One of life's greatest pleasures is a late-Saturday-night pizza and channel surfing session. This is when you are allowed to watch weird stuff, without worrying about To-Do lists, deadlines, or the judgment of others. It's Guilty Pleasure time. It's Barbarella time.
A few weeks ago, on just such a night, we were moaning about the available options on cable, not yet ready to retire to our rooms, when we saw that Barbarella was coming on next. This prompted a conversation about how our parents were too mean to let us watch the movie as children (although we understand why now...), and the quick decision that the moment had arrived for us to fill in that missing link in our pop culture education.
And so, we watched Barbarella, laughing and gasping all the way to the end. It's a little bit dirty, and a lot bit cheesy, and fantastic in its badness. It was also powerful, in its own way. We can't stop talking about it. There is a part of both of us that secretly wants to live like Barbarella, and we've decided there are two ways to do this:
1. Exercise (a lot), use hairspray (a lot), wear very tight clothing (not a lot), accept an important mission on behalf of Earth, and sleep with everyone we meet in the name of Patriotism.
or...
2. Buy junk that reminds us of the movie's better (yes, this is subjective) moments.
We have decided to explore option 2, as it aligns more closely with our normal routine. We're not sure that we'd be very good at top secret government work anyway. And so, here are the ways that we would live like Barbarella, if we could....
You could wear an actual space suit, and spin in mid-air whenever you take it off
or, you could wear a snazzy metallic 1960s dress like this one:
We would love to live in a pod entirely carpeted in lush shag,
But we'd also settle for a cool vintage rug.
unfortunately, this one has been sold from etsy.com
And then we'd have to have a goddess statue to go with it.
ebay.com
We love this,
And who wouldn't love a vintage skunk fur coat (yes, they made them, and they are fabulous)?
http://rozessecondhandnews.blogspot.com
We love, love, love her boots:
So, we could buy some like these:
etsy.com
And speaking of black and white (and more boots):
Oh, how I love thee. Let me count the ways...
vintage mod dress, modcloth.com
With some boot options:
Vintage mod boots, from afunkyshoeandboot.com
Black Chanel thigh-high boots, from Elle France Sept 2012
Vintage black and white boots, from polyvore.com
And you can't wear it, but you can certainly watch Barbarella on it (but not in the same room as the rug)...
stylehive.com
Now, all we need is some colorful mood lighting, a blind angel to fly us places, a backyard maze full of naked people, and a hookah room with swings and piles of pillows. I think it could work.
In all of the various and sundry items we Blackbird girls are drawn to, there is one small (but ever growing) collection we have that has been born out of two other collections -- the cookbook and cocktail collections. It just seemed like a natural extension to start picking them up when we see them, but then, that's really the excuse to buy something 99.999% of the time. Today, I'm talking about vintage party books.
We don't really like parties, either one of us. They sound like fun in the abstract, planning stages, but when it comes to the actual entertaining part -- we'd just rather go junking! But we LOVE the idea of elaborate cocktail soirees, divine dinner parties, and fun, game filled get-togethers. Eh, maybe one day some of my vintage cocktail shakers will actually get used to make drinks for a crowd. But until then, we thought we could share some festive Halloween activities and games with you, our readers, from a great book in our collection called Gay Parties for All Occasions, written by E.O. Harbin in 1950.
Lace is one of those classic things that never really goes away. It shows up on every season's runways. But this year, with the forces of what we've already discussed here -- classic Hitchcock women and yet another Victorian revival -- lace is having a strong comeback because of its timelessness and elegance.
Tadashi Shoji Fall 2012
The varieties of styles are endless. It can be handmade, machine made, laser cut -- it is both technologically current and traditionally old-old-school. It can be used all over or as just as accent.
When I worked in Product Development, we were always playing with different ways of introducing lace like patterns. It is hard to balance out the sugary sweetness and daintiness of the pattern, and I think that this year, designers have gotten it right. In the hands of some, lace has more graphic punch, like Alexander McQueen's fall offerings. But with others, they have found how to embrace the sweetness in a more hard edged way, like this Tadashi Shoji gown.
Alexander McQueen, Fall 2012
It's showing up in fashion accents as well, such as these nail tips from Joy Cioci's show:
And you know how we feel about Country Living. They had lace decorations for Halloween!
It's no secret that the Blackbird girls love color. We shudder at the thought of a room with white walls. Red, teal, aqua, navy--our house looks like a Skittles factory exploded. But we also love the graphic, stark contrast of black and white mixed in with our rainbow.
The Pizio collection.
