Reflections on ... The Gypsy Rose Lee Show

Oldshowbiz is the essential Tumblr account of comedian turned author and astute show business historian Kliph Nesteroff devoted to “Showbiz Imagery and Forgotten History.” He regularly exhumes a treasure trove of mid-twentieth century kitsch curiosities and obscurities – including THIS delectable high camp bonanza. 

Turns out brassy burlesque legend Gypsy Rose Lee hosted her own talk show in the sixties (The Gypsy Rose Lee Show, 754 episodes, aired 1965–1968). As the ads exclaimed, “Gypsy is Fresh! Delightful! Mad-cap! Cheery! Glittering! Irrepressible! Provocative! INCOMPARABLE!” The summary for this 1965 installment: “Singer-actress Eartha Kitt talks of men and love and singer-actress Lainie Kazan sings a tongue-in-cheek love song “Peel Me a Grape””.  Thrill as these three camp icons let their hair (wiglets?) down and dish some “girl talk” over coffee (although my boyfriend Pal suggests their coffee cups appear empty. There’s also a bottle of champagne on the table but it goes untouched). The episode captures intense, fiercely glamorous Kitt around the same time she portrayed Catwoman on TV’s Batman series, while Kazan purrs a sex kitten anthem with lyrics like “Peel me a grape / Crush me some ice / Skin me a peach / Save the fuzz for my pillow … Pop me a cork, French me a fry / Crack me a nut, bring a bowl full of bon-bons …” It culminates in the three women joining forces to belt-out Lee’s signature tune “Let Me Entertain You.” If you weren’t gay already, you will be after watching this!

Reflections on ... Friday Foster (1975)

Recently watched: Friday Foster (1975). Tagline: “Her name is Friday, but you can love her any day of the week!” An irresistibly trashy and lurid late entry in the seventies Blaxploitation genre, Friday Foster is no masterpiece, but it's vivid and wildly entertaining. 

In the action-packed but incomprehensible plot, glamorous, gutsy, fun-loving, fearless and intrepid ex-fashion model-turned-photojournalist titular heroine Friday Foster (Pam Grier) gets caught up in a complicated and impossible-to-follow narrative about an assassination attempt against the world’s wealthiest African-American magnate Blake Tarr. From there: something something … her fashion model best friend Cloris gets murdered … something something … the action keeps shuttling between Los Angeles and Washington … something something … an assassin who knows Friday know too much keeps trying to kill her … something something … Friday has an obligatory nude shower scene … something something  … Friday steals a hearse from Cloris’ funeral to evade her killer … something something … car chases and shoot-outs ensue … something something … a genuinely tense and suspenseful chase scene in an abandoned warehouse … something something … private detectives and political conspiracy theories … something something … political intrigue, murder and a conspiracy theory called “Black Widow” ... something something … helicopters!

But frankly, who cares when it’s this much fun? Friday Foster is never remotely boring, and I’d rather watch the buxom, stylish Pam Grier outwitting villains than tired old honky James Bond. On the plus side: the blistering funk soundtrack is sensational. (Of course, it instantly evokes not just Blaxploitation but the golden age of retro porn! On the addictive theme tune, the female chorus coos “Hey Friday watcha doin’? / Watcha doin’? Friday / Friday / Get it on! Do it!”). There are copious gratuitous glimpses of naked female boobage. All the male characters sport safari-style leisure wear with huge collars and flared trousers. The seventies cars, costumes and earth-toned décor are kitsch heaven. The low-life milieu of pimps and hookers is well-represented. Huge snifters of cognac signify the height of aspiration, sophistication and conspicuous consumption. Blake Tarr seduces Friday in a hot tub! I love that all the central characters are defiantly black and that everything is saturated in a Black Power message.

/ The height of sophistication: big fishbowl snifters of cognac /

/ Ladies and gentlemen ... Ms Eartha Kitt as "the magnificent Madame Rena!" / 

(An aside: Jim Backus (Gilligan's Island / Mr Magoo / Rebel without a Cause), Scatman Crothers and Ted Lange (Isaac from Love Boat) round out the truly bizarre cast!). 

(Another aside: Grier’s wardrobe is fiercely chic throughout. Check out the scarf emblazoned with “YVES ST LAURENT” in block letters to ensure you don’t miss she's wearing the high-end luxury label).

