Happy Birthday to ME!

What a milestone darlings! I'm 110 today! I hope all of you feel this good when you're 110, except for you temperance crusaders! Fuck you, jerkwads! Of course, temperance crusaders don't live to be 110; it just feels that long.

I'm able to take the time to dictate this to Little Dougie, as most of my close friends can't materialize, or rise from their coffins until after Sundown, so the party doesn't really get rolling until then. Isn't it odd that most of my friends are dead? I have an alibi! In fact, I have alibis for all of them, and they number in the hundreds, and if you add lovers, the tens of thousands.

Anyway, the Headless Indian Brave was at his still all last night (and on Memorial Day, a ghost's busiest day short of Halloween. So many gentlemen callers!), making his special brand of firewater, to fire up the celebration. You know you've had a really great birthday party if, when you wake up afterwards (or these days, if you wake up afterwards.), you find you are two years older! A truly memorable birthday party is one you can't remember at all. You know, a second childhood only comes once. Thank heaven for third childhoods.

As to presents: ladies, vodka is always appreciated. Men, a good, hard shag is the best thing to unwrap. Line up, Tarzans. Who's on first?


Bud, Lou, darlings!


Cheers all.

PS. I mentioned in yesterday's flogging that Little Christopher Lee, a babe in arms of 85, was shooting Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Well Little Chris subscribes to this flog, naturally, so he can read each one the instant it's posted. Thus today, I received an urgent she-male from Chris. I assumed that he was letting me know his wife of more than 40 years, Gitte Lee, was finally out of town (He's told me he'd throw me one just as soon as his wife went out of town for a day. That was in 1968, and the possessive bitch hasn't left his side for ten minutes since. At least that's what I'm assuming, since he still hasn't called.), but actually he was she-maling me to say he's been cut from Sweeney Todd. His whole role, as a ghost, has been cut. (The Headless Indian Brave was up for the part, but sadly, he doesn't show up on film, which is a real drawback for a film actor, except for Pauly Shore of course.) Fortunately. it was cut before he wasted any time actually shooting it. So everyone out there, refuse to see Sweeney Todd when it comes out, and let them know it was because they cut Christopher Lee. And then send Little Gitte a telegram telling her she's needed in Dafur immediately. Cheers dears.





PS. Oh, and it's also Little Douglas's birthday. The decrepit old curmudgeon is 57. Send him a birthday greeting if you feel like it, but it's not necessary. You'll only spoil him.

A Very Scary Birthday

Is there something particularly scary about the Zodiac sign Gemini? I should know, as I am one, but this weekend is the horror festival of birthdays. You see that photograph above? Well all of those frightening men are having their birthdays this weekend, two of them today! Yesterday, May 26th, was the 94th birthday of the late great Peter Cushing (Lower right), with whom I appeared in Frankenstein's Reason For Living. Tuesday, May 29th, is the 92nd birthday of my dear old chum, horror icon Guy Thanatos (Lower left), with whom I appeared in East vs. West and Doctor Scary. (I've never before noticed how much Guy looks like Little Douglas would look if Douglas were talented.) And today, May 27th, is the birthdays of both Vincent Price (Upper right), with whom I appeared in The Haunting of Horrible House, and Christopher Lee (Upper left), with whom I appeared in Bats in My Belfry. (Peter Cushing was in that one also.) Were Vincent still alive, he would be 96, while Christopher, the infant of the group, is alive and happily 85 today.

That amazing picture was taken for the one and only movie when all four of these wonderful horror icons appeared together in the same picture. Rather than describe it to you myself, allow me to insert here a couple paragraphs from Guy's forthcoming autobiography, My Gruesome Life, ghost written by Little Douglas himself.

I made one film that year, Habitation of the Hideous, with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and I finally all together, not merely in the same movie, but in the same scenes, demonstrating the chemistry that had kept us apart for decades. In the picture, a young couple, played by Steve Guttenberg and Larraine Newman, during a violent rainstorm, stumble into a spooky old house inhabited by the four of us, in what looks to me like a four-way gay marriage, although I don’t think that’s what the writer, if there was one, had in mind. But I’ll be damned if I know why these three old men and mature-but-perky me are sharing a house.


We stalk about, menacing them for seventy-five minutes, and then morning comes and they leave. There was next to no script, plot or story. There was certainly no budget or point, and my check, when it came, bounced.


