Bytes

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Thought for the Day

Models from 100 Years Ago, Part 2

Marjorie Leet in 1924

Marjorie Leet was born in 1904 in Iowa, USA. She was an actress, known for Encounter (1952) and On Camera (1954). She died in 1994.

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Maude Fealy in 1908

Maude Fealy (1883 – 1971) was an American stage and silent film actress whose career survived into the sound era. Fealy died on November 10, 1971, aged 88, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

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Connie Stuart in 1899

I have not been able to locate any information about Connie Stuart.

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Evelyn Laye in 1922

Evelyn Laye, CBE (1900 – 1996)[1] was an English actress who was active on the London light opera stage, and later in New York and Hollywood. Awarded a CBE in 1973, Laye continued acting well into her nineties. It was reported after Laye's death that the Queen Mother had petitioned the then Prime Minister John Major for Laye to be awarded the DBE (damehood).

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Belle Otero in 1891

Agustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias (1868 – 1965), better known as Carolina Otero or La Belle Otero, was a Spanish actress, dancer and courtesan. She had a reputation for great beauty and was famous for her numerous lovers. Otero wound up as the star of Folies Bèrgere productions in Paris. One of her most famous costumes featured her voluptuous bosom partially covered with glued-on precious gems, and the twin cupolas of the Hotel Carlton built in 1912 in Cannes are popularly said to have been modelled upon her breasts.

Otero retired after World War I, purchasing a mansion and property at a cost of the equivalent of US$15 million. She had accumulated a massive fortune over the years, about US$25 million, but she gambled much of it away over the remainder of her lifetime, enjoying a lavish lifestyle, and visiting the casinos of Monte Carlo often. She lived out her life in a more and more pronounced state of poverty until she died of a heart attack in 1965 in her one-room apartment at the Hotel Novelty in Nice, France.

A Bela Otero, Valga, Pontevedra

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Thought for the Day

From the Vault: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"

From Bytes, 28 January 2010:

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Although this is often attributed to Sigmund Freud, there is no record of him ever having said it or written it.

It appears that the quote may be an adaptation of the phrase “Sometimes a banana is just a banana” used in an early Saturday Night Live sketch, as follows:

Announcer: And now, Great Moments in Herstory, a celebration of women through the ages.

[Dissolve to a finely appointed sitting room, complete with globe, couch and easy chair. A narrator reads a superimposed text as it scrolls by.]

Narrator: Vienna, April 12th, 1908. In the quaint old house at number nineteen Berggassestrasse, Doctor Sigmund Freud has been making bold advances in the treatment of mental illness through a new technique involving the interpretation of dreams. His pioneering efforts in the face of repressive Victorian attitudes will ultimately lead to the development of the Fifty-minute hour, over-use of the word "relating", and a rash of bestsellers with personal pronouns in their titles. Now, for the first time, he is about to practise his new method on a member of his own family: his daughter Anna, later to become a brilliant analyst in her own right. Little does he know he is on the threshold of revealing the secrets of the human mind by Fathering modern psychoanalysis...

[During the above, bearded, bespectacled Sigmund Freud enters, places a cup of tea on a table beside the easy chair, pulls a book from a bookcase and, while thumbing through it, makes his way to the easy chair. He sits and reads. His young daughter, Anna, enters, taps him on the shoulder and climbs into his lap. They speak with heavy Viennese accents:]

Sigmund Freud: Hello, Anna. How did you sleep, Liebchen?

Anna Freud: Oh, I slept very well, Papa. You know, I had the strangest dream, though. I dreamt about a man who looked just like you.

Sigmund Freud: [sipping tea] Mm hm.

Anna Freud: He had a beard just like yours. And he was old enough to be my father.

Sigmund Freud: Ya.

Anna Freud: I couldn't figure it out. And then, he was sitting on your bed, Papa.

Sigmund Freud: Uh huh.

Anna Freud: Along with all my male cousins. And they were all bound and gagged except for one arm. And everybody was bare naked.

Sigmund Freud: [gets increasingly "turned on" as she proceeds] Mm hm.

Anna Freud: And they had bowls of fruit in their laps, you know?

