Las Vegas Grind! Viva Las Vegas 2013 ... Followed By a Few Days in San Francisco!

Before splitting for the annual Viva Las Vegas weekender and San Francisco (on 27 March 2013), I was feeling drained, angry and tired and London was still in deep winter. Ever since getting back (on 6 April 2013), I’ve been feeling drained, angry and tired and London is still in deep winter! Add to that a horrendous case of jet lag and being distressingly broke after ten days in the US, and I have been one grouchy mofo lately. Such is life! It’s taken me a while to absorb and reflect on my time in the US – it definitely seemed to speed by fast. And I did do a lot of drinking. But I want to document the trip as best as I can while it’s still relatively fresh in my tortured mind. Apologies if this entry comes across as fractured and disjointed!

Big Elvis and I ... an emotional reunion!

Thursday 28 March 2013 (Viva Las Vegas Day 1): I arrived in Vegas on Wednesday night, but after a tortuous, epic 18-hour journey by the time I reached The Orleans Hotel and Casino I crashed out in bed immediately. My hotel roommate this year was New Orleans-based journalist and homme du monde Kevin Allman. He was there partly to work, covering the New Orleans Bustout Burlesque troupe (who was responsible for staging the burlesque showcase and burlesque competition for this year’s Viva Las Vegas) for the publication Gambit. 

Thursday afternoon (once I was upright and functioning)  Kevin and I went to see Vegas institution Big Elvis perform in the lounge at Harrah’s on The Strip. Kevin was a Big Elvis virgin; this was my first time seeing him since 2010. It was a memorable and enjoyable reunion. Sure, you go to Big Elvis for the Mondo Trasho / kitsch / National Enquirer / Diane Arbus factor (hell, he is a morbidly obese Elvis impersonator) -- but you stay for his soaring, heartfelt and incredible voice. By then I’d already sunk a few cans of Budweiser, followed by a very potent (and expensive) Bloody Mary at Harrah’s. Against my better judgement, bad influence Kevin somehow persuaded to get up and dance during an audience participation number. OK I didn’t exactly “dance” but I embraced my inner Ann-Margret and shook some maracas along to “Viva Las Vegas.” The black mail photos exist: Kevin also filmed it on his iPhone! I’m hoping this incriminating footage doesn’t surface on Youtube! Anyway, I can’t imagine going to Vegas without seeing Big Elvis – he is compulsory, the embodiment of weird, tacky old-school Las Vegas glitz.(And I say that with love).

Historic meeting: When Kevin Met Big Elvis!

To my eternal shame ... me shakin' that maraca to "Viva Las Vegas." Never say I don't embrace the spirit of things.

Back at The Orleans I scored myself the dream biker cap I always wanted from the Los Angeles-based vendors My Baby Jo. It’s black (well, charcoal grey) and hopefully evokes Marlon Brando in The Wild One, or Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising. I caught up with some American, Dutch and Canadian friends I hadn’t seen since Viva Las Vegas 2012. Later, I accompanied  Kevin to watch Bustout Burlesque rehearse their revue in the deserted showroom. The musical high points of the first night were the Rockin’ Roy Orbison Show featuring Marcel Riesco, and the Janis Martin tribute with Marti Brom and Rosie Flores.

Patrick and friend



AnneMarie (from the Netherlands) and Patrick (from Seattle)



My reunion with Dutch beauty AnneMarie! (One of us might be a bit drunk)



Bustout Burlesque showcase dress rehearsal: Finland's LouLou D'Vil practices her routine. Note the full jazz band playing behind her: they really swung.



My new biker cap!



Natelle, Sharon (from Vancouver) and I

Friday 29 March 2013 (Viva Las Vegas Day 2): The first of the weekend’s series of pool parties. Coming from London (especially deep winter London), I’d been craving this, and it didn’t disappoint. Lounging in the sun, drinking icy beer with my feet dangling in the pool while listening to the surf combo The Aquasonics is my idea of bliss. (They aren’t rockabilly obviously, but the awesome Aquasonics are always one of my musical favourites at Viva Las Vegas: they really nail the deep, rumbling twang-y menace of how surf ideally should sound – and rarely does. Sadly, my old friend Miss Kitty Baby wasn’t go-go dancing with them this year. Viva Las Vegas was missing its queen in 2013: there was a definite Miss Kitty Baby-shaped hole).



Awesome surf guitar instrumental band The Aquasonics tearing it up

The Friday pool party was also the men’s vintage bathing suit competition. Two of my friends – Kevin and Patrick – had both entered in their best cabana suits. The competition was tough, but in the end, Patrick won. Later that night Kevin and I watched the proper Bustout Burlesque showcase, then caught the tribute to Gene Vincent (The Blue Caps with Graham Fenton).

A bit of friendly competition: Kevin and Patrick modelling their vintage cabana suits prior to the men's vintage swimsuit competition



I fucking love this guy! This cute Latino kid from San Diego befriended me and shared beer after beer with me from his cooler. Sweet guy. His girlfriend had passed out and he carried on partying. I kept reminding him, Keep an eye on her, don't let her get sunburnt or sunstroke and he'd say, "I put a towel over her."



The men's vintage swimsuit competition contestants

Patrick's moment of triumph



Reunion with Mitch



Waiting for the Bustout Burlesque showcase to begin



The big finale of the Bustout Burlesque revue (understandably, photography was forbidden during the performance)




Reunion with Suzy and Jorge from Los Angeles



Jorge and I



Viva Las Vegas beauties: the two I know are Lisa (tall and willowy redhead in the leopard skin) and AnneMarie (the brunette at the end in red).



Dance floor action



More dance floor action



The guys: Ejole (aka Little E), Chris, Patrick and Oran



Hijinks! Patrick, Lisa and Oran

Saturday 30 March 2013 (Viva Las Vegas Day 3): Kevin and I headed to the car show (the Viva Las Vegas car show is the best in the freakin’ WORLD!) before the sun turned too scorching. The climax for me was the glistening pink and cream Imperial, a vehicle worthy of Jayne Mansfield. Then Kevin and I decided to get out of the sun (and conserve some energy for Little Richard’s concert later that night) and grabbed a cab to Frankie’s Tiki Room for their signature Mai Tais. I only caught a fleeting and intriguing glimpse of Frankie’s last year en route to The Golden Steer steak house. It really is Tiki heaven in there: one of the hippest jukeboxes I’ve ever seen, exquisite Tiki / Polynesian decor, and excellent cocktails.

