Meltdown Madness

I'm back darlings. I don't know what the hell happened. After my exhausting adventure with Doctor Who and the Daleks, I took a brief nap. It seems to have taken up most of August. I've got to remember to turn up the volume on my "Snooze" button. And when I woke up, there was no mint on my pillow. (Believe me, when I wake up, I usually need an industrial-strength mint!) It turns out that Leona Helmsley had died. Who will scream and froth at the minimum-wage help for me now?

Little Douglas was no help at all. He's all agog about his new book, The Q Guide to Classic Monster Movies. Heaven only knows why. It's not about ME, so what's the point? It goes on sale one month from today, on September 25, 2007, and you can pre-order it now from Amazon.com, though I have no idea why you would. If you're in Southern California - and really, why be anywhere else? - you can actually meet Little Dougie, when he does a reading/book signing at the A Different Light bookstore in West Hollywood two months from today, on October 25th. I won't be there (Halloween is my busy season.), so don't show up looking for me. And trust me; meeting Little Dougie is no big thrill.


The image at the top of this page is the cover of the issue of Entertainment Weekly that was shoved into my slot today by my mailman who, as my fans all know, always comes twice. Scandal! Celebrity Meltdowns! Lindsey, Britany, Nicolle, Mel, Tracy Morgan (How big a celebrity can you be if I have to use two names to identify you?), the list goes on and on.





As you can see, celebrity meltdowns are nothing new, but what the hell is wrong with Young Hollywood? Why just today, Nicole Richie spent the better part of an hour in jail. Thank heavens her jailhouse baby wasn't born during that part of the hour. And Lindsey Lohan faces a nasty ninety minutes in The Big House soon too, undoubtedly in the Paris Hilton Wing. Isaiah Washington can not seem to open his mouth without a "Faggot" popping out, which makes him the exact opposite of Little Dougie. That adorable little animal lover Michael Vick has been kicked out of the NFL and faces serious jail time, by which I mean longer than just the entire network run of Anchorwoman. The only job he can get now is Dogcatcher, for which, at least, he is uniquely qualified. Britany Spears & Kevin Federline's two toddlers are suing for emancipation, pointing out that, although they are both under three years old, they are scientifically proven to be vastly more mature than either of their parents. At this point, the various paternity scandals involving Eddie Murphy and Goran Visnjic (No, that's really how it's spelt.) seem refreshingly normal.

Honestly Young Hollywood, I'm no stranger to celebrity meltdowns. I've had my own in my time.





I've even been arrested, and stood trial myself (Never mind about what the charges against me were. If you must know, look it up. You've got Internet access obviously.), but I never spent long, grueling minutes in jail, or OZ as it's now known, thanks to HBO, where it was portrayed as a paradise of hot men and rough sex. (OZ was HBO's only June Foray into gay porn, so far!) In my own films, Babes Behind Bars, Infraction, and Scofflaw, I exposed as much of the brutal Sapphic conditions prevailing in women's prisons as the Hays Office would allow. My own personal research however, suggests that real women's prisons aren't nearly as much fun as they seem in the movies.


But no matter how deep the depths I sank to, my career was always resurrected, thanks to the wonders of such branches of science as biology, surgery, and public relations.

The trick is to understand how to reinvent yourself; to make a completely new you, out of pieces of the old. I've done it time and again.

The Hollywood kids today even speak a whole new language. Ever read an interview with a young celebrity? They may seem completely incoherent, until you realize that they are spoken in a special language, Star Speak.

Young stars are anxious to explain how their new vanity project is in black & white, because they saw a Three Stooges short in back & white, and once the repairman explained to them that there was nothing wrong with their TV, they loved it for it's emotional honesty and insisted that their vanity project (Stupider and Stupidest) would be even more hard-hitting in black & white. The execs greenlighting it so the star would then do Teenage Mutant Anaconda Garglers agrees to shooting the vanity project in B&W since it will be less money lost anyway.

The male celebrity will explain why leaving the mother of his 7 children for someone named "Jolie" was "Painful but ultimately positive." That while shooting Hacksaw Meets Drill Press he and Miss Jolie shared deep experiences that bonded them forever as he was pretending to snip bits off of her.

If it's Mad Mel Gibson, he'll tell how he's fused two genres, the religious epic and torture porn, to make Saw Ye My Saviour.

