There is good news and bad news. The Queen of Camp and legendary gay icon Dame Joan Collins aka Dynasty's Alexis Carrington Colby is back on the road again touring with her one woman show"Unscripted". The bad news is that she is only taking it to theaters in the U.K. If you live there then beg, steal or borrow to grab a ticket to see the 82 year old .....(I mean the 49 year old) .... actress who once said 'Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.'
Here's a reminder of Joan shining as Alexis when she could cut anyone to shreds with just her tongue.
Better still here is Joan as Joan making mincemeat of an Australian TV interviewer who was foolishly enough to try and rile her.
94-year–old IRIS APFEL is a fashion legend. In an era when even Hollywood stars are slaves to stylists and opinionated editors who want all of us to conform, this New York idiosyncratic doyenne is one of the last truly original, most fabulous dressed women around.
Her large crammed Manhattan home is packed full of vintage pieces, designer clothing and treasures that she has picked up in thrift stores. She combines chic with cheap. Everything she wears is big, bold and totally stunning, and always topped off with her signature oversized glasses. She was married to her centenarian husband Carl for 66 years, and she has such an enthusiastic energy and pulse for living, and is now the 'new face' for WiseWear‘s Socialite Collection having designed for them a fitness tracker which is actually fashionable. Plus they can even send out a distress message in case you get lost in your hotness!
We put on our glad rags on so that we could sit down and talk life and style with this remarkable fashion icon after she had been so beautifully captured in an enchanting new documentary portrait simply called"Iris"by the late Albert Maysles. It is still one of our favorite interviews, so to mark her new venture, we thought we would reprint it now.
QG: Your mother once told you to buy a simple black dress, as you would always have something to wear. However it looks from the clothes that you actually wear that you simply ignored her, and in fact you say in the movie that “black is not a style, it’s a uniform.”
IA: No, I didn’t disagree with my mother, as that was good basic training she gave me. What my mother meant was that I should have a good architectural piece of clothing that didn’t have any embellishment. One that I could wear to the office in the morning, and then go straight out to a black tie affair at night by simply just changing accessories. My mother worshiped at the altar of the accessory.
QG: How old were you when your sense of style manifested itself, and when did it evolve into the Iris Apfel look?
IA: As far as I know it always was there. My family told me that when I was a kid of about four or five years old (but I don’t remember) we were spending the summer at a resort. My mother used to take great pleasure in dressing me every night and she would always concoct an outfit. She had a kind of an orange crate, which I would stand on top of as she dressed me. One particular night all of a sudden people came rushing into the room because I was howling and screaming and carrying on like a banshee as if my mother were going at me with an axe. They were desperate to know what happened. It seems that my mother took a hair ribbon and made a big bow out of it and went to put it in my hair. I kept screaming “it doesn’t match, it doesn’t match”, stamping my feet and carrying on. Now all these years later I realise that Mom was so right as I hate matchy matchy, but in those days I was just horrified. (laughs)
QG: What was the most exciting thing about fashion in those very early days when you were still traveling the globe for your interior design business?
IA: It was so exciting because there was such an enormous amount of creativity. Balenciagawas alive and I had friends in the fashion business who would take me to all the openings in Paris, and it was really so exuberant. Then it was like something new with these bursts of creativity and genius, most of which are all finished now.
QG: After the success of the exhibition of your clothes and jewelry at the Metropolitan Museumin 2005 you became an octogenarian starlet, and so many more doors were opened to you, what was the favorite one? Being a Visiting Professor perhaps?
IA: Actually I called myself a geriatric starlet. They were all very nice as I like doors a lot. I collect doors too. (laughs)
QG:Bruce Weber the photographer said that the reason you did this movie was that you thought Albert Maysles was handsome and you had a crush on him! I’m curious to know what the real reason was?
IA: At first I didn’t want to do it and turned it down flat. Then I had a long talk with Linda Fargo (Senior VP at Bergdorf Goodman) and she said that I must be out of my cotton picking head as people would just drop dead to have Albert Maysles even take a still photograph and he wants to do a documentary of you! I really didn’t think anybody would care about a film about me as I wasn’t very well known and I didn’t have anything to sell. However Albert convinced me, and I’m very glad I did it, as it was a wonderful experience he was a really wonderful guy. We shall all miss him so much.