Me getting back to my hillbilly roots at the car show



Perfect shade of Halloween orange



That pink and cream Imperial



Items for sale at vendors at the car show. Check out the beautiful vintage magazine cover featuring Elizabeth Taylor. I love the screaming headline: "Film Star Vanishes! Where is Monty Clift?"



Outsider art at the car show



Delicious Mai Tais at Frankie's Tiki Room



Me getting bombed at Frankie's



Exquisite Tiki decor at Frankie's



Exterior of Frankie's (I emerged from the darkness blinking and drunk). The green neon sign must be dazzling by night



Tiki sculpture outside Frankie's

Little Freakin' Richard!!

My main motivation for attending Viva Las Vegas this year was to see headliner Little Richard, whom  I revere as the Bronze Liberace, the pioneering freaky Queen Mutha of rock’n’roll. And now that the former Richard Wayne Penniman has turned 80, it’s now or never.  His concert at the car show on Saturday turned out to be a hot mess / car crash / train wreck! But a compelling one! Musically Richard and his band were pretty awful, but just seeing Little Richard in the flesh, at close proximity, was a spine-tingling and unforgettable experience.

My best shot of Little Richard

The concert started a good 45-minutes later than scheduled. Kevin and I missed Vicky Tafoya and Dick Dale’s sets beforehand, but did catch opening act The Rockats – who were very, um, slick. We all waited with bated breath for Richard’s arrival. Advance word is he’s immobile now, the consequence of a near fatal car accident in 1985. His injuries have worsened with age and apparently recent hip replacement surgery did not go well. Sure enough, when Richard finally appeared he was wheeled straight to the piano from a ramp by the side of the stage in an ornate throne-like gold wheelchair (think ancient Egyptian pharaoh). Adding to the tension and weird atmosphere, he was flanked by tough, expressionless Nation of Islam-style bodyguards wearing suits and sunglasses.

Unfortunately, the opening song was a slow tuneless blues / boogie trudge that seemed to last forever – not a promising start! But it was representative of what was to come. You could almost feel the crowd’s good will and excitement start to evaporate. At one point Little Richard asked the crowd, “Do y’all like the blues?” I wanted to shout, “No!” It was at least three or even four songs into his set before I started recognising songs (when he got to “Good Golly Miss Molly”. The choice of material throughout was odd and unrepresentative of Little Richard’s oeuvre. For Kevin, the last straw was when Little Richard covered “Old Time Rock’n’Roll” – a Bob Segar song! He left in protest!).

Not to be ungallant, but Richard’s once-glorious voice is shot. Kevin noticed his keyboard player did most of the heavy lifting in terms of piano playing, allowing Little Richard to appear to be playing when he wasn’t; Richard himself mainly just did the occasional show-y flourish. His horribly slick band of jaded studio musicians mainly kept the tempo at a slow blues plod which made the songs almost interchangeable. (His bassist wore his jacket with the sleeves rolled up 1980s Miami Vice-style and tried to encourage the audience to clap their hands above their heads – an unforgivable sin in my book). Watching him, I speculated what it would sound like if Little Richard was backed by a stripped-down, lean and hungry, desperate little rhythm and blues band -- but I suspect it’s too late for that. At times you could almost sense Richard lose interest midway through a song and go into autopilot. For me, the musical highlight by far was the beautiful “Directly from My Heart to You”: it’s one of my favourite Little Richard songs, plus it’s a ballad (so a tempo he can still manage). Even the band’s bombastic treatment of it couldn’t wreck it.

This all probably sounds pretty damning – but Little Richard was mesmerizingly entertaining just to watch. I knew the concert had the potential to be great or awful -- but that either way it would be fascinating and it was, in a memorably twisted way. Richard’s outfit was a glittering rhinestone-studded suit somewhere between powder blue and lavender (the colour of Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes), accessorised with matching little Cuban-heeled rhinestone-studded ankle boots. His face was mostly obscured by wrap-around opaque smoked shades and a truly shocking jet black wig (a curly bouffant mullet, very long in the back, seemingly not updated since the early 1980s). What you could see was taut-skinned, mocha-coloured and still beautiful. (I mostly saw him from the side because of his position behind the piano; his haughty and elegant profile is worthy of comparison to Nefertiti’s). The signature pimp-tastic little pencil line mustache (the inspiration for John Waters’) is still intact. Occasionally he’d briefly remove the dark glasses to mop the sweat off his face and it was devastating to catch a fleeting glimpse of his piercing black eyes.

Glimpse of Little Richard without the dark sunglasses

Perhaps inevitably, Little Richard has lost his the feral wild-eyed quality of his youth, but he has kept his queenly androgyny, and (for a committed hardcore born again Christian) he still emanates a whiff of genuine sleaze and danger. Even burnt-out and ailing, his charisma is riveting – at 80 Little Richard is majestic, fierce and strange. Best of all, Richard’s rambling soliloquies between songs were odd and enthralling. Fussing over the selection of drinks on offer by his piano seemed to lead to some kind of meltdown (“I want ginger ale!” Kevin reminded me that during this episode, Richard picked up a can of the soft drink Sierra Mist and reflected, “Who’s Sierra?”). There was the expected amount of Bible-thumping (at one point he announced his brother Peyton would be handing out his "new book”and an autographed photo for us all. When they were tossed into the audience, everyone clamoured for a copy. The book turned out to be an entirely generic prayer book; the autographed photo was a black and white postcard from the 1980s featuring a much younger, heavily-retouched Little Richard). He talked about his disability and hip problems and asked us to pray for him (“my hip is broke on the inside,” he explained, adding that he’s now too physically frail for any further operations). He expressed amazement at reaching the age of 80 (his mamma was dead by 71). Most alarmingly, he suddenly said, “The world is ending soon, you know. Jesus is coming.” He said it with a smile on his face, but with total gravity – it’s a development Little Richard seemingly welcomes. He seemed to pad things out by endlessly introducing his musicians. “Y’all glad to see me?” he’d ask, and then continue, “Y’all glad to see Kenny? Y’all glad to see Carl?” or whatever his band members were called. I was amazed by the amount of people daring to call out song requests to someone so regal and so patently not a people pleaser (“Jenny Jenny!”). Little Richard would respond by turning to his musicians and querulously asking, “What did they say?” and then snap, “Shut up!”