If the male star is Matthew McConaghy, he will explain why wearing shirts is emotionally dishonest. (He's so right.) If he's anyone else, he will be shirtless at the interview, even if it's backstage at the Kennedy Center Honors.

No matter who you are interviewing, he will take a cell phone call from Angelina Jolie during the interview. She's called me twice, just while I was writing this flog, and I'm certain I'm female.

An essential component to a celebrity interview overseas is explaining why the celeb found it necessary to adopt 20 of their country's children, and how the kids's real parents, the ones being restrained by bodyguards just outside while shouting "KIDNAPPERS!" is completely onboard with their children's new last name being "Federline".

When a celeb couple is interviewed together overseas, they will adopt an additional child during the interview, ordering off the desert menu. In my day, we stars just adopted our own, natural children. (Not that I did that. My Pattycakes was a bastardess, I swear!)

There are terms you must learn the meaning of. "We grew in different directions." means the now-divorcing male celeb just made a film with Angelina Jolie, or his wife just made a film with Anne Heche, who is due to swing back again now.

"He/she's a genius!" means "We just worked together."

"It's all about the craft." means "It's all about the money and publicity."

"It's a difficult work that looks at uncomfortable truths." means "No one will see it."

"It's a searing indictment of human bigotry." (Not to be confused with animal or vegetable bigotry. I hate bigoted kumquats!) means "It's about kids in bathing suits having sex at the beach."

"It's incredibly honest." means "I did my own nude shots."

"It really opened my eyes." means "I'd never heard of World War II until the script treatment was read to me."

"This was the most difficult movie I've ever done." means "This is the most recent movie I have ever done."

"I reached deep into my soul and found out things about myself I never knew." means "That bastard director insisted I memorize my dialogue! I had him fired."

"It was written for me." means "I screwed the writer." (Rarely if ever does this actually happen. Smart starlets screw the editor.)

"I turned down three other movies because I wanted to work with him. His movies illuminate The Human Condition." means "It's another Woody Allen movie no one will see."

"I really grew making this movie." means "I just aborted my co-star's baby."

It occurred to me that I should stop giving this precious knowledge away. Little Douglas suggested to me that I hold a seminar. Well I liked the sound of that, until Douglas explained to me what "Seminar" actually meant. But it still sounded like a good idea, so I have decided to hold a seminar in Celebrity Stardom. I will be opening Pigzit's Academy of Stardom, admittance limited to genuine stars. Tuition to be paid in vodka.

At Pigzit's, I will share my voluminous knowledge and experience in How To Be a Successful Star: how to handle the press, how to party non-stop, pantyless and drunk without getting arrested, how to combine hedonism and professionalism, and all the other essential items of information you never receive in acting workshops and university theater courses. And we'll have sports as well. What would Oz be, without Quidditch?

Where to hold my seminar was a challenge. My friend Ken Levine recently held a writing seminar of some sort at a hotel near the airport, where one can get out of town quickly once the checks have all cleared. Unfortunately for me, I am persona non grata at most of the hotels and motels, no matter how seedy, near LAX, Burbank Airport (Recently renamed for an unfunny dead comedian. Much as I wanted to celebrate his death also, I felt renaming the airport for this schmuck was in bad taste. It's Burbank. They should call it the "Laugh-In Airport".), and even Van Nuys Airport, owing to a string of unsavoury incidents that date all the way back to Orville Wright's embarrassing itch.

However, I have found a location for my Academy: The tunnel where Sherman Way goes under the Van Nuys Airport runway. It's central, easy to get to, and best of all, closing it down for my seminar will inconvenience hundreds of thousands of nobodies. That's real Star Behaviour. Look at Little Will Smith; to make his movie I Am Legend, he had major thoroughfares in New York City closed down, bringing the great metropolis to a standstill day after day, so he could do the important work of filming this hard-hitting, human drama of major significance, in which Will plays the last man alive in a world of vampire zombies. Now, this very day, for the second weekend in a row, Will has closed down a major Los Angeles freeway, creating gridlock over 200 square miles, to film another important movie. (I think this one is Candyland the Movie.) Will is a Real Star! But when Will takes my workshop, he'll learn how to bring an entire state to a halt, just to record voice tracks for an animated movie.

As the date for my workshop grows closer, and I develop my syllabus, I'll include more details. For now, register early and often. But, you MUST be a Star! Nobodies are not allowed. You must have an impressive résumé and rap sheet to qualify. I'll keep you posted. For now...

Cheers, Daleks

Welcome to the dog days of summer, my darlings. Are you all relieved now that my 2-part Doctor Who & the Daleks story is concluded, and I, of course, survived? If the daleks had killed me back in 1930, I'd have a hard time flogging in the 21st Century.

So, how true-to-life was this adaptation of an unpublished chapter of my memoirs? Well, as I pointed out last week, it presented me as a stage star in New York City, when I was actually in Hollywood that entire year, shooting my first three talkies: The Godawful Truth, An Affair to Forget, and Dancing in the Drink; the latter film a musical not released until 1931. And by no stretch of the imagination did I ever speak with that accent, but then the actress who played me, Miranda Raison, is English, and was faking what she thought of as an all-purpose American accent. Also, I have never found it necessary to repeatedly tell people "It's Tallulah; three Ls and an H." to distinguish myself from all the Talulas out there.

But they did get my hair color right, they got my age about right, which is more than I ever did, and they portrayed me as single, which I was in 1930. Of course I was never engaged to anyone named Lazlo (Who could love a man named Lazlo?), but Lazlo was played by Ryan Carnes, who is best known for playing Justin, the gay lover of Andrew Van de Kamp on Desperate Housewives. Further, the character of Lazlo was genetically crossbred with a pig by the daleks, and turned into a man-pig. Tallulah loved him anyway. Hmmm. A gay man who turns into a pig, and I just ignore it and go on loving him just for the fine porkings. Darlings, that is the story of about five of my marriages, so that was very true to Life.

And of course, The Doctor and I did defeat the daleks, and prevented them from mutating the population of America into daleks. At the end of the show, the last dalek transported itself away, to try their fiendish experiment somewhere else. So where did it go? Hmmm. 1930, humans turned into racist monsters claiming to be The Master Race, and exterminating anyone who was different from them. Well we all now know that the daleks went to Germany. Fortunately, we still defeated them in a little skirmish called World War II. You may have read about it. It was in all the papers, and I think they made a movie about it.

So did any of the human/dalek/Nazi hybrids survive the war to this day? Only one that I know of.

But Lazlo was a fictional character, a composite of a few of my husbands. Actually I was on a heteroll at the time. In 1929, I was married for about 10 hours to Count Vlad Tepes, who had many faults to be sure, but was certainly heterosexual, if a bit kinky. Sadly, his fatal Sunlight allergy killed him on the morning after our wedding night, leaving me with only a couple world-class hickeys and the need for an immediate transfusion to remember him by.

I married again in 1933. I don't remember the wedding or courtship, as I had been celebrating the end of The Great Evil [Tallulah's term for Prohibition. She still refuses to use the word. She seldom displays inhibitions either. - Douglas] , and I lost a few months. When I woke up, I was Mrs. Boris Karloff. I took the professional name Karloff-Morehead, as Boris always said that was what drew him to me. Here's a photo from our wedding night, as I showed Boris just what Morehead was all about. Did you know he was a Shriner? And I had to teach him the value of moisturizing.

The marriage was a short one, though it was considerably longer than my marriage to Vlad. It lasted only until late 1934. It ended due to a silly misunderstanding. I was never going to slice off his penis and keep it in a jar with all those others. I'm 87% sure those were fakes, props from a movie I'd been in years before, Bluebeard's Daughter. Even after Boris realized this, he was too traumatized to return to Morehead Heights, or ever again enter any room I was in. Honestly, I have never intentionally decockpitated any man. Defrocked? Yes. Decocked? Never. I live with a Headless Indian Brave, not a dickless one. Lorena Bobbitt's statement that she was only following my example was pure poppydick. I learned early in life, that a penis that is not attached to a man is semi-useless. When I'm singing "When the red, red hobbit comes bob, bob, bobbitting along, along," it's just a children's song.

