Hopelessly Devoted To: Gretchen Wyler

Published November 22, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

A year after Shirley MacLaine rocketeered to stardom, due to replacing an ailing Carol Haney in the original Broadway production of Pajama Game, the vibrant Gretchen Wyler (1932 – 2007) accomplished almost exactly the same thing with Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings. Wyler attacked the role of movie star Janice Clayton with such virtuoso power that she was promoted from second understudy to lead, almost overnight.

Nicely, this led this leggy wonder into to a distinguished career, full of stage and television efforts, including multiple stints on a variety of soap operas and situation comedies. Interestingly, for someone who often used her sex appeal as a vibrant component of her performing arsenal, one of her significant nighttime credits was as a guest star on Haunted Angels, a third season episode of the classic detective show that brought about the creation of the term “jiggle TV,” Charlie’s Angels.

Perhaps the most accomplished of several Angels’ plotlines that included horror genre elements, this venture found Wyler’s well-to-do Clare Rossmore requesting assistance from America’s favorite femme investigators due to the seeming ghostly reappearance of her long dead nephew. Adding to the gothic allure, Rossmore’s philanthropic countenance manifests itself in the form of a psychic research institute, an appropriate setting for a supernaturally charged murder to occur.

Of course, all is not as it seems, and as truths are revealed, Agatha Christie style, Wyler nestles nicely into an agreeable chemistry with David Doyle’s ever faithful Bosley. While this story features a rare, fun pairing between Kate Jackson’s Sabrina and Cheryl Ladd’s Kris, it is Doyle, a musical stage veteran himself, and Wyler who truly charm with a rare ease and joy.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Jeri Southern

Published May 2, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

Late fall and early spring often find me, in some sharp sense of contemplative bliss, immersed in the music of numerous husky voiced jazz dames. This year, as the March days in Chicago alternated between gray & windy and unseasonably warm, I took special comfort in the seemingly casual, throaty stylings of Peggy Lee, Chris Connor and Jeri Southern. Their smoky tempos seemed to perfectly echo the prospect of winter’s slow yet hopeful fade.

Southern, a favorite of Frank Sinatra who retired in her late 30s due to paralyzing stage fright, became my favored discovery. Her albums like Southern Comfort not only feature amusing titular word play, but tend to highlight obscure, inventive material. Her take on Cole Porter’s well-known Dancing on the Ceiling, meanwhile, is near perfection – an expert blending of smart tune and adept stylist.

Of course, I was soon researching her life and happily discovered that her filmography included vocalizing on A Taste of Ivory, the theme song from the twisted 1978 psychological horror show Die Sister, Die. While that performance is difficult to track down, her simple, haunting version of Every Time We Say Goodbye is sure to delight both lovers of the finely romantic and the lushly gothic, as well.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Peter Lorre

Published December 13, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

I have mad love for all those quirky character actors from the ‘30s and ‘40s. Often cast as ne’er do wells and sophisticated villains, their talents were often broader than they were given credit for.

For example, even though he was best known for his sinister turns in M, The Stranger on the Third Floor, The Beast with Five Fingers and The Raven, the unforgettable Peter Lorre truly shone as a comic impresario. In particular, he excelled in the glorious MGM musical Silk Stockings, a reworking of Greta Garbo’s famed comedy Ninotchka.

Here, Lorre gamely attacked clever lyrics by Cole Porter…

…and even engaged in a dance specialty or two!

Now, one has to wonder what Boris Karloff and Vincent Price might have added to the mix here.

Ponder that…and until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Elisabeth Welch

Published November 15, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

The stunning Elisabeth Welch is a major part of the success of the classic 1945 anthology Dead of Night. As the fun and vibrant Beulah in the film’s most popular segment, The Ventriloquist’s Dummy, she is one of the first characters to react to the fact that something is off with Michael Redgrave’s Maxwell and his devious puppet partner Hugo.

Welch was much more than a sympathetic terror conspirator, though. One of the most sophisticated stars of the British theater and Broadway, she often introduced songs that went on to be classics.

Cementing her status as a cult icon, Welch also fabulously worked with auteur Derek Jarman in the late ‘70s.

More can, but need not be said!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Virginia Bruce

Published February 17, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

VB Invisible Woman

If I had been an old Hollywood diva, I would have wanted the career of Virginia Bruce. An important figure in the world of Universal Horror due to her pert and powerful essaying of the leading role in The Invisible Woman, Bruce also worked with such notables as Jimmy Stewart, William Powell, James Cagney and Abbott and Costello.

Significantly, while trying to earnestly woo Stewart in Born to Dance, she also introduced the Cole Porter classic I’ve Got You Under My Skin.

Pretty much fading from the screen by the late ‘40s, this silver streaked celluloid wonder still left behind a legacy of dreamy magnificence, permanently drifting beneath the fantasies of old school movie lovers worldwide.

Virigina Bruce

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Va-Va-Villainess: Virginia Bruce

Published January 24, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

Virginia Bruce Born to Dance cigarette

As Broadway diva Lucy James in 1936’s Born to Dance, smoldering pixie Virginia Bruce causes much havoc between enthusiastic hoofer Nora Paige (Eleanor Powell) and her shy, devoted sailor beau Ted Barker (Jimmy Stewart).

bruce-stewart-born-to-dance Initially using him as a publicity ploy, James soon grows serious about Barker. This, nicely, gives Bruce a chance to add layers of soft pain to her characterization. This humanity doesn’t stop this character’s out of control anger issues, though. After destroying a hotel suite and getting Paige fired from her understudy job, James is decidedly left on the outskirts of the film’s grand and happy finish. Virgina BTD2

Not surprisingly, the talented Bruce still comes out the winner, though. Born to Dance’s score was composed by none other than Cole Porter and, with sweet elegance, she introduced his classic I’ve Got You Under My Skin, which was nominated for an Academy Award, here.

Horror Hall of Fame:

Bruce filled the title role of 1940’s The Invisible Woman, a more comic take for the classic Universal horror series. This natural celluloid wonder also tangled with eternal mad scientist Lionel Atwill in the Abbott and Costello comedy Pardon My Sarong.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Robert Goulet

Published June 30, 2019 by biggayhorrorfan

Robert Goulet Beefcake

Best known for his exquisite musical performances, the handsome Robert Goulet enlivened Tim Burton’s horror fueled comedy Beetlejuice with his majestic smoothness.

Thus, as Pride Month jogs healthily to a close, a melody of Cole Porter tunes done in Goulet’s impressive style seems like the perfect way to lower the curtain on June’s rainbow fueled activities.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

Robertgoulet beetlejuice

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Fred Astaire

Published June 24, 2018 by biggayhorrorfan

fred astaire

The essence of cool suave in an every man’s persona, Fred Astaire lit up dozens of enjoyable musicals for a stretch of over twenty years.

His final role in the film adaptation of Peter Straub’s powerful Ghost Story, meanwhile, saw him adding a nice helping of contemplative sorrow to the spooky proceedings.

Of course, this celluloid ease was put to grand display in The Gay Divorcee, one of the classics that he made with Ginger Rogers, his most notable dancing partner. Cole Porter’s Night and Day may have been sung better by others, but it never looked more grandly elegant.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

ghost-story-poster

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Gloria Swanson

Published March 19, 2017 by biggayhorrorfan

Sunset Boulevard

Was there ever anything as haunting as Gloria Swanson’s deliciously deluded Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s classic, emotional noir Sunset Boulevard? Many refined and enthusiastic film buffs will probably, unanimously, agree that there isn’t.

Thankfully, almost 25 years after this macabre venture, Swanson returned to play another demanding diva in Curtis Harrington’s fondly remembered television horror Killer Bees. As the queenly Maria von Bohlen, Swanson ruled her fictional family with a tart grip even as the matriarch’s fuzzy flying pets began to draw the life out of members of the frightened local community. gloria killer bees

Meanwhile, although she was never known as a singer, the always game legend tackled a couple of tunes in the early 80s on a variety of star studded specials.

Here, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra’s well regarded Wonderful One gets the nostalgic treatment.

Next, Swanson is joined by Brooke Shields (Alice, Sweet, Alice, The Midnight Meat Train) and Barbara Eden (A Howling in the Woods, The Stranger Within) for a surprising version of Cole Porter’s What Do You Think About Men?

For those interested, the adventures of this singular entertainer are explored in deeper detail at https://thehairpin.com/scandals-of-classic-hollywood-the-gloria-swanson-saga-part-one-e2d29b36eac2

gloria 3

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Jessica Walter, “Why Can’t You Behave?”

Published December 15, 2013 by biggayhorrorfan

Oh, the double standards! Its okay for the 95 year old with the elk tattoo on her stomach to parade around the lobby of our building in a Dracula string bikini- but not me!!! What??!!??

Walter, going crazy, in Misty!

Similarly, it seems its perfectly acceptable for the divine Jessica Walter, perhaps best known to some as Arrested Development ‘s caustic Lucille Bluth, to cause massive amounts of mayhem in genre projects like Play Misty for Me (1971), TV Christmas slasher Home for the Holidays (1972), Doctor Strange (1978) and Ghost in the Machine (1993) – but introduce her to one wayward gentleman and she wonders why he can’t behave!

Yes, in the “She Can Do It All” sweepstakes, the eclectic Walter sang the role of Bianca/Lois Lane in a 1968 television production of Cole Porter’s classic Kiss Me Kate, which was also released as a limited edition LP. This proves, at long last, that Belinda Carlisle’s theory is true. Heaven is a place on earth!!! (Bloody Jessica Walter walking earth!!!)

Delicious Walter as the delicious Morgan LeFay! Doctor Strange

So, worship that red dress and — Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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