My favourite Little Richard moment: towards the end, someone said something about bringing some dancers onstage. Little Richard leered, “Girls or boys? I want girls.” (Sure you do. The campy King and Queen of rock’n’roll managed to say this with some conviction and a lascivious grin). Of course this was the cue for “The Girl Can’t Help It”, one of Richard’s towering all-time finest moments. But the band played it as a slow crawl that was painful to hear and Richard’s voice was harsh and strident. A selection of women from the audience was dragged up onstage to dance and channel their inner Jayne Mansfield. As “The Girl Can’t Help It” dragged on interminably, I wonder if they started to regret it. Once the female invaders were onstage, one of Little Richard’s unsmiling Nation of Islam-style thug bodyguards promptly materialised and stood right behind him protectively with a stony facial expression for the duration of the entire song – as if suspecting one of the dancing girls would suddenly lunge at and attack Little Richard? Or try to kidnap him? The split second the song ended, the bodyguard made a hostile, impatient gesture for the girls to vacate the stage – now! Wild!

Later that night, Kevin and I attended the burlesque competition. Outside the showroom veteran doyennes of the mid-century Golden Age of stripping were selling autographed photos – including the sensational Rita Alexander. In the 1960s when she used to strip in the clubs of Bourbon Street in New Orleans she was called The Champagne Girl (her trademark was balancing full flutes of Champagne on her amazing rack without spilling a drop). I’d hesitate to guess Alexander’s age (60-something? 70-something?). She certainly looked amazingly well-preserved in Vegas in her chic black cocktail dress, and still favours heavy black eye make-up and gravity-defying blonde bouffant hairdos. It was tempting to buy one of her 1960s black and white 8’10” glamour shots and have Alexander autograph it with a silver glitter pen (I’d turn it into a Lobotomy Room flyer!), but they cost a bomb. (I did hover around her table and say “Hi”. Rita Alexander was sweet and complimented me on my leopard skin flat cap). Around the corner from Alexander 85-year old burlesque royalty Tempest Storm was also autographing photos, and hers were even more pricey (there’s a definite hierarchy at work!). I can confirm Storm also still looks great, still with the tousled mane of long Rita Hayworth-auburn hair. I’ve caught glimpses of Tempest Storm over the years at Viva Las Vegas, and her whole demeanour is so poised, ladylike and imperial – she’s like an empress!

The fabulous Rita Alexander in her prime

In 1967 Alexander starred in a wonderfully rancid-looking sexploitation film called Hot Thrills and Warm Chills. Watch this brief but intoxicating clip of the sullen young Rita Alexander in a skin-tight spangly gold outfit smoking, go-go dancing and drinking. It’s the reason cinema was invented! It’s life-affirming!

GoGo McGregor of Bustout Burlesque, the night of the burlesque competition. Note: I just realised you can see Tempest Storm in the lefthand corner, wearing pink! So I managed to take her picture without having to pay for it, without even trying!

Suave couple: Allen and Aaron from Seattle



Allen, Aaron and I. I love the detail of elegant Allen in his dinner jacket, bow tie and frilly shirt ... drinking a can of ultra-trashy Pabst Blue Ribbon.




And the winner is ... Missy Lisa won the 2013 Viva Las Vegas Burlesque competition

Sunday 31 March 2013 (Viva Las Vegas Day 4): The last day of Viva Las Vegas always feels more laid back and mellow. Most of the day was spent at the pool party. Afterwards: we checked out the always-excellent and gripping jiving competition (think of the Corny Collins Show from Hairspray come to life. Obviously I mean the 1988 John Waters original, not the 2007 abomination!), then the Charles Phoenix slideshow. The rest of the night was a final round of wandering around, checking out bands, drinking and bumping into friends. The next day, Kevin split early for New Orleans. I left several hours later for San Francisco.

Suzy and Jorge



Suzy, Jorge and I



Tradition: Patrick always does some variation of the Easter Bunny on the Easter Sunday pool party. This year he was a vision in leopard skin



Friendly Canadians at the pool party



High glamour at the Sunday pool party (photo by Kevin. I would have been too shy!)



This guy sat in the row in front of us at The Charles Phoenix Slideshow. I told him I was hunting for a fez of my own. I seriously coveted his (the one I eventually tracked down in San Francisco is very similar to this one).



With Sweetpea from Seattle




The great Charles Phoenix with his festive Easter Lamb (made out of meat loaf)



This redhead was one of the most striking women at Viva Las Vegas all weekend. When I got up close to her and clocked her freaky cat-like / space alien contact lenses, I complimented her on them and she got a bit offended (I was meant to think they were her real eyes?). My biker cap is making my ears stick out weirdly in this shot -- my ears aren't normally that elf-like.

1-5 April 2013: San Francisco went by in a blur! Taking into account arrival and departure times (and that I lost the whole of Monday night when I went to bed early with a thudding headache. I felt rough by Monday: too many days of partying combined with wisdom tooth pain wiped me out), I was only there for 72 hours! I accomplished a lot while there, but I need to go back for a longer period next time. I managed to see most of my San Francisco friends, but I really regret not getting to see Kacy French this trip.

Highlights: For me, San Francisco means bar-hopping. I made it to all my old favourite haunts – Esta Noches, Hole in the Wall, Vesuvio, Lucky 13, Trax – and discovered some new places. I checked out Zeitgeist and Aunt Charlie’s Lounge based on recommendations – and neither was for me. (Maybe I went to Aunt Charlie's on an "off night"). Walking home from Aunt Charlie’s in The Tenderloin at about 1.30 am (the neighbourhood all travel guides warn you to avoid late at night) was certainly suspenseful! Parts of San Francisco look like something out of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. London’s street people are so benign by comparison – for one thing, they don’t do crack or crystal meth!

I always stop in for a drink at gritty Mexican gay bar Esta Noche in The Mission (usually after eating a burrito at a nearby taquería first!). I've been coming here since 2001.

Otherwise: I ate Mexican food every freaking day! (Truly, my soul is Latino. What a shame it’s wrapped around a pasty-skinned, ginger-haired, Irish-looking exterior). As per usual, I stayed at The Twin Peaks Hotel on Market Street – my home away from home. It’s situated right between The Mission and Castro – so ideal for what I have in mind! I did some serious shopping in Haight-Ashbury: dropped a fortune CD shopping at Amoeba Records and found the perfect vintage fez (the glamorous and eccentric fifty-something redhead who sold it to me at the vintage clothing emporium was missing a finger tip; I tried hard not to stare while she was counting out my change).