Sigmund Freud: Mm hm.

Anna Freud: And everybody kept offering me a banana. I was not hungry for a banana, though, you know? Except when the man with the beard offered me the biggest and ripest banana. [Sigmund shifts uncomfortably and sets down his tea cup] Oooh, Papa, that was the only banana I ate. Oooh, and then the bed turned into a train, Papa.

Sigmund Freud: Ya?

Anna Freud: And it went through a tunnel. And we came out of the tunnel [Sigmund holds up his trembling hand as if he is about to grab Anna's torso] and then I fell and I fell and I fell and the man with the beard fell and fell and fell. [abruptly] And then we both smoked a cigarette. [Sigmund lowers his hand and cools off considerably] Papa, what did that dream mean?

Sigmund Freud: It doesn't mean anything, Anna. It's only a dream. Sometimes a banana is just a banana. Anna?

Anna Freud: Yes, Papa?

Sigmund Freud: Please don't mention this to Mama.

Anna Freud: [toys with his necktie] Oh, I won't. [They give each other a hug.]

Announcer: This has been another [dissolve back to the title graphic] Great Moment in Herstory!

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75oherstory1.phtml

Monday, December 2, 2019

Thought for the Day

Street Art

Sunday, December 1, 2019

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

READERS WRITE and BRETT'S MONTHLY:

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December

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Today is the first day of December and we begin the countdown to Christmas.

BTW:

December is named from the Latin word decem, meaning ten, because it was originally the tenth month of the year in the Romulan calendar (c 750 BC) which began in March. There were no days or months for the winter period which followed December. Later, the months of January and February were created out of the monthless period and added to the beginning of the calendar, but December retained its name.

Here in Oz, of course, it will be hot, hot, hot.

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Readers Write:

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I mentioned watching Season 3 of the Crown and posted the limericks allegedly composed and quoted by Princess Margaret at a White House dinner with President Lyndon Johnson.

It inspired Sandra J to send me an email:

Barry and I have been watching The Crown just this morning we lay in bed until 11.30 watching some more episodes. We’re now up to Charles and Camilla (the first time round) About the meeting between Margaret and Lyndon Johnson – I thought the whole thing was OTT. We’re addicts.

Thanks, Sandra.

Here’s some anecdotes for you:

#1:

Princess Margaret met Elizabeth Taylor at a wedding in London where Taylor happened to be wearing the 33.19-carat Krupp diamond ring Burton had purchased for her. According to Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger’s book Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton: The Marriage of the Century, Princess Margaret asked Taylor, “Is that the famous diamond? It’s so large! How very vulgar!”

“Yes,” Taylor responded. “Ain’t it great?”

“Would you mind if I tried it on,” the princess asked.

As the princess modelled the huge diamond, Taylor said “Doesn’t look so vulgar now, does it?”

#2:

During their 1965 trip to the US, Princess Margaret and husband Anthony were invited to a dinner attended by many Hollywood celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Judy Garland, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Natalie Wood, Dorothy McGuire, Jimmy Stewart, Frank Sinatra, and Mia Farrow. Taylor and Burton left early, before the princess arrived, annoyed at being seated away from the princess and near the kitchen.

According to The Telegraph, the princess offended Judy Garland by having an aide ask Garland to perform. Garland is reported as responding “Go and tell that nasty, rude little princess that we’ve known each other for long enough and gabbed in enough ladies’ rooms that she should skip the ho-hum royal routine and just pop over here and ask me herself. Tell her I’ll sing if she christens a ship first.”

At the same function, Princess Margaret also ruffled the feathers of Grace Kelly by telling the actress, “You don’t look like a movie star”, to which Kelly is said to have responded, “Well, I wasn’t born a movie star.”

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In response to the post 10 Stunning Models from 100 Years Ago, Part 1, Byter Ian sent an email:

Hi,

Third photo down must be Stevie Nicks' grand mother then?

Regards :)

Thanks, Ian.

This the pic referred to:

Yes, IFU.

It is Stevie Nicks, the photo dating from 1977. The stuff up came about as a result of the pic coming up on a Pinterest search on Ione Bright. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Here is Ione, 1912 (hopefully). . .