One critic who shall be nameless complained that: "This elderly quartet is about as menacing as a newborn kitten. Lee has his resonant voice trying in vain to give a swirl to incredibly flat dialogue, Cushing is supremely unconcerned with the lackadaisical goings on and seems to be floating in his own private world, Price chews the scenery apparently from hunger, and Guy Thanatos hasn’t got enough to do to rise even to his usual level of awful, and is merely bad. Was there really a time we were scared by these grandiose grandfathers?" After begging us for years to make a movie together, our fans responded to our granting their fondest wish by staying home and ignoring this picture. Would you care to explain to me why you skipped it?

As it happens, May 29th is also my birthday, more on that on Tuesday's flogging, and --- What's that Douglas? Tuesday is your birthday too? I know that. But you're not a celebrity, so who gives a bat's fart? As I was saying before Little Douglas made his pathetic bid for attention, that one year, Vinnie, Pete, Chris, and I all celebrated together. (Guy was in England at the time, making a tremendously bad movie.) This picture was taken at that party, right before I shagged the three of them, in the most horrifying orgy since the Emperor Caligula died.

How coincidental is it that Vinnie and Chris have the same birthday? The two men are nothing alike, apart from being immensely tall, tremendously talented, and possessed of magnificent voices. I think this picture shows just how utterly dissimilar they are.

I am sometimes asked if Vincent was gay. To quote a famous woman with a name quite similar to mine: "Well, he never sucked my dick." In his later years, the thrice-married, father of two Vincent was known to have admitted to being bisexual, which I'm sure was a huge shock to any fans who had seen his campy performances, observed his fey personal style, listened to him lecture on art, or watched him in a kitchen, brandishing his whisk. All I know is that when he was rehearsing his famous one-man show as Oscar Wilde, the one suggestion his director and every critic gave him was "Butch up!" But to address that question, here's a photograph that was clearly taken just as Vincent was preparing to give Peter Lorre head. And I know Peter was straight!

In addition to movies, Vinnie did a tremendous amount of TV, by which I mean television, not transvestites, though I wouldn't rule them out either. This lovely picture is of Vincent and Patricia Routledge, in the scariest episode of Keeping Up Appearances ever, which is odd, given that that wonderful series started right around the time Vinnie passed away.

Anyway, Vincent was a wonderful, intelligent, sophisticated man, a great actor, a ham who did it with style and class, and a warm man whom, it was often said, could make friends with anybody. Talk about tolerant, the man even got along with Delores Delgado, and even Will Rogers despised that hateful sow. Oh, and Vinnie was incredibly funny as well.

Hard as it is to believe from his long career playing villains, and mean, cutting, severe, nasty people with short tempers, Christopher Lee is very funny offscreen also. He's particularly known for his amazing impression of Cher. Here are three different pictures taken over the decades, of Lee doing his Cher impersonation. Chris is the scariest tranny on the planet.

Christopher Lee is also one of the smartest men in movies. He speaks 7 languages, and reads several more. Most actors today can barely speak even one. He has actually appeared in more movies than any other big star. Check out his IMDb resume. His film list is almost 300 movies. Over the last decade, he has appeared in Sleepy Hollow, two Star Wars movies, all three Lord of the Rings films, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Corpse Bride. That is eight box office hits in a row! That's better than Harrison Ford in the 1980s. He's the biggest star in the world! And right now, he's shooting the Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet. Did I mention he sings? And not just American Idol pop stuff. Lee is a full-on operatic bass, and has sung in operas all over the world, in those 7 languages he sings. And you should hear him beatbox!

And as if that's not enough, he's also a war hero. During World War II (You may have read about WWII. It was in all the papers, and I think they made a movie about it.) he was a spy for British Intelligence, not a movie spy; the real thing. The man IS James Bond! He risked his life going undercover, behind enemy lines. Most of his war record is still classified. One can imagine how amused he must have been when he played a Bond villain in The Man With the Golden Gun, opposite the pathetic Roger Moore, since Lee is the genuine article. I don't know how he kept a straight face.

Here's another lovely picture of him, from 1980:

Hold on. Douglas, is that you in that picture with Chris? I do wish you'd stop intruding into my postings. How is it that these days, you look a whole lot older and far less attractive than you do in that picture, while Chris, at 85, still looks great? When did you pass him?