Leading lady majestic, statuesque and frequently-naked Grier was the supreme goddess / female superstar of Blaxploitation (her closest rival: Tamara Dobson in the Cleopatra Jones movies). As utterly magnetic as Grier is, for me she is comprehensively upstaged by scarily-intense veteran sex kitten extraordinaire Eartha Kitt in a fleeting “guest star” appearance as bitchy fashion designer Madame Rena. (The poolside fashion show segment is like an ultra-low rent version of Diana Ross’ Mahogany (1975)). By this time, temperamental chanteuse Kitt was 48-years old, long past her 1950s heyday and widely regarded as washed-up. In Friday Foster the diva is onscreen for maybe ten minutes and yet she wrings maximum dramatic impact from every second! Wearing a ratty wiglet, durable pro Kitt approaches the role as if she’s still playing Catwoman on TV’s Batman series and is gloriously campy and almost drag queen-like. SPOILER ALERT: wait until you see Kitt’s death scene!

/ Madame Rena on the topic of her arch rival, Ford Malotte /

Reflecting the prejudices of the time, Friday Foster is casually, outrageously homophobic. (The gay characters are treated as a freaky, titillating joke. As the kids today would say, Friday Foster is "problematic"). Madame Rena rages against her haute couture competitor Ford Malotte: “This plastic faggot couldn’t design a handkerchief, let alone a dress!” Eventually we catch up with Malotte himself – a stereotypical acid-tongued queen – surrounded by his entourage in a sleazy homosexual dive bar in Washington. (Positioned as unsympathetic, Malotte turns out to be a queer sexist who suggests Friday, "Go home. Get laid. Have a baby."). Yeah, the depiction is pretty hateful and cliched, but it’s also a fascinating snapshot of social history. And damn, that dank red-lit gay bar setting looks inviting!

/ Kudos to effervescent Todd Brandt of the essential Stirred, Straight Up with a Twist blog for pointing out to me that Ms Eartha’s enraged “teeth-gritting telephone scene” beautifully echoes Diana Ross’ telephone tantrum in Mahogany! And that “the sketch of what appears to be a 1950s Edith Head gown (pictured behind Kitt is) completely unlike any of the sleazy Qiana halter numbers from Madame Rena’s show!” /

Further reading:

Check out my reflections on Eartha Kitt's underrated, long-forgotten 1970 album Sentimental Eartha here.

Reflections on ... Tally Brown, New York (1979)

/ Tally Brown photographed by Francesco Scavullo in 1969 /

"... but the most magnificent, inimitable fräulein is the zaftig subject of Tally Brown, New York (1979) - a must-see for all those interested in performance and the cultural history of New York in the 70s. The bewigged Miss Brown, with false eyelashes capable of sending her short, round body aloft, is the most mesmerising raconteur and cabaret artist you’ll hear all year. Opening the film with her indelible cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” Tally concludes with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,” performing that song’s line – “You’re not alone! / Give me your hands”—as a rallying cry far more rousing than several decades’ worth of tepid gay-rights chants."

Melissa Anderson reviewing Tally Brown, New York in The Village Voice in 2003

/ Tally Brown photographed by Francesco Scavullo in 1969 /

Watching Tally Brown, New York (1979), I couldn’t help but think: thank god, a filmmaker documented this remarkable, charismatic and completely original woman. And that it was someone as simpatico as queer New German cinema maverick Rosa von Praunheim.

Von Praunheim weaves a revealing portrait of chanteuse, actress, show business doyenne, bohemian earth mother and all-round diva Tally Brown (1924 – 1989), preserving both her riveting nightclub act and her personal offstage life. And good thing he did as Brown -  a vivid scene-maker in New York’s underground art subculture in the sixties and seventies - seems to have completely fallen through the cracks in the decades following her death. A Torch for Tally – the blues album she recorded in the fifties – is long forgotten. The Andy Warhol art movies she appeared in like Camp (1965) and Ari and Mario (1966) languish unseen in locked vaults at The Warhol Foundation (I managed to catch them when the British Film Institute held a comprehensive Warhol retrospective about ten years ago. Brown is magnetic in both). In 2017, Tally Brown barely seems to exist as a footnote.

