This is an amazing movie find, especially for a stamp collecting movie nut (which I’m not but I can appreciate the passion). Sixty pages of blank squares, each ascribed with the name of a 1920’s – 50’s star, from Academy Award winners to TV stars, “The Young Set”, International stars, World-Famous Women, Animal stars, Shootin’ stars (Western), Symphony stars, Singing stars, Comedians and every other category that Hollywood could possibly subdivide itself into.
The Screen Stars Photo Album was made in 1955 by the Harlich Manufacturing Co. of Chicago and approved by the National Poster Stamp Society with “All Rights to Screen Star Stamps and Stamp Albums fully protected by Hollywood Star Stamps, Inc. in cooperation with the Stars, Studios And Motion Picture Relief Fund, Inc.”.
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Well, the obvious tunes I would name are “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, “What Have I Done to Deserve To This?” and I guess “I’ll Be There for You”. The rest of my favorite tunes are here. But if I have to credit an early source of inspiration for being in the music business and then becoming a songwriter it would have to be the TV show, “Name That Tune”, upon which this game is based and which I watched religiously as a wee nip.
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Last night was the closing of The First National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple. I had never written a musical before, hardly ever went to see them. I’m an all-the-way Pop Culture gal and for me this was a medium from ancient times with way too histrionic sounding songs and singers frozen in time. I was the least likely person in the world to write a musical but write one I did, with Brenda Russell, Stephen Bray and Marsha Norman. We were nominated for 11 Tony’s. How we even won one, the brilliant LaChanze for Best Actress, was a miracle in the climate on Broadway. (Don’t get me started on that one…). Beyond being eternally proud of the work, especially the uplifting and joyous effect it had on audiences night after night, the most stunning part of the journey was the family of friends I made through the Broadway run and the ensuing national tour. Right from the beginning when we started writing Purple in 2001 I always heard that there’s constant bickering among everyone but we were all really friends. And I mean everyone, from Alice Walker, the Pulitzer prize winning author of the novel, down through us authors, the cast, director, producers, hair, makeup, wigs, production managers, everyone. I was always being told by other friends who had written for Broadway that by the end no one would ever talk to each other and that so many writers of so many shows, because the experience takes years and is so intense, never end up speaking unless they write another show and then it’s just about work. Our case always was and remains different. This is a family that will be together forever, bound by an experience where the piece itself was bigger than any one part. Everyone felt chosen and blessed to be a part of The Color Purple. Fantasia WAS Celie. Watching that journey of her finding herself through this character was a joy and a privilege. Every cast member, starting with the staggering Felicia P. Fields, Tony nominated for Sofia and the first actor we ever cast in 2003, was not only a triple threat – brilliant singers, actors AND dancers, a rare enough find in one person let alone an entire cast – they were a gift for any artist to have interpret their work.
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I’ll be waving one of these all day and night today as these are the final two performances of the First National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple. The whole 4-1/2 years I was writing this with Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray we waved these church fans and others from my collection of 60 from the 1950’s and ’60’s daily. I’ve been stuck on songs before but being stuck on a song for a musical when one has to consider way more then the singer or the content of the song like the plot, which we were writing at the same time as the songs, the dialogue, whether something should be musicalized or spoken, is there dancing to it or not, does the wig guy have enough time to make the wig changes, on and ever-increasingly on…, let me tell you the sweat pours down and these church fans, totally organic to what we were writing other than a couple decades too late, came in mighty handy.
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No official Kitsch O’ The Day entry today as I’m getting ready for the opening tonight of the last stop on the first national tour of my musical, The Color Purple. The second tour begins in March but it’s a whole new production and whole new cast. I will miss my amazing Color Purple family of the last five years BEYOND IMMENSELY!
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One of my favorite genres of Kitsch is when objects are produced to take advantage of a massive trend in pop culture but actually have nothing at all to do with that trend. My next favorite genre of Kitsch is when the products themselves are impractical for the use they were created to serve. This “Disco Beat” earring holder qualifies on both fronts! The bouncy, clean cut 1950’s American Bandstand bobby-soxers would have never gotten into the 1970’s disco-beated Studio 54 and the zillion holes provided to dangle earrings from makes for too crowded of a surface to effectively hang more than a couple sets of earrings without them hanging over each other and coalescing into a tangled mess. All of which makes for one hell of the fantastic Kitsch product!
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When Vanessa Williams snagged the Miss America crown in 1984 one of her first honors was to grace this box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. But the box was banished as quickly as her title when sexy photos emerged. Ironic when the text includes lines like “It is with this intent that Kellogg Company provides this limited edition Commemorative Package as a lasting reminder that…we must continue to promote the American dream and encourage all Americans to freely pursue life, liberty, and happiness.”.
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Fantasia as Celie. Fantastic cast, many from the original Broadway production. Five years of my life into the making of this baby. I’m very proud of it. If you’re in LA come to the Pantages.
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him
As I was sitting here minutes ago swamped with deadlines and in a panic because I didn’t write my Kitsch O’ The Day post yet I got an email from my good friend and reliable Kitsch spotter, Tom Trujillo, telling me that I HAD TO watch this video, “Pardon Me” by Maxine Swaby. My first thought was we finally have a few moments of sunshine here in LA and this video opens up with brightly colored tulips so wouldn’t that be nice? My second thought was this isn’t so bad, a little lethargic perhaps but no big deal. My third thought was Maxine Swaby is leading me down a very subtle yet precious path of Kitsch because many of her notes hide somewhere under the melody, most of the shots and transitions are too literal interpretations of the lyric, and the energy of everything – Maxine, the shots, the color palette, et al – always stays so even keel you just want to show Ms. Swaby a picture of a clown or something that will make her laugh, give her a big shot of sugar so her hands won’t stay within the 3 inch range she confines them to, anything at all to add little ooooomph to the overall video situation.
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