*CANDIDS*

[mongoII]

Van Johnson caught off guard in his dressing room.

[JackFavell]

I saw Barry Nelson on stage in something and his hair was huge.

[klondike]

I saw Barry Nelson on stage in something and his hair was huge.

Have ya ever asked yourself, when ya see a celebrity whose hair is looking, well, ridiculous, in any particular way - Gee, does everybody who knows that person just LIE to them constantly?, or: Don't they have access somewhere to a large mirror in a well-lit room?, or: Are they just so dang full of themselves they figure their scintilating personality negates all physical appearance?

[mongoII]

Remember this shot of Barry and his wild hair that I posted a while ago. It was taken in 2003.

[JackFavell]

I actually think he looks great there.... at least he looks real, not like some plastic doll who had aged oddly. When I saw him and he had that fifties updo - swung up Elvis duck tail whatever....he was in his 60's at least, and it looked badly dyed bright red. It was dreadful.

I don't think people are lying to them, I just think they get known for something and can't give up that particular element of their "personality". Like June Allyson with her hair bobbed and peter pan collars, which she wore well into age. It didn't suit her, but maybe she just couldn't change. It also may be that Nelson didn't look like that all the time, but that he made an effort to look like "Barry Nelson" only for that stage appearance.

[jdb1]

Yes. I agree. If they looked just like every other senior, who would notice them? I wonder every time I see him: when is Paul McCarntey going to get a haircut? It's a question of how fiercely they want to hold onto their former selves. And if you're really lucky, your current and former selves are both fabulous, like Cary Grant or Lauren Bacall for instance.

[klondike]

Sure, sure, let's all chuckle benignly at those cute old senior celebrities & mutter axioms about their quaint eccentricities . .
Well, maybe Joe needs to run that diaper photo of Marlon Brando again, ehhh?

[mongoII]

Klondike, if I did that I wouldn't hear the end of it, since there were many nays after I posted it.

[knitwit45]

Knitty, at which source did you find this info about Kaye? It certainly would explain a lot and, if true, was surely supressed in his lifetime, a time in which one didn't admit to such things. Come to think of it, I have heard tell of his being totally hyper at times and at other times hiding away on his own for long periods. Some highly talented people are truly overwhelmed by their own genius.

Judith, this was where I found it, "Librarian's Lobby, July 2002, by Daniel D. Stuhlman "Jewish Comedians, Part 2"

http://home.earthlink.net/~ddstuhlman/crc50.htm

[klondike]

Klondike, if I did that I wouldn't hear the end of it, since there were many nays after I posted it.

That's putting it gently, Mongo - were I to truly advocate that, I really would be one cruel old Sled Dog!

[mongoII]

Judy Garland belting out a tune at the Hollywood Canteen in 1943

[mongoII]

APRIL 17th. BIRTHDAYS


OLIVIA HUSSEY is 59 today


JOAN LORRING is 84 today


LON McCALLISTER (1923 - 2005)


WILLIAM HOLDEN (1918 - 1981)


ANNE SHIRLEY (1918 - 1993)


PAUL LANGTON (1913 - 1980)


RICHARD TRAVIS (1913 - 1989)


LOUIS JEAN HEYDT 1905 - 1960)


ARTHUR LAKE (1905 - 1987)

[mongoII]

Audrey Hepburn perched on a camera crane with
director Richard Quine observing

[klondike]

Three cheers for Arthur Lake, who holds two distinctions of bizarrely mismatched minutiae - claiming the on-screen personification of funny-pages icon & sandwich inventor Dagwood Bumstead, and being the secret son-in-law of Marion Davies & William Randolph Hearst, through marriage to their love-child daughter.

[jdb1]

Knitty, at which source did you find this info about Kaye? It certainly would explain a lot and, if true, was surely supressed in his lifetime, a time in which one didn't admit to such things. Come to think of it, I have heard tell of his being totally hyper at times and at other times hiding away on his own for long periods. Some highly talented people are truly overwhelmed by their own genius.

Judith, this was where I found it, "Librarian's Lobby, July 2002, by Daniel D. Stuhlman "Jewish Comedians, Part 2"

http://home.earthlink.net/~ddstuhlman/crc50.htm

Thanks for this link, Knitty, but I would take its contents with a grain or two of salt. The writer (and who is he, anyway?) claims to have used Martin Gottfried's bio of Kaye as his primary source, but I don't think he read the book too carefully. I laughed at that sentence about how, as a "left-handed redhead," Kaye felt like an outsider within his own Jewish family and his community. What nonsense; I seriously doubt he was the only blond/redhead in his family -- it's not genetically likely. And as for left-handedness - it was often the custom in Kaye's day to turn a lefty around to right-handedness anyway, so it really can't see it being that big an issue.

Then a few paragraphs below, the author recounts how Samuel Goldwyn didn't like Kaye with red hair, because it made Kaye look "too Jewish," and so insisted that Kaye dye his hair blonde. I believe I remember in Gottfried's book that the story was that Kaye's hair was brown, and that Goldwyn wanted to brighten up Kaye's look by dyeing his hair reddish-blonde. However, there are black and white photos of a young Danny Kaye in Gottfried's book that clearly show Kaye with light-colored hair, either red or blond. The details are not in themselves all that significant, but they demonstrate that the facts have been mixed up somewhere along the way.