No matter. You know, sometimes people think that horror stars aren't really fine actors, like Olivier and Brando and Pauly Shore. But Peter Cushing was a wonderful actor (As Osric, he STEALS the movie of Hamlet away from Olivier completely!), Vincent Price was peerless, and Chris Lee (Who is also in Hamlet by the way.) could teach everyone how it is done.

For that matter, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff were masters as well. German genius playwright Bertolt Brecht said many times that Peter Lorre was his favorite actor in the world, and he wrote A Man's a Man just for him. (What a redundantly titled play. The sequel? More of the Bleeding Obvious.) Boris is one of my ex-husbands, no matter what his family says. (Co-incidentally, Lee has played my third husband, Count Vlad Tepes, in more than ten movies. The man wants me so badly that he keeps playing my tragic ex-hubby just so he can go on pretending he's married to me.) Boris was a terrific actor, and one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild. His SAG card number was a single digit. Where did the idea that horror stars were lousy actors come from?

Oh yes.

This lovely shot is of Bela Lugosi's little known interpretation of Stanley Kowalski in summer stock. I believe that Tennessee Williams suggested they retitle that production, A Streetcar Named Hambone! I toured in Streetcar (The play, not in a streetcar - I think.) in the 1980s, opposite Bob Denver as Stanley, and it was said that next to Lugosi's Stanley, Bob's Stanley was Tony-worthy. (Although, when questioned, they did tend to admit they meant worthy of Toni Tennielle.)

Happy Birthday Chris. And Pete,Vinnie, and Guy, wherever you are, natal felicitations to you too. Thanks for the scares. They don't make 'em like you anymore.

Cheers darlings.

We Have To Give Back!

You know darlings, sometimes my life is just plain weird. Maybe a handful of you remember a Ken Russell science-fiction movie a few decades back called Altered States, in which William Hurt, back when he was sexy (Am I the only person old enough to remember when Hurt was hot? Oh. I am.), took a spiritual journey on hallucinogens, and found himself mutating into odd life forms, much like his career has ever since. Well darlings, the map may say that Morehead Heights is in California, but I assure you that Altered is the state I've been living in for the last century. And I've never taken an hallucinogen gratuitously in my life. How well does LSD or Mescaline mix with vodka, anyway? I can't remember.


But this week has been something else. It was American Idol Finale Week, although this American Idol isn't holding her finale any time soon. On Tuesday evening, I was supposed to attend the finale performance show at the Kodak Theater in order to write a review of it for Little Kent Levine's flog, "By Kent Levine," as he couldn't be bothered, since he was busy taking Sanjaya Maladroit to a Hula Prom on Maui. But I was turned away at the door through some horrible mix-up that I'm sure is all Kent's fault. Nonetheless, professional that I am, I managed to watch the show on a cell phone in the cab coming home, and dictate my review to Little Dougie, who she-maled it to Little Kent, who then posted it under the title AMERICAN IDOL: and then there were two. You can read it by clicking on it's title.

However, I am not in the habit of being turned away like some nonentity (You know, like you.), though I am open to being turned around. More on that below. I was still determined to have my Kodak Theater moment, so on Wednesday evening I showed up there again, but this time at the stage door, claiming to be Paula Abdul. At first, the Crusty Old Stage Manager objected that I looked nothing like Miss Abdul, but I told him how I had tripped over my pet Great Dane, Baskerville (He's so hard to notice), and had landed on the floor face first, so I was completely smashed, and thus unrecognizable. The Crusty Old Stage Manager bought that one, since I had fallen face-first onto the floor no less than three times just while telling him about it, and anyone even casually glancing at me from 100 yards away could see that I was undeniably smashed. "I'm terribly sorry, Miss Abdul," the Crusty Old Stage Manager said, "I didn't realize it was you. You're so much more sober than usual. Gosh; you look much younger in person."

So now, not only was I backstage at the Kodak, but I was being escorted to Paula's dressing room, which in her case, is really an undressing room. I found it's mirror opens up like a door, and when you pass through the looking-glass, it has a secret passage to the male contestant's dressing room. On the wall in the passageway, I found "The Phantom loves Christine" written in lipstick inside a heart in Lon Chaney's handwriting, which is particularly amazing when you consider that the Kodak Theater wasn't built until 70 years after Lon died.

