Fatale Abstraction

Today's blog:
What a dame's legs ought to be, according to the Phlegm Institute.

Exhibit A is the famous legs of Betty Grable showing why they were insured for about a million bucks in the 1940s. The idea of these legs--bless them-- got a lot of our guys through WW II, and what could be more American than that? We'll forgive Betty that ghastly frock that is wheeling about her like the rings of Saturn, because she is so damned cute. Hers is a sweetly comic turn in Walter Lang's 1941 joint Moon Over Miami. You must love technicolor.

Next up is the engineering marvels that are the legs of Gwen Stefani. These are textbook gams, barely suggesting there is bone underneath all that girliness, which is a wonderfully female trait, in my opinion. Gwen is so cute that it really wouldn't matter if her legs weren't astonishing, but they are. In a cover story in Vogue a few years ago, I read an interview in which she said she was hungry all the time, but that she was afraid of having the merest bit of extra avoirdupois in photographs or on stage. Sounds a mite obsessive, and a little sad. But still there are those legs. Have a cheeseburger on me, Gwen. You've earned it.

Next, there's the gloriously voluptuous body of Jennifer Tilly, and particularly her very pretty and sorta thick legs. She is a comedic giant in film, although she has been a bit below the radar in general with her role choices. Bullets Over Broadway is worth seeing for her performance alone, not to mention the brilliant other performers in the film, and the acidly comic script, exquisite costuming, etc. She was great in the sort of bad yet riveting Dancing At the Blue Iguana. Yeah, that film was probably panned as a colossal stinker, and I don't care. I don't think she's topless in it, but she does play a goth stripper. I haven't seen her as the Bride of Chucky, but I'll bet she rocked in that one, too. She said laughingly in an interview that she knew when she took that role that her career was on the downhill path.

Finally there is my perennially favorite actress Patricia Arquette. She was a revelation in True Romance, and the scene where she kills James Gandolfini with the typical things one has scattered about a cheap motel room is my all-time favorite fight scene. She was marvelous as a sociopath with the delightfully dry Ellen DeGeneres in Goodbye Lover. GL features a great number of wardrobe changes, and she looks fantastic. Some of the looks she sports in that film are evocative of 40s high glamour and Carmen Miranda/Dorothy Lamour style. Good stuff. Plus, Ellen (playing a cop who is investigating some mysterious deaths in PA's social circle) delivers some golden lines:

DETECTIVE POMPANO (Ellen DeGeneres): Okay, look for the needle in the shit pile. These are crowd shots from all five murders. We wanna separate potential suspects from your average scumbag citizen.
DETECTIVE ROLLINS: Ma'am, you know, we're sworn to serve and protect. If you hate everybody so much, why are you doin' this job?
DETECTIVE POMPANO: Because every once in a while I get to shoot somebody.

Wow, funny how even starting with such a pleasant topic as lovely legs I still manage to end up at misanthropy...