QG: What do you think of the movie now?
IA: I haven’t actually seen it yet. But if I don’t like it, there is no one to complain to about it now. (laughs)
QG: You said in the movie that you believe that it is better to be happy than well dressed.
IA: Absolutely. I think fashion is just part of my life and if it hadn’t of been fashion then it would have been something else. I was so worried in the film that I would come across as some empty headed fashionista.
QG: Well you didn’t.
IA: Thank God for that because they’re so many empty headed people in the fashion business who take themselves way too seriously and I don’t think I am at all like one of them. To me there are lots more important things in the world than just having the right shoes!
I think that if you have to work very hard at dressing up and it makes you nervous or uptight, then you won’t look very well because you won’t be comfortable. I think it’s much better to be comfortable and happy than well dressed, don’t you?
QG: Absolutely. You value individuality and curiosity so highly
IA: Oh yes…
QG: Then how would you encourage people nowadays to be just that, when things are so mass marketed?
IA: First you have to know who you are. That is the most important thing, as if you don’t know who you are you will either get swallowed up or you follow some unsuitable trends and just become a nonentity. It’s not easy to know who you are and it’s very painful and takes a lot of time and that is why a lot of people don’t want to put in the effort. However if you don’t have any individuality and you’re happy just being one of the girls (or boys) be my guest. I’m not the fashion police. I won’t fault you.
QG: One of the most touching aspects of your life in the film is your marriage to your husband Carl who celebrated his 100th birthday this year.
IA: It was sixty-eight years together a couple of weeks ago.
(n.b. Carl subsequently died in August 2015 a few days after his 101st Birthday)
QG: What is your secret to having such a long happy relationship?
IA: Having a sense of humor and giving one another space: your own space. I’m delighted that gay people now want to get married and I say why not! It’s nobody’s business and I would happily give my blessing.
It's only Tuesday and its already turning to be a week of Dolly's and Divas. Yesterday we were celebrating that announcement that theDivine Miss M is going to be playing Dolly Levi on Broadway this year, and today we are breaking open the bubbly as it is the 70th Birthday of our favorite sparkly country and western superstar Miss Dolly Parton.
It's not hard to see why this effervescent pint-sized larger-than-life singer/songwriter/actress with her rags to riches story is such a popular gay icon. With her outrageous dress sense that glorifies her magnificent breasts, she has a style that would make her a perfect drag queen. If truth were known, in the past she actually entered a Dolly Lookalike Drag Competiton and lost! When talking about her own appearance she once said 'it takes a lot of money to look this cheap". On a serious note however, she has not just been a big ally of LGBT rights but she has put herself and hosted very successful Gay Days at Dollywood even though the drew the ire of the local Klu Klux Klan. Dolly is the most honored female country singer of all time, but that is not why we love her. It's the fact (amongst other things) that she starred in both" 9-5," and "Steel Magnolias" plus she wrote the ultimate gay 'grab-your-kleenex' anthem of all time with 'I Will Always Love You'which she was such a massive hit for both her and Whitney Houston.
Handsome L.A. based identical gay twins Gary and Larry Lane loved Dolly so much they wrote her a screenplay for a movie based on her life and then went all the way to Dollywood to present it to her personally. They even made a documentary of the their journey "Hollywood to Dollywood" (available at Amazon). Like all good fairy tales it had a happy ending and whilst Dolly never made their movie, the boys did get to hang out with their idol.
11 year old Elizabeth Alison Gray is not gay BUT she knows how to fantasize like one. When she discovered that she had been adopted she decides on a whim that her birth mother was in fact Dolly and she sets off across country to be 'reunited' with her in a delightfully quirky comedy called "The Year That Dolly Parton Was My Mum"(available from Amazon).
We may not all go to quite the extremes as this but we do want to at least wish you a very happy 70th birthday, and tell you that we will always love you too.