The wonderful Rooky Ricardo's Record Shop on Haight Street. I discovered it in 2012 and re-visited this year. Check out the vintage Ike and Tina Turner records ... goose bumps. They are like religious artefacts for me! Don't Play Me Cheap (from 1963) is one of my favourite album covers of all time. The very young Tina Turner wrapped in faux fur ... the bouffant wighat ... the frosted pink lipstick ... but most of all: those killer slanting Satanic eyebrows, worthy of Divine!

The awesome Beck's Motor Lodge: atomic era architecture at its finest. That pink and buttercup yellow colour scheme! I always stay at the Twin Peaks Hotel a few blocks away. Loyal as I am to The Twin Peaks, I'd stay at Beck's Motor Lodge if my budget would permit.

When I was in San Francisco last year I didn’t visit North Beach and really regretted it. This year I compensated by spending most of a dreamy day there reclaiming my beatnik roots. It began a bit anxiously: I caught the bus to North Beach from The Mission. The driver instructed me to alight at North Point -- waaaay too soon and I had to walk for ages to get to where I wanted to be! Finally seeing the familiar sights of Coit Tower and Saints Peter and Paul Church looming on the horizon warmed my heart. Then I mellowed right out by drinking coffee at a table outside Caffe Greco. It was blissful, and felt Continental, like being in Paris or Rome. From there, I indulged by inner beatnik: spent some quality time browsing at City Lights (I bought Funeral Rites by my spiritual mentor Jean Genet), stopped for a beer at Vesuvio, and wandered around the gift shop of The Beat Museum (but didn’t cough up the cover charge to enter the museum itself! Money was getting tight by then). I love the seedy old strip club neon signs that dot Columbus and Broadway. The only downside in North Beach: I went to Li Po Cocktail Lounge for their signature cocktail – the enticing-sounding Chinese Mai Tai. It's a Mai Tai with mystery Chinese ingredients -- could I be more intrigued? The bartender was initially friendly, I ordered – and then got kicked out for not having picture ID! At my age! (As younger friends delight in pointing out, my sideburns are flecked with white. That didn't seem to make any difference in this situation). I tried to negotiate with him, but with no luck. (I’m a Canadian who lives in the UK and doesn’t drive – so no picture ID. I didn’t have my passport on me). Instead, I backtracked to nearby dive bar Hawaii West for a beer. (The Li Po bartender argued I would be asked for ID everywhere I went. That was the only occasion I was asked for ID all trip!).




"Topless A Go-Go!" It sounds like it should be the title of a Russ Meyer film. In the 1960s the fabulous Condor Club on the wonderfully seedy corner of Broadway and Columbus in North Beach was a burlesque club. These days it's a sports bar. Luckily they've kept the original neon sign intact.



Placque outside The Condor commemorating the historic and pioneering topless and bottomless exploits of stripper Carol Doda. I highly recommend you type "Carol Doda" into Google image -- except maybe not while you're at work.



The giant mural inside the lobby of The Condor in North Beach dates back from when it was still a titty bar (it's now a sports bar). I think this buxom cartoon woman with the neon nipples is meant to represent Carol Doda.

/ Tough cookie: the real Carol Doda photographed in 1968 by Diane Arbus /



The Hungry I Club just around the corner from The Condor in North Beach. In the 1950s and 60s The Hungry I was an intellectual beatnik nightclub featuring jazz and folk music and comedians. The likes of Bill Cosby, Lenny Bruce, Maya Angelou and Barbra Streisand all performed there early in their careers. Later on it changed venues and management and became the low-rent strip club it is today! Still, what a great sleazy neon sign! I did peek into the gift shop of the Beat Museum next door, but didn't cough up the cover charge in order to enter the museum itself. I didn't need to actually visit the Beat Museum; I was already living it!



"The Home of Beat Poetry" Vesuvio Cafe in North Beach, where the likes of Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas used to drink. It's just around the corner from the wonderful City Lights book store



The best grafitti I saw in San Francisco. This was in North Beach, on the corner of Vallejo Street and Stockton Street, right where Chinatown begins. I'd just been kicked out of The Li Po Cocktail Lounge, was backtracking to the Tiki bar Hawaii West instead and spotted this en route.

Finally: It was a blast having dinner with Oran, Teresa, Lisa and Charlie at The Front Porch in The Mission on Wednesday night. Thursday I hung out with my friend and finally did something a bit high culture – went to look at some old masters at the Legion of Honour museum in Lincoln Park. (Lincoln Park offers spectacular views of San Francisco, but it was very misty the day I was there). Then we went for sea food at the Anchor Oyster Bar in Castro. On Friday I split for London, got back Saturday 6 April – and it’s been downhill ever since!

Oran and Teresa. Shame it was so dark out when I took this shot, as you can't fully appreciate Oran's awesome vintage car.



Lisa and Charlie



Oran and Teresa



The memory of those mashed potatos and macaroni and cheese are flooding back to me. Carbs ... CARBS! Left to right: me, Oran, Teresa and Lisa.

Further reading:

See the rest of the photos (there are more!) on my flickr page

Kevin Allman's article about Bustout Burlesque's adventures at Viva Las Vegas on the Gambit website

My blog about Viva Las Vegas 2010

My blog about Viva Las Vegas 2011

My blog about Viva Las Vegas 2012 (and trip to San Francisco)

Lobotomy Room 16 March 2013 Set List

Via

“I’m a thief and a shit kicker and, uh, I’d like to be famous ...” Ultimate freak diva Divine (formerly Harris Glenn Milstead, the three hundred pound drag queen, singer and leading lady of choice for Prince of Puke, John Waters) has been haunting my imagination lately. For one thing, I recently re-visited Pink Flamingos for the first time in ages when I realised a friend in his early 30s had never seen it. Then the 25^th anniversary of Divine’s death was earlier this month (she died 7 March 1988 at the tragically young age of 42; I hope everyone marked the occasion by doing something extra filthy in her honor).  And in an exceptionally timely coincidence, I paid homage to this eternal outlaw / queer icon when the documentary I Am Divine made its UK premiere at the 2013 Lesbian and Gay Film Festival at The British Film Institute in London on 14 March. My old friend film journalist Damon Wise was on the guest list. Thanks to him adding me as his “plus one” I managed to hustle my way into the sold-out opening night screening. (For the record, Damon is as straight as an arrow. To paraphrase New York doyenne of performance art Penny Arcade, Damon is “so queer he’s not even gay!” Or at least, I’m queer enough for the both of us). Anyway, I Am Divine is a loving and sweet-natured tribute to the punk Hog Princess and a true must-see for aficionados of the cinema of John Waters (which I hope is most people I know!). I therefore dedicate the 16 March 2013 Lobotomy Room to the memory of Divine.