/ Tally Brown photographed by Francesco Scavullo in 1969 /

The Barbican screened this ultra-rare documentary (in a grainy 16-millimetre print on loan from The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts) on 4 October as part of it’s The Grime and The Glamour:NYC 1976 – 1990 series devoted to “the wild days and night of New York’s coolest era”. As the title implies, von Praunheim positions flaming creature Brown - a native New Yorker - as the personification of her city’s decayed glamour. In atmospheric and beautifully degraded footage, we see seventies New York at its most gloriously scuzzy, grungy and decrepit: the porn cinemas and peepshows of Times Square, gay bathhouses, The Chelsea Hotel, neon signs, dive bars, dissolute nightclubs. And it all looks heavenly!

/ Tally Brown photographed by Billy Name in the sixties (almost certainly at Max's Kansas City). This shot is in Name's 1997 book All Tomorrow's Parties - the first time I ever heard of Tally Brown /

/ Lady sings the blues: Tally Brown in her youth /

Brown was a classically-trained (at Julliard) and adventurous singer with a disparate repertoire who regularly performed at venues like Reno Sweeney’s, SNAFU and gay bathhouse The Continental Baths. Onstage, we see Brown deliver jazz and blues standards (like “Goody Goody” and an intense, emotionally tormented version of Kurt Weill’s “Surabaya Johnny”) with commanding authority. But she also had a penchant for wittily and radically re-interpreting modern rock music like “Love in Vain” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones. She was especially partial to David Bowie. In the film we see her cover “Heroes” (she sings the final verses in Marlene Dietrich-like German), an eerie “Lady Grinning Soul” and “Rock’n’Roll Suicide.” Accompanied only by a pianist, Brown transforms the Bowie tracks into perverse torch songs. Call me a heretic but I’m no “rockist” or Bowie fan, so I prefer Brown’s slinky, dramatic, tortured and Eartha Kitt-like versions to the originals.

Brown moved in avant-garde circles and in von Praunheim’s film we encounter a pantheon of the era’s countercultural hip queer elite, including her friends Taylor Mead (his drooling village idiot antics are either enchantingly childlike or grating depending on your sensibility) and the effervescent, self-deprecating Holly Woodlawn. A silent Andy Warhol is briefly seen (but not interviewed). At one point No Wave “it girl” Anya Phillips performs an abject burlesque routine to a bar full of indifferent men. A glittering, turbaned Eartha Kitt is viewed carried aloft on the shoulders of a semi-naked African-American bodybuilder (she was then starring in the Broadway production of Timbuktu). For Divine fans the film offers a bonanza. We see him offstage with his own cropped greying hair, clad in a red kaftan and then onstage in full drag in a fragment of the 1978 stage production The Neon Woman. Post-show Brown “interviews” Divine backstage and jokes about regularly getting mistaken for him - and even signing autographs as him.

/ Above: Eartha Kitt as she appears in Tally Brown, New York (costumed for the musical Timbuktu) /

/ Divine and Tally Brown /

/ Divine (as Flash Storm) backstage during a performance of The Neon Woman at Hurrah in New York, 1978 /

/ Grace Jones and Tally Brown /

In an ideal world Brown would be revered as a LGBTQ icon. Certainly, she has qualities that should make her catnip for aficionados of camp. For one thing, Brown looks like an escapee from a John Waters film. Squint and she can resemble both Divine and Edith Massey. Her highly individual and distinctive appearance is extreme and drag queen-like. She favoured white powder, heavy black eye shadow, false eyelashes as thick as tarantulas and huge, ratty bouffant wigs. (Judging by the film, she also chain-smoked like a demon).  Brown’s plump feline face can evoke both Kewpie doll or Kabuki mask.

/ Tally Brown in the underground film Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (1972) /

And she was zaftig. Or Rubenesqe. Hell, the rotund Brown was frankly and defiantly fat and owned it. Von Praunheim shows her visiting a much-younger artist ex-lover who lives in The Chelsea Hotel. Asked what attracted him to Brown, he explains it was her sensuality and confidence about her size, likening her to “a fertility goddess … like the Venus of Willendorf.” Unfortunately, by the time von Praunheim made this film, Brown’s body was a ruined temple. Following an accident that shattered her knee, she relied on a cane and lived with a degree of immobility and pain.

