Kilty Larkin’s

Please tell me that you’re not one of those celebrity worshipers. I really don’t know what to think of these people. No offense, but get a life of your own. Pining over celebrities is not only lame, but it’s actually pathetic. Okay, so that statement may tick a lot of people off. However, typically if a comment makes you angry, it probably holds some truth. Now, let’s think about this issue with celebrities for a moment. Take Jessica Alba for instance. You can probably purchase Jessica Alba posters in a variety of stores and online. They’re not difficult to come by. Of course I admit that she’s an attractive girl. However, I can say the same thing about countless others. There’s nothing exclusive to her beauty. This can be said about any Hollywood star, supermodel, or musician.

Well, if you’re looking for Jessica Alba posters, then you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m sure that you can find plenty on EBay though. I heard the whole spiel a while back about this young actress, and how she was the most looked-up name on the Internet, yada, yada, yada. I guess it’s simple to come to the conclusion that men like her. That’s understandable. However, the truth is that no one would care if she weren’t famous. People always tend to build up actors and actresses from the roles they see them play. They soon start to believe that the celebrity has something that others don’t. This is bogus. All of you out there are falling for their characters. The characters are not the celebrities. So do you want jessica alba posters or are you infatuated with Dark Angel? They’re not the same. Jessica Alba is about as super-human as Paris Hilton. Didn’t you see her host the MTV Movie Awards? I think I can conclude that no one loves Jessica Alba more than Jessica Alba does. Big surprise! Truth be told - I love Jessica Alba also - but I’m trying to make a point here!?!

Feel free to collect as many Tom Welling, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jessica Alba posters as you please. However, try not to forget that these are just mere mortals, who get paid far too much money to act like someone they’re not and read a script of witty dialog that was crafted by someone else. At the end of the day, they aren’t exactly saving the planet from anything. On the other hand, if you keep purchasing those Jessica Alba posters, maybe she can buy herself some more high fashion attire and jewelry. That’s important!

Marilyn Monroe pictures and likenesses are still everywhere. She has become an icon, and the standard of glamour, sexiness, and beauty throughout the world. Her legacy is carried on in modern day pin-up images by Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears, Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Scarlett Johansson, Paris Hilton, Jenna Jameson, Carmen Electra, Jessica Simpson, etc. (Did I forget your favorite?) All of these beauties, and many more, pose in the style of Marilyn Monroe pictures taken many generations ago. Some say that Betty Grable was the first pin-up Queen, but Marilyn Monroe’s pictures made the pin-up an art form.

OK, so the most obvious choice is the classic Marilyn Monroe picture where she is standing over the subway grate blowing cool air up her sexy dress on a hot city day - in the movie, The Seven Year Itch, with co-star Tom Ewell. But what if you want a more original or rare Marilyn Monroe picture, one that not everyone has plastered to the bathroom or bedroom wall?

I have seen over the years some gorgeous, stunning, and rare Marilyn Monroe pictures that seem more representative of the Marilyn Monroe who was a person, too. One of my favorites is the shot of her working out. She is laying with her back to the bench press, holding small dumbbells up in front of her. She is dressed in jeans and a bathing suit top. The photo is black and white, shot by Phillipe Halsman in Hollywood in 1952. Simple… real… beautiful.

Another staged but nevertheless telling Marilyn Monroe picture is one with her in ballerina-like dress, a strapless white and gauzy number. She is sitting on a chair, facing the camera. She is barefoot, her painted toes crossing over each other as those of a child who would fidget with her feet. She is (nervously - pretending?) hunched inward, one hand in her lap the other moving toward her face.

Marilyn Monroe picture collectors will probably already own the pin-up, Vargas Girl photo, of Marilyn naked, stretched out on red satin that matches her red lipstick, but they may not have such unique pieces as the one of her doing a Lustre Creme ad, the magazine ad she is featured in to sell Tru-Glow makeup, or Sam Shaw’s photo of Marilyn in a bathrobe, looking wistfully out of the window of what is presumably her house?

More Marilyn Monroe pictures that have appeal are the ones where she is with other celebrities. There is a set of photos of her with an old car, a set including one photo of Marilyn leaning on the car and Sammy Davis Jr. in the foreground doing a Mr. Bojangles-style kick in mid-air. Classic. Also in the series, Sammy and Marilyn are joined by Frank Worth.

And the true collector of Marilyn Monroe pictures will have the rarest of images: Marilyn on the cover of the very first issue of Playboy, on the cover of a May 14, 1956 issue of Time (where she is depicted in sketch illustration), and on the cover of LAFF, a "humorous picture magazine".

But the best of Marilyn Monroe pictures may be those taken before she was Marilyn Monroe. Norma Jean is in bathing suit, on the beach, or in vibrant red sweater, standing at the shore in Mexico and captured by the early tintype photography or the brilliant color photography of William Carrol in 1945. Of course, there’s the rarest of pics of Marilyn/Norma Jean: of her as a baby, sitting on her mother Gladys’s lap at the beach… adorable as ever. Goodbye Norma Jean - we still love you.

Do I hear true that Rocky Balboa is returning just in time for Christmas? The Italian Stallion rides again? That’s great news! I just can’t get enough of the feel-good struggles that Rocky Balboa has gone through - in and out of the Boxing ring.

