Kilty Larkin’s

Before rock and roll burst onto the scene, pop music was more sedate and one of its leading exponents was Patti Page. She began as a country music singer and crossed over into pop, with country-tinged records that were very popular with the public. Page was born into a poor, farming family in 1927 in Claremore, Oklahoma. Her vocal talent and good looks were to carry her away into stardom. She was Clara Ann Fowler before she assumed her stage name.

Patti Page’s break came when she was picked to sing on a local radio show, broadcast from Tulsa. The bandleader and manager, Jack Rael listened to one of her sessions and invited her to join the band he managed, the Jimmy Joy Band. Rael later became her personal manager and supervised her solo career. The first single was released in 1948, called Confess and it reached the Top 20 chart position. The follow up, With My Eyes Wide Open I’m Dreaming was a million seller.

Even more success followed when All My Love came out. It was adapted from the orchestral piece Bolero, composed by Maurice Ravel and was the first number one hit for Patti Page in 1950. Later in the same year, she had the biggest hit of her career when she recorded The Tennessee Waltz.

The face of pop music changed of course as the 1960s revolution of groups took hold. Patti Page had a loyal fan base however and remained a much sought after live performer. The last pop hit occurred in 1965 with the theme song from the movie starring Bette Davis, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Her last ever chart position was in the country charts in 1982, with the song My Man Friday, which reached number 80.

Despite her advancing years, she continues to give live performances for her fans. Patti Page has been an astute businesswoman too and started her own record label in the 1990s. She was given a special Grammy Award in 1998 for her contribution to music as the Best Traditional Pop Singer.

Patti Page has been married twice, the first time in 1956 until her divorce in 1972. Her second marriage took place in 1990. She helps her present partner to run a successful maple syrup products company. A CD release is scheduled for 2007 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Oklahoma becoming a state. Patti Page is one of the contributors to the compilation, along with other Okie artists such as Jimmy Webb and Garth Brooks. The proceeds will go towards a local charity.

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.

My friend still has a Britney Spears poster in his bedroom. In this poster, she is wearing a cap, doing a semi-wink at her viewer, has a crop top on to expose or reveal her naval piercing, and is quite voluptuous for the rails that usually top the fashion and celebrity charts.

The Britney Spears poster stays on my mind for a number of reasons. First, for probably the first two years of her stunning shoot to pop-stardom, I had no idea who she was, despite being really into pop culture for my own interests and for those at the time of my students, who when they took a composition or critical thinking or other class with me got everything from Teletubbies shows to Madonna concerts to films like Trainspotting and Little Big Man. That is, I stayed up on current celebrities, shows, film, music, and other media to incorporate it into the classroom where we would analyze, deconstruct, or somehow connect literature and rhetoric.

Working with one student who is a brilliant writer, I would come to collaborate on plays and other works with him. And, because of him, I would come to know of this dynamo, this mini-diva, through my first Britney Spears poster and through his obsessive allusions to Britney Spears as the be-all and end-all of performers.

Next, becoming close friends with another student a couple of years later (another brilliant writer who is now finishing her graduate work to become a teacher), I found myself face-to-face with another Britney Spears poster. This time, rather than having a penchant for her music/on-stage performances (which I now see as wonderfully engaging events to watch, by the way), this student saw Brit as the epitome of health. She didn’t appear to diet, gorge and puke, or starve herself by living on hi-test caffeine and cigarettes. My friend was a beauty herself, but was often fixated on being "too fat" (and wasn’t), so the Britney Spears poster reminded her that women with curves were acceptable - even gorgeous and sought-after.

So when I now visit my new friend, who is gay but has Britney Spears posters on his walls (as beards for his unknowing father) and who idolizes her for her pop value, I think, I re-visit the positive images in my head and likely in the head of thousands of young females - who may just grow up emulating someone healthier and more real than the boob-job queens or the coat hangers whose claim to fame is how exaggerated their rib cages are when they walk down a runway or gyrate on a stage.

Now Britney Spears is a mom and in the news more for her celebrity, but if she never returns to the sexy little musical pin-up girl, she may very well be remembered by her Britney Spears posters, pictures and desktop wallpaper. Britney Spears may very well be our generation’s Marilyn Monroe.