Happy Birthday, Evangeline Lilly!

"I love being outside -

that's where I'm the happiest."

~Evangeline Lilly

Scene of the Week

Charmian Carr, Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, Duane Chase, Angela Cartwright, Debbie Turner, and Kym Karath's So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music (1965)

Favorite Film from Favorite Actress

The Sound of Music is one of my favorites.

~Sophie Leigh

Twentieth Century starring

Carole Lombard and John Barrymore.

~Liana Sheridan

Quote of the Day

"My passions were all gathered together

like fingers that made a fist.

Drive is considered aggression today;

I knew it then as purpose."

~ Bette Davis

Photo of the Week

Fred Astaire demonstrating the Continental dance

in Weekly Illustrated, Issue November 3, 1934.

Favorite Film from Favorite Actor

For our favorite film that stars our favorite actor is either Holiday Inn, Blue Skies, Easter Parade, or White Christmas. Personally, Sophie and I are still torned between Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. It's quite obvious why those two are our favorites but for favorite film, however, is a different story since both Bing and Fred starred in Holiday Inn and Blue Skies. Those two films would be an option but I having seen Blue Skies. I quite think that it's rather bland and lacks an interesting love interest for both Bing and Fred to play off from, but I quite enjoyed watching Fred teach Bing how to dance during the A Couple of Song And Dance Men sequence. On the flip side, there's Holiday Inn which is a great holiday film and sparked a hit song for both Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby. The song was called White Christmas, making Bing Crosby a household name and immortalized his voice in people's homes every Christmas. ~LS

I agree with Liana but I do believe that Bing Crosby is being overshadowed by White Christmas and other Christmas songs. He was done the Road to film series way before he had started working on Holiday Inn with Fred Astaire. And I really think that anyone of their film is my favorite of theirs, especially Blue Skies because the film really highlights what they can do as dramatic and comedic actors, in general. -SL

Quote of the Day

Hey guys, Sophie and I aren't going to stop writing on this blog but real life does call. In the meantime, enjoy our scheduled posts of quotes and photographs. ~LS

Quote of the Day

"It matters more what's in a woman's

face than what's on it."

~Claudette Colbert

Quote of the Day

"Jealousy is, I think,

the worst of all faults

because it makes

a victim of both parties."

~Gene Tierney

Happy Birthday, Paul Rudd!

"Theater is the most enriching and thrilling thing to do as an actor. It trumps movies and all that other stuff. People say, 'You must love the instant feedback,' and we're all attention whores for sure - that's why we choose this profession. But it goes beyond that: There's something magical about a shared experience in a theater, with actors and an audience. I don't know if the audience members realize just how huge a part they play in a production. How they are determines how we are, and when it all works, it's magical."

~Paul Rudd

Quote of the Day

"The fun of acting is to

become someone else."

~Rita Hayworth

Quote of the Day

"I don't recall ever deciding

to pursue a career in acting."

~Lauren Cohan

Underrated & Overrated Actress

Underrated Actress: Claire Luce

Overrated Actress: Ginger Rogers

Quote of the Day

"I'm very picky when it comes to men.

I come across a man

who I'm really attracted to about

once every five years."

~Evangeline Lilly

Photo of the Week

Dixie Lee-Crosby's promotional shot for Love In Bloom (1935).

Updated Pages

• Favorite Actresses
• Favorite Actors
• Favorite Films

~ Sophie Leigh

Hey guys,

Sorry for not writing on this blog. Liana and I both have busy schedules, but we do have Pinterest accounts each that we keep updated every now and then with photographs.

Thank you!

Sophie Leigh

X

Photo of the Week

In honor of Grease Live, here our "Photo of the Week".

John Travolta behind the camera on set of Grease (1978).

Film Fridays: I Love Melvin (1953)

Theatrical Film Poster, 1953

For Film Friday, I thought that I'll write about the movie that I've been dying to see. And that film is I Love Melvin starring Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor. Most of the musical numbers (maybe all) are on YouTube.

I Love Melvin is about a photographer named Melvin Hoover (O'Connor), who accidentally bumps into a young actress named Judy LeRoy (Reynolds) in the park. The pair starts talk and he later offers to do a photo spread on her; however, Melvin's boss has no intentions in using the photos. He plans on marrying Judy but her father wants her to marry someone else. She tells her that he could get her on the cover of Look Magazine, but for Melvin that was the impossible because only his boss gets the final say of who gets to appear on the front cover. One of the film's tagline introduces Donald and Debbie as "kids from Singin' In the Rain". Debbie plays a hopeful young actress who dreams of starting in a major motion picture named Judy; on the flip side, Donald is Melvin -- a struggling photographer who wishes to become a professional photographer and not, an assistant to a professional photographer.

The film begins with Debbie Reynolds picking up her red lipstick and writing the words: "I Love Melvin" in big red capital letters in text to indicate that Debbie had written on the mirror with her red lipstick. After the film's title credits ends, it cuts to a dance number. The first dance number of the entire film though Debbie barely dances in the film. "Lady Loves" is surely a good way to start a new film after the blockbuster that was Singin' In the Rain in 1952. The number has Debbie dressed up as a 1950s glamour girl but the wasn't the first idea and concept that they had in mind. At first, they wanted her to be a country girl but the idea was soon scraped when the glamour girl idea came into play.