It’s been a great run, but few remember that the original Rocky won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Picture and earned Sylvester Stallone a nomination for Best Actor. The American Film Institute placed Rocky at number 78 of its "100 Greatest Movies of All Time" list, and #4 at AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Cheers. Not too shabby!

The Academy Awards next year will have their Hollywood insiders, and movie critics explain why Rocky Balboa is so beloved to movie audiences throughout the world, yet they will probably be voting for some little anti-American documentary. The point they miss is that Rocky is all about the wonderful opportunities in America, and that’s actually what makes the movie audiences coming back for more.

In many ways, Rocky Balboa is every man, woman or child who has ever risen up in the face of adversity, to beat the odds. Rocky’s big speech in the first Rocky movie said it all…

"It really don’t matter if I lose this fight. It really don’t matter if this guy opens my head either, ’cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody’s ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I’m still standin’, I’m gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren’t just another bum from the neighborhood."

At the end of the first fight, Rocky proved himself as a boxer and a man to all those who had doubted him before, including both his trainer, Mickey, the crowd, and most of all himself. True to his word about what his goal for the fight was, he shows no concern at all for the judges’ final decision. As reporters try to interview Rocky, he seeks only to find and hold Adrian, his girlfriend and soon-to-be wife. Adrian finally fights her way through the crowd, into the ring and, as Apollo Creed is being announced the winner by split decision, Rocky takes her in his arms as the two exchange, "I love you’s." No wonder Rocky Balboa has appealed to women, as well as men, for these many years.

Rocky became the role model for millions in that first movie, having demonstrated that one seemingly insignificant man can stand in the face of overwhelming odds, and in doing so, show himself to be a true champion. Pure Hollywood - I love that Rocky Balboa!!

Rocky Balboa has been a retired boxer for many years now, and the buzz on the next movie is that Rocky is lonely and restless in Philadelphia. The former heavyweight champion is approached to fight a match with the reigning heavyweight champion of boxing - Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon. Soon Rocky’s comeback ignites a drive-by media firestorm. Theme sound familiar? I’ll bet they didn’t think of casting George Foreman, but that would have been great.

Some may say that Sylvester Stallone is just trying to squeeze a little more juice from the Rocky movie franchise - that he hasn’t has a box office hit in years and this is merely a futile attempt at regaining his faded star status. Well I hope those people shut up and let me go to see Rocky Balboa in peace. I’m sure whatever happens, if Stallone stays true to the Rocky movie formula, we will have another feel-good movie this Christmas season. What’s wrong with that?

Hey, when do those Rocky Balboa tickets go on sale? Hey, I wrote this without once using the word ‘knockout’ to describe anything! There’s hope for us all.

When Alice Faye left us in 1998, she did more than take with her the redeeming talents of a singer turned actress. Alice Faye emblazoned upon a number of generations the integrity, stamina, and grit of a tough and talented legend.

A child raised in Hell’s Kitchen, Alice Faye advanced early and continuously. She was a good student and she graduated from public school in New York. That same year, when she was thirteen, Alice auditioned for the Earl Carroll Vanities—instead of enrolling in high school. Initially, the mature-for-her-age Faye was grated a place with the troupe, but was turned away when it was discovered she was only thirteen.

Never one to be sidetracked by rejection or by fudging birthdates, Alice Faye again tried out, this time for a place in the Chester Hale Vaudeville Unit—where she was accepted after auditioning and after noting on the application forms a birth date that made her eighteen years old. (She was fifteen.) As web masters Roy Bishop and George Ulrich report, Faye would later interview with chuckles over her masking her true age and at how her life was thereafter lived as one older than she actually was.

As a number one talent (as many Tin Pan Alley and other song-masters attest), Alice Faye sang and pioneered and ushered he popularity of over twenty songs, songs that she would sing on the radio—in the first years—and then as part of her role as singer-actress—in over thirty-five feature films, TV and other appearances, and filmed events.

But as talented and crowd-pleasing as she was, Alice Faye was also principled and convicted, an independent thinker with a sovereign soul. She resisted allowing her image to be made into the alluring and marketable “cheesecake” type or pin-up girl type. Once married and with children, she followed through with mothering and housewifery in a style that reinforced her attitude toward her family—which was of devotion to them over her career. And when she began to resent the pressures of a 1940’s Hollywood where producers were phasing her out for another up-and-coming starlet (or before she felt resentment), she “left Hollywood on her own terms:” she drove off the lot of a picture in progress and didn’t look back. (Despite the tabloids at the time, which mocked up a rivalry between Alice Faye and Betty Grable, authentic reports show not only was she friends with Grable but she left Hollywood of her own volition, no one else’s.)

While she also returned (seventeen years later), to do one more film, then relegated her work to parts and roles she chose… such as cameo appearances on “This is Your Life,” “The Love Boat,” “The Dean Martin Show,” numerous others, and in roles such as spokesperson for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in support of living “active and healthy senior years.”

Alice Faye left behind the notion that women have a voice, that age is just a number, and that getting out while the getting’s good may not be all that bad a move after all.