Its a hoot when every time Kelly Bundy (Christina Applegate) walks onto the set every male in the live studio audience breaks into a cheer! It must have been an ego boost for her. She has to have some of the most viewed legs in television history. This YouTube series parts I II & III are a joy to behold. She started out the show at age 16. “Kelly Bundy” turns 50 this year, my how time flies. Its says in her bio at the link above, she was the first choice for the Legally Blonde role that went to Reese Witherspoon. She was apprehensive about taking another ‘dumb blonde’ role. As is so often the case, medical necessity has marred the beautiful body, but not her soul.
[Speaking of lewd, rude and crude, Roseanne started just a year later in 1988. They weren’t quite so over the top, and they didn’t have Christina Applegate.]
When I was a kid I caught in reruns an episode or two of Ripcord. I really liked it. The exciting adventures (is there any other kind?) of Ted McKeever and his sidekick Jim Buckley (Ken Curtis). Memories are kind a fuzzy as a kid, so when I got older and nobody else remembered the show, I started to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing! Then 50 years later we have what they call the “internet” and I could research all these things.
I had remembered the very personable Larry Pennell from the popular series back then, The Beverly Hillbillies and his role as Dash Riprock. The person watching a show has no idea what an actor is really like. You just have to go by your gut and reading between the lines. One of the things I read about Larry was that he had 1 marriage his entire life to one Patricia Throop. That says something, especially for Hollywood. He was a professional baseball player for 5 years for the Boston Braves (who became the Milwaukee Braves, and then the Atlanta Braves).
He’s just one of those guys like Ron Ely, Clint Walker, Fess Parker and Denny Miller, that strike you as really decent people. It wasn’t until late in life that I realized that’s what either attracts me to someone, or repulses. One of the funniest stories I heard was when I found out the relationship between Andy Griffith and Francis Bavier. Everybody’s favorite Aunt Bee, just did not like Griffith, and was a real bitch towards him. A few months before her death she called him and apologized for her behavior.
Claudia Cardinale answers the question: Are French or Italian women the most beautiful? Yes. She’s both. Italian father, French mother. I put her IMDB bio at the end of her pictures. As noted by one of the more famous cinematographers to have filmed her, “There is not much you can do wrong in photographing her.” Understatement of the year. I find her fascinating for a couple of reasons. From what I can tell, she never made a “Hollywood” movie. I couldn’t have told you what she looked like until recently when TCM showed the 1963 classic 8 1/2. Looking through her credits the only other thing I might have seen her in was Pink Panther or Once Upon A Time In the West. She made both Pink Panther and 8 1/2 in 1963 (released that year, probably made in 1962) when she was 25. Why on God’s green earth hadn’t Hollywood moved heaven and earth to get her here in 1956 when she was 18? At 2 films a year she could have made 12 films by the time she was 25. I have to assume Hollywood is run by the dumbest people on earth. The other thing I’d like to know/not know: Is she as screwed up as a lot of beautiful women? My guess is no. Europeans on average don’t seem to be as screwed up about sex as Americans.
My favorite. Not so heavily made-up, not the ‘bod’ shot. Just “CC”
Normally I despise celebrity “event” photos, but this works
A horrible shot in most respects, I like the background
Yeah…
She was born in 1938 thank God, when photographers still knew what they were doing
I mean look at that
Looks like an honest expression
The glamour goddess
Like many other female Italian film stars, Claudia Cardinale’s entry into the business was by way of a beauty pageant. She was 17 years old and studying at the Centro Sperimentale in Rome when she entered a beauty contest, which resulted in her getting a succession of small film roles. Her earthy interpretations of Sicilian women got her noticed by Italian producers, and the combination of her beauty, dark, flashing eyes, explosive sexuality and genuine acting talent virtually guaranteed her stardom. After Careless (1962) she rose to the front ranks of Italian cinema, and became an international star in Federico Fellini‘s classic 8½ (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni. American audiences may best remember her from her starring role in Sergio Leone‘s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
At the Italian Embassy in Tunis, she was voted the most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia. Her prize was a trip to Venice during the Venice Film Festival. After the festival she was offered movie roles, but refused them and returned to Tunis. However, six months later, a producer sold her on a career in movies, and she went to Rome with her parents, two brothers and a sister, taking a home in Castel Giubileo, a small town outside the city (1957). – IMDB
[There are 3.2 million other great photos of her, feel free to look them up. Flawless.]
