THE VILLAINS (Part 5)

One of my favorite villains in that egomaniacal Cruella De Vil from "101 Dalmatians."  One statuette shows her with the ever present cigarette holder and the other is her morning in bed.   What a gal!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LEGENDS #3 CAROL CHANNING

Image
The year was 2010.  The Broadway Cares annual Christmas ornament was the incomparable Carol Channing as Dolly Levi in the Jerry Herman musical (with Michael Stewart providing the lyrics), "Hello Dolly." Beginning as a play in England, it was adapted into a French farce before falling into the hands of Thornton Wilder and becoming "The Merchant of Yonkers."  With little success at the box-office Wilder revise it and presented it again as "The Matchmaker" in 1954 starring Ruth Gordon which in turn became a movie starring Shirley Booth in 1958. The producer David Merrick acquired the rights to make it a musical ("Dolly, A Damned Exasperating Woman" and "Call on Dolly" were two of the original titles) and he offered it to Ethel Merman and then Mary Martin, both of whom turned it down (Ironically, they both did it later.) To helm the project, Hal Prince, Jerome Robbins and Joe Layton were approached but with no agreement reached and ulti...
Read more

GRANDMA SMITH

Image
My Grandmother raised nine children, (seven girls and two boys.....my mother being the youngest.) She became a widow in 1935 when my grandfather was killed in an auto accident just north of our small town of Corbin, Kansas.   From then on, she took turns living with her children for about a month at a time.   Eventually, it was decided to build her a small one room house on my parents property where she could have her own space but be close at hand.  (This "house" was constructed when I was thirteen or so.) A few years later, (now, in her eighties) she began receiving mail form an old beau that she had known in her youth and it soon blossomed into a certified romance.  (A long distance one, but a romance nonetheless.) All of her children went into shock when she announced at the age of 89 that she and her reunited beau were going to be married!  (Sadly, I no longer remember his name.... it may have been Leo.) At any rate, "Leo" made the trip from somewher...
Read more

TRAINING

Image
In New York, Fabian and I both worked for American Tree and Wreath, a manufacturer of artificial Christmas trees.  As part of our job, we were sent out to various stores in season to help them set up their Christmas departments by decorating the trees that had been purchased from our company. We also were responsible for setting up our showroom and it's sister one in Skokie, Illinois, as well as holding teaching seminars on "How to decorate your tree." At still other times of the year, we were dispatched to trade shows in various parts of the country to again set up displays that would be taken over by the local reps for the duration of the show and later dismantled by them. One such year, we had trade shows in Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas and Indianapolis and all in a matter of weeks of each other.  Since Fabian hated to fly, we offered an alternate plan to the powers-that-be.  Upon consideration, they agreed to the plan.  It was cheaper to let us take the t...
Read more