Happy (81st) Birthday Dame Maggie Smith CH DBE who, with 6 Oscar Nominations and 2 Wins and countless other awards (don't lets forget the 5 BAFTAS), is one of THE leading actresses of her generation, and one of our favorite gay icons of all time.
For some reason or enough we had always assumed that Kylie Minogue had recorded a Christmas Album years ago, but it turns out that she has only just got around to making one. We are glad she waited as the result is wonderfully festive as only she, Australia's favorite singing gay icon, could make it.
There are 13 tracks in all (on this her thirteenth studio album) and includes duets with sister Danni, Iggy Pop, Frank Sinatra plus our favorite song of collection "Only You" which she sings with TV's Late Late Show Host James Corden.
The Brits are this week re-releasing the hit single of Cilla Blacksinging "You're My World" in the fervent hope it will be the Christmas No 1 Song this year which has always a traditional highlight for the music business in the UK.
Cilla, a discovery of her fellow Liverpudlians The Beatles, recorded this in 1964 and it stayed at the Top of The Charts in the UK for four weeks, and was the first single of hers to be released in the US where it peaked at no 46 in the Billboard Charts.
After her career in pop music faded Cilla went on to become the most successful and highly paid TV host in the 1980's and 1990's and parlayed her way into being one of the UK's most best-loved national show-business stars, and something of a gay icon too. She died tragically earlier this year at the age of 71 and the nation went into deep mourning.
French movie star ALAIN DELON celebrates his 80th Birthday today.
Delon was one of most prominent actors and screen "heart throbs" in the 1960s. He achieved critical acclaim for roles in films such as Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Purple Noon (the original Talented Mr Ripley in 1960), L'Eclisse (1962), The Leopard (1963), Lost Command (1966) and Le Samouraï (1967). Over the course of his career Delon worked with many well-known directors, including Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni and Louis Malle.
His attempts at making it big in Hollywood failed every time but in Europe he was a major box office star. Married twice and known to have had countless affairs, this handsome matinee idol always had a big gay following, partly because he was never afraid to strip off and show all his assets.
Delon announced his decision to give up acting in 1997, although he still occasionally accepts roles, and he now lives in Switzerland with 2 of his 4 children and focuses on his business activities.
Amongst Emmy Award winning director Jeffrey Schwarz's prolific output are four excellent documentaries on iconic gay figures : first it was activist & cinephile Vito Russo, then celebrated porn actor Jack Wrangler, followed by the definitive profile on John Water's favorite actress Divine. I get to talk to him now about his latest movie on the 50's heartthrob movie star Tab Hunter.
The news of some celebrity’s deaths hit you hard personally,
especially when they are somewhat unexpected.
Cilla Black’s was one such case.
I mean, it’s tough when you lose someone you grew up with like I did
with her. Not literally of course as I
was brought up in a nice squeamishly clean middle-class Methodist Orphanage in
the England’s leafy green suburban Home Counties whilst Cilla (then still Priscilla
Maria Veronica White) was raised in
a Roman Catholic working-class terrace house in Liverpool’s rather rough
Scotland Road area.
We didn’t ‘meet’ until I was
sixteen years old in 1964 and had started a phase of dating girls.She helped me enormously as I only had only
to turn on my transistor and play her Number One Hit record ‘Anyone Who Has A Heart’
and I scored.Big Time.She was like my big sister as she was already
21 years old by then and had just enjoyed a modest success with her first
record penned by her Merseyside mates The Beatles who had persuaded their
manager Brian Epstein to take her on.
I got confused later when I
heard the American singing star Dionne Warwick claim that Burt Bacharach
had written ‘Anyone Who Has a Heart’ for her but that Cilla had pipped her at
the post and reached the Number one spot where she stayed for a few weeks.It sounded like sour grapes to me but anyway it
made no difference as Cilla was already one of us and when she quickly followed
her first success with another No I Hit... 'You’re My World'…. I knew she was
singing to me, and whichever girlfriend I was foolishly trying to woo at the time.
