Showing posts with label The Curio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Curio. Show all posts
Sunday, 4 September 2016
Tuesday, 7 June 2016
Art of the Book - Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon"
A shot of the demure Jayne Mansfield adorns the infamous "Hollywood Babylon" by controversial avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger !
This shot of Mansfield was infamous even before it was included was the cover to the legendary 1959 tome.
The photograph was one of a famous series of shots taken in April 1957, at a special dinner party at Romanoff's in Beverly Hills to officially welcome Sophia Loren to Hollywood.
Ensuring her legendary assets could, erm, "come out to play'", Jayne went to the party wearing (well, almost wearing!) a plunging white dress.
She proceeded to show the twins off in a variety of provocative poses.
Mansfield, of course, succeeded in drawing all the attention away from a very uncomfortable - and angry - Sophia!
She proceeded to show the twins off in a variety of provocative poses.
Mansfield, of course, succeeded in drawing all the attention away from a very uncomfortable - and angry - Sophia!
Thursday, 2 June 2016
Thursday, 22 October 2015
The Curio - Keeping up with Joneses
DDD-elicious Donna Jones, a housewife from Milton Keynes (born in 1982), has been recorded as having the biggest natural breasts in the UK.
That's a whopping size 40M ! ... And, yes, her bras are made from parachutes!
Donna's assets are so large that, as she told News of the World, she couldn’t even breastfeed her son Kyle when he was a baby. "I didn’t dare, in case I suffocated him", she said
Saturday, 12 September 2015
Moments In Time - Women Posing Beside the Hiroshima Peace Bridge (1954)
As a mountain range rises angularly in the background, two Japanese misses, on in modern dress the other clad in traditional Japanese kimono, pose beside the Peace Bridge in Hiroshima during a day of remembrance, the ninth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima with atomic bombs. Shielding their heads from the sun with parasols, Misses Sakae Okubi (left), 28, and Mariko Matsumoto, 22, both affected by the atomic bombing of August 6th, 1945, are shown in Peace Memorial Park. Miss Okubi suffered minor burns of the arms and several cuts on her back, while Miss Matsumoto lost her father, grandmother and an uncle, just days before the surrender of Japan of August 14th, 1945. After the formal surrender of Japan, work was begun on the Memorial Park by Japanese-American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi. The formal surrender came on September 2nd, 1945.
Wednesday, 22 July 2015
The Curio - Previously Unseen Photos From Nirvana’s First Show Unearthed
Teen Unearths Previously Unseen Photos From Nirvana’s First Show
By Peter Helman @_peterhelman
July 20, 2015
The teenage daughter of Tony Poukulla, a high school friend of Kurt Cobain, has just unearthed some previously unseen photos of Nirvana’s first ever show at a Raymond, Washington house party in 1987.
Poukulla lived at the house and played second guitar on a few songs with Nirvana, then made up of Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Aaron Burckhard.
As MJ Poukulla tweeted, “My dad went to high school with Kurt and played with him before he got big.”
See the pictures below, via mjpoukkula
Poukulla lived at the house and played second guitar on a few songs with Nirvana, then made up of Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Aaron Burckhard.
As MJ Poukulla tweeted, “My dad went to high school with Kurt and played with him before he got big.”
See the pictures below, via mjpoukkula
Incomplete Show Setlist:
“Aero Zeppelin”“If You Must”“Heartbreaker” (jam)“How Many More Times” (jam)“Mexican Seafood”“Pen Cap Chew”“Spank Thru”“Hairspray Queen”
Sunday, 17 May 2015
The Curio - All The Pretty Pier Horses: Sonora Carver and the Diving Steeds of Atlantic City
The astounding Sonora Webster Carver was a huge attraction amongst the sideshow on the legendary Steel Pier, during Atlantic City's heyday in the 1920s and early 1930s, famous for ... erm leaping from a huge tower on the pier into a tank sixty feet below .... on the back of a horse! ... Yap that word is 'HORSE'!!!
The bravest woman of all time .... or a chick even more batshit crazy thanSarah Palin? You decide!!
The Steel Pier was opened on June 18 1898, originally built by the Quakers, as a private resort. However, it was soon open to the public and advertised as “the handsomest and most luxuriously appointed pier in the world”! This was no idle boast!