After watching through the one-way mirror as Brandon Rogers changed his underwear, I charged into the room, determined to teach Brandon what pleasuring an American Idol was all about. However, no sooner had I made a flying tackle of young Brandon, than we were hustled out to shoot the above photograph. So I never got rogered by Rogers. "Drat!" as Bill Fields always said when he found I'd polished off his Jack Daniels while he was in the men's room.

Once back in Paula's dressing room, I found some Mormon sugar cubes lying about in plain sight, sewn into the lining of a coat placed in a secret compartment inside a locked drawer in the wall safe. I assume they were Mormon, as they had the initials LDS stamped right on them, I think. I can be a tad dyslexic if my vodka isn't fresh-squeezed. Anyway, I dropped one into my gin and lemon, which was a teensy bit tart, and drank it down.

My old chum Bette Midler dropped by just about then, on her way to sing The Breeze Beneath My Knees, or whatever that ghastly song is. She was drinking a cup of coffee for some reason (WHAT, I ask you, is the appeal of coffee? Not only is it's stench unbearable, not only is it's taste revolting, but the damned devil's brew will sober you up! Just thought I'd warn any coffee virgins out there. One place you will never run into me is a Starbucks.), so I thoughtfully dropped the other cube into her coffee without mentioning it to her, and she went out to sing her number, which may explain a lot about that performance. Who knew coffee could make you sing flat?

But as Bette was out destroying her formerly peerless musical reputation onstage, things grew hazy, and I became dizzy and disoriented. This, in and of itself, isn't alarming. In fact, it's desirable. Clarity is vastly overrated. But as the world whirled around me and I reached out to Brandon for support, I must have blacked out. On the upside, I missed the rest of Bette's song.

When I woke up, I was lying on a tropical beach. I might have been alarmed then, but frankly, this isn't the first time this has happened to me. Read chapter 24 of my semi-best-selling autobiography, My Lush Life, to learn of another occasion when I drifted off in Hollywood, and woke up in Hawaii.

This island paradise was not Hawaii however, even though it looked exactly like our 50th altered state. I knew it wasn't Hawaii, because Little Kent was nowhere to be seen, and there were no hula-dancing Sanjayas either. What was there were tents, a polar bear, and the remains of an airliner. What there was not, was an open wet bar, although everything else was wet. I looked in both of my hands, and they were empty! My drink was --- was --- LOST!

Fortunately, I found the liquor stocks were still intact in the stewardess station in the plane wreckage. What a lifesaver! As it happens, this not being my first disaster, I am more prepared than a Boy Scout. (What a myth that is. Never in all my years, have I found a boy scout to have a condom when needed.) My Joan Crawford "Drill Me" pumps easily convert into flats, the better for staggering about on sand, and the removeable high heels become martini glasses. But still, there were no olives. Reduced to barbarity already! I felt like the Lord of the Flies, only I saw no flies anywhere to unzip and lord it over.

I was just settling in with my third drink, when Dr. Jack Shepherd came running out of the woods (How did I know his name? Another mystery!), being chased by the foulest-tempered column of second hand smoke I've ever seen. If anyone ever tells you that second hand smoke doesn't kill, you tell them to ask Mr. Eko. Jack was hollering something about how "The Others" were coming.

"Well, hold up a minute, Jack," I said, "Give me a second to floss and undress, and we can be coming too."

"No time!" he screamed, although a real man makes time.

"Besides," said Benry, who was tied to a nearby tree, his bloody face bearing testament to the rough sex he'd been indulging in (Not my thing at all.), "If you get pregnant on this island, you'll die."

"Darling," I said to Benry, "If he can get me pregnant, I will die --- of amazement! I'm less than a week away from being 110. My meno hasn't just paused. You can stick your arms and legs outside of the vehicle, because it's come to a complete halt."

"But," Benry replied, tremendously talkative for a man spouting blood from his mouth, "The island heals people. Just ask Locke or Jin."

"Well unlock that gin and break it out, darling." I said, "Get enough gin into me, and I'll do both of you. I'm just kidding. I'll do both of you anyway. But I'm not kidding about unlocking the gin."

"No time," said Jack, "We have to get to the transmitter."

"I have time." said Tom Sawyer, who was whitewashing a nearby fence. Noticing that Sawyer was every bit as yummy as Jack, and actually in better shape, I was only too happy to show him some of my own personal Dharma & Greg Initiative. Sawyer was "Up" for it, in every sense. He pressed my buttons, and our good vibrations could have knocked 20 airliners out of the sky, though that would have hopelessly overcomplicated a plot that's already impossible to follow.