Tally Brown, New York is most enthralling when von Praunheim simply follows Brown wandering around her local neighbourhood as she shields her vampiric pallor with a pink parasol, just like Vampira or Lily Munster. Or visiting her elderly mother in Florida (which Brown dismisses as “a geriatric ghetto”). The Floridian sunbathing seniors in pastel-coloured leisurewear stare aghast as Brown passes by. During these segments, accomplished raconteur Brown extemporises on the soundtrack about the vagaries of life on fringes of show business (she speaks with maternal tenderness about fallen Warhol superstars doomed to die young like Ingrid Superstar, Andrea Feldman and Candy Darling), her encounters with the Mafia, her love of marijuana (she was initiated into smoking reefer by jazz musicians and is contemptuous of “the Woodstock generation” embracing it). Her speaking voice is posh, cultured (she’s clearly had elocution lessons) and reminiscent of Eartha Kitt’s or Elizabeth Taylor’s. Brown got her start singing rhythm-and-blues in sleazy burlesque joints and her preferred audience was old strippers and young sailors. Asked about singing at The Continental Baths, she purrs that it turned her on. (“I love real decadence …”). As well as New York and Florida, the film shuttles to other places Brown lived over the years while touring in theatrical productions such as The Pajama Game, Medea and Mame, including Las Vegas, Hollywood and New Orleans. Wherever she performed, Brown immersed herself in the local demi monde. In Vegas she embraced a nocturnal lifestyle, performing three or four shows daily and then not sleeping for days at a time – perhaps outing herself as speed freak? Brown reminisces about partying with the drag queens of New Orleans’ French Quarter while von Praunheim shows us a leather man in chaps loitering outside a gay bar, his furry ass exposed in a pair of chaps. Ah, the low-life of Bourbon Street! Basking in Tally Brown’s ambience for 93-minutes is intoxicating.

Reflections on ... Sentimental Eartha (1970)

A few days ago, I scored the obscure oddity Sentimental Eartha (1970), widely regarded as sultry atomic-era chanteuse Eartha Kitt’s strangest album. In her case that’s really saying something: Eartha Kitt (1927 - 2008) was a strange woman who made strange records. The CD version released on an independent label in the nineties is long out of print and now ultra-pricey. On Amazon it routinely goes for between £75 - £400.  Miraculously, I nabbed a used copy for only about £3 from Germany!

By 1970 Kitt was still in-demand on the glitzy cabaret circuit but the hits had well and truly dried up. Sentimental Eartha showcases the slinky feline temptress’conscious effort to update and reinvent her image and sound “with it” by embracing modern rock trends. Many of the other post-war pop and jazz divas of Kitt’s vintage were also experimenting with a more contemporary “groovy” direction. Around this time, Peggy Lee re-interpreted songs by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Sly & The Family Stone. On Julie London’s unintended camp classic Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (1969) she applied her breathless sex kitten coo to “Louie Louie” and “Light My Fire” by The Doors as if they were Cole Porter standards. A few years later saw Miracles (1972), on which Peruvian high priestess of exotica Yma Sumac explored trippy fuzzed-out acid rock. 

Sentimental Eartha bombed upon release and is pretty much forgotten today. It deserved a kinder fate. As her biographer John L Williams would later assert, “The innocuous title gives little indication that this would turn out to be far and away Eartha’s most experimental album and one of her best.”

Sentimental Eartha’s cover features Kitt lounging in a woodland setting amidst autumn leaves clad in an animal-print maxi-dress, floppy black hat and the long straight wiglet familiar from her stint as Catwoman on TV's Batman. On the psychedelia-tinged music within, Kitt gamely tries on the unfamiliar roles of hippie maiden, soul sister and earth mother by tackling Herman’s Hermits “My Sentimental Friend” and three songs by singer-songwriter Donovan: “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”, “Catch the Wind” and best of all, “Hurdy-Gurdy Man”, on which Kitt cackles like a witch and suggests a sorceress casting a spell.

On some of the more delicate songs Kitt seems to deliberately and audibly mute some of her signature purring mannerisms. On others (like the ultra-dramatic opener “It Is Love”), she roars in full feline attack. And when “The Way You Are” ends with campy ad-libbed comedy Spanglish, it could only be Miss Eartha Kitt.

In his 2013 biography America’s Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt, John L Williams interviewed the producer of Sentimental Eartha, Denny Diante.  (The album was recorded in Los Angeles for a British label). The producer recalled Kitt as enthusiastic: “She was thrilled to death; she couldn’t thank me enough for pushing the more contemporary stuff. She was very contemporary herself, very progressive in her thinking.”

