Hot Chick ~ Pamela Tiffin

Female version of the Hot Toddy series...

Name: Pamela Tiffin

Stats: b. 10-13-1942. 24 films including romances and comedies in the early 60s and European exploitation films from the late 60s to the early 70s. She left the business in the mid-70s to raise her family.

Hotness Factors: Gorgeous slender brunette (sometimes blonde) with a face that could dazzle. Her sweet lilting voice is melodic and a bit intoxicating. She's the ditzy girl that drives men wild with desire and confusion. Even the most devoted womanizer turns to absolute mush in her hands.

Dudes She Digged: Married magazine editor Clay Felker in 1962 and divorced in 1969. She was rumored to have dated Pleasure Seekers co-star Gardner McKay. Then she married philosopher Edmondo Danon, with whom she had two kids and they are still married.

For Optimal Hotness Watch:

State Fair (1962) ~ Innocent farm girl makes suave State Fair announcer (Bobby Darin) change his womanizing ways.

The Pleasure Seekers (1964) ~ While in Spain, this all-American good girl makes suave Spaniard (Tony Franciosa) change his womanizing ways.

Come Fly With Me (1963) ~ A ditzy flight attendant makes suave Pilot (Hugh O'Brian) change his womanizing ways.

More on Pamela Tiffin to come...

TCM's 15th Anniversary ~ Favorite Promos

I've been having fun playing around on Turner Classic Movies' 15th Anniversary celebratory website. You can flip through the timeline and see the promos they have used over the years. I thought it would be fun to list my favorite promos TCM has aired and I would love to hear which ones are your favorites too. My top favorite is the Sunny Side of Life promo which single-handedly introduced me to Edward Hopper's paintings and Chet Baker's music. Click on the picture of that promo for a special treat. Enjoy!

Sunny Side of Life

(I cried when they retired this!)

One Reel Wonders

(the original version)

Darkness After Dawn

Open All Night

Silent Sunday Nights

Private Screenings

(The ending credits)

This Week in Hollywood History

Happy 15th TCM!

Ball of Fire (1942) ~ A Recipe for Success

Ingredients:

Actors:
3 Gangsters
1 Hard Nosed Dana Andrews
1 Sexy Barbara Stanwyck
7 Loveable Professors
1 Uptight Maid
1 Tall, Goofy yet Charming Gary Cooper
A few extra bit players with good parts

Script Elements:

A generous helping of Comedy

1 pinch of Drama

A dash of Sex

A sprinkling of 1940's slang

Spoonfuls of good dialogue

Several parts Romance
1 homage to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Silly character names (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat your DVD player.

With a Billy Wilder, a Charles Brackett and a Thomas Monroe, write your script for Howard Hawks' direction. Add generous doses of Comedy. This will provide you with the majority of the plot. Mix by hand while adding pinches of Drama to create interesting tension. When thoroughly combined add the Sex, enough to spice things up but not too much to get us in trouble with the Legion of Decency. Mix in dialogue and generous sprinklings of slang to keep the initial cultural element of proper speech versus 1940's colloquialisms interesting. Spoonfuls of good dialogue are essential to round out the script. Add Romance to please the women in your audience and 1 homage to a classic fairy tale just to make this film unique. For a final touch, add some silly character names just for fun.

Set aside script elements and work on the actors. Start with your character actors. Mix separately those characters who epitomize education, namely the 7 professors. Then add in one uptight maid to prevent those professors from getting too excited. Add Gary Cooper as Prof. Potts to introduce some youthfulness to the mix. Make sure you give him top billing! Now for the characters with street smarts. First you'll need various bit players with charisma. If you have an excellent Garbage-man in the form of Allen Jenkins throw him in! Add your gangsters for some excitement and violence. Now you'll need your leading lady. She needs to ooze sexiness and wit but also be genuine. You can't go wrong with an enchanting Barbara Stanwyck as Sugarpuss O'Shea. You'll notice that when you throw Stanwyck in, chemistry will happen between her and Cooper. You can't make it too easy on the mixture, so right before you are done, throw in Dana Andrews as Joe Lilac to get in the way of their romance. This will keep things flavorful and satisfying.

Turn mixture into a DVD and insert into player. Bake for 1 hour and 51 minutes and enjoy!

Norma Shearer Week was a success!

I just wanted to thank everyone for their support and encouragement with Norma Shearer week. I'm really happy with the results and the feedback. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank a few folks in particular.

Jennifer Z. ~ For being the ultimate Norma Shearer fan!

Jonas @ All Talking! All Singing! All Dancing! ~ For supporting this and all my other crazy ideas.

Kate Gabrielle @ Silents and Talkies ~ For her superb Norma Shearer painting and allowing me to do a guest post for Norma Shearer week on her site.

Carrie @ Classic Montgomery - For helping me with info on Robert Montgomery and his relationship with Norma Shearer. She also posted an ad for A Free Soul on her site.

Laura @ Laura's Miscellaneous Musings - She plugged Norma Shearer Week in her review of Lowell Sherman's Bachelor Apartment (1931).


Thank you goes out to these folks for their encouragement on Twitter and elsewhere:

Wendymoon @ Movie Viewing Girl
Casey @ Noir Girl
Operator 99 @ Allure
Tommy @ Pluck You Too
Cliff @ Vintage Meld -> who Tweeted every post!
Nicole @ Classic Hollywood Nerd
Mercurie @ A Shroud of Thoughts

... and everyone who commented!

Norma Shearer week got some links:

Fox News & Chicago Sun-Times ~ Posted my From Montreal to Hollywood: Norma Shearer's Story.
Large Association of Movie Blogs (L.A.M.B.) ~ My fellow LAMBs (baa) helped me plug Norma Shearer week.
Deliberate Pixel ~ The editor thought Norma Shearer week was going to be on TCM. Oops!
Turner Classic Movies ~ With Norma Shearer week I have a lot more Norma content on this blog, so I submitted my label link Queen Norma Shearer as a fan site for her TCM page and got accepted!

I leave you now with an anecdote from Gavin Lambert's Norma Shearer biography. Enjoy.

Saturday, January 23, 1936. The annual Mayfair Club Ball... It took place in the Garden Room at the Victor Hugo restaurant, a supreme example of Beverly Hills posh, designed like a Roman atrium with a rounded glass roof, fake Appian Way statuary, genuine flowering vines, and an oval carpet of grass-green wool. The official hostess, Carole Lombard, had asked all the ladies to come dressed in white. Fairly late, two couples arrived together, Norma and Irving and Merle (Oberon) and David Niven. Merle looked decorous in protocol white, but Norma was a study in strapless and backless scarlet.

Lombard managed a polite greeting, then turned away and made the rounds of other guests, expressing her opinion of Mrs. Thalberg in her usual pungent, four-letter-word style. "Sheer ego" was Eleanor Boardman's verdict, but John Houseman had a different slant. He knew Norma only slightly at the time but later noticed "her occasional compulsion to assert herself publicly by refusing to conform." This seems close to the mark, for a photograph of the event shows Norma looking openly pleased with herself, as if enjoying the effect of not giving her expected, perfect social performance.

That's so Norma!