#bitch goddess

[bitter69uk]

“In this business, until you're known as a monster, you're not a star.” Bette Davis, quoted in the opening credits of MaxXxine (2024).

“Bette Davis’ greatest creation was Bette Davis. She was – indeed – a fine actress, but she made sure that the world knew it, knew how hard she worked and what opposition she had to overcome to get great acting roles. She wanted to be known as an “actress” and she gritted her teeth, bulged her eyes and succeeded, winning two Oscars, eight nominations and numerous other awards. She became the Queen of Hollywood as surely as Clark Gable became its King, and she was a big box office star to boot.”

/ From The Illustrated Encyclopedia of The World’s Greatest Movie Stars (1979) by Ken Wlaschin /

Died on this day 35 years ago: Hollywood’s fierce “Mother Goddam”, Miss Bette Davis (5 April 1908 – 6 October 1989), concisely summarized by film historian John Kobal as “the most starry of actresses and the most actressy of stars.”

[bitter69uk]

Born on this day 91 years ago (23 May 1933): haughty veteran show biz diva, undisputed bitch goddess extraordinaire, camp icon and the woman forever known as Alexis Carrington - Dame Joan Henrietta Collins! In the spirit of generosity, because it’s her birthday, let’s draw a veil over Collins’ frankly unpleasant right-wing politics and support for UKIP! In terms of her trashy cinematic oeuvre, I treasure Collins’ performances in 1970s British horror schlock like Tales from the Crypt (1972) and Tales that Witness Madness (1973) (I’ve yet to experience the notorious Empire of the Ants (1977)), and the disco-era kitsch epics The Stud (1978) and The Bitch (1979) adapted from steamy novels by her sister Jackie. Pictured: young starlet Collins as Princess Nellifer in her big Hollywood break, Land of the Pharaohs (1955). (Tagline: “Her treachery stained every stone of the great pyramid!”). Collins was indebted to temperamental fashion model Ivy Nicholson (née Irene Nicholson, 1933 -2021), the original choice for the role. As Nicholson’s New York Times obituary outlined, “When Howard Hawks flew her to Egypt in 1954 for a role in his epic movie Land of the Pharaohs, she objected to the studio’s multiyear contract. So, as she later told the story, she bit one of the actors to get out of the deal. Her replacement was Joan Collins.” As for Nicholson, her wayward path led her away from both haute couture and Hollywood to underground stardom at Andy Warhol’s Factory.

Joan Collins, 1955

[j-august]

The back of my neck began to itch where the bitch goddess coincidence had bitten me before.

Ross MacDonald, The Ivory Grin

[pdxlocked]

[bitter69uk]

“Hollywood’s most representative “Great Movie Star” and the screen’s finest personification of no-holds-barred ambition, Joan Crawford created her own screen persona early, doubtless basing it on her own desperate climb from the bottom of society and pushed this screen image to the very peak of stardom. The outward manifestations changed, but the core of the image never altered: she was a tough, shrewd, determined woman who wanted the best things in life and would do anything to get them – even murder. “I love to play bitches,” she once said, and in the end, she came to symbolize the bitch-goddess success, the dark side of the American dream. She looked like a star, she behaved like a star, she was a star.” 

/ From The Illustrated Encyclopedia of The World’s Great Movie Stars (1979) by Ken Wlaschin / 

Born on this day: the fierce and regal Miss Joan Crawford (née Lucille LeSueur on 23 March 1904, although the precise year of Crawford’s birth is contested). Pictured: the diva photographed by Willy Rizzo in 1959. That’s almost certainly a glass of vodka next to her elbow. 

Joan Crawford gazing in the mirror, photographed by Willy Rizzo, 1959.

[black-women-appreciation]

Afro ✅

Dark skin ✅

Bad bitch ✅

[bitter69uk]

“… but what caught my attention and slightly disappointed me about her was not the colour of her foundation-smooth, pale pink complexion that seemed to take its tone from a sea of freckles (I hadn’t expected those), but the wild colour of her hair. I had thought it would be black or brown or some solid dark hue, and instead it was a kind of champagne pink, the colour one sees on a lot of California matrons in supermarkets.” 

The late, great film historian John Kobal dissing Joan Crawford’s pink hair in his 1986 book People Will Talk: Personal Conversations with the Legends of Hollywood. Pictured: Crawford in 1957. 

[bitter69uk]

From the amazing photographer Eve Arnold’s series of photos of fierce-eyed screen diva Joan Crawford for Life magazine in 1959. I love Arnold’s memory of their first meeting: before handing her two pet poodles to her personal assistant, Crawford lovingly kissed each dog on the mouth – then turned to Arnold and kissed her on the mouth, in that order! Read more here. 

Joan Crawford receives a facial photographed by Eve Arnold, 1959

[dommevinee]

Spend your morning worshipping my ass

[bitter69uk]

“Hollywood’s most representative “Great Movie Star” and the screen’s finest personification of no-holds-barred ambition, Joan Crawford created her own screen persona early, doubtless basing it on her own desperate climb from the bottom of society and pushed this screen image to the very peak of stardom. The outward manifestations changed, but the core of the image never altered: she was a tough, shrewd, determined woman who wanted the best things in life and would do anything to get them – even murder. “I love to play bitches,” she once said, and in the end, she came to symbolize the bitch-goddess success, the dark side of the American dream. She looked like a star, she behaved like a star, she was a star.”