Kitt promoted her new material with a German TV special. It was obviously produced on a shoestring budget. Check out that frugal set (decorated with office furniture? Hotel lobby furniture? What’s the deal with the coat stand? And why during “Sentimental Friend” does it repeatedly cut away to photos of spaghetti western actor Franco Nero?). But durable pro Eartha belts out the songs with style, sex appeal and conviction. And while the band may look square in their tuxedos, they’re tight, dramatic and swing hard. 

Thankfully there are plentiful clips from Kitt's 1970 TV special on YouTube. I've tried to assemble them all here:

/ Above: "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and "Catch the Wind" /





/ Above: "It Is Love", "My Sentimental Friend" and "The Way You Are". The dramatic spoken intros are something else! Kitt also seems to be doing some intense Method Acting with her performances. Check out her smouldering eye contact during "The Way You Are" and the way she moodily smokes and sips champagne  /



/ Above: "Genesis". Eartha at full-throttle tigress assault mode. Like Nina Simone, the volatile Kitt was the mistress of abrupt mood swings /



/ "Once We Loved": fierce! /



/ "Wear Your Love Like Heaven": Eartha Goes Psychedelic, Baby  /



/ "I remember what you said about me. You said I was a very beautiful brown Helen of Troy ..." An epic performance of that world-weary anthem "When the World Was Young" - which also featured in the Marlene Dietrich songbook /

/ One of the few nods to the old days: "C'est Si Bon", one of Kitt's first and biggest hits in the fifties /

As Williams argues, the TV special’s high-point is Kitt’s impassioned performance of the ballad “Paint Me Black Angels” (a Mexican song she’d already recorded in the fifties as “Angelitos Negros” with its original Spanish lyrics). Kitt delivers it in extreme close-up with a stark simplicity and a few tears rolling down her face. What a mesmerising presence she was!

Nonetheless, Sentimental Eartha bombed in the UK and was never even released in the US.  Kitt never pursued modern rock music again. It was a doomed but noble effort. As with Peggy Lee and Julie London, Kitt’s experimentations baffled her existing mature fans and failed to engage with a new younger audience.

I Get Around

I’ve been pretty damn privileged to have met many of my favourite artists over the years. If only digital cameras or camera phones had existed in the late 1980s/1990s, as that was when I did most of my freelance music journalism: I look back and wince at the lost opportunity to have photographed the likes of Poison Ivy of The Cramps, Lydia Lunch, Exene Cervenka (X), Henry Rollins, the Divinyls and Chris Isaak when I interviewed them and had the chance! Ah, well. Let’s take a sentimental journey. Note: These photos are arranged in strict chronological order, so as an added bonus you can monitor my ageing process while you look at them.


Rhythm and blues legend Ruth Brown (aka Motormouth Maybelle in the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray). Viva Las Vegas April 2006


Eartha-quake! Quintessential sex kitten chanteuse Eartha Kitt and I. Valentine's Day 2007


Undisputed First Lady of Rockabilly (and former girlfriend of Elvis) Wanda Jackson. July 2007


Vivacious Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn in London. September 2007


Ai chihuahua! With musician Robert Lopez (off-duty El Vez - the Mexican Elvis). May 2008


Punk photographer, raconteur and scene-maker Leee Black Childers at Cockabilly club night in Dalston. September 2008


Punk poetess Patti Smith at book signing for her memoirs Just Kids in London. March 2010


Burlesque Royalty: with the outrageous veteran stripper Satan's Angel (The Devil's Own Mistress!) at Viva Las Vegas 2010. (She's got some stories to tell! Oh, yeah).


One hot tamale: The mighty El Vez and I. (No wonder I'm slack-jawed). The 100 Club in London. June 2010


No, it's not Lemmy from Motorhead: Me with my old friend / petit frere Cyril Roy when he was in London for the premiere of the Gaspar Noe film he starred in, Enter the Void. September 2010


The King of Sleaze. And John Waters! Only kidding. Brutal close-up of the Pope of Trash (the Maestro!) and I. Book launch of the hard cover edition of his book Role Models. While he was in London I interviewed him for Nude magazine. November 2010


Unforgettable concert by beatnik / existentialist French chanteuse Juliette Greco at The Royal Festival Hall. November 2010


Eerily ageless Mistress of the Dark Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) and I at the Viva Las Vegas car show. April 2011