But then my cell phone started jingling the Heat Crazed title song (My first hit record and my personal theme song.), and Jack yelled, "He's done it. The ringbearer's quest is ended. Frodo has cast the ring into the underwater hatch, and we're saved!"

"Fabulous darling," I replied, "Why don't we celebrate with a three-way shag, while Benry just watches?" But before I could lift my heels back into the air, something I can usually do very rapidly, we flashed-forward, and suddenly Jack and I were on a bridge over the Mighty Los Angeles River, where a terrible car wreck was occurring just off-camera, which is the cheapest way to stage an accident. Jack, suddenly unconvincingly bearded, grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "We have to give back!"

Although giving back isn't my usual thing (as opposed to Little Dougie, who lives for nothing else.), I remembered just a few weeks ago, when American Idol Gives Back raised millions of dollars for all the adorable African children waiting to be adopted by American film stars, by giving back on a huge scale. Everyone in Hollywood is into giving back, although Ryan is still denying it. We're naturally generous that way.

For instance, here's a shot from an episode of the lovely TV series Six Feet Under, of some nice Hispanic merest whisper giving back to Ricardo Antonio Chavira, who plays Carlos Solis on Desperate Housewives. Ricardo is, in my humble and always abject opinion, the hottest of the Desperate Husbands.

I can only assume that during American Idol Gives Back, Little Simon Scowell and Extremely Little Ryan Seechest were giving back right and left. And now, here was Dr. Jack telling me "We have to give back." As I said, it's not my preferred way of making ends meet, but on an island where my fried eggs might turn fertile, and pregnancy is always fatal, perhaps it's a good idea. True, we weren't on the island any more, but you never know when one might flashback to it, so why take chances? As Jack requested, I turned around, and reached for my toes.

And suddenly, here I was, back at Morehead Heights again, lying on my chaise, mouth open, empty vodka bottles scattered all around, the TV running, the Headless Indian Brave snoozing on the settee. What had happened? Where had I been? Where is that island? Why are The Others so nasty? How does eye-patch guy always recover from his numerous deaths? (Is he a cheerleader? He's certainly no hero, the hobbit-drowning swine!) How does Hurley stay so plump on an island? How could Melinda not have won? Who's the better lay, Jack or Sawyer? Why did the judges put Sanjaya on the show in the first place? If it's only been a couple weeks, why is Walt suddenly so much bigger? I'm Lost!

One thing I am certain of; this is the last time I get drunk with Hiro Nakamura, even if his father is Mr. Sulu, who has given his fair share of back over the years, I assure you.

Cheers darlings.

Miss Take Liberties

Hello darlings. Do you love the above statue? It's called "Miss Take Liberties" and the plan is to erect it it in Hollywood Harbor, so that when boatloads of poor, immigrant movie stars come to California from far off, third world hellholes like Burma, New Zealand, Catalina Island, and Flagstaff, they'll see The Greatest Star Who Never Lived, and be inspired. The inscription reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, your no-talent movie stars, yearning to take liberties. I lift my martini by my golden doughnut." It always brings a tear to my eye.


And for me, after a lifetime of inspiring and containing large, proud erections, now I will actually be a huge erection myself! A dream come true, once they build the full-size one.

Anyway, I just wanted to leave you a quick note. I'm watching American Idol tonight for Little Kent Levine. Sometime probably after midnight, my comments will be posted on his flog, By Ken Levine. Be sure to click on that link and read it. Kent needs the hits.

Now look at this lovely picture:

That's Little Lord Laurence Olivier and beloved Tallulah-Morehead-wannabe Marilyn Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl, or, as it was originally titled, The Prince and the Slut. Today happens to be both of their birthdays. Marilyn would be 80 today, and Larry would be 100!

Neither are truly favorites of mine. Larry was so overrated. I saw him in Hamlet, and I couldn't understand a word of it. If you're going to do a movie in a foreign language, you should at least include subtitles. And he was married for years to that tramp Vivien Leigh, the bitch who stole Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche Dubois from ME! Then Larry won an Oscar for playing Hamlet, a role he only got because he was sleeping with the director. (Look it up on the IMDb; you'll see I'm right.) I grew a little respect for him when he sensibly dumped Viv for Danny Kaye. Did you know Vivien Leigh was the Lust Child of Janet Leigh and Vivien Vance? Absolutely true, as the Headless Indian Brave is my witness.