From the Facebook events page:

Lobotomy Room: 16 March at Paper Dress Vintage in the heart of bohemian Shoreditch! A Mondo Trasho night of rockabilly, frantic Rhythm and Blues, tittyshaking sleazy instrumentals, punk, kitsch and exotica (weird shit, basically! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs The Cramps Taught Us).

As an added bonus, there is a live performance from:

THE DEPTFORD BEACH BABES

Vicious beehived mistresses of surf-punk (comprised of ex-members of The Voodoo Queens, Mambo Taxi, Naked Ruby and Urban Voodoo Machine) stir up a tidal wave of guitar instrumental mayhem. Wipe out!

Admission is FREE, the booze is cheap, and the venue is walking distance from Old Street tube. If you’re working that night – call in sick. If you’re in jail – BREAK OUT.

/ Above: photo I took of Ella Guru at a Deptford Beach Babes gig at Ryan's in Stoke Newington, 2006 /




/ Below: Deptford Beach Babes guitarist and front woman Ella Guru and I /

Strictly speaking this was the second-ever Lobotomy Room. But considering the first one (on 29 December 2012) was sort of a low-key, trial one attended mainly by my friends, this felt like the debut proper.  In the lead-up to the night, I worked myself into a foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy worrying about details. Who would come? Would it be deserted? Would it be an embarrassing fiasco? It didn’t help that Spanking Machine (my friends Christopher and Lauren’s blues-punk duo) were playing a gig on the same night – and that a good 40% of the crowd I would normally rely on would be at that instead. So I was sweating bullets / shitting bricks / having kittens. (Spread some newspaper on the floor!).  By Saturday night I was virtually hugging myself and rocking back and forth, catatonic with stress.

In fact, the second Lobotomy Room was a triumph! Some useful stuff I learned: the Facebook events page is almost meaningless as a gauge for estimating who is actually coming. For one thing, by 2013 everyone is so inundated with events invitations via Facebook they’re immune to them. I certainly ignore 90% of mine. My “attending” numbers on Facebook stayed mortifyingly low right up until the night, which was making me anxious.

In the end, only a small hardcore group of my own friends came – the rest were strangers. But the location of Paper Dress Vintage (the centre of buzzing Shoreditch) on a Saturday night, and their no cover charge policy, almost guarantees a successful night. It also certainly didn’t hurt that a big group of Spanish people reserved a table for a birthday celebration. While DJ’ing I kept glancing up and thinking, Hmmm – the place is slowly but surely filling up. Then I realised the bar is three-or four-people deep, and when I needed to make a speedy dash for the men’s room (the perennial DJ’s dilemma – especially for one who drinks as much beer as me), I’d have to really push my way through throngs of revellers.  Most importantly, they were rowdy, good-natured and up for a laugh – I couldn’t have hoped for a better crowd.

/ Ella Guru and I, take 2 /





/The Deptford Beach Babes' Jane Ruby and Eric. Note Eric's painful, swollen and oozing pink eye infection -- and yet he still came! /




/Paddy and Sally /

The only downsides were technical. There were some hassles with glitchy / sticky decks- but I can’t complain because the decks are my own! (Paper Dress Vintage has vinyl-only decks, so I brought my own CD decks from home and keep them stashed at the venue to use when I play there). They kept “rejecting” my CDs, and not just the home-burnt ones. While one deck was playing, I’d load in the next CD into the free deck, try to cue the track I wanted – and it would stick on “Reading” and just keep whirring away – so as the currently playing song was counting down to its final seconds I would be frantically pressing “Eject”. Either it would suddenly “read” the CD at the last minute, or I’d have to quickly scramble to eject it and find a replacement song pronto! Obviously I got drunker as the night progressed, but this really kept me on my toes -- it kept things suspenseful! Then plenty of songs “skipped, which was odd because in theory my CDs are immaculately clean. (In an OCD ritual I polish the finger prints off them individually as I unpack them from my DJ bag and replace them in their cases every time). On a few occasions I accidentally played tracks I didn’t intend to, but no one was the wiser and I just shrugged it off. Paper Dress Vintage promoter Stephen and I tried to organise having DVDs projected against the wall to add to the sordid atmosphere (i.e. 1950s burlesque footage of Tempest Storm and Bettie Page bumping-and-grinding from Teaserama and Varietease; The Wild World of Jayne Mansfield) but it turned out my DVD player and his projector were incompatible; hopefully we can resolve that before the next Lobotomy Room.

/ Paddy and I /

Everyone really responded to The Deptford Beach Babes, who rocked the house with a tight ten-song set. I’ve known the band’s two front women guitarist Ella Guru (the Stuckist artist) and chanteuse Jane Ruby (formerly of the band Naked Ruby) since the 1990s. Both are veteran rock chicks extraordinaire and a scream to hang out with. (Earlier in the night I was talking to Ella while she stood in front of a mirror combing-out her vintage auburn beehive wig, fretting about how matted and ratty it is. I explained the split ends just make it look more real. In retrospect I wish I’d taken Ella’s photo while she combed her wig – it was a very John Waters / Female Trouble moment). Afterward pretty much everyone stuck around dancing and drinking right until chucking-out time. I obliged by cranking up my most desperate hillbilly and punk stuff. From my vantage point in the DJ booth, I had a great view of cute, sweaty and tattooed straight guys flailing around – most enjoyable.

/ Ike and Tina Turner in 1964 absolutely tearing through "I Can't Believe What You Say" in a punk-y 1 minute and forty five seconds /



/ Fuzzed-out garage punk stomp "Primitive" by The Groupies set to footage of early 1960s juvenile delinquent gangs: marriage made in heaven /