I had the perfect 10 photos, then I saw this one. A completely unscientific observation is that she is photographed mostly from her left side or head on. Which is strange as her right side is every bit as wonderful as her left. And to be fair, from what little I’ve seen, Italy churns out women like this without even trying.
Rush always used to say, “With talent on loan from God!” I guess God called in the loan. I started listening to him around ’93 or ’94. He did a lot of outrageous stuff back then simply for the press (the free advertising), as liberals got their panties in a wad about this or that. The way it was supposed to work (in their minds at least) was that they would make fun of conservatives and we were supposed to take it silently in a dignified manner. Rush just slapped ’em upside the head and made their liberal ass cry! Cry baby! Cry! And their bowels would let loose and they’d try to gin up a boycott on one of his advertisers, or file an FCC complaint, and he’d just slap them upside the head the next day.
I suppose that’s why he and Trump were such good buds. Trump slaps GD liberals upside the head too. But like I say a lot of the early stuff was just showmanship. Putting himself on the map. You don’t revolutionize an entire industry by being Marty Milquetoast. AM radio had pretty much been declared dead in the ’80s. Rush made it the place to be. Regrettably he made it so big, it became ripe for corporate takeover. It became big business and all the eccentric independent operators and family owned stations disappeared. Now its just various branches of the same corporation parroting, “iHeart radio app! iHeart radio app!” all day long.
But back to Rush. His positions evolved over 33 years (mine did too). When he started in ’88 he was pure establishment. GHW Bush had him stay overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom for Pete’s sake. He was a country clubber plain and simple. He had no use for Buchanan when he challenged Bush in ’92 and Dole in ’96. No use. And later Limbaugh had no use for Ron Paul either. I mention this because Buchanan and Trump’s platforms were identical. A lot of people made note in 2015 that Buchanan paved the way for Trump. Plowed the field. So when Trump started his run in 2015, it was surprising that Rush was his biggest supporter.
Rush provided me with many hours of enjoyment, and many hours of aggravation. Aside from the political trivialities, my main beef with him didn’t come about till later. He was a “cigar aficionado”. It gave him the cancer that killed him at only 70. That’s his choice. But from that amazing platform he had, how many other men did he entice into smoking them? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many other men might never of smoked a cigar? Got lung cancer? Esophageal cancer? Tongue, mouth? His advertising for cigars helped the delay of my own kicking the habit for 10 years. He promoted the smoking of cigars for 30 years. And if he ever went back and apologized for that, I didn’t hear it.
50 years ago she was 28 (born November 16, 1942), she’s somewhat older now. Born in London, raised in Canada. Some of her earliest roles were on the soaps The Doctors, The Doctors and the Nurses and Doctor Kildare, so a lot of medical training. I probably remember her from the Night Gallery series which played on NBC in the early 70’s. Something that just occurred to me about her personality, she was incapable of overacting. Too much of a reserved presence for that. In a lot/most of her roles she comes across as an extremely sophisticated and dignified lady (capital L). Probably wouldn’t have worked real well opposite Penny Marshall in Laverne & Shirley. While thinking just now about that example, I snorted how funny it would have been! It became very intriguing to consider though… especially with a woman loaded with such panache.
You can tell she’s a real blonde by the freckles. The photos I put first were from that period I considered her unbeatable, say 1968 – 1978. I put a few at the end that were before and after that period just to show you what I’m talking about. She typified the era. The wispy slender blonde with a quiet dignity. She fit into the hippy era perfectly. Its hard to explain if you weren’t there. The bellbottoms, the fringe vests, a headband. I was thinking that if there was an overarching assessment of her career, was that she was underutilized. While doing research for this post I noticed that’s exactly what the bio on IMDB at the link above said too. They said directors began using her for the ‘wow’ she brought, and not her acting chops.