/ From The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of The World’s Great Movie Stars (1979) by Ken Wlaschin /

Born on this day in San Antonio, Texas: the fierce and regal Miss Joan Crawford (née Lucille LeSueur on 23 March somewhere between 1904 and 1908. The precise year of Crawford’s birth is contested although 1906 seems to be generally accepted). Pictured: the diva – in blazing colour! - featured in the August 1942 issue of Photoplay magazine.

Photoplay, August 1942

[goddessmedusa9]

i control your wallet 😈

[pdxlocked]

[bitter69uk]

“Cigarettes were such a Davis signature that her Jezebel co-star Henry Fonda once joked, “I’ve been close to Bette Davis for 38 years—and I have the cigarette burns to prove it.” They were not just accessories, either, but an extension of her already over-the-top self. Per biographer Ed Sikov in his 2007 book Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis: “Cigarettes were to Bette Davis what a bottle of Southern Comfort was to Janis Joplin, or a half-unbuttoned black shirt is to Tom Ford: a mundane prop elevated by sheer force of personality to the level of a stylized autograph.” The book also quotes Dr. Ivin Prince: “She used smoking in a way I’d never seen before. It was a signature.” She was so dependent on her signature Vanguards—of which she smoked up to four packs a day—that she could not abstain from them, even during a ten-minute television appearance. “If I did not smoke a cigarette,” she explained to TV talk show hosts, “they would not know who I was.” No one told Davis to put out her cigarettes, though, not even her dentist—who told Sikov that the actress smoked in both his waiting room and in the actual dentist’s chair. “She pretty much did what she wanted,” Prince said. Davis’s accessory was so omnipresent and iconic that when the U.S. Post Office noticeably photoshopped out the actress’s cigarette, for a postage stamp in 2008, some Davis fans jokingly suggested a revolt.”

Born on this day: the turbulent Miss Bette “Mother Goddamn” Davis (Ruth Elizabeth Davis, 5 April 1908 – 6 October 1989), concisely summarized by film historian John Kobal as “the most starry of actresses and the most actressy of stars.” And as this 2017 Vanity Fair article by Amy Miller quoted above reminds us, she was also virtually a cigarette in human form! Portrait of Davis by Victor Skrebneski, 1971.

Bette Davis

[bitter69uk]

“MGM came to the rescue of the floundering career of Joan Crawford (who had in the 30s and 40s been one of their biggest meal tickets) after she’d been toiling for ten years in the salt mines of Columbia and Warners. Anyway, that was the plan – “Discover a NEW Crawford,” screamed the ads, “the eternal female!” – until critics and audiences got a look at the movie, as unintentionally funny as any that Crawford ever made. Here Hollywood’s Medusa is cast as Broadway’s Medusa, smitten by a blind pianist, played (virtually straight-faced) by Michael Wilding, who tells her that she has the “mouth of an angel” but “the words that come out are sheer tramp.” Though the studio tried to disguise the preposterousness of it all by giving Crawford Technicolor, dances and songs (dubbed by musky-voiced India Adams), and enough cigarettes to stub from here to social security, her snarly dialogue gives the game away – we’re talking pure, unadulterated camp.”

/ From Bad Movies We Love (1993) by Edward Margulies and Stephen Rebello – a sacred text in my household /

Released seventy years ago today (23 October 1953): irresistibly kitsch melodrama Torch Song, in which perennially fierce Joan Crawford stars as hard-as-nails bitch goddess stage diva Jenny Stewart – who softens and learns how to love again when she encounters a blind pianist.  Torch Song reaches a zenith of bad taste in the notorious “Two-Faced Woman” musical number – which Crawford performs in blackface! Pictured: Crawford perusing the comics section during production of Torch Song. (Dare I screen this one at the Lobotomy Room club?).

[bitter69uk]

“She was the perfect image of the movie star and as such largely the creation of her own indomitable will. She had of course very remarkable material to work with: a quick native intelligence, tremendous animal vitality, a lovely figure and above all her face, that extraordinary sculptural construction of line and planes, finely chiselled like the mask of some classical divinity from fifth century Greece. It caught the light superbly, so that you could photograph her from any angle, and her face moved beautifully … The nearer the camera, the more tender and yielding she became – her eyes glistening, her lips avid in ecstatic acceptance. The camera saw, I suspect, a side of her that no flesh-and-blood lover ever saw …”

/ Director George Cukor’s eulogy for Joan Crawford at her memorial service, 1977 /

Died on this day: magnetic fierce-eyed Golden Age Hollywood screen diva, Miss Joan Crawford (Lucille Fay LeSueur, 23 March 1906 – 10 May 1977). Pictured: promotional portrait of Crawford for the film Possessed (1931).  

Joan Crawford

[ifevilz]

please, on behalf of all the greek deities, I beg for more fanfics with the most perfect and crazy goddess of the greek pantheon, HERA. she is so hot, angry and possessive. despite all her hard layer, we know that there is the sweet hera kind, compassionate, diplomatic and loving. she just needs to be truly loved, for god’s sake. she is the best goddess, despite her crimes committed by anger. I understand her, and I love how creative and cruel she is with her punishments. she has several layers, toxic and healthy. anyway, I love her and would love that she had more stories.

(I love the way she is in the anime “blood of zeus”, I miss your peacocks but I like the aesthetics of the crows. my wife can do anything.