/ Punkabilly: Sid Vicious does Eddie Cochran /




Moon Mist - The Out-Islanders
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Wimoweh - Yma Sumac
Quiet Village - Les Baxter
I Learn a Merengue, Mama - Robert Mitchum
Don'a Wan'a - Wanda Jackson
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Handclapping Time - The Fabulous Raiders
Khrushchev Twist - Melvin Gayle
Viens danser le twist - Johnny Hallyday
Bombora - The Original Surfaris
Uptown to Harlem - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Bacon Fat - Andre Williams
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
I Can't Believe What You Say - Ike and Tina Turner
Intoxica - The Centurions
Trash Can - Ken Williams
One Hand Loose - Charlie Feathers
8 Ball - The Hustlers
I Love the Life I Live - Esquerita
Eggman - Edith Massey
Love Potion # 9 - Nancy Sit
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8's
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Dragon Walk - The Noblemen
Madness - The Rhythm Rockers
Club Delight - Jack Jolly
Safari - The El Capris
Peter Gunn Locomotion - The Delmonas
Drummin' Up a Storm - Sandy Nelson
53rd & 3rd - The Ramones
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
Boss - The Rumblers
Don't Knock Upon My Door - Billy Fury
The Big Bounce - Shirley Caddell
Saturday Night - Roy Brown
One, Two, Let's Rock - Sugar Pie and Pee Wee
Beat Party - Ritchie and The Squires
Rock'n'Roll Waltz - Ann-Margret
Little Queenie - Bill Black Combo
Her Love Rubbed Off - Carl Perkins
Red Headed Mamma - Sonny Burgess (dedicated to Red Headed Mamma Jane Ruby)
Strollin' After Dark - The Shades
Stranger in My Own Home Town - The Earls of Suave
Batman - Link Wray and His Wraymen
C'mon Everybody - Sid Vicious
Breathless - X
Mean Muthafuckin' Man - Wayne County and The Electric Chairs
Pillowcase - The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black
Pass The Hatchet - Roger and The Gypsies
You Give Me Worms - Turbonegro (for Eric -- although he'd left by then)
Willie Joe - The Mystery Trio
Poor Little Critter on the Road - The Knitters
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Primitive - The Groupies
Rock Around The Clock - The Sex Pistols
Little Girl - John and Jackie
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
The Whip - The Frantics
Devil in Disguise - Elvis Presley
Beat Girl - John Barry
Commanche - The Revels
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Roll with Me Henry - Etta James
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao and The Quests
Forming - The Germs
Johnny Hit and Run Pauline - X

On 27 March 2013 I split for the annual Viva Las Vegas weekender over the long Easter weekend, followed by a few days recuperating and hanging out with friends in San Francisco (so pretty much the exact same trip I did in 2012). I’m yearning for this trip for several reasons: it’s still deep winter in London and am craving some sunshine and warmth. Work is so stressful at the moment I feel permanently drained and angry. And there’s been some romantic disappointment bullshit I’d rather forget. But most importantly, The Queen Mutha of Rock’n’Roll Little Richard is headlining Viva Las Vegas this year, so my attendance feels compulsory. Journeying to Vegas from London to see the Bronze Liberace / Queen of Rock'n'Roll will be like a religious pilgrimage! I’ll give you a full scene report when I get back.

Further reading: Check out the rest of my photos from the 16 March 2013 Lobotomy Room on my flickr page

I have a new tumblr page! It's going to be NSFW and a bit more sexually explicit / homoerotic than I usually go on this blog. Proceed if you dare!

Reflections on Mamma Roma (1962)

/ Tight skirt, tight sweater: the sensational Anna Magnani in Mamma Roma (1962) by Pier Paolo Pasolini /

Volcanic. Tempestuous. Explosive. Volatile. Ok, these are all clichéd adjectives to use in the description of Italy’s greatest actress Anna Magnani – but hell, they’re accurate. The woman (revered as La Lupa by her Italian fans) was a tigress, a seething torrent of raw emotion. Magnani was dead by 1973 (Italy was plunged into mourning) and made relatively few films, but she left behind a gallery of screen-scorching performances. I’ve loved her in Rome: Open City (dir: Roberto Rossellini, 1945), L’Amore (dir: Rossellini, 1948), Bellissima (dir: Luchino Visconti, 1951) and The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1953).

/ My favourite portrait of La Magnani, taken in the early 1970s (so towards the end of her life). If you have to age, it may as well be like this! She was clearly a powerful and sensual presence right up until the end /

By the mid-50s, Magnani was so acclaimed in Europe that Hollywood inevitably beckoned. Weirdly, her American films seem well and truly inaccessible these days: I’ve never seen either The Rose Tattoo (1955) – for which she won the Best Actress Oscar -- or Wild is the Wind (1957). They’re seemingly unavailable on DVD in the UK and never crop up on TV.  For me Magnani steals Tennessee Williams adaptation The Fugitive Kind (1959) from under the noses of co-stars Marlon Brando and Joanne Woodward, even with the handicap of unfamiliar English (she apparently never properly learned English and had to painstakingly learn her lines phonetically).

/ Magnani in Mamma Roma (1962). The surrounding urban decay (dotted with ancient ruins) feels desolate, almost lunar /

Magnani’s crowning achievement, though, is Mamma Roma (1962), the film she made after returning to Italy after her stint in Hollywood. (Accounts vary about whether Magnani was born in 1905 or 1908.  Depending who you believe, she was her either 54 or 57 in Mamma Roma). The film is the highly politicised poet/provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini's follow-up to his sensational debut Accattone (1961). (I’ve already sang the praises of Accattone. I’ve seen Mamma Roma – one of my all-time favourite films -- many times over the years; this time it was on the big screen at The British Film Institute as part of their comprehensive two-month Pasolini retrospective).

/ A light-hearted moment on the set of a mostly tragic film: (left to right) Franco Citti, Ettore Garofolo, Anna Magnani and Pier Paolo Pasolini /

All of the essential components of Magnani’s persona are represented in Mamma Roma: Earth mother. Feral she-wolf. Mother Courage. Mary Magdalene. Noble whore. Fallen woman. Monstre Sacrée. Gritty but kind-hearted ageing prostitute. Vital life force. Every Italian woman who ever wore a black slip and shouted at someone from her tenement balcony. Magnani portrays title character Mamma Roma (sometimes referred to as “Signora Roma; we hear her actual surname -- Garofalo – just once). The name implies she’s meant to personify the earthy, sensual, battered but resilient essence or spirit of Rome itself.

/ Pasolini and Magnani during the filming of Mamma Roma /

(Pasolini reportedly later expressed ambivalence about casting the internationally famous actress in the lead role: in the Italian neo-realist tradition, he preferred using unknowns. His hesitation is impossible to believe watching Mamma Roma today: Magnani’s fierce, vital and magnetic performance anchors the film).

Magnani was a genuinely funny and ribald screen comedienne, but I like her best suffering heavy emotional torment. Her entry into show business in the 1930s was as a night club chanteuse – apparently she was like an Italian Edith Piaf. Onscreen she pitches her performances the way the great French chanson tragediennes Piaf and Juliette Greco sing their most tortured songs. Certainly Magnani’s ravaged, careworn face, with its expressive dark eyes and soulful under-eye bags, was ideal for evoking anguish.

