Klondike Sarah

Gentlemen, start your blaming! Let the recriminations begin!

The first odd thing came a few minutes after the election was called for O'Bama. The network anchor said that, in a few minutes, Sarah Palin would address the crowd in Arizona.

Whaaa? Since when does the losing Vice Presidential candidate make a concession speech? Since never, that's when. Stand silently at the back of the platform, watching respectfully, showing humility, that's what they do.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, John McCain came out and gave the best speech he's given in 8 years, while his trophy wife and his trophy running mate stood in the background, saying nothing, as McCain reminded us of the class he used to have, and his supporters reminded us of what bitter dickwads they remained. Nothing further was said about Palin making a speech.

So today, The Blame Game kicked into The Lightning Round. Somebody had to be responsible for the McCain campaign losing the election. Well frankly, there's plenty of blame to go around, although Dubya, Dick Cheney, and Barrack O'Bama strike me as the primary architects of McCain's humiliation.

But folks from the McCain campaign, who learned taking responsibility from Karl Rove and Homer Simpson ("This is everybody's fault but mine!" - Homer Simpson.), all believe that God gave them fingers so they could point them at others. It couldn't be their war hero candidate's fault, although their "He suffered horrors on behalf of America. He should get The Presidency as an automatic reward." concept turned out not to fly. (Turns out others suffered horrors in Vietnam also. Where's their presidencies? The soldiers suffering horrors in Iraq aren't even getting proper medical care, thanks to Dubya.) We all respect what John McCain endured. He's earned a comfortable retirement. And given that the hot wife he dumped his disfigured first wife for has more money than Roy E. Disney and George Lucas combined, I'd say that when he retires, it will be unbelievably comfortable. The hard part will be figuring which of his palaces to go home to each night.

But there was a handy scapegoat standing beside him: Sarah Palin. There's no question she hurt the campaign immeasurably. She was intended to attract disgruntled ex-Hilary supporters whose votes were purely gender-based, ideology be damned, an insane concept, and to attract the evangelicals and extreme right-wing nutjobs who had been Bush's core supporters. Well, she did attract the religious idiots, but no one else.

It turned out there was another constituency they had all forgotten about: reasonable, intelligent conservatives.(Yes, they exist. I've met at least two over the last 111 years.) And by the busload, Sarah Palin's nutball antics, displays of awesome ignorance, her hillbillies-in-Sak's-with-a-credit-card clothes-spending-sprees, and her off-putting baseless arrogance drove conservative voters over to O'Bama, where they cast very reluctant votes.

So it's HER fault! Yes, it's true that no one in their right mind wanted her one old man's heartbeat away from the presidency (Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity do not constitute "People in their right minds."), but who put her in that position? Who chose her as his running mate? McCain did. He shot himself in the foot, and Sarah Palin was the bullet. She is awful, but the blame is his.

So today, the people assassinating Palin's character (Hard to assassinate a completely fictional concept like "Sarah Palin's character".) were no longer we on the left. It's the members of McCain's campaign that are letting slip some juicy tidbits, like the fact that her clothes spending spree was far greater than we had been previously told. We learned that she did indeed ask to speak at the concession appearance, an amazing bit of ego there.

But the best stuff was learning that when it comes to geography, she is not smarter than a fifth grader, unless that fifth grader attends Wassila Elementary. My favorite? She thinks Africa is a country, and South Africa a region of that country. she's been so busy looking at Russia from her porch, and building bridges to nowhere, she's never glanced at an Atlas.

She repeatedly insisted she is qualified to be President of the United States, but asked to name the countries who signed NAFTA, you know, the countries on the continent on which she lives, and from which she has seldom, if ever, strayed, she couldn't do it. (Hint: it's Canada, The United States, and Mexico.)

Understand, I hate her and all she stands for, but the way she's being used as a scapegoat by the very fools who cynically foisted her on us in the first place, endangering the country to use her nutball appeal to try and curry votes from The Lunatic Fringe, is shameful. Talk about Buyers Remorse! Who is to blame for her driving voters away? They are.

Man, I hate having to defend her. She has gone back to Alaska, where a man with 7 felony convictions can still be re-elected to the United States Senate. She'll do well there. The populace is primarily composed of people who are wanted for crimes back in civilization, sort of like Australia a century and a half ago, only frigid, so when blatant crooks like Ted Stevens and Sarah Palin run for office, their crimes are a plus. I spent some time there back in the late 1920s, making the movie Eskimo Pie, in which I played The Klon Dyke, and let me tell you, the Eskimos are the most intellectually sophisticated residents they have.

On another topic altogether, if you know any Mormons, tell them to go the fuck back to Utah and roast in their own Hellish environment. Fuck the motherfucking Mormons! Little Dougie's dad was born in the Black Pit of Hell that is Salt Lake City, but his dad, Dougie's grandfather, had the good sense to flee from Utah to the civilized world of Los Angeles in 1922. And Dougie's beloved Mormon grandmother would never have voted against Dougie's own civil rights. She loved her family more than the evil church in which she was raised. (As she proved by choosing her religion-hating husband over her church.)

If you voted No on Proposition 8, then Cheers darling. If you voted Yes on 8, go to fucking hell, you piece of shit.

America is Back, Black, and Barack!!!