A Reunion with the Prince of Puke: John Waters when he was back in London to launch the paperback edition of his book Role Models. May 2011


With adult film performer Damon Dogg at The Hole in the Wall Saloon in San Francisco. April 2012


Christopher Raymond, Kembra Pfahler of New York glam-punk band Voluptous Horror of Karen Black and I. Meltdown Festival in London. August 2012

19 October 2011 Dr Sketchy Set List

/ And God Created ... Brigitte Bardot /

Happily, my jinxed period at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern has definitely has come to an end – this Dr Sketchy was smooth sailing and a really enjoyable night. My friend Jim (who I go to Viva Las Vegas most years with) turned up with a surprise guest: his Staffordshire bull terrier Daisy. Daisy was beautifully-behaved, nestling on the floor in the corner of the DJ booth. It was an added, unexpected bonus to get to kneel down and kiss a dog on the forehead while DJ’ing.

/ Sweet face: Daisy photographed at my place in February 2011. She's a bit bigger now. Who's a good girl? Who's a good girl? You are, Daisy /

The emcee this time was Dusty Limits (Weimar Republic decadence personified), and we had two burlesque performers/models: brunette Australian minx Sarina del Fuego and the frankly very fit Spencer Maybe. For once I kept the tone a bit classy and elegant (relatively-speaking), at least during Sarina’s pose. After her performance, Sarina had stripped down to just black lace lingerie and a kinky black lace eye mask. Her musical selection for her striptease was the dreamy finger-snapping instrumental “Perdita” by Angelo Badalementi, from the soundtrack to the 1990 David Lynch film Wild at Heart. Inspired by the song and Sarina’s outfit, rather than crank-up the sleaze and tittyshakers, I played some moodily lingering 1950s cool jazz-inflected make-out music: Dolores Gray's minimalist bongo drum-propelled "You're My Thrill", Julie London, Chet Baker, Eartha purring “I Want to Be Evil.”



Later I compensated when our male “boylesque” performer Spencer Maybe posed, and then he and Sarina posed together, spinning my raunchiest single-entendre novelty songs like “Tony’s Got Hot Nuts” by Faye Richmonde and Filthy McNasty’s “Ice Man”. I also incorporated exotica (Yma Sumac, Martin Denny), rockabilly, rhythm and blues and some 1960s French pop (Brigitte Bardot, more than one song by Johnny Hallyday!).

During Spencer’s pose I also played a track by Lizabeth Scott, the most haunting and enigmatic of 1940s and 50s film noir actresses. Because of Scott’s languid mane of ash blonde hair, smoky eyes, sultry and insolent demeanour and raspy low voice “that sounded as if it had been buried somewhere deep and was trying to claw its way out” (John Kobal) she’s been frequently (and unfavourably) compared to the more famous Lauren Bacall. In fact, Scott was a much stranger, more intense and harder-working actress than Bacall, and made more interesting choices.

A true actrice maudite, Scott has traditionally been disparaged or overlooked by mainstream film historians. An all-too typical assessment is writer Penny Stalling’s: “Scott ... churned out twenty-two films between 1945 and 1953, but few are memorable.” In fact Scott’s filmography between 1945 and 1957 (when she abruptly retired), is studded with obscure gems, and virtually all of them are films noir, partnering her with many of the greats of the genre: Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan. It’s only in recent years that Scott has emerged as a genuine cult figure for old film obsessives (like me!) and her career has been more generously reappraised. In particular, search out 1949’s Too Late for Tears (aka Killer Bait) to see Lizabeth Scott at her most mesmerising, almost serpentine as a suburban Los Angeles housewife with a treacherous and homicidal dark side.

/ Separated at birth: Lauren Bacall and Lizabeth Scott /

By the mid-50s the film noir cycle was coming to an end as public tastes changed, and so were Scott’s days as a leading lady. What certainly was a contributing factor to her abrupt and premature retirement was scandal magazine Confidential “outing” her as lesbian in 1955 – making her what must be one of the first victims of tabloid homophobia. In the article Confidential gloated “In recent years Scotty’s almost nonexistent career has allowed her to roam further afield. In one jaunt to Europe she headed straight for Paris and the left bank where she took up with Frede, the city’s most notorious lesbian queen and operator of a nightclub devoted exclusively to entertaining deviates just like herself.” (In fact the shadowy Frede was the proprietoress of the posh Parisian nightclub Carroll’s, where key figures of French show business performed to a presumably mixed clientele. A very young Eartha Kitt, for example, launched her singing career there in the late 1940s. In her 1989 memoirs Kitt describes Frede (a former lover of Marlene Dietrich’s) as “the most beautiful manly-looking lady in the world”).