But these little misunderstandings happen in every marriage. What wife hasn't chased her naked husband around the house with a butcher knife, screaming "I'll slice it off and feed it to the dog, you bastard!" once or twice a year? We're always sorry afterwards. Who knew a second circumcision was a bad idea? No matter what you've heard, I don't have a penis myself, so I had no way of knowing that foreskins don't grow back. I thought that maybe they had to be pruned periodically. Good lord, that pesky hymen of mine tried to grow back twice. I finally had to have it cauterized. Anyway, there was almost no harm done. I would point out that he sired his daughter after his marriage to me, so maybe I did it some good.

I made my most expensive movie, The Revenge of Cleopatra, during the time I was Mrs. Karloff-Morehead. Here's a lovely shot of Boris visiting me on the set. As you can see, he came straight from his lodge, and still hadn't moisturized.

[I must reiterate here that the Karloff Family stoutly denies that Tallulah was ever married to Boris Karloff, and clings to the story that he was married to Dorothy Stine Karloff, the mother of Sarah Jane Karloff, at that time. I wasn't there, or even born yet, so I don't know if that's true, or if it was just a desperate delusion born of deep denial by the traumatised Karloff. - Douglas]

Sad though it was, it was my last marriage to a truly hetero male for 20 years, unless I was married to one (or 2 or 3 or 4) during my wartime blackout. And those two marriages acquainted me with fear. I'm The Lady Who Terrified Boris Karloff! I can, if I choose, concoct horrors to freeze the blood in your veins. Want proof? Look at this:

Just keep telling yourself, it's only a joke. Unless you're Zsa Zsa, poor Thing.


On another subject just for a moment, I read that Ingrid Bergman died again this past week. She was of course, the legendary director of such classics as The Seventh Seal of Dr. Lao, The Virgin Sprung, Alexander's Fanny, Scenes From a Divorce, Through a Shotglass Darkly, Wild Razzberries, Nattvardsgästerna, and The Nutty Professor. She was a genius. Who else could have made a whole career out of being depressed while speaking gibberish? She will be missed, especially by the manufacturers of Prozac.

Cheers darlings.

A Wild & Crazy Groom.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr. and Mrs. Steve Martin.

Yes, that wild and crazy guy has run off and gotten married again! It seems like every time I regain consciousness, Steve Martin has gotten married. Who is he kidding? The man is 61 and this is only his second marriage. If he were a truly committed heterosexual, he'd be on at least his fifth wife. At his age, I had been married at least nine times that I know of, and bear in mind, when I was 61, I had only just turned 30, so I was really working it. That's because, to me, marriage is a sacred institution (Or is that a scarred institution?), and if I must be in an institution (And there are many who say I belong in one, though what does that idiot judge know?), I'd prefer it to be a sacred one.

As it happens, Steve's new wife is really new. She's - what? - three weeks old? All I know is that when I first saw Steve perform, in The Birdcage Theater at Knott's Berry Farm in 1964, Mrs. Steve Martin hadn't been born yet. I'm not certain her parents had even met. Now, I'm not saying that Steve is robbing the cradle. It's more of a loan. After all, it's not like he's going to out-live her.

We all know and love Steve for being a brilliant and tremendously original comedian. When one remembers all the great comic characters he created, like Ernie Bilko and Inspector Clouseau, one can't help but admire his genius,




And his amazing career in movies has enriched all our lives. Think of all the great, original movies Steve has made. Who else has made so many never-before-seen pictures? No recycling for Steve. Everything is fresh, as in these classics:

And elderly as Steve is, he's not through yet. He has three brand-new, completely original movies, all done and ready to unreel. Are you as anxious as I am to see these? I wonder what they'll be about?

But I'm here today to describe his wedding. What an event! First Steve took up his place at the alter. Then the organist hit up Here Crawls the Bride, as his gorgeous bride came down the aisle in her father's arms, dressed in beautiful white diapers. Then the minister stepped up and said, "Dearly beloved, I'm Chris Hanson, and this is Dateline NBC. Wildandcrazyguy61, I have your emails to Toddler4 right here. Do you really think this is an appropriate proposal to send a girl young enough to be your daughter?" To which Steve replied, "Well, excuuuuuse ME!"

There wasn't a dry seat in the house, at least on the bride's side.

Cheers darlings.

Rancid Prince of Bel Air

Don't panic darlings, at the sight of this softcore image above. I'm just celebrating that this is my 69th entry in this flog. Who ever knew I could take a flogging for 69 strokes? But as it happens, 69 is my lucky number. In fact, who doesn't feel lucky in a 69? Let's face it, when you're name is Morehead, "Facing It" pretty much always means 69.