I have lived for 111 years, and in all that time, only a handful of nights were as glorious as this night: the night women's suffrage passed and I acquired the right to vote, the night when, inspired by my kidnapping by Kaiser Wilhelm, America won World War I, often incorrectly called "The Big One." (I've had "The Big One." It was growing out of Milton Berle's crotch. Yes, I know, but once I'd slapped a burlap bag over his head, he was great. Milton was circumcised of course, and that cast-off foreskin made a lovely belt, big enough for Jackie Gleason. Milton never told Jackie what it was made of when he gave him that "belt."), VE Day, VJ Day, BJ Day, the night I gave Delores Delgado's Oscar to Jane Wyman, the night Delores Delgado drowned in the Seine in Paris, the Moon landing, the night Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on The Moon (So what was "The Moon Landing" you ask? The day a man first landed on J-Lo's butt of course. Try to keep up!), and now the landslide election of our first Afro-Hawaiian-American President. Our slave-owning early presidents would plotz! I can hear Thomas Jefferson now saying, "Oh sure, I wrote that 'all men are created equal,' blah, blah, yadda, yadda, but I never expected to be taken literally! Can't anybody take a joke anymore? For Heck's sake, he's an N-Word!" I threw him out of bed, and he crawled off to Sally Hemming's shack, to sire more slaves.

Much as I admire Barack Hussein O'Bama (Soon to be known as BHO. Of course, no one calls Dubya GWB, but that's because it makes him sound like the date rape drug, which would be a terribly nasty thing to call the date rape drug.), so far Michelle has selfishly prevented me from finding out first-gland if he is indeed "Hung like an Hawaiian." They say he's really only half-black. I hope the black half is from the waist down, if you catch my meaning. It seems a safe bet, given that his upper half is paler than Little Dougie. As some less than racially-liberal folks have pointed out, he's black, but he's not very black. However, he's black enough that most of The Confederacy went for McCain. (Remind me again why Lincoln felt we needed to keep The South? It seems to me that we would be a lot better off without them.) Here's how Southern McCain voters now see The White House.

But here am I, asking Hussy (That's what I call The President Elect in private. Ironically, it's also what Michelle calls me!) the one question all America is now asking, The One Great Question about the new O'Bama Administration: What type of puppy will the new First Doggie be?

I sobbed all through Hussy's acceptance speech. Eventually I managed to get the chaise leg off of my foot, but I still had tears for that moving speech. I loved all that blather about little 106 year old Ann Nixon Cooper voting for him. I just wish he had chosen an old lady to yap about who didn't have Nixon in her name! You'd think a man with the middle name Hussein would know what a liability having an evil middle name can be. He could have used ME as an example. I was discarding my virginity before little Annie had filled her first diaper. But, as usual, he knew that bringing me up would inevitably result in his being completely upstaged by my glamour and fame. So he went with that nobody Cooper woman.

I know why I was crying. For 8 years I have been ashamed of being an American, as The United States followed the Fascist path of Germany in the 1930s, behind a bumbling idiot and his Satanic Vice President, Voldemort Cheney, who had illegally stolen the Presidency. When O'Bama was declared the next president, I felt that shame lift from my shoulders, and I cried because my pride in being an American was restored. We'd broken The Black Ceiling, and Jim Crow is forever buried under the rubble.

We were braced for an "October Surprise," some horror cooked up by Karl Rove to scare the country into voting for Cosmetic Change instead of Real Change. But it turned out that The October Surprise was The Stock Market Crash, and folks remembered "It's the economy, stupid!" was still true, and America wisely decided not to ask the people who created the problem to fix the problem. If someone stabs you, you don't trust that person to stitch you back up.

And what's even better than O'Bama winning? Let me put it this way:

I thought John McCain's concession speech was classy, his first classy speech in 8 years. Of course, his followers still insisted on demonstrating what douche bags they are. When, in the spirit of uniting behind the new president as One Nation Not Under God, McCain mentioned O'Bama's name, his followers booed- loudly! McCain had to quiet them. Yet when Hussy mentioned McCain's name, in the same spirit of reaching across the aisle to unite these states so disunited under Dubya's Administration of Horror (The Bush Administration was the Saw IV of presidencies.), his people applauded McCain, and were respectful.

Who must we thank for this great victory? Well certainly Sarah Palin played a big role. Exit polls from all over showed, again and again, that lifelong Republicans who had been supporting McCain and intending to vote for him, switched to voting for O'Bama, thousands, if not millions, of them voting Democratic for the first time in their lives, once they got a good gander at, and worse, listen to, Sarah Palin and realized even they didn't want that psycho-bitch one old man's heartbeat away from being president. As one person I recently read wrote: "She believes in fossil fuels, but not in fossils." (Ironic, given that her running mate was a fossil.) Somehow, we'll have to get by without a VP who can see Russia from her stoop. Back to Alaska, Sarah. I'm sorry for the moose (Mooses? Moosum? Meese?), but I'd be sorrier for us if she had won.

Besides, Tina Fey has got to concentrate on 30 Rock. She doesn't have time to go on playing that Wacko-Mom, I mean Hockey mom.

McCain of course, gets the credit (?) for choosing Palin, so he was also a big contributer to his defeat. And certainly Dick Cheney's last weekend endorsement of McCain helped push O'Bama over the top. But let's face it, the person most responsible for the election of Barack Hussein O'Bama to be the 44th President of The United States of America is none other than - envelope please - George W. Bush! Thank you Dubya. It's the first good thing you have ever done in your whole, misbegotten excuse for a life. Now go fuck off forever.

And by the way, who did Joe the (unlicensed) Plumber vote for? No one. He's a convicted felon, and can't vote.