Reynolds & O'Connor in Singin' In the Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly

In Singin' In the Rain, Debbie faced multiple challenges including her feet bleeding through her shoes. The exact same thing happened to Ginger Rogers in 1936 with Swing Time after several pirouettes and takes of the "Never Gonna Dance" dance sequence.

Reynolds & O'Connor on set of I Love Melvin

The film moves from the street and to the park, which is where the new musical number takes places. "We Have Never Metas Yet" starts off with Debbie singing as she leaned onto a picnic basket. And she's day dreaming about meeting the perfect guy who is roughly six foot three. It then cuts to Donald walking towards a lamp post and swings around it like Gene Kelly during the "Singin' In the Rain" dance sequence in 1952's Singin' In the Rain, which is probably MGM's idea to have Donald recreate the lamp post swing move from the Gene's number, then Donald and Debbie sings a line at a time until the meet around the corner, bumping into each other there. The song finishes with the pair in a bad mood. They do, however, talk to each other in an off-screen conversation until the scene moves to the steps of a park gazebo.

After Debbie has left the screen, Donald talks to Debbie's little sister and she tells him that "life has its funny little ups and downs", which is a pretty universal advice that any little girl could give you even a fictional little girl. That's pretty weird for a grown man getting schooled by a little girl (Sorry, Donald!) but it's this scene that drove Donald into going on a date with Debbie's character and making an attempt to get her on the front cover of Look Magazine; however, it didn't happen until the end of the film, leaving it to the audience's imagination to figure out what happens next to Melvin and Judy. Theoretically, they continue to date until they end up getting married, but that's just me.

                                                                                                            - Sophie Leigh

The Stereotypes that Men Gives to Women

Every women can't be difficult to work with or difficult to understand. I refuse to get stereotypically judged by a man who doesn't know anything about me, nor will I allow to let a man judge me for who I am; however, I know stereotypes because I was born stereotyped by my family and classmates growing up as a child, and they refuse to see that it's going to drive me into insanity. But these stereotypes are still implied to women, by careless men.

The Magazine Image - This stereotype is what a man or boy wants to have or dreams of having. I know so because it's what girls tries to look like. News flash ladies: the women in magazines are photoshopped to look perfect, just think of how distort and depressed the model of a magazine photograph will seem when they see that their body has been altered in the final print of a magazine.

The Actress - This is a stereotype that could go either good or bad. It involves a dramatic or manipulative girl in order to fit into the stereotype. The actress can manipulate a boy into thinking that she's either a nerd or a complete bimbo, just to make him like her. She can also act out like everything seems like a big deal. Sounds like anyone you know? Well, I know that I've used this stereotype to piss off the people that I hated back in High School. Oops, sorry boys but I'm an actress.

The Tomboy - This one is when a girl doesn't want to wear high heels, dresses, or skirts because of her legs. It seems fair but that it not the case in some countries. In the Philippines, "Tomboy" literally means "Lesbian", which is not the meaning of the term. The real meaning of "Tomboy" is the type of clothes that she wears.

The Nerd - This one applies to mostly Asian girls. The girls who are labeled this are either Harajuku girls or girls who wears glasses. I am a girl who wears glasses and who got labeled "The Nerd" in High School, but it is not the stereotype that I see myself in.

I am not the nerdy girl in the outside. I've always see myself as "The Actress", though that's what I've working towards because it's something that I am; however, this doesn't mean a thing, because the stereotypes can be destroyed by us women and us alone. It's something that you can completely ignore because you are not a stereotype. You are you and you alone. 

So what does the boys wants? The boys stereotypically wants "The Magazine Image" like Puerto-Rican model, Jessica Caban and African-American model, Tyra Banks. The boys who likes that kind of girls are jerks, because those girls are not the real thing.

Ladies! Remember that you are perfect in your own way. You are your own "10", so tell a guy straight at his face that he is being a jerk when he talks about wanting a model girlfriend with big boobs. Just tell yourself that he is just all talk and not cute because of his ego is messing with his mind. Please, don't change yourself because of what people are saying behind your back.

A quick update from me, Liana. My co-owner, Ms Sophie Leigh is going to post the Stereotypes article since she has the blogger app on her phone and can do research for it, but I will continue my Roles of Women Throughout the Decades article series as soon as my college schedule clears up.
Thanks!
~Liana Sheridan

Quote of the Week

I know that I haven't been posting in a while. That's because I've been helping Kate Reed with her Claire Luce biography so here's a quote from William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet.

"These violent delights have violent ends

and in their triumph die

like fire and powder

which, as they kiss, consume."

~William Shakespeare

Favorite Actress

These Actresses aren't all Old Hollywood actresses, but we do know that only Diana Ross and Olivia Newton-John in this list are actresses from the awkward transitional decade between Modern and Classic films. These women made an impact in our lives and continue to inspire us as artists.

Julie Andrews

Diana Ross

Olivia Newton-John

Honorable Mentions:

• Ginger Rogers
• Lucille Ball
• Carole Lombard
• Claudette Colbert
• Esther Williams

The Names of the Decades

Here's the name of the decades:

• 1890s - The Gay Nineties
• 1900s - The Noughties
• 1910s - The Terrible Teens
• 1920s - The Roaring Twenties
• 1930s - The Thirlling Thirties
• 1940s - The Flying Fourties
• 1950s - The Nifty Fifties
• 1960s - The Swinging Sixties
• 1970s - The Disco Era
• 1980s - The Greedy Eighties
• 1990s - The Naughty Nineties
• 2000s - The Millennium
• 2010s - The Digital Teens