A Look Back

Dyan Cannon on phone in the '60's

Sophia Loren in a breeze.

Helen Mirren, actress "Woman In Gold" 

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Beautiful and stunningly beautiful white women from days gone by formed and support the opinions about what was the standard for this and the last century.

Look at this gallery. It is more of a tribute. Women like Kim Novak and Sophia Loren featured in this gallery of poses, who set standards today's woman glances at in their mirrors for glimpses. Yes, this is a tribute to the influence of white women in our sensibilities. This gallery of comparative photographs skips through the mid-twentieth century with darlings like Caroline de Maigret and Lucille Baugh! Audrey Hepburn set the standard of elegant poise and the long forgotten Isabel Jewell!

If you look close and beneath the assumptions they are all white women, whose influence framed the network of thought and esteem Black women from then until now hold as mirrors. In the strive for freedom Black American's struggle for identity begins with images framing their perception of themselves.


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
October 14, 2017

pretty legs of Ginger Rogers.

Anna Q. Nillson in 1920. 

Mae Busch's exquisite beauty in 1922. 

Hedy Lamar in the style of the 1940's.

Sophia LOREN and other challenges for Black Men.

Sophia Loren in a striking pose as Cleopatra.

As repulsed and angry at the insistence of white people that African stories, historical references, Hebrew customs, and traditions, and Egyptian culture and high sophistication was white it took me but a pause to study why and know that psychologically whites aren't prepared for the truth or exposure outside the myths they created to cover the evil they'd done.

Hedy Lamarr, who played Delilah in the mid-20th century version of Sampson, and Sophia Loren in a period piece made me to set aside my aversion to white indoctrination until they went off screen, or I laid the picture down on the coffee table. Those two were so profoundly beauty and the awe they consistently got as a reaction from them was breathtaking. Anything that takes the breath away requires time to recirculate the system of breath that believes in living. Restorative properties of beauty meet legendary proportions a few times in each man's lifetime. We remember them trying to open the reasons why.

Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Jan. 4, 2017  

The Epitome of Perfection Part 8

Some breathless moments for me began with the sight or the recollection of Sophia Loren, or perhaps her presence challenged the very notion of Italian women's supremacy over other European women. It didn't. Did it detangle the story that accompanies white women worldwide wherever they go that they are the ideal ? No. It did not.

For an Indian, as I am; Sophia Loren, I could not judge harshly because she supplied the weight to the feeling of deep beauty transcending a social order and the social norm. It was just a refreshing time hearing her voice, listening to her talk, looking at her imaging you were with her, could be with her, and were acknowledged by her.

Of course at the height of her beauty (that's inaccurate her beauty did not wane), and her career it was dangerous for Colored people to express or worse exhibit gushing or even casual desire for any white woman. A 'member' (what Negroes used to called themselves and each other away from white folks) could get killed by a white woman in degrees. Black men, in the public eye, need to examine this, and their occupation with beautiful white women amongst themselves preferably because an assembly of like-minded individuals brings clarity solitude can't and won't because one person needs the other person. If being a separate entity unto one's self does not help a man trapped in the child support system, and that threatens his freedom, why resort to it during the period of examination crucial to your development, and later initiation rites?  That is a helluva a leap, but it isn't. The subjects are related. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories Jan. 4, 2014

Mystique is important to employ. More than a defense it is a glory, a substance of things hoped for, a manifestation of things worked on. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 1.4.17

A Brilliant Mind Looks Into Marriage

Hedy Lamarr was married and divorced six times.

"Perhaps my problem in marriage — and it is the problem of many women--was to want both intimacy and independence. It is a difficult line to walk, yet both needs are important to a marriage." – Hedy Lamarr, actress  and inventor (1913-2000)

Hedy Lamarr was an actress who was a contract star of MGM's "Golden Age."

"Go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living.

They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." ~ Kurt Vonnegut

an image of Excellence

actress Hedy Lamarr
starred in Sampson & Deliliah

actress Jaime Pressly...

the Jester

Movie Crushes

Nichelle Nicoles, actress 

The question popped up in a conversation. Who were my early movie star crushes? Who are yours? I thought about a second, and the images came running out of the gate. Dig this:

The actress who played Daniel Boone's wife in the 1960's series, the mother of Lassie, Helen Lamarr who played Delilah in Sampson & Delilah, Eartha Kitt, Nichel Nichols who played Uhuru in original Star Trek, Diana Carolyn the first Colored woman to star in a series, Mary of the singing group: Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson, Miriam Makeba, Diana Ross, and a few others including Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe...