Mamma Roma is a middle-aged prostitute who’s been walking the streets for decades. (Italian neo-realist whores have great fashion sense; Magnani mainly sports a tight pencil skirt and tight sweater-over-bullet bra combo, with a patent leather handbag and killer stiletto heels). Along the way she was forced to abandon her son Ettore (presumably he was raised by relatives; Pasolini never clarifies). Finally liberated from the bondage of her pimp and ex-lover Carmine, Mamma Roma is reunited with Ettore (now a teenager) and strives to eke out a new, more respectable life for them together in dog-eat-dog post-war / economic miracle-era Rome.

/ Mamma Roma and Ettore attend mass / 

This theme of re-location from rural poverty to urban slum (and the traditions and roots that get lost in the promise of modernity and progress) particularly interested Pasolini. Like Accattone, Mamma Roma is set around the Roman neighbourhoods Pigneto and Trastevere – then decrepit, now hip and gentrified. I did some serious bar-hopping in Pigneto when I was in Rome in October 2010. To channel the ghosts of Pasolini, Magnani, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini I would have happily licked the cobbled pavement. (In reality I stuck to drinking Campari and Prosecco).

/ My photo of framed portrait of Pasolini above a vintage jukebox at Bar Necci in Pigneto, taken when I was there in 2010. It was in this neighbourhood Pasolini filmed his early masterpieces Accattone and Mamma Roma. See the rest of my Roman holiday pics on my flickr page /

Pasolini strove to transcend the conventions of Italian neo-realism into his own idiosyncratic Cinema of Poetry. As with Accattone, Pasolini tenderly ennobles the hardscrabble struggles of the impoverished social underclass with a lyrical, painterly eye (framing characters like they’re in a Renaissance painting) and employing classical music (in Accattone Pasolini used Bach as an aural backdrop; in Mamma Roma, Vivaldi soars on the soundtrack). This is a milieu of bare subsistence, in which hunger is a genuine possibility. When people argue, someone inevitably pulls a knife; the confrontation is probably observed by urchin children and a mangy third world stray dog. The war-scarred landscapes are so decimated they look lunar. In the background, a baby always seems to be crying. Mamma Roma and Ettore are cafoni, the Italian equivalent of North American hillbillies. In the subtitles, there are frequent disparaging references to “hicks”. Mamma Roma admonishes Ettore to not speak like a hick (presumably in a rough, rural peasant dialect) but to talk like she has learned to – like an urban Roman.

Almost immediately, there are ominous premonitions things won’t go well. The window to Ettore’s new bedroom offers a view of the local cemetery. Worse, Mamma Roma is tracked down by Carmine, who blackmails her into working the streets again.  Carmine is played by the swarthy, smouldering Franco Citti from Accattone (again playing a pimp). This time around Citti sports a (deliberately?) unflattering sleazy little moustache; it certainly makes him look like a seedy pimp. Magnani and Citti’s confrontations crackle with violence – emotional, with the potential for physical (you wouldn’t want to see Magnani lunging at you with a kitchen knife and wild-eyed expression). I’m a total sucker for Franco Citti; he’s unforgettable reminding Mamma Roma when he first met her, she was “covered in lice” and “didn’t know what panties were.” “You knew it would end badly for one of us ...” he snarls.

/ Franco Citti as Carmine /

For swathes of Mamma Roma, Magnani vanishes and the action centres on Ettore.  As Magnani’s wayward son, non-professional actor Ettore Garofolo (yes, the character is named after the actor who plays him) makes a haunting impression and suggests a complex and troubled inner life. Pasolini’s camera tenderly explores his elfin face (melancholic in repose), button nose and sorrowful dark puppy eyes, captivated. A simultaneously tough and vulnerable man-child, he struts in the perfect sailor roll (or in this context, pimp roll) even in the too-big suit his mother insists he wear. As has already been pointed out, Garofolo can look like the pretty teenaged street thug from a Caravaggio painting come to life. (Pasolini and Caravaggio probably shared similar taste in rough trade).

/ Heartbreaker: Ettore Garofolo /

Ettore is amoral, alienated. He rejects Mamma Roma’s attempts to make him go to school or work, drifting instead towards petty crime with the local juvenile delinquents. (Ettore’s gang are very much Pasolini’s type and his camera caresses them in loving close-ups. In a nicely rakish touch, one of  Ettore’s cutest buddies is missing a front tooth). It’s interesting to speculate Ettore has the makings already of being the next Carmine. In her urgent mission to advance her illiterate provincial son, Mamma Roma never stops to ask him what he actually wants. When someone asks Mamma Roma, "You’d hang on the cross for him, wouldn’t you?” she unhesitatingly replies, “What else is there?” Her maternal love is savage, primeval -- but Pasolini hints she’s also motivated by assuaging her own guilt for having abandoned him and asks if maybe Ettore would have been more content to stay in the countryside and be a labourer. Is what awaits him in Rome an “improvement”?

Pasolini’s most daringly audacious and avant-garde scenes depict Magnani turning tricks at night on a grim stretch of road (recalling the scrubby wasteland on the outskirts where Maddalena is beaten up in Accattone). These are opportunities for Mamma Roma to relate her own history. It starts with her fellow tarts (like loyal friend Biancofiore) and her “johns” asking Mamma Roma to tell them her story, but as Magnani walks and speaks they gradually drift away until it’s mainly Mamma Roma delivering heart-rending monologues about her travails directly to the viewer, effectively breaking the fourth wall. She speaks of brutal, grinding rural poverty and enforced marriage at age 14 to a relatively wealthier, much older man.

/ Mamma Roma's friend and fellow prostitute Biancofiore (Luisa Loiano). With her beehive hairdo and heavy 1960s dark eye make-up, she looks like a J H Lynch painting come to life /

/ Silvana Corsini as the town tramp, young single mother Bruna, who ensnares Ettore with her feminine wiles (and fuzzy arm pits). Corsini played the dim-witted whore Maddalena in Accattone: she was exceptionally good at playing not very bright child-like women /

Pasolini keeps key details of Mamma Roma’s life vague and – confusingly – her accounts often contradict themselves. She married the corrupt older man, but also refers to having “married” Ettore’s criminal father – who was promptly hauled off to prison by waiting police men as soon as the ceremony ended. They’re clearly not the same man. How many husbands has Mamma Roma had? There’s a tantalising possibility that Carmine could be Ettore’s father. (Ettore himself expresses no curiosity about his father’s identity. A more conventional director would have explored this plot angle; Pasolini has different priorities).  Mamma Roma’s stories meld the personal and the political: she rails against hypocrisy, Mussolini’s Fascism, injustice. In one soliloquy she describes the family of Ettore’s father as wretched scum, the lowest of the low (a police snitch, a beggar, a brothel madam) but points out “if they’d had money, they would have been good people” – perhaps the most powerful message of the whole film. In a moment of religious doubt, Mamma Roma looks skyward and angrily implores God, “Explain to me why I’m a nobody, and you’re the king of kings.”

