Mirror, Mirror...

My Song Sketch from this week featured a song that was in an Ava Gardner film. My mother loves Ava Gardner; she thinks Ava is the most beautiful woman ever (besides me and my sisters, of course. Haha!). Now, I completely agree that Ava is stunning, however, classic-black-and-white-film-actress-wise (purely looks) I prefer Lauren Bacall or Rita Hayworth or Dorothy Dandridge.

But the actress I think I'd like most to look like from that era is Gloria deHaven. I've seen her in Two Girls and a Sailor and The Thin Man Goes Home most often and I find her completely captivating. I also adore her gorgeous voice (which you can hear here).

What about you? Which black and white beauty would you choose to look like if you could (not that you wouldn't want to look like you but if you had to look like someone else, say)?

And... today is the last day to enter in my giveaway!

The Limb is Mightier Than the Thumb Feature Friday

I don't know if a movie should count as a Feature Friday (I originally planned for it to only be about blogs and shops), but hey! I make the rules on this here blog! So, I am featuring a movie I watched last night and loved! I'm sure you all have seen It Happened One Night before but it was the first time I'd ever seen it and it made me wonder why I hadn't already watched it a million times.

It is so funny, so sweet and super sexy. It's about a rich strong-willed heiress and a brash newspaperman on a road trip from Miami to New York - hijinks and romance ensue, of course! Both Claudette and Clark are so appealing and the dialogue is adorable!

This is one of the best scenes in the movie and hopefully will inspire you to watch it!

Any films you recently watched that you wish you'd seen before?

P.S. Feel free to follow me! I promise only ever to lead you to bright, sunny places!

Meglio stasera, baby, go, go, go!

Hi everyone! I'm Sally from Flying Down to Hollywood. Emma needed a little bit more time to rest up with the baby before coming back to the blog so she asked me to do a little guest post.

My blog is mainly about old movies (although I do throw in the occasional contemporary film as well). Since Emma informed me that she usually likes to use Sunday posts to concentrate on something music-related, I thought I'd talk about one of my absolute favorite singers in classic film. Her name is Fran Jeffries. She's most famous for the song that I'm going to embed below - "Meglio Stasera" from The Pink Panther. This is one of the few renditions of this song in Italian and I'm not sure why more people don't do the song in Italian. The English translation isn't (in my opinion) all that terrific. But, who knows?

So, here is her well-known song:



and here is one of her lesser-known songs, "Sex and the Single Girl" from Sex and the Single Girl with Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood.



So there you have it. Fran Jeffries. One of my all-time favorite singers in film. And, on a slightly unrelated note, how 60's-fabulous are her outfits? I love them! Both of them! I have no earthly clue where or when I'd wear that two-piece outfit, but I don't care. I want it anyway!

I hope you guys like Fran Jeffries as much as I do! And, Emma, I hope you're having a simply marvelous time with your little one!

Gene Kelly - Perfection

I don't think I've made my adoration for Gene Kelly a secret... He is my most favorite classic film actor ever! Able to be charming, vulnerable, sexy, smart, funny... perfect. Sigh. One of my favorite things is the sweet way he interacts with children. This little dance from Anchors Aweigh (my favorite Kelly film) always gets me teary-eyed.

It wouldn't let me embed this so I linked to the video from the pic and in the paragraph.

P.S. Feel free to follow me! I promise only ever to lead you to bright, sunny places!

P.P.S. I have a brand, new original album out! If you download it and looooove it, please write a lovely review on the site from which you purchased it!

Guest Blog Post from Sally of Flying Down to Hollywood!

The marvelous Sally from Flying Down to Hollywood, a perfectly marvelous blog (you really ought to visit her! Her blog is tons of fun.) about old movies (with some new thrown in from time to time!) has been kind enough to agree to do a guest post! Thank you, Sally!

First of all, I’d like to thank Emma for this wonderful opportunity to be a guest blogger! This is my first time guest blogging and I feel very honored! Now, I was trying to figure out what to write and I finally decided to blend my love of old movies with Emma’s recent song sketch. The result? Audrey Hepburn!


Audrey Hepburn is easy to love; you don’t even have to know anything about her to love her. Her beauty, sexiness, and sophistication are apparent, making her easy to admire. Her appeal spans generations as the college dorms filled with Audrey Hepburn posters and photos will attest.
Many of Audrey Hepburn’s roles are famous in their way and show a side to her that audiences enjoy relating to. Roman Holiday (1953), for instance, was her first major film. The princess she plays in the film is a wonderful blend of independence and romance, of responsibility and spontaneity. (Two fascinating sidenotes about this film: she won an Oscar for her role in it; Gregory Peck didn’t like the idea of playing opposite an unknown actress but, after meeting the unknown actress, fought for her to get equal billing.) Her style, vulnerability, and eccentricity in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) have helped in her icon-like status. Her spunky Jo Stockton in Funny Face (1957) proved that beauty and brains can blend together into a delightful package. This film contained such classic moments as the photograph with the balloons (shown here) and her memorable dancing, which was featured in a Gap ad.


Now, when you think of My Fair Lady (1964), it’s a slightly different story, somehow. It’s still Audrey Hepburn. She’s still elegant, beautiful, and spunky. The controversy over her as a casting choice (many argued that Julie Andrews should have reprised her Broadway role as Eliza Doolittle) helped My Fair Lady to be more or less forgotten as an Audrey Hepburn classic. She was overlooked when the Academy Awards rolled around (ironically, Julie Andrews won for Mary Poppins) and today, those same college students who apply Holly Golightly to their walls forget that she was even in My Fair Lady.

So, I highly recommend revisiting the film and wonder why Audrey Hepburn did not earn at least an Oscar nod, marvel at her beauty, and either laugh or groan (depending on your perspective) at the final line. And along the way, or perhaps just afterwards, I highly recommend revisiting Emma’s beautiful rendition of Wouldn’t it be Loverly?