Now, on to business: America's favorite Royal, Prince Fredric Von Anhalt Gabor, is at it again. On Thursday, Prince Freddie was found by the Beverly Hills police, in the backseat of his (Zsa Zsa's) Rolls Royce, naked. I hope those poor officers got special bonuses for the damage to their eyes. Poor darlings. When you're a police officer, you go to work each day knowing someone may shoot and kill you, but not that you may have to see Prince Freddie naked. These poor officers probably wished they'd been shot, or that Freddie had been.

Now let's be honest here; who hasn't spent time time naked in the back of a Rolls Royce? I've ended up naked, end up, in the back of Rolls Royces more times than I can shake your stick at, but not for the reasons given by Freddie. Here's Freddie's story of how he ended up on Bellagio Road, behind the the Bel Air Country Club, starkers:


Prince Gabor told the incredulous police that three "Hot" women in a white Chrysler convertible pulled up alongside him and said they were fans of his and wanted him to pose with them for pictures. He said he stopped, got out, posed with them, and hugged them, and then one of the women put a handgun to his neck and said, "Give us your [Zsa Zsa's] money." He said they took $1,800 in cash, along with jewelry, all his clothing, and his car keys -- but not the Rolls Royce -- and left.

Here's an image of Freddie's version of events:

Does this sound remotely plausible to anyone? First off, does anyone drive convertibles anymore? When did you last see a convertible? During your last visit to a drive-in movie theater?

But still harder to believe is the idiotic concept that Prince Freddie has "Fans". People have fans because they've done something or are someone people find admirable or entertaining. Sleazeball, overage gigolos do not have fans. What did he think these "Hot" women admired him for? His marrying a woman twice his age for her money and fame when he himself is way over the hill? His shameless publicity-seeking? His groundless claim to be a "Prince"? His absurd, now utterly disproven claim to be the father of Baby Dannalyn? His boasting of an imaginary affair with a brain dead bimbo? His announcing to the press that he'd cheated on his wife, or his threats to sue Bill O'Reilly for pointing out that it was all a crock of crap, as it was medically proven to be? Now that I see his "Accomplishments" all written down, I want his autograph too. What a pillar of society! He's hot!

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that some women did get him to pull over and pose for mug shots - I mean pictures - with them, and did pull a gun on him. Well, he says he hugged them. No wonder they pulled a gun on him. It was undoubtedly to stop his hugging them. Ew! If he'd just been earning his going-out money, that means he'd probably just made love to Zsa Zsa. She's 90 and bedridden. He probably had that Old Lady Smell, which is nothing like New Car Smell. Speaking as an old lady myself, often when I enter a room, someone inevitably asks, "Who brought the Limburger?"

What probably actually happened, if indeed anything at all did happen, and he wasn't just caught right after the hooker left, before he could redress, was most likely something like this:

As you can see, I doubt it was "Hot" women who held him up, if indeed anyone at all did. But, to be fair, when you've been married to Zsa Zsa for as long as Freddie has, any woman looks hot. If he'd been held up by Roseanne, Rosie O'Donnell, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, he'd still have described them as hot. Given the opportunity, he'd probably chase me around the room, even after reading this flogging.

He says they took him for $1800. Where would Prince Freddie get $1800? Oh yes, Zsa Zsa.

Let's face it; would any actual hot women ever want to see Prince Freddie naked? My guess is that even Zsa Zsa insists all the lights be out. But you have got to give the sleazeball credit. He sees young upcoming sleazeballs snatching the headlines away from him everyday: Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton, Tom Sizemore, George Michaels, Screech, yet he knows how to grab those headlines back with originality. No boring, banal stuff like getting caught driving drunk, with pockets full of "Someone else's" cocaine for him. No, he's a victim of Hot Muggeresses and forcibly denuded, while Zsa Zsa is robbed long distance.

In other matters, if you watched tonight's episode of Doctor Who, you're probably wondering how accurate the portrayal of me was. Well, they got my hair color right, and they did portray me as a star, albeit on stage in New York in 1930, when I was actually in Hollywood that year, filming The Godawful Truth and An Affair to Forget. My voice is deeper and I don't have that accent. Also, I'm far more beautiful, but otherwise, it was right on the nose. Certainly I was always being pursued by men who were literally pigs, and those damn Daleks were every bit as obnoxious as the show portrayed them.