Hollywood then and now likes to pigeonhole actors as either TV or movie. She got marked as TV material. I have no idea why but her résumé confirms it. Which is fine with me, just thought I’d point it out. A number of actresses like her faced a similar dilemma. How to increase her fame? Make herself more of a marketable commodity? Playboy Magazine was a big deal back then. A few, like Marilyn Monroe, an appearance in Playboy definitely didn’t hurt and likely helped their career. I would have to say for Joanna’s 1968 appearance in the magazine guaranteed her a TV career. A lot of times back then it ended up making a woman look “desperate” or cashing in. She would have been 26 at the time.
A lot of really beautiful women like that had a busy career until about age 40, then it petered out. So the calculation she had to make in 1968 was (she would have turned 40 in 1982), build it slow and see what happened in the next 14 years? Or roll the dice and see what appearing nude did for her? You got to realize the 60’s was quite the swinging time, nudity was a lot more common in movies and such then it is now. An indication of just how beautiful she was is by how Getty Imagesgobbled up her photo stock. I was left with about 5 I could use. Which is fine, but a lot of the ones they have are the casual ones that show the era so much better. Her love interests, the nightlife, the ‘biz’. The “real” her.
I have found out over the last couple of years with my “The 10 Most Beautiful Women” of the decades posts, that I’m not the only man that enjoys looking at the icons from back in the day. Men have fantasies and dreams about all different women. They come in quite the assortment of sizes and shapes. Loud women, quiet women, arrogant, or reserved. Blonde, dark, voluptuous or slender. Not one woman (I don’t think) appeals to every man. What shaped our individual desires I doubt even we could say. Half of it is likely subconscious. From reading her bios, a great grief from her life naturally was the death of her only child, Damien Zachary Cord, from an acute heroin overdose in 1995 at age 26.
Close-up of British actress Joanna Pettet in the film ‘Blue’ (directed by Silvio Narizzano), Moab, Utah, 1967. (Photo by Lawrence Schiller/Polaris Communications/Getty Images) [My favorite photo of her]
Close-up of British actress Joanna Pettet in the film ‘Blue’ (directed by Silvio Narizzano), Moab, Utah, 1967. (Photo by Lawrence Schiller/Polaris Communications/Getty Images)
Joanna about 1970
I could be way off base on this one, but Black & White seems to work out better for some women then others. I’d say she is in the former group. The next group of photos she looks dramatically different to me in, both younger and older. Very strange to me the difference.
For me this is a fun exercise. I’ve covered 8 decades of beautiful women. Other men’s hobby’s might be cars or guns or coins or stamps. As I’ve mentioned some women standout more than others, even while having nearly identical backgrounds, ages or even physical appearance. Through the hundreds of women there’s always been a handful that seem to be more in the forefront of my recollections than others. Say that if you could only have 1 DVD to watch the rest of your life, who would you want on it? I suppose a lot of it comes down to, “Who do you like?” Who stands out as nice, warm, funny, interesting and enjoyable? A silly exercise, but fun. For me I think what stars like Joanna are is an embodiment, of the women you’ve known in your own life. Representing who knows what.
She went into modeling after failing her audition at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She was told she was “Too fat and too ugly!“
Is one of the most respected British actresses despite the fact she has had no acting training.
Cuts and dyes her own hair.
An aspiring actress, she first came to fame as a model in London’s swinging 1960s, where she was photographed by the greats, including her friend, the late Patrick Lichfield. She became one of the top ten most-booked models of the 1960s.
Lumley’s breakthrough role was as Purdey in The New Avengers (1976), a role for which over 800 girls auditioned. Purdey propelled Lumley to instant fame and created one of the “must-have” hairstyles of the 1970s — the Purdey bob. Lumley became a pin-up figure for a generation of British males who grew up watching her as the high-kicking action girl.
English actress Joanna Lumley, 16th January 1986. (Photo by Michael Ward/Getty Images)
Joanna Lumley, 24, who has been given a leading role in The Breaking of Bumbo opposite Richard Warwick.