It started at a pottery show. We went specifically to visit one of my favorite clay artists, Stacy Lambert. We got to the show five minutes before the doors opened, and somehow, Stacy was already sold out. I stood there, wavering between denial and disappointment, trying to ignore the pounding in my head (you try driving 45 minutes to buy something that no longer exists by the time you get there, and see what kind of headache you end up with), when I happened to glance at the next vendor down. The pounding in my head traveled south to my heart, and I knew it was love. The table was filled with black and white pottery--owls, crows, gnarly trees...and, thanks to Leanne Pizio, a new collection was born: sgraffito.
Leanne Pizio's pottery chicken heads
We both purchased pieces, and by the time we placed them on the piano at home, knew that we had to have more. It seems like just yesterday that our collection was such a baby (only 3 pieces!), and now it has grown into a beast. We just call it The Pizio. It has grown from the piano, up the walls, across the house, and wormed its way into any available space it can find. We have allowed it to acquire color (we love the aqua!), but the majority of it is black and white perfection.
It was only after we had been collecting the Pizio pottery for a few years that we started to notice vintage sgraffito. For two people with very little restraint, this is bad news (in a good, good way). We have a lot of conversations that start with "If we had a bigger house...," and this is one of the reasons why. If we had a bigger house, we would not only own every single piece of Leanne Pizio sgraffito that we could get our hands on, we would own every piece of vintage sgraffito we could find.
Marianne Starck
for Michael Andersen Pottery, 1950s
Marianne Starck
for Michael Andersen Pottery, 1950s
Marianne Starck
for Michael Andersen Pottery, 1950s
And, if we had a bigger house, and it happened to be in the Czech Republic, we would want it to look like one of these:
Exterior of Schwarzenberg Palace, Czech Republic
Czech Republic, Sgraffito Exterior; photo by Paul Harris
"It's alive! It's alive!"--one of the most recognizable movie quotes of all time. (In fact, it made #49 on the list of the American Film Institute's top 100 movie quotations.) It brings an immediate image of a hulking creature, slowly moving on the laboratory table in a creepy room of shadows and machines. The Frankenstein monster, most famously played by Boris Karloff in 1931, is one of the Hollywood icons. He sets the standard for that story, irreversibly infiltrating our culture. Never mind that the monster in the book didn't look like that. In fact, the book never mentions the specific use of lightning to animate the creature--that's all Hollywood. So, what we know as "Frankenstein" is based on the vision of a 20th century movie crew. But if we disregard the lighting, the machines, the dialogue, and the music, what is really the most pervasive element of that film? The monster. Frankenstein is what we call him now, although his real name is something much more mundane. And who made that monster out of Boris Karloff? The makeup man, Jack P. Pierce.
Jack Pierce and Karloff, from en.wikipedia.org
www.secureworldpost.secureworldexpo.com
A Greek immigrant who first tried careers in baseball and acting, Jack Pierce became one of the definitive geniuses in the movie makeup world in the first half of the 20th century. He spent more than two decades with Universal Studios, specializing in horror makeup. When he signed on to do the Frankenstein movie, once he was no longer under an obligation to cater to the design ideas of the film's first star, Bela Lugosi (who was replaced on the project by Boris Karloff), Pierce paired research with his own creative spin to create the monster that we know and love. He figured that Dr. Frankenstein, inexperienced in the nuances of neurosurgery, would take the simplest route to transplant a brain: cut off the top of the skull and sew it back up. This gave the monster his characteristic flat top, with some sutures, and the heavy brow. Pierce kept Karloff in the makeup chair for four hours every day, applying a rubber appliance with black hair with green streaks (which give texture and depth in the black and white film), cotton and putty for the forehead and around the eyes, a few scars, and the infamous electrodes (not bolts!) on either side of the neck. He topped it all off with a special greenish-gray makeup, which he knew would read as a "deathly pale" on the screen (to contrast with the living characters' normal black and gray tones; in the colorized movie posters, the monster is green, and has been ever since). Karloff's lips, arms, and fingernails were darkened with black greasepaint to give the appearance of decaying flesh. The costume was complete with the addition of heavy boots (13lbs each!) with lifts to make the monster taller.
As impressive as it is to be the man responsible for one of the most famous monsters of classic Hollywood, we now add a few more high points to Jack Pierce's resume. This makeup genius is responsible for the classic look of Bela Lugosi's Dracula. (Lugosi insisted on applying his own greasepaint, but Pierce tweaked it to look better on film, which is why the Count's face carries shadows so well.) Lugosi's career took an upward turn after his role as Ygor in Son of Frankenstein, a character created for him by Jack Pierce using rubber appliances, applied hair, and false teeth.
www.mantex.co.uk
Frankenstein wasn't his only famous Karloff work, either. Pierce was the makeup artist for The Mummy in 1932. He treated the fabric with acid and flame, dipped it in a syrupy chemical solution, wrapped Karloff, let it get wrinkly and dry, and then got it dirty so that it would look properly aged on film. Even though Karloff is only in the mummy costume briefly in that movie, it is again one of the most memorable parts of that film.
www.badhaven.com
Speaking of brief, another iconic Pierce character, who in reality was only on screen for a few moments at the very end of the film, is Elsa, otherwise known as The Bride of Frankenstein.
from www.collider.com
So we've covered the Mummy, Frankenstein, his bride, and Dracula. Believe it or not, The Wolfman, starring Lon Chaney Jr., is also a Pierce makeup. A molded rubber nose appliance, fake claws, and thousands of individually applied yak hairs made this another of the most famous movie monsters in history. Pierce also designed Chaney Jr.'s character for Man Made Monster.