As for Marilyn; the woman copied me slavishly, right down to the substance abuse. I'd love to see her at 80. I wonder if her world-famous breasts would have the same problem mine have now. I get these bruises on the underside of them which my doctor realized were toe marks. I kick them as I walk. Thank Heaven I'm barely ambulatory these days. Marilyn starred in Gentlemen Prefer Blonds. The title is true, but not the obverse. Blonds Prefer Men Who Are No Gentlemen, and I speak as someone who has been a platinum blond for most of my adult life.

Speaking of birthdays, mine is a week from today. Presents can be sent to me c/o of Morehead Heights. What do you get for the woman who's had everyone? Well, vodka is always the right size.

Now I've got to get to the Kodak Theater. Click on By Ken Levine and read me there, and I'll be back with a longer flogging in a day or two.

Cheers darlings.

Clancy Has Lowered the Boom.

In my last flogging, I gloated over the death of Jerry Falwell, merely because he was a toxic pestilence on American Society, and a man of profound ignorance who nonetheless fancied himself an educator. There are those who insist one mustn't speak ill of the dead. What do fools like that have to say about Hitler? That he liked kittens, and sometimes went whole days without murdering anyone? Hell, the best thing about someone being dead is you can say whatever you like about them, and they can't answer back.


Still, I prefer to say nice things about dead people, unless they're Delores Delgado, that bitch! After all, when you're only 10 days away from being 110, you realize you may soon need as many friends among the dead as you can amass. I can't spend eternity just hanging out with the Headless Indian Brave. Come to think of it, I've spent several years alive now, just hanging out with the Headless Indian Brave, and Little Douglas of course, who isn't dead, just his social life. So today I get to say nice things about a dead person, even though I'd never heard of him before two days ago.

Why am I flogging about a dead stranger I've never heard of? Because Little Douglas asked me to. He had heard of Fulton Burley, the Irish tenor in the picture at the top of this page. Little Dougie had more than heard of him; he'd seen him perform live upwards of 20 times over the years, in something called The Golden Horseshoe Review at Disneyland, Walt Disney's strange little version of Xanadu in Anaheim.

I don't really get Disneyland myself. Why would someone who lives and works in Hollywood need yet another fantasy world to visit? The place is usually full of noisy, obnoxious children (Is there any other sort of child?), and they don't serve or allow alcohol anywhere in the park!* That's not "The Happiest Place on Earth." That's LIVING HELL!

But Little Douglas loves the place. For God's sake, don't wander into the room when Dougie is talking theme parks with one of his fellow Disneyland Freaks. Why on earth a grown man in his 50s gives a rat's ass (Let's say Elia Kazan's
derriere, for a specific example of a "Rat's Ass".) about old amusement park attractions, or gets upset about "Replacing Nature's Wonderland with Big Thunder," - whatever the hell that even means - I can not fathom. Dougie is actually excited that, and I quote, "They're reopening the Submarines after almost 9 years, albeit as Finding Nemo, which is a fantasy, and has no business being in Tomorrowland." What is he even talking about? He's even said, "Barry Humphries played Bruce the Shark in Finding Nemo, so maybe in the ride, there'll be an audio-animatronic Barry Humphries." What the hell does that mean? I know who Barry Humphries is of course, but what is "Audio-animatronics"? Sanskrit?

Anyway, near as I can tell from Dougie's rantings, The Golden Horseshoe is a dance hall saloon in Frontierland (Pictured above), where, for many years, they staged a show called, with stunning creativity, The Golden Horseshoe Review. When Little Dougie was a boy, growing up in 1960s Southern California, he saw The Golden Horseshoe Review over and over. I'm assuming it was a good show, as why would someone voluntarily see the same stage show over 20 times if it was lousy? Here's what the whole cast looked like, posing on the stage.

Does that stage look at all familiar, even if you've never been to Disneyland? It should. The designer, Harper Goff - a genius - was a movie production designer. He designed Disney's version of Captain Nemo's Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He also designed a saloon for the Doris Day western transvestite musical Calamity Jane. When Walt Disney asked him to design an old west saloon for Disneyland, he just handed Walt the same blueprints and picked up another check for the same set. (I told you he was a genius.) Therefore, it is an exact duplicate, down to the smallest detail, of the one in that movie. Plus, Warner Brothers used the set again for a scene in my darling Vincent Price's theme park movie, House of Wax.