Pa News Photo 20/7/75 Joanna Lumley at a Photocall for her New Role as Elaine Perkins, New Girl in the Life of Ken Barlow for the ITV Soap “coronation Street” in Manchester
For me, Joanna Lumley checked a lot of boxes. 6′ 1″ (okay 5′ 8″) of leggy blonde. British accent. Beautiful face. Photographed by the best. Funnier then hell. Could be a very nice person, even if a flaming liberal. Photography 50 years ago was just better. Stunning photos. My favorite episode of hers from Absolutely Fabulouswas when she overdid the self-injections of Botox and her face went numb. And I completely forgot! What brought her to mind was I was watching an old movie on TCM, ‘The Satanic Rites of Dracula‘ (1973), when they had one of their spooky satanic rite scenes. It involved this scrumptious looking blonde lying on a slab buck naked while the evil coven leaders did their spells and incantation thing. I thought, “Is that Joanna Lumley?” It was!
FILE – This May 1950 file publicity photo originally released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer shows Esther Williams on location for the film “Pagan Love Song. According to a press representative, Williams died in her sleep on Thursday, June 6, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 91. (AP Photo/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, file)
This very long movie (On an Island With You) is playing this morning on TCM. They just had the ‘final kiss’ in the pool. Esther Williams started out her teens setting swimming records at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and was only prevented from competing in the 1940 Olympics by the outbreak of World War II. So she was a serious jock. She was not just a hottie in a swimsuit. With no Olympics, she joined “Billy Rose’s Aquacade!” (yeah I don’t know what an “aquacade” is either) Hollywood spots the fetching young lass and puts her in the movies. But because they have no imagination, Esther spends the next 20 years waterlogged.
The same way Gene Kelly was a dancer, so to Hollywood’s mind, he could only be in movie’s where he danced. Shirley Jones could relate, they had her as a singer, so when musicals went out of favor so did she. Poor Shirley Temple, she was a “child star”, so when she grew up to be a stunning young woman, she was out. One of the few to break the mold, in his case “costume” pictures, was Tyrone Power. Eve Arden was the ‘cynical girl Friday’. Natalie Wood was put in anything that showed off her figure. John Wayne was a cowboy. The cliché is authors only have 1 book in them. I long ago figured out directors only have 1 movie, they just change the location or the actors. Sometimes.
She was also quite the businesswoman: “My suits are quality fabric. She went on: “I put you in a suit that contains you and you will swim in. I don’t want you to be in two Dixie cups and a fish line.”
Sometimes I think gun owners have shit for brains. They seem to have no concept of how tenuous the 2nd Amendment is. None. Their talk is full of bravado, “They’ll never get my gun!” Why would you let it get to that point? Where you are fighting a superior force that has superior weaponry? Does that make any sense? Why not take a few steps now so it never gets to that point? The NRA has 5 million members. With about 30% of the adult population owning a gun, that’s close to 95 million not paying a dime (GOA and others being figured in). And I’m not talking about the national organization, your rights are going to live or die by what happens in your state. That drops to minuscule numbers.
Which is a shame, because the closer you are to those representing you, the greater impact you have. Every state has an association fighting for their rights. In Iowa its called the IFC. If every gun owner in Iowa gave them $10, that would easily be $5 million dollars more than they have now. If every gunowner in Iowa gave $10 dollars top their State House race, that would be $5 million more dollars to spend on House races then are spent now. I’m not talking about your US Representative, I’m talking about your State Representative. Your rights will live or die at the State Capitol.
Then it comes to the gunowners behavior at the shooting range. The Iowa landscape is dotted with outdoor shooting ranges operating usually surrounded by cornfields, with varying degrees of volunteer and a paid staffer or two thrown in. The paid guy is usually the groundskeeper. I wouldn’t be surprised if the officers of the club get free membership, but probably not too much other compensation. The groundskeeper is there to mow the grass, grade the parking lot, maybe paint the trap house, plow the drive in the winter, those sorts of things.