Dubya used to make a lot of noise about having a "Mandate," despite his narrow victories, based on only a handfull of fictitious votes. In fact, his 2000 "Victory" was just five votes, all of them Supreme Court Justices who should have known better, but who were in the bag. O'Bama however, has won by a landslide, and the voters have further handed him Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. Darlings, that is more of a "Mandate" than dinner, a movie, and a motel room with Huge Jackman! (And Huge, I'm free!) I might add that, though Proposition 8 passed in California for now (FUCK YOU MORMAN CHURCH! You're a fine group to dictate "Traditional Marriage" to ANYONE! Don't think we don't remember Little Dougie's Mormon Bishop great-great grandfather William Haney Hickenlooper and his three simultaneous wives!), and Gay Marriage has been re-banned, nonetheless, Mandates are still legal.

But now the robocalls stop. I'll feel so lonely. Each time the phone rang, I thought, "It might be Mr. DeMille!" But now when the phone rings, it might actually be someone alive at the other end. "What? You're a real person I can actually converse with? How do I do that?" Fortunately, the 2012 campaign starts tomorrow, so the calls will recommence. Hilary has already declared, and on NBC, Rudy Guiliani was heard to say, "9-11. I am declaring 9-11 that I am a candidate 9-11 for president in 2911 or 2012, whichever comes first. 9-11."


All joking aside; what a great day for America. Dubya will soon be gone (And hopefully then under indictment, along with Jeb, Cheney, and all the other criminals that placed him in the White House illegally), we've shown that our ideals of equality may actually mean something, and elected an inspiring man to our highest office. There was a sigh of relief and cheering all around the earth, as people in every country breathed easier (Kenya, where our next president's African Family hails from, has declared a national holiday today, in Hussy's honor), knowing that the Evil America that has terrified them for 8 years is banished, and Good America is coming back.

Cheers darlings. Real cheer this time. To quote one of our worst presidents: It's morning in America. Time for a drink.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween darlings. It's the most spookiest time of the year, The Gay Christmas. And to be especially festive, I've posted this lovely painting of Donald Duck's Halloween done by the legendary Disney artist Carl Barks.


Speaking of Gay Christmas, there's an election next week. Did you know? They've been keeping it quiet, so few people even know about it. But with any luck, six days from now, we'll be able to speak of "President Elect Mandingo."


But if you live in California, be sure to vote NO on Proposition 8. It's just simple fairness. We call it "Equal Rights." You see it's this simple: either everyone has the same rights as everybody else, or they don't. The lying bigoted assholes behind the "Yes on 8" campaign, like the Mormon Church for instance, say "Restore Traditional Marriage". You remember "Traditional Marriage." That's when a teenage boy knocks up a Republican Governor's teenage daughter; they're forced to marry, they make each other miserable beyond belief for a few years, and then they either divorce, or one kills the other. Lovely thing, Traditional Marriage. But the thing about Traditional Marriage is, it doesn't need "restoring" because it hasn't gone away. All we've done is expand it to include everyone.


The liars say they won't be able to practise their idiot religions. Nonsense. Members of bigoted, small-minded religions, like The Mormons for instance (Odd people to champion "Traditional Marriage," since for Mormons, that involves one husband and three to ten wives. Some "Tradition."), won't be forced to perform gay weddings, they just also won't be able to force their imbecilic beliefs and tenets on other people, you know, like the way The First Amendment says they shouldn't anyway. So vote No on Proposition 8. Let everyone be miserable, not just the straight folks.



Last year for Halloween, Little Dougie told the tale of his friend Larry Vincent. it bears repeating, so feel free to click on Mister Halloween, and read it again.


However, for this Halloween, I thought I'd share a tale from my universally-available autobiography My Lush Life, this time, the tale of my scariest marriage, a very non-gay marriage that could make anyone prefer gay marriage.




If there's any name people associate with me more than my own, it's Frankenstein. Of course, in 1968, I co-starred with the divine Peter Cushing in the Hammer horror classic Frankenstein's Reason for Living. In this unusual story, Frankenstein put the brain of Jack-The-Ripper into the body of a dead female street-walker, played by me, so I was The Frankenstein Monster in that movie. It was a challenge, since I had to play a man in a woman's body. The trick to playing a man is remembering that all men think with their penises. But I don't have a penis to think with, no matter how many thousands of them I've borrowed. But then I realized that my male brain didn't have one when he was in my body either, so I didn't have to think at all!





Anyway, my story takes place many years earlier. In 1933, The Great Evil [Prohibition] was repealed, and I set out to celebrate. That was the last thing I remember before begining My Lush Life, Chapter 13:





When I awoke I was lying in my bed in Morehead Heights, next to an unfamiliar man. When I looked closer, I realized I did recognize him, and when I did, I let out a scream. I was lying, naked, next to the equally naked, Scariest Man In The World, Boris Karloff!



Boris woke up, looked over at me with his hooded, monster’s eyes, and said: "Good morning, Tallulah dear." And then leaned over and kissed me.

"Mr. Karloff," I said, "Aren’t you being a bit forward?"

"Aren’t we formal today, Mrs. Karloff?" Boris replied, and I went into shock.


What woman hasn’t woken up after a particularly Social party and found herself married to a strange man? I’m sure that’s happened to all my readers once or twice. But who else has woken up from a party and found themselves married to Frankenstein’s monster?



Not that I wish to malign dear Boris; he was actually a very nice, soft spoken, polite Englishman, with an incomprehensible, boring obsession with cricket. In any event, finding myself married to Boris Karloff was only one of the shocks I had waiting for me that morning.