Of course, the cliffhanger ending, with me in peril of being exterminated by those nasty old Daleks, has all of America on the edges of their seats. Well part two next Friday should alleviate your fears. And no, I don't seduce the Daleks. You think they looked yucky when they opened up and sucked in that young man? Well they deliberately made them look less horrifying for television. Below is a cutaway I saved from back when it really happened, so you can see just what those disgusting monsters actually look like inside their giant pepperpots. Prepare yourself. It's gruesome in the extreme.

Cheers darlings.

Doctor Whom, I Presume?

Darlings, I've been fictionalized!

Little Dougie has had me watching the new Doctor Who series from the BBC Wales that's been running on the Sci-Fi channel. I am of course synonymous with science fiction. I was the star of one of the first great science fiction movies of all time, the fantastic silent movie Beyond Belief, directed by the German genius Fritz Bumsen. For a lovely look at a rare color still from the picture (It was shot in black & white of course.), scroll down to the end of my July 5th flogging. Among my other science fiction movies are THAT!, Bride of the Blob, Doctor Scary, and Frankenstein's Reason for Living. People often take one look at me in films and say, "Must be science fiction! There's no other possible explanation."

The new Doctor Who is in it's third season now, and is better than ever, which is saying something, given that the show is almost older than I am. It originally went on the air 27 minutes after TV was invented, while it was still silent. The first new Doctor, Chris Eccleston, jumped Tardis after one season, and Little Dougie decided that he should be the new Doctor, despite the fact that he is not even an alien (No really; he's not.), and I should be the new companion. Here's a photo from the audition tape we shot. Notice how Dougie uses make-up and soft-focus to try and simulate his appearance of 20 years ago. Pathetic, isn't it?

Needless to say, they were not so foolish as to hire Douglas. Little Dougie thought he had a shot since Russell T. Davies, the show-runner, is a big old homo, and the creator of the homolicious series Queer as Folk, the TV version of Dougie's life back in the 1980s.. Dougie was all-set for a casting couch session, but even Davies isn't that much of a homo. However, it must have given them ideas, as Dougie is of Scottish origin, and they did end up hiring a Scotsman, Little David Tennant, whom you can see in the picture at the top of this flogging, auditioning me to be his companion.

They begged me to do it, but I am retired. Shooting 14 hour-long shows a year when you're 110 is just too taxing. These days I can act or I can drink, but I don't have the energy for both. I believe that a person must have their priorities straight, except for Little Dougie, whose priorities are anything but straight, or I should say "Straight to any butt." My priorities are clear and sensible; drinking won.

So they did the next best thing: they wrote an episode of the show about me, and hired some little wanna-be actress named Miranda Raison to play me, in an episode called Daleks in Manhattan. I have plenty of experience working with Daleks, having worked for the great movie moguls back in Hollywood's Golden Age. Here's a lovely old picture of me with Louie B. Mayer and Jack Warner back in 1939.

So they shot a two-part story about the Daleks trying to make me their slave/concubine in New York City, back in 1939. Talk about suspense; it's one thing for the Doctor to save planets from being conquered by Cybermen or the Slitheen, but imagine the horror for mankind if the Daleks deprived the world of ME! Pure blood-curdling terror! Let me tell you, there is nothing like Dalek sex. Those plungers come with optional attachments that are amazing! When they start shrieking "COP-U-LATE! COP-U-LATE!" it's an out-of-this-world experience.

The program will air in the United States this week, on The Sci-Fi Channel. Part one will air Friday July 27, and part two will air August 3rd. Consult your local listings. Now remember, you will not be seeing the real me. You will be seeing this Miranda Raison person playing me. What a great role for a nobody actress, even though she will never be more than a pale reflection of my true glamour.

And be prepared for a BBC-TV budget. Remember, it's all shot overseas. In fact here's a look at their location shoot for Daleks in Manhattan. It looks more like The Bronx to me. Trust me; there's no clock face on the Empire State Building. But then, ask not for Doctor Whom the clock tolls. It tolls for ME!

Cheers darlings.