Amazing!
Just kidding. I realize not everyone’s life is built around tangentially relating the science fiction/fantasy films and television of their youth to everything they experience, and I’m trying to recover from that shock. I’m sure you were thinking how beautiful mother and daughter both are. And they are.
Ms. Farrington married acting coach, partner to John Cassavetes, and unlikely cabbie Burt Lane and the couple had Diane in 1964. They divorced when the baby was only 13 months old and Ms. Lane lived sometimes with her mother and sometimes with her father until she was 15, when she emancipated herself from her father having already sadly written her mother, living in Georgia at the time, off following some unfortunate family fallouts. They had kind of a bumpy period that I don’t think it’s fair to get in to, but they are reconciled and all is well.
So, back to the poll and how mobile we donnas are: Which of Colleen Farrington’s ‘do’s rocks your world?
Been a while since we’ve had a Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day around here and I thought I’d look to remedy that right about now.
Like fellow rebel-imaged hottie James Dean*, Marlon Brando was a complex cat who looked damned fine deviating from the norm.
Credit.**
“Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we’re acting. Most people do it all day long.”
(Interview in the New York Times. July 2, 2004.)
Girls like a boy who plays music.
This picture ain’t just whistlin’ dixie. Marlon Brando holds several patents for drumhead tensioning. That links to one, but the patent office issued others between December 2002 and November 2004.
Marlon Brando: Pussy Magnet.
Girls like a boy who reads.
“With women, I’ve got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end. I slip the loop around their necks so they can’t get away or come too close. Like catching snakes.”
Mr. Brando’s legally wedded snakes:
“He gave us our freedom. … When Marlon dies, everybody moves up one.”
(Jack Nicholson, on Brando’s import in the history of actors.)
Mr. Brando passed away on July 1, 2004 at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California of respiratory failure from pulminary fibrosis, brought on by numerous causes. R.I.P.
I promise to revisit Marlon Brando another Hot Man Bein’ Hot etc day because I’ve got loads more pictures.
*On October 1, my Complete James Dean DVD box set arrives, along with an Audrey set. Anticipaaation.
**All pictures via fuckyeahmarlonbrando on the tumblr, a beautiful must for Brando fans.
via geminichilde on the tumblr.
Just three years ago, Sharon was a “painfully shy girl of 20 with blonde pigtails,” according to her own recollection. The Dallas-born youngster had never acted or had a smidgen of dramatic training.
Now that Sharon is an actress in the technical sense of the word, anyhow, she has set her goal on becoming “a light comedienne in the Carol Lombard style.”
“I’ll give up acting the second I’m married,” says Sharon, which leads many observers to believe it won’t happen for some time.
Most actresses would rather shed a husband than a career, but Sharon is an unusual girl. What actress, for example, would go out her way to point up the scars on her face? Sharon has a noticeable diagonal scar under her left eye. She also has a small one to the side of the left eye, and another one–“caused by chicken pox”–on her forehead.
“I suffered the big scar,” says Sharon, “when I fell on a piece of corrugated tin when I was five. I wouldn’t dream of having the scar removed. I am very proud of it. It’s me.”
(“Sharon Tate is on a crash program to get to the top.” New York Sunday News. December 18, 1966.)
So many thanks again to TheSensationalSharonTate blog for the transcript of the full and charming interview.
“You must remember I was shy and bashful when I reached Hollywood. My parents were very strict with me. I didn’t smoke or anything. I only had just enough money to get by and I hitchhiked a ride on a truck to the office of an agent whose name I had.”
“That very first day he sent me to the cigarette comercial job. A girl showed me how it should be done, you know taking a deep, deep breath and look ecstatic.”
“I tried to do as she said,” Miss Tate explained, “but the first breath filled my lungs with smoke and I landed on the floor. That ended my career in cigarette commercials.”
(“Sharon Tate Leaves You Breathless.” Robert Musel. Stars and Stripes Magazine. January 1, 1967.)
Special thanks to the SensationalSharonTate blog, you can read the full article here. I love how matter-of-factly self-effacing Sharon Tate comes off in interviews — a sense of humor about oneself is such a good quality.
The Thought Experiment 