Once I stirred up Terrence, he filled me in and I had the largest series of surprises since the time Mildred Puett woke me up in Tijuana more than twenty years before. The big shock wasn’t that I was Mrs. Pratt [Dear Boris’ real name was William Henry Pratt. Thank Heaven he changed it.], it was that it was 1934! My blackout had lasted just a little over a year! Honey, when I celebrate, I really cook!


Studio head Louie B. Thalberg had been furious when I’d disappeared without a trace for more than six months. One production had to be cancelled and then another had been shot with my role being played by Delores Delgado! That was the lowest blow of all! I was on suspension.


Eventually I had been found in San Francisco, working as a drag queen! Worse than that, I hadn’t been too successful. When Terrence and Major Babs came to collect me, the owner of the club where I’d been performing said to them, "Tell your friend that if he wants to be a convincing woman three words: Depilatory and Face Lift. And if he must impersonate a celebrity, why not someone other than that washed-up old hag Morehead? Now, how about settling his bar bill?" What a rude monster! How sensible of loyal Major Babs to have broken his collarbone.


Once I’d been brought back to Los Angeles, a disgusted Louie loaned me out to Metro, where I was now halfway through shooting a film with Boris Karloff, a sequel to his The Mask Of Fu Manchu called Fu Manchu’s Blessed Event! I was playing Fu Manchu’s white mistress (As with all the Fu Manchu movies, the film was wildly racist.) who gives him a son.



Yes, you read that right. It wasn’t bad enough that I’d lost an entire year in a Social Blackout, failed as an unconvincing drag queen, had missed out on two films, been replaced by the extremely untalented Delores Delgado (Thank God the film tanked at the box office), been suspended, been loaned out to Metro, was appearing in a racist piece of escapist claptrap (As opposed to the always high-class, quality films I made at PMS) and had married The Scariest Man In The World, but, worst of all, I was playing a MOTHER! Could I possibly sink any lower?


I learned the answer to that question when I arrived at Metro later that day and saw my costume.


Apparently Boris and I had had a whirlwind courtship and married three weeks into production. Further, I had been the aggressor in the relationship.


Oddly, considering that for most of the film I’m performing in a Social Stupor, I received some of the best reviews of my career, with Variety calling Boris and I "The Lunt & Fontanne of horror movies." So immediate was my fan response among the Horror Community that both Universal, the Horror Headquarters of America, and RKO, which was trying to compete with Universal for the horror dollar, asked Louie for loan-outs of me. Universal had the brilliant idea of teaming "Horror’s Big Three", namely Boris, Bela Lugosi and I, in a film that could charitably be described as "Loosely Adapted" from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Pussy. RKO wanted to feature me in HER! Louie, still disgusted with my disappearance, agreed to both films, but with one proviso; they would have to wait until I first shot a super-spectacle for him at PMS.


Paramount had had a huge success that year with Cecil Blunt DeMille’s Cleopatra, starring Claudette Colbert . Everyone expected them to turn out a sequel but DeMille instead chose other projects, announcing that there could be no sequel to Cleopatra. How wrong he was.


Our legal department had discovered that Cleopatra, Marc Antony, Egypt and the Roman Empire were actual historical personages and places and thus in the public domain. Paramount didn’t own them. Anybody could make a movie about them. Thus Louie B. Thalberg, who never saw a bandwagon he couldn’t jump on, decided that if DeMille wouldn’t make a sequel, Von Millstone would. And so I came to play the title role in PMS most expensive movie ever, The Revenge Of Cleopatra!


I played Cleopatra, of course, and Rod Towers played Caesar Augustus. Despite being a natural Platinum blonde, I played Cleopatra as a brunette, thus demonstrating the broad range of my legendary versatility. The film begins at the very moment that DeMille’s picture ended. Cleopatra lies dying of snake bite beside the body of Marc Antony. My faithful friend Polidorus, played by the immensely tall (Six foot seven) and strong character man Harry Rumpole, sucks the snake venom from my wound. [Terrence, venom-sucking expert that he was, voluntarily spent many long hard hours demonstrating snake sucking techniques to Harry Rumpole. So enthusiastic was Harry about the lessons he received that the coaching continued after the venom-sucking scene had been shot, and, in fact, even after the entire movie was completed. That’s professionalism!]

Over Antony’s body I vow revenge on Octavius who killed him and has become Emperor Caesar Augustus of Rome. With Polidorus’ help I travel to Rome, disguised as a Greek Princess, intending to make Augustus fall in love with me so I can then kill him and take over his empire.


When I get to Rome all goes according to plan. I find Caesar Augustus is under the influence of his evil wife Livia, played to perfection by Delores Delgado, and her cruel son Tiberius, played by the always amusing Vincent Lovecraft. I seduce Augustus and he falls for me hard. I’m about to kill him when we meet Jesus Christ (Spencer Hooks), when he comes to Rome with his disciples. I realize that I’m now in love with Augustus and we both convert to Christianity. With the help of Jesus and the disciples we foil the evil plans of Tiberius and Livia and kill them. Then the Roman Empire converts to Christianity and Augustus becomes the first Pope. Jesus himself gives the Pope special permission to marry me and we live happily ever after in the newly built Vatican.


As this brisk summary of what is, after all, a four hour movie, shows, unlike DeMille’s pagan orgy of gratuitous sex and violence, our film was a moving and deeply religious epic about the power of Faith to change history.


Critics were stunned by this massive film, and their reviews reflected their bewilderment: The Times wrote: "In The Revenge Of Cleopatra Miss Tallulah Morehead makes a spectacle of herself." Variety wrote: "In his Egyptian/Roman epic Cyril Von Millstone is unfettered by historical fact" The Christian Science Monitor, never my fan since I cancelled my subscription, gushed: "Miss Morehead’s performance as Cleopatra is every bit as believable as the screenplay." The London Times wrote: "Watching a movie in which Cleopatra, Caesar Augustus and Jesus Christ creep about a palace at night and stab Livia and Tiberius to death in their beds, is to understand how far civilization can sink."