/ An intriguingly butch study of Lizabeth Scott. The safety pin makes a punk statement /

Scott took legal action against the magazine, but the damage was done and shortly afterwards she quit the film industry – and withdrew from public life. To date, Scott has never publicly acknowledged the gay rumours – certainly the general consensus was that she had been the mistress of (married) film mogul Hal B Wallis, who’d guided her career in the 1940s at Paramount. Now 89, the elusive Scott never married and lives in deep seclusion in her palatial Hollywood Boulevard mansion, declining all interview requests as the enigma around her grows. We can only hope Scott writes an autobiography before she dies or gives one last genuinely revealing interview – but at this point it looks likely she’s taking her secrets to her grave.

After completing her last major film role (in the 1957 Elvis Presley musical Loving You, incongruously enough!), Scott’s one last gasp at a show business career was re-launching herself as a torch singer with the album Lizabeth in 1957. (Weirdly, Scott frequently played nightclub singers in her films – but always lip-synched over another singer’s dubbed voice!). It’s an alluring and credible album, with Scott warbling jazz standards like “Willow Weep for Me” and “Can’t Get Out of This Mood” in a husky 40 cigarettes-a-day voice over stylish arrangements courtesy of Henri Rene and his Orchestra (he’d previously collaborated with Eartha Kitt, so knew a thing or two about chanteuses with idiosyncratic voices). Sadly, Lizabeth wasn’t a hit, and Scott didn’t pursue singing but I love to drop in an occasional track from it when I DJ.

/ The cover of Lizabeth Scott's 1957 album Lizabeth /



/ Lovely and dramatic: Lizabeth Scott singing "He is a Man" on television in 1958 from her album Lizabeth. The guy leaning against the lamp post in a trench coat whistling is such a nice touch /

Watermelon Gin - Florence Joelle's Kiss of Fire
Town without Pity - James Chance
Pas Cette Chanson - Johnny Hallyday
Because of Love - Billy Fury
Early Every Morning - Dinah Washington
Beauty is Only Skin-Deep - Robert Mitchum
Too Old to Cut the Mustard - Marlene Dietrich and Rosemary Clooney
Virgenes Del Sol - Yma Sumac
Exotique Bossa Nova / Quiet Village Bossa Nova - Martin Denny
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Contact - Brigitte Bardot
Rockin' Bongos - Chaino
Greasy Chicken - Andre Williams
Follow the Leader - Wiley Terry
Love Letters - Ike and Tina Turner
Whisper Your Love - The Phantom
I'll Drown in My Own Tears - Lula Reed
The Fire of Love - Jody Reynolds
It - The Regal-Aires
Miss Irene - Ginny Kennedy
Give Me a Woman - Andy Starr
Don't You Feel My Leg - Blue Lu Barker
Night Scene - The Rumblers
Woh! Woh! Yeah! - The Dynamos
Drive-In - The Jaguars
You're My Thrill - Dolores Gray
Shadow Woman - Julie London
Sexe - Line Renaud
I Want to Be Evil - Eartha Kitt
Lonely Hours - Sarah Vaughan
Shangri-La - Spikes Jones New Band
Little Girl Blue - Chet Baker
Crawfish - Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin
I Learn a Merengue, Mama - Robert Mitchum
Go, Calypso! - Mamie van Doren
Rock-a-Hula - Elvis Presley
Honalulu Rock'n'Roll - Eartha Kitt
Elle est terrible - Johnny Hallyday
L'appareil a sous - Brigitte Bardot
You Can't Stop Her - Bobby Marchan
Roll with Me Henry - Etta James
Man's Favourite Sport - Ann-Margret
Cat Man - Gene Vincent
Tiger - Sparkle Moore
Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad - Betty Hutton
He Is a Man - Lizabeth Scott
The Strip - The Upsetters
Tony's Got Hot Nuts - Faye Richmonde
Ice Man - Filthy McNasty
Ford Mustang - Serge Gainsbourg
Seperate the Man from the Boys - Mamie van Doren
Beat Party - Ritchie & The Squires
Kruschev Twist - Melvin Gayle
Wino - Jack McVea
Summertime - Little Esther
La Javanaise - Juliette Greco
Fever - Hildegard Knef
Work Song - Nina Simone
Beat Girl - Adam Faith
You've Changed - Billie Holiday