(click to view)The venue’s most fondly remembered act began in the 1920s and 1930s, the brainchild of one Dr W. F. Carver, a noted sportsman after a freakish brush with near fatal danger.
Dr. Carver was returning home on horseback one night in 1924. The bridge he was crossing collapsed and his horse plunged forty feet into a raging river. The horse magically executed a well-balanced dive and both swam safely to shore.
Dr Carver wondered later whether a horse could be trained to do this! Dogs could certainly be trained to dive … but horses?... Horses??
Well, it turned out they could! Thus, soon after, was begat the greatest AC attraction of all. An attraction that in fact toured the country to huge audiences and no little hysteria.
One of the original riders - and certainly the most famous rider of all - was Sonora Webster - who would go on to become Dr Carver’s daughter-in-law. Her husband Al Carver had been the original horseman but Sonora, being a female rider, drew even bigger crowds. She soon made her performance a climactic part of the thrilling show.Her job was to mount a running horse as it reached the top of a tower of forty to sixty-foot in height and sail down along the animal's back as it plunged into a deep pool of water directly below.
Sonora was a sensation and soon became the lead diving girl for Doc Carver's act as they travelled the country.
Sadly - yet perhaps unsurprisingly given the shocking dangers involved - tragedy struck Sonora in 1931. After a bad dive she was very badly hurt. She suffered detached retinas and was blinded.
Incredibly, however, she continued to take part in the show for another ten years!!
Sonora published her memoirs in 1961 in a tome entitled ‘A Girl and Five Brave Horses’, which inspired the film ‘Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken’ about Carver and the diving horses.
Sonora lived on to the mighty age of 99, passing away in 2003 in Pleasantville New Jersey. She had been blind for 72 of those years.
tx Susan MacDonald
Friday, 1 May 2015
Moments In Time - The Human Cannonball (1925)
So-called human cannonballs were among the earliest lunatics ... sorry "daredevils", of the modern age.
Yap, surprising, the first human to be used as a projectile was not Mike Tyson's wife Robin Givens!
Actually the first human to be used as a projectile was some sort of Tranny called "Lulu" in 1871. This British man dressed in drag and was sent skyward by a catapult at the London Music Hall!
The use of an actual "cannon" to project a human was first pioneered by legendary circus showman P.T. Barnum in 1880.
In this case, another Brit, - this time a real woman named Zazel! - stunned audiences when she climbed into the cannon and was shot into a safety net. Barnum used coiled springs to propel her along with a fake bang and puff of smoke thanks to well-timed firecrackers.
Unfortunately, Zazel later broke her back while performing and retired from the show.
These days, the springs have been replaced by a compressed air cannon - but they still use a fake bang to give the audience a thrill. ..... A bit like porno movies, I guess!!
Tuesday, 14 April 2015
Thursday, 5 March 2015
The Curio - Stormy Monday: The Shocking Day the Stripper Sneaked on to LSU Campus (1948)
One of the favorite stories told regarding Lousiana State University is the one of the day Stacie ”Stormy” Laurence, a New Orleans stripper, came on campus (March 4, 1948).
She arrived at noon and started her stripping dance before the Huey P. Long Field House, as more than thirty students looked on.
That's when the trouble occurred.
The students, enraged by her show, stormed the stripper, throwing her into the lake.
They turned over her van and destroyed all the band equipment as the band members fled.
Student Body President Gillis Long tried to quiet the crowd, but the mob prevailed.
Poor Stormy picked up a number of injuries in the fracas!
From the Lousiana State University Yearbook
Images by Edward Clark
Tuesday, 3 March 2015
Vintage Vixens - Yes We Can Can Can: Gluttinous Maximus La Goulue
Louise Weber, also known as La Goulue (i.e. The Glutton; a nickname given to her by journalist Gabriel Astruc who was bemused by her habit of dancing on a gentleman’s table, kicking off his top hat with her toe and taking his drink while he chased after his chapeau) was the Moulin Rouge’s first major star and is credited with creating the can-can.