Though popular, the film was simply too expensive to turn a profit and plans for a second sequel, Cleopatra Saves Atlantis, were scrapped despite the most powerful screenplay I’d ever had summarized for me, and I went off to Universal to work with my husband again, this time with Bela Lugosi as well, in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Pussy.


I hear you out there, loyal reader darlings, saying "Tallulah dear, I worship the stool you drink on, and I believe every word of this inspiring autobiography, but I’ve seen The Black Cat with Karloff and Lugosi, and you are not in it." I will explain.


I reported to work at Universal with Boris, Bela, some hopelessly plain looking little actressette named Jacqueline Wells *, and darling David Manners who was gorgeous and who I would have been all over like L’Orange on duck if it weren’t for the facts that: 1. My husband was in the film and on the set of a picture about a man who murders his faithless wife and her lover, and 2. David was just the merest whisper, if you follow me. Presiding over us was the dark, fascinating master Edgar G. Ulmer.


The film made some slight changes in Poe’s story, but basically I play Boris’ wife, who is having an affair with Bela Lugosi. (I know-insane!) Boris finds out and walls us up alive in the cellar. When the police come and knock on the fresh brick wall they hear what sounds like the wail of a bewildered kitty come from behind the partition. The police tear down the wall and find Bela and I behind it, still alive and using our last bits of oxygen to make passionate love as we die. (Well, what would you do in that situation?) The wails they heard were my passionate moans. Boris then goes completely crazy, laughing dementedly and saying over and over: "It was the pussy! It was that awful, disgusting, smelly black pussy! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" Bela and I are rescued and live happily ever after.


Unfortunately, during my blackout celebrating the return of alcoholic freedom to America, Beelzebub’s minions had conquered Liberty in another way. Lucifer’s second-in-command [The Breen Office] had inflicted Satan’s Manifesto [The Motion Picture Production Code] on the motion picture industry and the movie business had capitulated! The First Amendment was used for toilet paper for the next thirty years!


The Black Pussy was declared completely unacceptable for release, and Carl Laemmle Junior took the unprecedented steps of cutting me and my storyline out of the film altogether, instead building up a minor subplot about a devil cult that Boris runs as a hobby into the main show. The only glimpses of me in the released film that you saw were some shots of me lying in bed beside Boris, photographed through gauze netting. Another actress, a little nobody named Lucille Lund, replaced me in a few scenes as Boris’ new wife, who is supposed to be Bela’s daughter, who is killed off early. Jacqueline Wells’ and David Manners’ characters, extremely minor supporting parts in the original film, are built up into the hero and heroine. In short, the film was defaced beyond all recognition!


The Breen office even objected to the title! Classic American Literature apparently meant nothing to those barbaric cultural vandals. Hence the name change to The Black Cat, and, just to strip the icing from the cake, they even stuck a cat in the picture! Subtlety was completely lost on the philistine Mr. Breen.


By the time the ruined film was in release Boris and I were divorced. Our marriage had been placid at best, dull at worst. Boris drank in moderation, ate in moderation, made love in moderation, he was, in fact, just too English for words! But the worst thing was his inexplicable obsession with cricket! Every single weekend he attended cricket matches. I didn’t even know there were cricket matches in Los Angeles, but apparently a bunch of English misfit malcontents had some sort of cricket club and Boris never missed a game. I went with him exactly once! The game is incomprehensible, The athlete’s outfits are unsexy, and they served TEA! I’d rather talk clothes with Terrence.


At Morehead Heights things were peaceful. Boris and Major Babs (Whom Boris knew only as Illinois Smith) shared an interest in military history. Boris loved dogs and so took to Terrence’s Yorkshire terrier Felicia, and the Headless Indian Brave was frightened of Boris and avoided him.


The marriage might have worked out if Boris hadn’t been so damned curious. I had this one cupboard at Morehead Heights that I kept padlocked. Boris wouldn’t leave it alone and one day I was awakened from a sound, restful stupor by the sound of a man shrieking in terror. Not thinking clearly as I was shocked awake, I grabbed an immense butcher knife and ran upstairs, followed by closely by Major Babs. There we found Boris standing before the padlocked cupboard, which he had pried open with a crowbar. It so happened that this was the cupboard in which I kept the jars containing the "Keepsakes" I’d supposedly sliced off my late husbands in Bluebeard’s Daughter, which I kept locked up, as they were valuable movie prop souvenirs.


As it happened, I’d never told Boris they were in there, so he didn’t know they were only props made by the brilliant artisans at PMS. Boris, I’m afraid, thought they were real! Then he turned and saw me running towards him brandishing that huge knife! Well, it was too much for poor Boris. The Scariest Man In The World was terrified! He cupped his hands over his crotch, screamed: "You won’t get mine, Devil Woman!" and turned and crashed through a second floor window. Fortunately Terrence happened to be outside and broke his fall or Boris might have slipped right off the end of Tumescent Tor to certain death! As it was, both men spent four weeks in hospital.


Even after the misunderstanding was cleared up, Boris wouldn’t come back. Some traumas just strike a man too deep. We divorced on grounds of irreconcilable differences and went our seperate ways. Four husbands down. would I ever find True Love?


