Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Dishing Douchebag Divas




Double-Bagger Douchebag Divas
"... if there's such thing as a
double-bagger douchebag,
he is definitely it."


http://forums.escapefromelba.com/index.php/topic,30.msg143853.html#msg143853
Well, Harriet, continuing the usual tacky post-Oscar put-downs from Vaudeville-Maudeville, I must say, my dear, that I’ve seen quite a few Double-Bagger Douchebag movies in my time—but there’s still one movie out there that’s even worse than that.

And that’s the classic Triple-Bagger Douchebag movie that I’m sure you’ve seen so many times like the rest of us diligent moviegoers—and that’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962).

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane has got to be up there in the all time Triple-Bagger Douchebag Top Ten with 3 of my most favorite stunning Douchebag Divas:

Betty Davis, of course, as the charming but troubled Old Bag Child Star Baby Jane Hudson conniving her Big Come Back like so many Old Bags do. One thinks of the lovely Norma Desmond—Gloria Swanson combo who in real life are almost as inseparable as Ma and Inca:

“Each night during the filming of Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson would return to the rented house on Mulholland Drive she shared with her mother, Addie and the youngest of her three children, Michelle, then 16. As the 50-year-old actress swept into the grounds, Addie would turn to her granddaughter and say, 'Oh, here comes Norma', a reference to Swanson's role as the half-insane former silent star in Billy Wilder's film. 'After each day's shooting, she carried on talking in the voice of Norma Desmond,' remembers Michelle Farmer-Amon, now 70, 'and she stayed in that personnage for the duration of work on the movie.'”—Andrew Wilson, “Living with Norma Desmond,” The Observer, Sunday 9 March 2003

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/mar/09/features.review2

Yes, Hariett, then there’s Blanche Hudson. Poor Blanche played by Joan Crawford the cheesy wheelchair-bound kvetching La La Land Whiner—at her helpless broken-wing best. You know the type? Limping and gimping her way through the movie—appealing to the Sympathy Vote. Constantly abused, tortured and endlessly dished by her Evil Sister, poor Blanche. Does Blanche deserve such tacky treatment?

Yes, there’s Bette Davis and Joan Crawford—but then to complete the lovely ménage-a-trois there’s charming Victor Buono as Edwin Fagg—that infamous most smarmy Douchebag Fat Boy of Hollywood caught up in the cloying campy clutches of the Blanche-Baby Jane soap-opera.

Supposedly a Hollywood agent, Buono wiggles and squirms his way through Baby Jane Hudson’s once-famous but now ridiculously saccharine performance of "I've Written a Letter to Daddy"—talk about douchebag diva.

Sound familiar? It should—it’s exactly like the love letter to Big Daddy that Sylvia Plath seals with a kiss and mails to heaven—with her head in the oven.

No comments: