21st May 2017 / No Comments Yet
Woman /
25 December 1965
Oskar Werner was hitting his peak here, which may explain Margaret Hinxman practically wetting her knickers in this interview. There’s not much about Margaret herself online, although her books are still on sale, but the reference to her here, lifted from Richard Burton’s diaries, is rather funny.
I have several friends who enjoy nursing a hatred of Dave Clark from the Dave Clark Five, so the bottom item is for them. Enjoy.
Tags: 1960s, dave clark five, film, music, oskar werner, pop
6th July 2016 / No Comments Yet
Disc and Music Echo /
23 November 1968
Now, of course, gossip from the US is available on demand to Brits, so it’s odd to think that it wasn’t that long ago that US showbiz news was seen as something warranting programmes and features of its own, such as this clearly regular column in Disc. I grew up watching Entertainment USA, and still recall my excitement at discovering US pop magazines in my local newsagent (and the disappointment when they weren’t a patch on Smash Hits), so I do have some idea of the anticipation with which Disc readers must have awaited each edition.
What of Judith Sims, though? I was glad to see that she had a respectable career in journalism, including being the Los Angeles bureau chief for Rolling Stone. Her work here certainly demonstrates a keen sense of humour, which comes in useful when observing the circus around Yellow Submarine. It’s a terrible shame that cancer claimed her life whilst she was still fighting for copyright maintenance in what was then the very new medium of the World Wide Web. I wonder what she would have made of Gypsy Creams?
Tags: film, pop, USA
9th June 2016 / No Comments Yet
Disc and Music Echo /
23 November 1968
In more ‘the past is a different country’ news, this round up of New York entertainment gossip features an actress saying something that, thankfully, wouldn’t be tolerated today. I do wonder whether Grace Slick’s black friends were making fun of her. Let’s hope so, especially as her protestations that ‘black is just a colour’ and that she could appear in green are clearly absurd. I haven’t seen any episodes of Smothers Brothers, but I’d guess that appearing in green would render the joke meaningless. Also, here’s an excellent article explaining just why her claim that black skin shows up better on TV is absolute rubbish.
Blackface, unfortunately, is still with us to a certain degree, but tends to be confined to white people trying to make a point about racism (rarely successfully), or very stupid white people who don’t realise the weight of history.
Tags: blackface, film, grace slick, racism