No one is “paid” to cleanup after shooters. I don’t get it. The range I go to has one of the best groundskeepers in the business. If the shooters did their part we’d have a topnotch facility. Instead they go out of their way to make a mess. Everybody knows where the broom and dustpan are to be hung up. Put them there. But with all the brass lying around, its clear you didn’t use them, why did you get them down? Is your mother coming later to cleanup after you? We ain’t. Why do you choose to shoot in a pigsty? They really need to see the one in Story County, that poor club is getting ripped off by their groundskeeper. Its a shoddy looking facility with even lazier shooters. A bad combination.
Every range I know has neighbors that don’t want them there. Every range I know has officers that have been doing it for 20 years because no one else wants to. It wouldn’t take much for these ranges to close down. The only reason they are allowed to exist is because they were grandfathered in. You telling me the local environmental whackos wouldn’t love to close them down over the lead? You bet your ass they would. There’s nothing that says these ranges have to be here for you to come and shit in. Grow up punk.
The other day I was watching some movie and I started to wonder, “Yeah she’s good looking, but what would she look like without makeup?” It made me start to wonder, what did they look like when they rolled out of bed? Walked out of the shower? This afternoon TCM is playing ‘Sex and the Single Girl‘ (1964) with Natalie Wood. She is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women of all time. She lead off my post, ’10 Most Beautiful Women of the 60’s’. I did a search, “Natalie Wood without makeup”. I found a couple of when she was younger, but none I don’t think of when she was famous.
If you look on Facebook much you’ll see that women are masters of knowing what side or what angle they look best at. I’m not kidding. The photo they’ll use for their account photo often bears no resemblance to their other photos. They know how to use a soft focus or other slightly altered photo that takes 15 or 20 years off them. I really saw it 12 or so years ago with Jennifer Love Hewitt. I watched her in The Ghost Whisperer and thought she was the cats meow. Then the Enquirer and others started printing photos of her without makeup and took a lot of the bloom off the rose. I guess the question I’m trying to answer is what makes a woman beautiful? And why to one person and not another?
In Natalie’s case I have to think she had a good amount of natural beauty, or else any woman could look topnotch by simply having a good makeup artist and a cute hairstyle. And that’s clearly not the case. So there must be something there. Some fundamental quality about her bone structure that makes her stand out. I suppose it reminds me of photographing a young woman years ago. The first time was in the winter when she wore a good deal of makeup. As she explained for a summer shoot, it was too warm so of course she wouldn’t be wearing the makeup. It was a completely different look. Less the ravishing beauty without the makeup, but just as attractive nonetheless.
Stage and Screen, Personalities, pic: circa 1960’s, American actress Natalie Wood,(1938-198), star of such films as “Rebel Without A Cause” 1955, “West Side Story” 1961, and “Splendor In The Grass” 1961 (Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)
[Using another example from Hanne Nabintu Herland on how women know how to use the best photo, you wouldn’t even know the 2 photos below were the same person!]
I caught a couple of minutes of the NPR morning show the other day hosted by one Steve Inskeep. They were reporting that Trump had “falsely stated” something or other. It occurred to me that all I ever heard on “public” radio was negative things about the President. I started thinking, he’s been on the political scene 5 years now, and in all that time he hasn’t done onepositive thing? Is that even possible? That a President wouldn’t do onegood thing for the country? Even by mistake, even if he was the living embodiment of Satan you’d think he would have done one good thing. I’m starting to think NPR has a liberal bias.
The other thing I figured out was when I flipped by WHO 1040 a few days ago. Morning host Jeff Angelo was talking about the Derecho Storm we had just experienced. There was some question on how to properly pronounce ‘Derecho’. He assured us he knew the correct way because his wife was fluent in Spanish and had told him. Bingo! I’d picked up over the years he was soft on illegal immigration. Border security and deportations weren’t important to him. There was only 1 answer: he’d married a Mex! That explains it. But a few posts ago I thought his career at WHO would be short lived as he brought absolutely nothing to the table.
Then it occurred to me. The pointless idiocy of the show right before his (Van Harden 5-9), is going to have to be looking for a host soon. Harden has to be pushing 70. He can’t go on forever. If you need pointless idiocy with no discernible talent, who better than Jeff Angelo?! I did it again! (Armstrong & Getty are on 1430 KASI 9 am – 12 noon, its not local but it beats the hell out of Angelo)
Iowa life 