The illegitimate daughter of a washerwoman, the outgoing Louise was hired as model by Pierre-August Renoir and soon became a favorite artist’s model in the Montmartre district, more in thanks to her over-the-top personality than any great physical beauty.
She was also one of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec‘s favorite subjects, painting her first for promotional posters: La Goulue Poster, Moulin Rouge, 1891 La Goulue Poster, Moulin Rouge, 1891 and then for his personal work at the Moulin Rouge where she was known as “The Queen of Montmartre“ the headlining act, supported by Jane Avril, Nini Patte en l’Air (i.e. Nini Legs-in-the-Air) and of course the larger-than-life Môme Fromage (i.e Kid Cheese) who was a real big girl all through her career
At the height of her fame, Louise danced nightly with Valentin le Decosse, a businessman who took an assumed name –his real name was Jacques Renaudin– and lived a sort of double life. The shadowy figure in the foreground of La Goulue’s Moulin Rouge poster is Valentin, and was a sort of inside joke as everyone in Paris knew of his “secret identity” much to the shame of his business-minded family.
Renoir's 'La Goulue Arrivant au Moulin Rouge' (1892)
La Goulue was prone to plumpness –the success she found as a model with a trimmer figure can be attributed to her life of borderline malnutrition– and although she was corsetted within an inch of her life and dancing non-stop for up to five hours a night rumor has it she left le Moulin at the height of her fame partially because famed manager Charles Zidler made comments about Jane Avril‘s more slender figure and put her, not La Goulue on the newest Lautrec poster.
La Goulue left le Moulin in April 1895 after what could generously be called “artistic differences.“ She was wealthy and famous and didn’t take well to being bossed so when the managers asked Louise to tame some of her more raucous dancing and behaviour –they were getting in trouble with the pigs.
In retrospect, this was not her brightest move and she quickly lost her Moulin money through a series of failed business attempts and, sadly, by the end of her life, she was living in a caravan and selling cigarette and peanuts on the streets where formerly she reigned as queen, suffering with severe depression and alcoholism.
Two years before her death in 1927, a journalist tracked down the former star and recorded just about a minute of silent footage where – with her trademark smirk and twinkle – she treated the young filmmaker to a brief glimpse of the dance she made so famous.
Wednesday, 11 February 2015
Friday, 16 January 2015
Art of the Cover - Abigail's "Abigail" (1973)
Whooaa ... seems a truckload of mascara was evidently shipped in for this buxom blonde-bombshell's cleavage-tastic cover shoot!
Yap, it's the idiosyncratic, eponymous - and lone - LP released by enigmatic Brit starlet Abigail Rogan - known by the single handle Abigail -a major 70's sex symbol in Australia!
London-born actress Abigail Rogan became Australia’s first television sex symbol as a result of her role as the sensual but virginal Bev Houghton in the atrociously camp but surprisingly popular soap Number 96 (1972-1973).
Her acting skills were not exactly Oscar worthy but Festival Records reckoned they were on to a good thing and set her up in Sydney's Studio 24 with producer Martin Erdman (of 'World of Sound' fame).
The result is a platter full of naughty ditties like the subtly titled Please Terry, Do It One More Time, My Baby Does It Good and Do It Again !
Rogan's breathy cover of the Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot/ Jane Birkin erotic classic "Je T'aime (I Love You)" was a big hit locally (#6), even if the lyric rewrite eschewed the more blatantly sexual aspects of the original.
Other tracks included covers of Jim Croce's "These Dreams", Lyndsey De Paul's "Sugar Me" and Gato Barbieri's "Last Tango in Paris".
Although the Gainsbourg cover and, to a lesser extent, this debut LP were achieved decent sales locally, follow-ups - including a bizarro comedic release with ventriloquist Chris Kirby - were not and, very soon after, Abigail would leave her brief musical foray behind her.
Tracklisting
A1 An Occasional Man
A2 My Baby Does It Good
A3 New Fangled Tango
A4 These Dreams
A5 Do It Again
A6 Je T'aime (I Love You)
B1 Sugar Me
B2 The Man I Love
B3 (Just As) I Am
B4 Pillow Talk
B5 Last Tango In Paris
B6 Please Terry, Do It One More Time
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