[I must emphasize that the Karloff family and all historical documentation denies every word of this chapter. So far as we can establish it, Tallulah was never married to Boris Karloff. We can only assume that Tallulah’s memories of making those two films with him while still recovering from her End Of Prohibition bender have eroded over the years into a false memory. Fortunately, this is a Show Business Star Autobiography, so Truth isn’t an issue. -Douglas]

Cheers darlings.

The October People

I hate October. Despite that cheery holiday Halloween, a.k.a. The Gay Christmas, it's a month of death. Little Dougie's mother died in October, 11 years ago. (Read Dougie's tribute to his mom here: Iris Genevieve Puett Dunn McEwan.), our mutual friend and mentor Bill Hudnut died in October, 16 years ago today, and Dougie's best friend, John Fugiel, died in October, 21 years ago today.(You can read Dougie's blog tribute to John Fugiel, originally posted a year ago today, right here: John Fugiel 1952 - 1987.)

Plus, they have some kind of weird ritual called "The World Series" that used to play havoc with the new TV schedules every October. However, these days, no one pays any attention to "The World Series" anymore, and it's been shuffled off to some obscure cable channel, where it no longer intereferes with TV viewing. To give you an idea of how lame it's become, this year The American League awarded its "Pennant" (A small flag shaped like The Bermuda Triangle, which is where all interest in The World Series has gone) to a Little League team!

But even the amusement factor of an amateur team playing in this World Series thing hasn't stopped the usual October Parade of Death, and celebrities have been keeling over one after the other at such a rate, one suspects that Sarah "Sure Shot" Palin has been flying over them in a Helicopter, shooting them for their clothes. (Well, you can hardly expect her to adaquately clothe herself for a measly $150,000. Gracious, I can barely buy a pair of shoes for that in our present economy. As it is, she can barely make ends meet, what with the pittance Alaska pays her to live in her own house.) And what's worse, there aren't even any candidates for The Good Ridddance List in the parade of fresh cadavers.


The closest thing to a candidate for The Good Riddance List this October has been Mr. Blackwell, who fell off the runway forever at the youthful age of 86.

Odious as this untalented poseur was, he was simply too innocuous for The Good Riddance List. However, I have never forgiven the self-infatuated dandy for his including me on his 1966 Worst-Dressed List. I do NOT dress "Worse than she smells." I have sworn affidavits from the "Noses" of three top Parisian Parfumiers, who all stated under oath that I smell much worse than I dress! And further, that my clothes smell worse than they look also. Mr. Blackwell never put me on his list again, as he claimed I had become "Too obscure to bother about." He should talk!


In any event, in 1925, John Barrymore placed me at Number 1 on his far-more-prestigious "Best Undressed List," and if there was anything Mr. Blackwell never wanted to set eyes on, it was a naked woman. The whole reason he became a fashion desgner was to keep women's bodies covered.

Actually, Mr. Blackwell was more of an out-of-fashion designer. I mean when was the last time you heard someone on a red carpet say, "I'm wearing Mr. Blackwell"? 1960? 1860? Never? For Mr. Blackwell, Project Runway meant trying to get into first class on an airplane.

Here's one of his actual dress designs, from back when he still made an effort to actually design something once in a while. Notice how he tried to "Hide the natural repulsiveness of the female body" by making it look like a big hairy penis. I might suck this dress, but I wouldn't wear it.

Mr. Blackwell was a shy, modest, self-effacing man. Here he is recently, seen in his tasteful, understated living room. This man made Jerry Lewis seem shy.

Mr. Blackwell is survived by Mrs. Blackwell, and all the little Blackwells, including 7 imaginary grandchildren, and hundreds of imaginary mourners.


Another death this month, one that actually is a loss, was magnificent singer Levi Stubbs, who died prematurely at 71.

Levi was the lead singer for the legendary group, The Four Tops.

When I told Little Dougie that Levi was one of The Four Tops, he squealed, "I LOVE The Four Tops! They make me feel like Heaven!" However, as it turned out, Dougie was mixed up, and was thinking of a different set of four tops.

Anyway, Levi Stubbs was an incredible singer, as well as a movie star. Here he is singing a love duet with Rick Moranis in the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors, which he sang so well that the song, I'm a Mean, Green Mother From Outer Space, was nominated for an Oscar. In the movie, Stubbs was playing Karl Rove.

By the way, Little Shop of Horrors, was a musical remake of a classic 1960 Roger Corman horror comedy that starred Jonathon Haze as Seymour Krelboin. As it happens, Jonathon is one of my most devoted fans. In fact, when Little Dougie was pointing out to Haze's Little Shop co-star Jackie Joseph, her mention in my beliked book My Lush Life, Jonathon made a point of mentioning how much he'd loved it when he read it. (No joke!) Here's how he looked in the original film.

"Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?" said lovely Edie Adams in many a commerical for noxious, foul-smelling, cancerous cigars 40 years ago. She looked beautiful, but thanks to Murial cigars, she smelled worse than I do, and it's probably the carcinogens she peddled that are responsible for her youthful demise at 81 this month. Here she is on the cover of TV GUIDE magazine, nuzzling a cigar store wooden Indian. My longtime companion, the Headless Indian Brave, may have no head, but at least he doesn't smell like an ashtray, and he never gives off splinters.

Edie had little choice about the commercials though. When her husband, legendary comedian and TV pioneer Ernie Kovaks, was killed in an automobile accident, he owed the IRS over $500,000, and Edie chose to do the ads to work off Ernie's debt rather than declare bankruptcy. I suspect she'll bring this up now that they're reunited in TV Heaven..