Lon Chaney Jr. and Jack Pierce, from acertaincinema.com
Jack Pierce did makeup for over 100 films from the 1920s through the late 1940s, including: White Zombie, Werewolf of London, The Mummy's Tomb, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Raven, Dracula's Daughter, The Mummy's Hand, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The Scarlet Claw, and The Phantom of the Opera (1943).
White Zombie, from nutshell-movies.com
And last, but certainly not least, is a film that was actually one of Jack Pierce's first character concept projects, and which may even have reached farther across pop culture than his classic monster films: The Man Who Laughs (1928). The movie is an adaptation of an obscure Victor Hugo story, about a man whose mouth is cut upward at the corners to give him a perpetual grin. Pierce's interpretation of this character for the silent film is a documented source of inspiration for another one of the twentieth century's most notable characters: the Joker. See the resemblance?
The Man Who Laughs, from http://hypenc.com/2010/2011/04/21/rexs-film-reviews-the-man-who-laughs/
Sadly, Universal decided to cut back on scary movies, and they dropped Jack in 1947. He had a little more movie work in the 1950s, and then did makeup for the Mr. Ed television show. He died in 1968, a forgotten page of Hollywood history. But, he is part of the reason that there is an Academy Award for makeup design today. Pierce's work proved that a large part of a film's success comes from the makeup and concept design of the characters, and he was posthumously given a lifetime achievement award. He is now in the running for a star on the walk of fame. We think it's long overdue.
Information obtained from : www.imdb.com; www.tcm.com
The Blackbird girls are huge fans of Alfred Hitchcock. I know, I know -- who isn't? But we're the type of fans that record every movie onto our DVR when Turner Classic does the special Halloween showings of all of his films. We once kept a Hitchcock film on our DVR for two years, just because we liked it. Sadly, we moved to a new city and had to switch out the old cable box for a new one. But not to worry. It's now back on our new DVR and our Netflix queue! (It's Mr. and Mrs. Smith, by the way -- watch it if you've never seen it. It's a comedy with Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery.)
Thanks to several projects that are in the works, Alfred Hitchcock is hotter than ever. Anthony Hopkins is starring in a movie about the filmmaker, out in 2013, and Freddy Highmore just signed on to star as Norman Bates in a Psycho prequel for A&E. There's a lot of buzz out there about these projects, and it's starting to infiltrate other areas.
Kim Novak in Vertigo
He was known for the "Hitchcock Blonde" -- Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedron, Janet Leigh -- drop dead gorgeous, icy, stylish. They were the representation of the ideal woman in his films. Hitchcock was the master of a deceiving appearance -- making them look beautiful as their world falls apart, like in The Birds, or using their beauty to draw the viewer in, as in Psycho.
Jil Sander, Spring 2012
Designers this year, in the spring with Jil Sander, and others this fall, gravitated towards fitted suits and classic mid-century silhouettes. There's always some representation of 1950s glamor in fashion, but this year seems to highlight the polish and sophistication of the Hitchcock leading ladies. Look for structured Kelly bags and gloves in accessories this fall.
Cosmetics are jumping on the trend, too. Chanel launched a three color line of nail polish this fall based on Hitchcock films -- Frenzy, Suspicious and Vertigo.
And for your viewing pleasure...the fantastic dream sequence from Vertigo:
He's usually red, only sometimes ugly, and always pops up at Halloween. (Sometimes, he's a girl!) And, he's highly collectible. At the risk of sounding weird and dangerous, let's talk about the devil....
No, we don't collect devils. We have a couple of pieces that are part of other collections (a red lady devil swizzle stick, and a footed restaurantware mug with a devil over flames, like the ones pictured above), but in honor of those true collectors out there, we thought we'd highlight some wickedly awesome, devilish items that we've found lately.
Collecting devils doesn't mean that you are evil, or of a particular religion, or crazy. They are undeniably cool, and it's interesting to see how he has changed stylistically over the centuries (or not). And, with Halloween just around the corner, devils are easier to find, and love (in a junk love sort of way). We confess that we're...tempted.