As it progresses, Mamma Roma is increasingly characterised by an overwhelming sense of dread. Outside maybe film noirs, it’s difficult to find films more fatalistic than Mamma Roma or Accattone. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Mamma Roma (like Accattone) builds toward a tragedy that feels ancient, epic, primal and operatic; Pasolini foreshadows this from almost the beginning. It climaxes in a startling shot of a character filmed from above in a crucifixion position so beautifully-composed, so suffused with Christ-like suffering it makes you gasp.

Earlier there’s a wrenching moment when Mamma Roma abruptly clamps her hand over her face and bursts into tears of sheer relief, believing that things finally seem to be going in her favour -- all the degradation and turmoil she’s suffered is seemingly justified. Of course she is wrong. The odds (or the system) are stacked against her and Ettore before she even began. Mamma Roma’s daring to improve her lot seems to enrage the gods. Fate punishes her. It’s impossible to escape the past. Pasolini persuasively demonstrates that mother and son are foredoomed by their environment and socioeconomic status. In Accattone, Franco Citti seals his fate by defiantly declaring, “Either this world kills me or I’ll kill it!” In Mamma Roma, Anna Magnani similarly swears, “I’ve paid my dues in this life, and the next.” She lives to regret those words.

Reflections on Shanghai Gesture (1941)

/ Gene Tierney and Ona Munson in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Gesture (1941) /

(Note: I wrote the review below for the DVD of Shanghai Gesture for the Nude magazine website several years ago now. I thought I'd dust it off, tweak it a bit and revive it here. The film is truly berserk, haunting and highly recommended -- especially with a stiff drink in your hand)

/ Ona Munson and Maria Ouspenskaya in Shanghai Gesture (1941) /

The seven films Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich made together are like intoxicating  fleurs du mal: erotic, dark, witty, sublime, and modern. Together they honed Dietrich's complex, sultry and feline persona and brought a whiff of genuine Weimar decadence to mainstream Hollywood. After their personal and professional relationship imploded with The Devil is a Woman in 1935 Dietrich went on to work with major directors like Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock and tour her acclaimed one-woman cabaret show around the world well into her 70s. For von Sternberg - who'd antagonised a lot of people in his 1930s heyday with his volatile tyrannical temperament - his post-Dietrich career was one long, humiliating decline.

/ Almost ridiculously beautiful colour portrait of Gene Tierney on the set of Shanghai Gesture /

1941's Shanghai Gesture represents one of von Sternberg's last gasps before losing creative autonomy. (During the filming of 1952's Macao , he'd be sacked midway through production and replaced by Nicholas Ray). A torrid and baroque study in vengeance and corruption, the film sees Von Sternberg re-visiting the locale of Shanghai Express, his 1932 triumph with Dietrich. Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston), a rich white industrialist with a murky past, is seeking to gentrify Shanghai (he calls it "the cesspool of the Far East"). When gorgon-like dragon lady Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson) learns he intends to close her gambling den she starts plotting her revenge. Meanwhile, slumming rich girl Poppy (the exquisite Gene Tierney) becomes ensnared by the toxic allure of the casino ("It smells so incredibly evil ..."), addicted both to gambling and the heavy-lidded charms of Dr Omar (a torpid Victor Mature in a burnoose and fez).

/ Gene Tierney, Victor Mature and Phyllis Brooks. It has to be said, Mature is insanely sexy as Dr Omar. No man ever looked better in a fez /

/ Kiss me, you fool. Who could resist? /

Von Sternberg was Hollywood's most seductive visual stylist. Here he evokes a sensual and depraved Shanghai of the imagination, an underworld of opium-scented exotica. Mother Gin Sling's vice palace is a glittering Art Deco inner circle of hell, where the beautiful and the damned drink cocktails of brandy and sulphur and gamble away their souls. A Chinese New Year parade is depicted as a macabre carnival; Mother Gin Sling's climactic New Year's Eve party culminates with the surreal sight of terrified female "white slaves" being hoisted skyward in cages.

/ This scene is genuinely surreal and will have you rubbing your eyes in amazement /

The overripe, purple dialogue occasionally threatens to tip the film into kitsch (Dr Omar calls Poppy "my plucked bird of paradise"; Mother Gin Sling snaps at someone, "Stop behaving like a disabled flamingo!"). But even in a scratchy, muffled DVD transfer, Shanghai Gesture is a hypnotic, shimmering spectacle and its treatment of miscegenation and colonialism is way ahead of its time. And as portrayed by Munson (best-remembered as bordello madam Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind ) with a purring voice, serene mask-like face and Medusa hairstyle, Mother Gin Sling is a mesmerising villainess.

/ Ona Munson: compelling and unforgettable as Mother Gin Sling in a role that feels like it could have been intended for Marlene Dietrich (or Anna May Wong). The whole persona of Mother Gin Sling also feels informed by Gale Sondergaard in The Letter (1940) from the year before /

/ Gale Sondergaard as the inscrutable and sinister Mrs Hammond in The Letter (1940) /

Munson obviously made an impression as the brassy but warm-hearted Belle in Gone with the Wind (interesting bit of trivia: the part of Belle was supposedly offered to both Mae West and Tallulah Bankhead beforehand), but in the larger role of Mother Gin Sling she truly seizes the moment. Munson’s life and career were both disappointing and ended in tragedy (she committed suicide at the age of 51 in 1955). This is the performance to remember Ona Munson for. Late in the film, Munson has an incredible monologue in which she divulges how she came to be Mother Gin Sling (“... they sewed pebbles into the soles of my feet so I couldn’t escape ...”). It’s an acting tour de force, which can be favourably compared to Elizabeth Taylor’s similarly lurid and climactic monologue in Suddenly Last Summer.

/ The sardonic and evil Mother Gin Sling smiles as Poppy comes unglued /



/ Watching Shanghai Gesture at home, while Lydia Lunch glares from above (as you can see, both my TV and CD player are 1990s relics) /