Edie won a Tony Award for playing the original Daisy Mae in the Broadway musical Li'l Abner, in which she sang the song I'm Past My Prime. That was 51 years ago, so she was well past her prime by now. She also sang You Can tell When there's Love in a Home, although really, you can only tell if the bed squeaks or if one of them is a screamer. (And frankly, if Peter Palmer were nailing me, I'd be howling like a banshee!)

She was in a number of movies, ranging from great (The Apartment, The Best Man) to lousy (Under the Yum-Yum Tree, Call Me Bwana, The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood), and she played that slut Mae West in a TV movie about Ernie, in which she herself was played by Melody Anderson, but I always think of her first in the Sinnerama comedy spectacular It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

In this next shot, that's Edie at the left end. The winner of the It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World cast tontine is several steps closer to being declared. In fact, it's pretty much down to Mickey Rooney, Jonathon Winters, and Stan Freberg now. Go Stan!

This next photo must be from her last film appearance, a cameo in Oliver Stone's current release, W.

This is 1950s game show host Jack Narz.

Jack was a mere 85 when he left the planet this month. Half a century ago, Jack was Little Dougie's favorite game show host, the Jeff Probst of The Eisenhower Years. It was Jack's show Dotto, a favorite of Dougie's, that launched the quiz show scandals of that era, but Jack wasn't to blame.

Among the many shows Jack hosted were Concentration, 7 Keys, Video Village, and Beat the Clock. Little Dougie never met Narz, though he did work once with his brother, Tom Kennedy. Yes that's right. Jack Narz was the least known member of The Kennedy Clan.

Composer Neal Hefti died this month at 85, though we should not consider it rough justice for his having composed the theme song for the Batman TV series.

Bear in mind that I appeared as a guest villain on Batman once, as The Drunkard, so I endured that "Music" in person. I understand that, on the scaffold, just before they swung the trap out from under him, the last thing Saddam Hussein ever said was, "At least I won't be best remembered for having written: 'Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Batman'."

Here's Adam West, wearing a mask to hide his shame, trying to dance The Batusi while sticking fingers in his ears to block the sound of Hefti's Batman music. The laugh is on West. He couldn't get his fingers through the purple cowl.

And they just keep on dropping. 1950s Los Angeles TV "Personality" Chucko the Birthday Clown popped off this month after only 86 birthdays. Although his real name was Charles Runyon, even his wife and little Chucko Jr (His son, not his dick. Get your minds out of the gutter.) only knew him as Chucko.


Little Dougie met Chucko once, at a supermarket appearance in Torrance, when he was still young enough to be impressed by a clown. The upside of Chucko's death is that, as the mascot of birthdays, now that he's dead, no one will have birthdays any more. Fine with me. I wasn't looking forward to being 112.

Chucko was quite the entertainer, doing a live morning show 5 days a week with a studio full of kids, all of whom were having their birthdays. I'd have been shooting the tots with an Uzi by the second day. He always opened his show with this song:

"I'm Chucko, I'm Chucko,

I'm Chucko the Birthday Clown.

I'm Chucko. I'm Chucko.

I'm the happiest clown in town."

And just why was Chucko so happy? Well he explained that in the song's release:

"Christmas comes but once a year, but I come every day."

I was happy for him and all (Ulp! Maybe all that "Clown White" wasn't make-up!), but it didn't really seem an appropriate thing to brag about on a children's show. Here he is doing his fabled impression of Judy Garland.

Just as Edie did ads for cancerous smokes that both looked and smelt like turds (What's sexier than smoking a cigar? How about the turd banquet scene in Pasolini's Salo?), so did Chucko do ads that taught kids that the way to health and happiness was popping pills. Such great wisdom in one so white.

But as I've said before, the fewer clowns the better. Here's a scary thought; of this terrifying trio, the only one still alive is Pennywise the Dancing Clown. (And yes, you sharp-eyed ones, that picture of Chucko was taken at Disneyland.)

But let's end up on a positive note: Here's not only a good thing that happened this October, but it will bring a happy anniversary back on each October henceforth. Readers of my above-mentioned, award-adjacent autobiography My Lush Life will remember my musical director Bryan Miller, and my #1 fan Gilmore Rizzo. Well last week, on October 11th, they got gay married.


Here's me, Little Dougie (Wearing Bob Mackie. No kidding. Bob Mackie!), and adorable Little Greg Stanford, "The Ring Bare-er," (Wearing "God". Nice fabric!) at the wedding, in which Dougie, a lifelong bachelor, played "Marriage." Now Dougie playing Marriage; THAT is a "Threat to Marriage"!

And here's the Happy Couple. What do you say we keep them that way? So if you live in California, be sure and vote NO! on Proposition 8. After all, a vote for Propostion 8 is a vote for bigotry! How do these two guys sharing house payments and raising dogs threaten anyone else's marriage?

And while you're at it California voters, vote No on Proposition 11 also. It's a Republican power grab. This is the year the Republcians LOSE! And all Americans, vote for O'Bama! We can make America something to be proud of once again.

Cheers darlings.

Hibernating Beauty

As I look down at the world from my parapet here atop Morehead Heights, waiting for the delivery van from The Liquor Barn to arrive, these are some of my current observations:


This week Disney DVD released a new edition DVD of its 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty. This has created a bit of a crisis for Little Dougie. You see, he has the 2003 release 2-disc "Special Edition." The 2003 release says, right on the packaging, "The Ultimate Fairy-Tale In The Ultimate Format!" It has "An innovative digital restoration," and "All-New state-of-the-art digital picture and sound."



