#bitch goddess

[bitter69uk]

“This classic camp bitchfest is a prime example of Joan Crawford doing the sort of thing she always did best. Though disguised as a soaper, it’s actually almost a horror movie, and she’s the monster. The plot structure is pure Gothic romance: a sweet young innocent (Lucy Marlow) comes to stay at a gracious Southern mansion that’s populated with a clan of snarling neurotics. Presiding over this menage is Crawford, who seems to be a perfectly charming, devoted wife and mother. In fact, however, she’s a sweetly malevolent, slyly manipulative gorgon of absolute selfishness and downright vicious vindictiveness. Her face is made up like a Kabuki mask; she looks like a dragon lady in a comic book. As for her gowns (by Jean Louis), they’re all bedecked with trains and veils and capes, as if she were a vampire …”

/ Paul Roen writing about Queen Bee (1955) in High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films Volume Two by (1997) /

Yes! Get stung by the Queen Bee herself when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People) presents this irresistible melodrama on 20 February at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Starring fierce-eyed diva Joan Crawford (pictured) at her most imperious! Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s website. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. Full sordid details HERE.

[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]

[drolta]

hands off

[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 ✅

[goddess-emilyjo]

Bet you wish you could've kissed my dawgs at midnight!🦶🏻😈

[bitter69uk]

Join us for an evening of high camp and diva worship (over cocktails, of course!) when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room film club (devoted to cinematic perversity) presents gloriously overripe Southern Gothic melodrama Queen Bee (1955)! Downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot) on Thursday 20 February.

When naïve cousin Jennifer (Lucy Marlow) comes to stay with her old money Southern relatives the Philips at their palatial Georgia mansion, she’s confronted with a wildly dysfunctional family dominated by the chatelaine of the house, Eva Phillips (Joan Crawford at her scary, fierce-eyed best). An outwardly charming wife, mother and socialite, Eva’s elegant ladylike façade conceals a manipulative sociopathic monster! Crawford is clearly having a blast here, and so will you. Thrill as Crawford sashays around clad in ultra-glamorous ensembles by Jean Louis, slaps faces, sleeps in an eye mask and little white gloves and torments her emasculated alcoholic husk of a husband Avery (Barry Sullivan) with “Darling, a party is to women what a battlefield is to men. Oh, I’d forgotten you weren’t in the army, were you? Something about drinking, wasn’t it?” (A sampling of Eva’s other choice lines: “Aren’t I wicked?” “Any man’s my man – if I want it that way.”).

Sure, Queen Bee boasts an interesting supporting cast (almost none of whom employ Southern accents): rugged John Ireland (veteran of great Westerns like My Darling Clementine (1946) and Red River (1948)), Fay Wray (possibly cinema’s original scream queen in King Kong (1933)) and Betsy Palmer (best remembered by horror movie freaks as Jason’s mother in Friday the 13th (1980)), but let’s face it, they are all overshadowed by Crawford. As the film’s tagline accurately declares: “She’s so excitingly good … when she’s so wonderfully bad!” Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s website. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. Full sordid details HERE.

[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

[dominantmrt]

[goddessdelph]

What would you do if I had you in front of me right now ??👣🦶😈

[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

[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

[goddessmedusa9]

i control your wallet 😈