Now here's the weirdest, most terrifying thing: Fulton, lovely blond belter Betty Taylor, and screamingly funny comic Wally Boag, performed The Golden Horseshoe Review over 40,000 times! Good God darlings! Can you imagine delivering the same lines, singing the same songs, and telling the same jokes 40,000 times! And in a "Saloon" where they don't serve any alcohol! If that's not Living Hell, what the hell is? For sheer horror, that tops anything in House of Wax.

Take a look at this picture:

That's the view Fulton had 40,000 times, except when he saw it, the seats were always filled with tourists, and he probably saw it in color, unless he was colorblind. It's the view from the Golden Horseshoe stage.

Fulton was 84 when he died on May 7. He did that damned show from 1962 to 1986. He replaced the singer who opened the show in 1955 and who wisely thought that 7 years of doing the exact same show five times a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, was more than enough. Not so for Fulton, who then did the show for almost a quarter of a century. Did he retire, or was he paroled?

He got the show courtesy of Wally Boag, the comedian who co-wrote and starred in it. I've seen Mr. Boag perform on TV and Little Dougie is right about him; he is very, very funny. But honestly, how can you tell a joke like: "I'd like to sing a song for you. You'll like it. It's pretty --- pretty awful. It's called, 'When they operated on Father, they opened Mother's male'." 40,000 times? I collapsed at around 7455 times. Anyway, Wally is a funny man, with rubber legs and a zany personality. And he's still alive.

Not just alive, but commenting: "He was a natural for it and had a delightful sense of humor," Wally Boag said of Burley in the Los Angeles Times this week, "When you went by his dressing room, you always knew you were going to hear a good joke." Perhaps, but on stage, the jokes he told were things like "My parents would play cute tricks on me growing up. Like I'd go to school, then come home, and they'd moved."

Walt Disney always claimed to love America and Americans, but he kept Fulton Burley on the payroll even after Walt's death, and Fulton wasn't even an American. The man was a Canadian, born in Toronto. Well, maybe Walt and Wally couldn't find an American singer willing to do the same show 40,000 times.

Little Dougie tells me that Fulton was a charismatic stage performer, a brilliant singer, and a fine straight man to Wally's comic shenanigans. (That's the first time I've used the word Shenanigans in anything but Scrabble, in over 60 years!) Dougie knows a good deal about performing, but he knows next to nothing about straight men. In the Disneyland show, Fulton sang The Girl on the Police Gazette, performed in the Pecos Bill comedy finale, and always did his big piece, his comic sing-along number Clancy Lowers the Boom. "And no personal opinions, ma'am. It's boom, boom, boom, not bum, bum, bum." he said every performance. (You'd think the woman would learn after once.) It's typical that Dougie would remember that joke, as, for Dougie, it's always bum, bum, bum, at least in England.

Oddly enough for an actor and singer, he wasn't gay. he was married to a woman named Terry for 62 years. I don't know how he managed it. To the best of my memory, I've never had a marriage last over 10 years. He also had a sister, whose maiden name was Betty Burley. Say that five times fast.

And he had one rather unusual ability: He could lift each of his eyebrows independently of the other, so they would waggle alternatively, instead of together like Groucho. Now that's talent! If I could do that, I'd have won an Oscar!

Dougie said he talked with Fulton once, when Little Dougie was maybe 16 or 17, and that Burley was very nice and jovial. (Dougie always has liked burly men.) Well, his Golden Horseshoe performances only numbered in the low 4 figures then, so he probably wasn't fully brain-fried just yet. I imagine that by 1980, he was probably pleading with any people he met to just shoot him now, or for Clancy to please lower that fucking boom already.

He has.

Here's a last glimpse of Burley, posing by the Golden Horseshoe's useless Pepsi bar with a couple of the show's can-can dancers, and in the back, Miss Betty Taylor, who played Slue Foot Sue in the show. They always sang: "The welcome mat is out to stay, at the Golden Horseshoe Cafe."

No longer.

Cheers darlings.

*[Editor's note] Actually, alcohol is served in Disneyland, but only at Club 33 in New Orleans Square, which is an extremely private, members only club, membership by invitation only, almost unknown to the general public. Please don't tell Tallulah. She'll never learn it from this note, as she never even glances at these finished blogs. - Douglas