Actress Melinda O. Fee [an eerie Valerie Cherish doppelganger] played a fembot on Bionic Woman in September 1977. My unhealthy fascination for obscure jobbing television actresses, yielded a clue to the disturbing reality of today’s Melinda [an eerie Jane Hudson doppelganger]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNuCD2BO3dM#t=24m22s

Apparently, Melinda did a one day gig as “Jill Foster Abbott #4” on Y&R covering for Brenda Dickson who was.. ahem.. at home sick. These stunts subsequently cost Brenda her role and career.

Project du jour; a bunch of human hair hairpieces that were used in silent movies. Never mind how I got them. Will revive them. Use them in fashion shoots. No one will know. A second career. Third?

[I’ve done this before]

it must have been a shock

Evil Under The Sun (1982) Jane Birkin’s costumes are perfection

screw real life.
click here

Best stage Norma Desmond ever, Betty Buckley.
Saw this in London, she fucking destroyed me.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LFd-QN32oBI#t=275

and then this happened:

Sigh…

Yvette Vickers was a b-movie actress of the 50s, mostly known for her roles in The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) and the Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). Her first movie appearance was more promising -albeit uncredited- in Sunset Boulevard (1950) as “Giggling Girl on Phone”, in the Christmas party scene. It seems Yvette wasn’t as career focused as her peroxide contemporaries Marilyn, Jane or Mamie were. Playboy playmate for July 1959, she drifted to bit parts in the 60s, developing a reputation of a man-stealing, fast party girl, slowly fading out of the industry altogether.

Jump to April of 2011, when a concerned neighbor discovered her dead body in her Benedict Canyon two-story home, a decrepit, tiny wooden pied-à-terre (about 700 ft2 / 65 m2), which had been her home since the 50s. Yvette had been lying dead on the wooden floor for over 6 months. She had no family or friends, preferring to keep to herself, increasingly paranoid that people were stalking her. A half brother came out of the woodwork, claimed her humble estate and immediately put the house on the market. He had movers throw all of Yvette’s belongings in the trash; press clippings, movie scripts, clothes, mementos, photographs, recordings, everything, was hauled away to the public dump, while Yvette was cremated. The house was sold for half the asking price, a mere $275,000 and was promptly demolished. Within a few weeks, nothing was left of Yvette Vickers, but for some old movie clips on youtube. She joins the many ghosts of Old Hollywood.

Somebody broke into her home before the demolition and shot footage of the cobwebbed, empty space. I recognized it as being the set for many of her pin up photos and I spliced some obvious ones together. It was so eerie to see the crisp, black and white images of young Yvette next to the cruel reality that was to come many years later.

[click for larger]

Her wig..

epic moments in forgotten b-movies

today was mostly about Veronica Lake.

When she tried to visit her old studio, they wouldn’t let her in.

“Guy Bourdin was a short man with a whiny voice, and had a reputation of being incredibly demanding. Dark rumours surrounded him: his mother abandoning him as an infant, the suicides of his wife and two of his girlfriends, and the cruelty in which he treated his models.”

Ever since first I saw “The Misfits” as a child, it struck me how rough Marilyn’s wig looked. I recently stumbled upon her hair and makeup tests for this film, in soft make up and her own hair styled in a gentle, airy style, all of it very flattering. Who knows what took place between that test and the time on set with that chalky, hard wig and the kabuki face.
And all of that, under a crazy hard, unforgiving desert sun.

1. Studio test with her own hair / 2. On set with a half wig on top and her own front hairline / 3. Full wig

LA BETE: Pardon…

LA BELLE: De quoi me demandez-vous pardon?

LA BETE: D’être “Bête”. Pardon.

Judex (1963). Masked villainesses and mismatched hairpieces = excitement in my special area.

This audacious tv adaptation is so forlorn and deathly, Wilde would’ve totally endorsed.
Set in 1982 New York City [a treat in itself], Dorian is a ruthless model who manages to have her screentest age instead of her. Very AA++

An early 1980s Siân Phillips was the epitome of the Dusty Springfield school of tranny beauty, complete with 1950s hack nosejob and affected uppah class intonations. Celebrating her.