These were exciting and
heady times to be a teenager in the Swinging Sixties and we had this whole new
world of fresh clean-cut wholesome pop music with trendy fashions to match.Cilla was part of this vanguard of natural
talent that was simply discovered and nurtured in those days and not
manufactured as is in later generations.Whenever she appeared on Television in her Biba clothes and her Vidal Sassoon
sculptured haircut we couldn’t help but like her, and we wanted to be be just like her too.After all she had been discovered by the
greatest pop band of the last century, so of course we loved her.Then when The Righteous Brothers sang ‘You’ve
Lost That Loving Feeling’ so did Cilla.The
boys made it to the top of the UK charts, but we made sure that Cilla made it
to the No 2 spot the very same week.
As the years passed Epstein
try to transform her from a singer into an actress but her efforts were met
with limited success as she was never any good at playing roles being other people. However what he did establish was that she had a natural
flair for comedy whether it was in TV or on London’s West End stages.What Epstein, and others realized after his
untimely death, that this untrained young singer’s greatest asset was that she
had tapped into our hearts by just being a very natural down-to-earth charismatic
Northerner who had an ability to see the best in everything and everybody.It seemed an obvious step then into hosting
TV shows, and before we could even blink, she was not only fronting two of the
UK’s most successful shows in television history, but she also became the
highest paid person on the small screen for her efforts.
From 18 years we faithfully arranged
our Saturday night schedules around watching ‘our’ Cilla try and help and match
up some lovelorn singles on ‘Blind Date’.This was mainstream television at its very best and although British
inverted snobs liked to pretend that the whole affair was far too lowbrow for
them, in reality none of them, or us ever missed a single week.When it started in 1985 I was married to
Peter and the only time we ever disagreed was when one of the light head bachelorettes
failed to pick the hottest man. I’m kind
of happy that watching ‘Blind Date’ was in fact one of the very last things he
and I did together the night that he passed away too.
Cilia’s other mega-successful
TV show that also ran for some 16 years was ‘Surprise Surprise’ where she
matched up families who hadn’t seen each other for decades.Always a Kleenex grabbing moment, but I made
a point of stressing to Peter that as much as I loved being a voyeur, I would
never ever want to be reunited with any of my dysfunctional family. There is
after all a very good reason why I had not clapped eyes on most of them for 50
odd years.
What Cilla captured so
succinctly was the heart of a nation, as even when she turned into one of the
shrewdest and most professional television of our generation she wanted us to
always remember that she was just one of us, and that life was really a lorra
lorra fun, as she would say in her heavy Mersey accent that she still reveled
in.Attempts at turning her into an
international star failed miserable, but we wonder if she really cared about
that?We certainly didn’t, she was
quintessentially English and we were happy to keep her to ourselves.It is testimony to how popular she was also
within ‘show business’ too as a host of legendary British stars have been lining up
today one after another to pay such very glowing tributes to a woman who will be so
missed by all her peers too.
We loved Cilla Black not
because she outlived and outlasted all those incredible musicians that made up
the Mersey Sound some 50 years ago, but because she was a star when you needed
to have an actual talent to be one on television.Cilla shared it with us with such boundless
enthusiasm and all that goodwill that you almost wanted to be one of the
successful couples that went the whole way on ‘Blind Date’ as you knew she would be at your wedding in
the front row wearing a big hat.
When Pink News made a list of 50 Greatest Gay Icons, Cilla was no.23 which was 9 places higher than Beyonce. However Cilla Black was not just one
of the major popular cultural icons of mine, and other generations, she was always
a 'lorra lorra fun'. When my very inquisitive and innocent 5 year old nephews from Northern Ireland once asked me years ago which really famous people I knew in London, I immediately lied and said 'Cilla'. They were far more impressed than if I had named Beckham their own idol as even they loved her more than even the Royal Family. So farewell Cilla and a big thank you too as we will have nothing but the fondest of memories, and I want you to know that I never blamed you for the fact that your
music way back then made those rather forward girlfriends want to go beyond
‘first base’ with me.Urgh ! I got over them, but never ever over your music or you.
