Category Archive: Stage & Screen
Divine Delilah on the Divan
A friend sent me this image of Heddy Lamarr for Christmas. It’s from her 1949 performance as Delilah in Cecil B. De Mille’s Samson & Delilah, which, naturally, involves much lounging on divans—an entry in Encyclopedia of the Exquisite—and brooding…
Mrs. Houdini
Harry Houdini makes an appearance in Encyclopedia of the Exquisite as an origami lover. But, as ever, his devoted wife and stage assistant Bess Houdini is all but overlooked. As successful as the great magician was in making his big…
“Hurrah for Anything”
I have a cartoonish sense of the beatniks, the kind of pop-informed cliche vision—people in black turtlenecks snapping in some 50s era coffeehouse—that poet Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) would have hated. Patchen pioneered the poetry-jazz movement of the late 50s, donning…
Mobius Mystery Man
This post is sort of related to my post yesterday about Butterfly dances, because I came across this intriguing video while looking at the ladies fluttering by. Luis Martinelli, a contortionist who turned his body into a Mobius strip for…
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