So now comes today's release in, apparently, The Post-Ultimate Format, featuring a restoration of the restoration, that makes the 2003 restoration "Look like raw sewage spewed from under a zoo for digestively-diseased animals!" Roy Disney appears on a trailer for this release saying, "Once you have seen Sleeping Beauty in this new, enhanced, engorged, and restored digital restoration and anti-diluvian resurrection edition, with bonus extras, extra extras, extra bonus extras, and bonus extra bonuses, you would only use your 2003 DVD release to wipe the shit from your ass, except shit deserves better."


So Dougie can't decide if he should pony up another $14 for a 75-minute movie he already has a spectacularly good DVD of. Admittedly, one of the extras on the new release is a spell that, when you hit "Play" on the extra menu, it conjures up the ghost of Eleanor Audley in your living room, or where ever you happen to be when watching it, for you to ask Disney-approved questions of as you enjoy the movie. Just don't bring up working with Lucy.


You see, for his 9th birthday, Little Dougie got taken to see Sleeping Beauty in its original release, at The Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills, in 70mm Technorama and stereophrantic sound. He loved the movie, and came out of it knowing exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to grow up to be Maleficent!


Well, who could blame him? There are drag queens aplenty in his life, but Maleficent is a Dragon Queen. She's a Queen (of Evil, natch!), and she's a dragon! She wears cool looking robes, she parties day and night with some little devils and demons, she ropes in handsome princes and keeps them chained up as sex slaves in her dungeons (Until some buttinski little fairies let them out. Meddlers!), and she makes great entrances! This is Dougie's Dream Lifestyle!

Which may help explain why, the first time Little Dougie glimpsed Morehead Heights, my luxurious movie star mansion lodged ever-less-firmly astride massive Tumescent Tor, he shrieked - I mean exclaimed,"Oh my God, it's Maleficent's Castle!" You see, it is. My house was used for both the exteriors and the interiors of Maleficent's Castle in Sleeping Beauty. Walt said that my house had a "Uniquely 2-dimensional quality." In fact, he said my house was "Such a cartoon," he had to use his multi-plane camera to fake a three dimensional look to the live shots.

I was originally cast as Maleficent. Long-time fans, mine and Disney's, know that I played the Wicked Queen in his Snow White sequel, 7 Brides for 7 Dwarfs, so it should be no surprise that, when Walt needed his most evil queen of all, once it was clear that Darryl Zanuck would not release Clifton Webb to play the role, that they should come to me next.

Here I am being tested for the role in full make-up and costume. Sonja Henie played the dragon, only they hadn't worked up the make up or costume for the dragon yet, which is why Sonja is in her street clothes and normal face in this test shot.

It didn't work out for me to play the role. For some reason, whenever I put on the costume, it made me extremely horny! It was so pronounced, you could see it in the picture! Now, I was born horny and will die horny (assuming I ever die at all, and the jury is still out on that. I am, after all, a Screen Immortal!), but being so horny that it distorts the silhouette of my turban into that of a rampant bull created certain problems when working at Disney Studios. They were not the most sex-friendly studio in town. Nor was there a wet bar on the set. (I had to go to Walt's Office for a drink!) I was told to keep away from The Mousketeers. It was always "Leave Bobby alone! Hands off of Cubby! Whose lipstick stains are these all over Annette's training sweater?" Finally I was fired, after an incident involving tail feathers (not mine!), some bird-brained behavior, and some very lousy extemporizing by Huey, Dewey, and Louie. And they sure as hell weren't Mousketeers, so what's the beef? (Oh Dewey, Dewey, Dewey. I've never forgotten that magic thing you used to do with your bill!)

Mallufulah was never to be. Eleanor Audley got the role, but I never sought revenge. The poor woman did a lot of episodes of I Love Lucy. That's punishment enough for anyone. OJ better hope for more leniency.

But now, from out of The North, comes a new Maleficent, bane of moose, wolves, and unmarried horny teenagers, Russian expert, and one of the few who recognize the truth that dinosaurs and humans co-existed, as I have demonstrated in my dinosaur trilogy: 1,000,000 Years Ago, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Block, and Jurassic Tart, though, according to Ms. Palin, that first movie couldn't have taken place earlier than 10,000 Years Ago.

Sarah "Welcome to the 13th Century" Palin is truly Presidential timber. She's from Big Timber Land, where The Big Bad Wolf gets shot by Soccor Moms from helicopters piloted by Joe Six-Pack, and sometimes his half-Injun brother, Joe Two-Six-Packs. Good Lord; she was unknown a month ago, and now she has dropped more catch-phrases and catch-words into The American Lexicon than a whole season of Saturday Night Live in the mid-1980s:

"We're Mavericks!"

"You Betcha!"

"Soccor Moms and Joe Six-Packs."

"Victim Pays for Her Own Rape Kit."

"I'm an outsider."

"Media Filters."

"Gotcha Questions."

"Abstinence Only."

"Stupidity is Non-Elitist."

"Can I call ya Joe?"

"I know a gay person - well not 'know' in the Biblical sense, and all Real Sense comes from The Bible, so I know many gay people, I've just never met any."

"Main Street Values."

"Knowin' Stuff is over-rated."

"Barack Obama is BFFs with a Terrorist/Former Chicago Citizen of the Year."

I do look forward to the day, it must be soon, when Sarah Palin pricks her finger, perhaps on The Needle of Truth, and goes back into hibernation through the next Ice Age (Global Anti-Warming), until reawakened by Prince Nutjob Successionist as he lays on her True Love's First Abstinence.

For True Love Conquers Brains!

Cheers darlings.