Helen Lamarr's pretty legs!!!!

Marilyn Monroe in a LIFE magazine shoot laughing at home by Alfred Eisenstaedt

black actress Nichelle Nichols, as Uhuru

HOLLYWOOD IDEAL

actress Hedy Lamarr in a scene of Sampson & Delilah !!!!

The Hedy Lamarr Foundation

http://hedylamarr.org

Hedy Lamarr



INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY

Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah (1949) at 36 of age

Hedy Lamarr: Inventor of more than the 1st theatrical-film orgasm


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2011/11/hedy-lamarr-inventor-hedy-lamarr-sex-symbol.html

Hedy Lamarr, Old Hollywood sex symbol, had a brain. It's a fact that may be nearly as overlooked as the inventor's wartime creation: landmark technology that was a precursor to Bluetooth.

It's not surprising that she's known best for her sultry persona, given her film role that made everyone sit up and take notice. In 1933's "Ecstasy," a Czech film, she raised eyebrows and drew condemnation around the globe when she appeared nude in one part of the film and simulated an orgasm in another.

Lamarr is seen going skinny-dipping and, still without a stitch on, chasing a runaway horse. The orgasm scene comes later, and, yes, she does smoke a cigarette afterward. "Ecstasy" is considered the first theatrically released movie to feature an actress simulating an orgasm on screen.

Take that, Meg Ryan.

Now, Richard Rhodes has revealed the nerdy side of this legendary beauty and superstar.

His new book, "Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World," tells about the invention and how her role in its creation was long ignored.

In a recent interview on NPR's "All Things Considered," Rhodes said Lamarr was the type of person who "was constantly looking at the world and wondering how can that be fixed, how can that be improved."

During an early, unhappy marriage to an Austrian arms dealer (!), Rhodes said, Lamarr would sit at dinner parties given by her husband for Nazi generals, listening to them talk about weapons. With her interest in science, he said, she listened closely to the weapons talk.

Lamarr later escaped that marriage — although not by dressing up as one of her maids and jumping out a window. That story was a fabrication by Lamarr, the author said. She did, however, book passage on a ship with Louis Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and by the time the ship reached its destination, she had a seven-year, $3,000-a-week contract with the film studio.

"Algiers" (1938), with Charles Boyer, followed soon after, and Lamarr became a huge star.

Lamarr's invention came about, Rhodes said, because "she was keenly aware of the coming war. She was glued to the newspaper, reading the stories. ... When German submarines began torpedoing passenger liners, she felt at that point, 'I've got to invent something that will put a stop to that.' "

Her idea involved making a radio signal "hop around from radio frequency to radio frequency," Rhodes said, to interfere with signal jamming. Thus, a torpedo could be radio guided with less fear of having the signal jammed.

She and a partner obtained a patent, then gave it free of charge to the U.S. Navy. Brilliant, yes?

The Navy "basically threw it into the file," Rhodes said. Later, however, the idea of frequency-hopping was resuscitated by the Navy, and "then the whole system spread like wildfire. The most well-known application today is Bluetooth."

So why isn't Hedy Lamarr the Inventor a famous name?

The patent had expired, Rhodes said, plus, during most of the device's life it was a military secret. By the time it came out, it had gone through many permutations with input from various sources.

"She was simply lost in the noise."

ELIZABETH TAYLOR

"Elizabeth Taylor, the actress, but mostly Elizabeth Taylor, the woman is an ideal, an American ideal. The ideal of America was forged during and after the nefarious deeds that tainted people around the globe, and their various cultures. Once the supremacy of the idea, and the fact of white America, and Americans became a hammer above the heads of subjugated nations it became a gospel that fear enforced, and the images that came from this ideology became the additional lure of Elizabeth Taylor, the ideal. She was elegant, and beautiful in a magical, and unapproachable way. Women in other cultures exposed to the American culture learned to despise, and re-define themselves, and their men learned to gauge beauty by the Hollywood standards penned, and directed from those studios. At the top of the heap of idols, and inaccessible Goddesses reined Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Hedy Lamarr, and on and on into the present we can go to find their inheritors. They were a small elite group, but they shaped the images in millions and millions of minds into what they were not: white."

©Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Elizabeth Taylors' tiaras were world famous.

http://theweddingtiara.com/archives/elizabeth-taylors-wedding-tiara