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