/ For all you glove freaks out there, as modelled by stripper and bondage / fetish model Tana Louise, aka "The Cincinnati Sinner" /

DJ Set List for Gail and Jasja's Leaving Party 15 April 2011

/ Gail and Jasja (aka Sparkle Moore and Cad van Swankster, the proprietors of London's most chi chi vintage clothing emporium The Girl Can't Help It) were given a raucous and boozy send-off at their farewell party at Ryan’s in Stoke Newington on 15 April 2011 /

/ (Gail and Jasja were married on 1 April 2011. The sugar couple from the top of their wedding cake looks eerily like them -- down to the fine details of Jasja's tattoos!) /

In the 1990s Gail was the hostess / promoter of sleazily atmospheric club nights like More than Vegas and Blue Martini – clubs that plunged Soho back to its seedy neon-lit 1950s golden age. I discovered More than Vegas early on when I first arrived in London and it was instrumental in making me the twisted fuck I am today!

I didn’t take as many photos as I should have at the party (how could I not have photographed Ms Mansfield?!). I was DJ’ing for the first half of the night, which was a bit chaotic (technical problems a-go go!) and afterwards drank a helluva lot to de-stress. (Did I mention it was a boozy night?). Gail and Jasja have re-located to San Diego and will be much-missed by their friends in London. (Jasja would definitely want me to point out The Girl Can't Help It is staying put at Alfie's Antique Market and is in the safe hands of Laurie Vanian).

It was an honour to be asked by Gail to be one of the DJ's at their leaving-do. Going to More than Vegas in the early 90s was definitely a factor in making me want to pursue DJ'ing, and the More than Vegas resident DJs like Jake Vegas and (especially) the sublime Ms Mansfield were certainly an inspiration.

/ The Way They Were: Ms Mansfield and Jake Vegas in the old days at More than Vegas at The St Moritz on Wardour Street /

/ Gail and Mari in the nineties /

Gail's only musical stipulation was she wanted lots of Eartha Kitt, Jayne Mansfield and Violetta Villas so I definitely played more than one track by each (well, except for Violetta as I only have one song by her!). Playing at least one song by the original Sparkle Moore, the great female rockabilly chanteuse Gail swiped her name from, was also compulsory.

/ Me DJ'ing at Gail and Jasja's leaving party. Can I just say in my own defence, it was very hot in that corner and I'd been running up and down the stairs earlier ... /

I was the first DJ on and the whole audio situation was very much cobbled together at the last minute and very stressful (and I was pounding back beer to combat the stress), so my set wasn't as smooth and flowing as I would have liked. But anyway, here it is ...

Woh! Woh! Yea! Yea! The Dynamos
Vesuvius - The Revels
Rock-A-Bop - Sparkle Moore
Boss - The Rumblers
Sweet Little Pussycat - Andre Williams
St Louis Blues - Eartha Kitt
Esquerita and The Voola - Esquerita
The Whip - The Originals
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Beaver Shot - The Periscopes
Chatta Nooga Choo Choo - Denise Darcel
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
She Wants to Mambo - Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin
Bossa Nova Baby - Elvis Presley
Heartbreak Hotel - Ann-Margret
Beat Girl - Adam Faith
Crawlin' - The Untouchables
Fever - Timi Yuro
Peter Gunn Twist - The Jesters
Comin' Home - The Delmonas
I Was Born to Cry - Dion
Summertime - Little Esther
You're My Thrill - Chet Baker
Willow Weep for Me - The Whistling Artistry of Muzzy Marcellino
Little Things Mean a Lot - Jayne Mansfield
Dragon Walk - The Noble Men
I Love the Life I Live - Esquerita
Czterdziesci Kasztanów (Forty Chestnuts) - Violetta Villas

See more photos from Gail and Jasja's leaving party here

See photos from Gail and Jasja's last-ever yard sale here

(Looking at this set list in retrospect, am sure I've left some songs off ... I definitely played Eartha Kitt's version of "Mack the Knife" in there somewhere. I DJ'd for at least 90-minutes, so there must have been more songs than that! Ah, well. They're lost in the mists of time now).