The Beauty of Retrospect: First Lady Michelle Obama

I received an incendiary comment (which I marked as spam) telling me to get my picture of Michelle Obama, which I posted here in November 2008 right after the presidential election, off this blog and referring to her by a racial epithet.  Well, I was deeply angered and offended by that, and so, not only am I going to leave that picture on my blog, I'm going to post another - right now!   

Why wouldn't I want to feature the First Lady of the United States - who has raised two wonderful daughters, has campaigned vigorously for healthier diets and living patterns in America, and has done so much at the Olympic Games in London to reverse the damage Willard Mitt Romney had done to America's international reputation? 

Did I happen to mention she's more popular in America than her husband? 

Tomorrow I begin my second series on athletes, the first since March 2007, in tandem with the Olympics. :-)   

The Beauty of Retrospect: Catherine Keener

So what has actress Catherine Keener been up to since I first featured her in November 2006?

Well, she's been in movies such as Into The Wild (2007), The Soloist and Where The Wild Things Are (both 2009), as well as Peace, Love and Misunderstanding (2011).

So, she's been very busy, thank you very much. :-) 

The Beauty of Retrospect: January Jones

Once again, for the first time since November 2009, the lovely Ms. Jones of the AMC television series "Mad Men," a January we actually look forward to seeing. :-D 

Her role as Betty Draper Francis was diminished a bit in the just-completed fifth season, but she's remained an indelible presence on the show. :-)

The Beauty of Retrospect: Anjelica Huston

Anjelica Huston is one of the first women I featured on this blog back in 2006 (the color picture below is from that year).  So what has John Huston's strikingly beautiful daughter been up to lately?

Well, she currently appears in the NBC drama "Smash," about the making of a Broadway musical, as Eileen Rand - the musical's producer.

 

Among the movies Ms. Huston (pictured above in 1974) has appeared in since 2006 is 2007's The Darjeeling Limited, a very funny travel movie set in India. 

The Beauty of Retrospect: Margrit Ramme

Is it too soon now to post two pictures of German model Margrit Ramme here, after having posted so many of them here in recent months?

Of course not! It's never too soon! In fact, I would argue that I'm late in posting a couple more!

I have now posted up to seventeen pictures of Margrit Ramme here (not counting her picture with Karen Graham), by my count. :-)

Both of these pictures are from a Vogue editorial.  

The Beauty of Retrospect: Karen Graham

 I never seem to run out of Karen Graham pictures.  She has one amazing portfolio! :-)

Here she is in a pensive pose. :-)

The Beauty of Retrospect: Jacki Adams

When I first posted a picture of  1980s model Jacki Adams in August 2007, someone left a comment on my asking if I had more pictures of her, and I said I'd keep my eye out for some.  Well, it took nearly five years, but I have a couple more pictures of Jacki Adams to share! :-) 

Jacki Adams's style could best be described as "classy cool," not unlike that of her modeling peer Dianne deWitt.  She worked with all the best fashion photographers in the business - Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Arthur Elgort, Francesco Scavullo, Patrick Demarchelier (you know, the usual suspects!) - and appeared on the covers of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and New Woman.     

Jacki Adams, now an skilled outdoorswoman who climbs mountains, hikes trails and runs marathons, was probably best known in the eighties as the face of Elizabeth Arden cosmetics, which she represented for five years.  Both of the pictures above are taken from the Elizabeth Arden ad campaign. :-)  

The Latest Numbers (And Other Things)

I have now posted 591 women on this blog.  I've gotten well ahead of where I want to be in order to have posted pictures of a thousand different women by the time I mark the tenth anniversary of this blog in September 2016. :-)

With one of my first five hundred women now identified, I am adding Renata Vackova's name to the list of subjects I compiled back in September 2011.  (That Erno Laszlo model from September 2010 may remain forever anonymous. :-( )  Also, I am adding to my list of permanent links (on the right side of the page you are looking at now) a link to model-turned-photographer Janice O'Reilly's photography Web site, after having included in my most recent post featuring her. :-)

I'll be spending the remainder of July 2012 on retrospectives - women I've already featured - but for August 2012, I'll be devoting the entire month to female athletes, something I haven't done since March 2007 - in honor of the Olympics.  And it's better than the Olympics, because the Olympics last only two weeks and change.  And no sob stories here! 

Stay tuned. :-)

The Beauty Of Anonymity, Model ID Update: Renata Vackova!

Back In February 2011, I posted a black-and-white picture of a very sexy model from a Saks Fifth Avenue ad for Princess Marcella Borghese skin care products, asking anyone if they could identify her. Well, thanks to help from three blog viewers - and they all agree on this one - I can now identify her as Czech model and actress Renata Vackova.

Renata Vackova was very much in demand as a model in the mid-eighties, when this picture was taken.  She also made her presence felt in the movies at that same time; in 1984, she appeared in the film version of Amadeus, about the rivalry between composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, which was directed by another Czech, Milos Forman.   

Here's a color photo of Renata Vackova, from 1985, which I managed to find.  It's from a Revlon ad.

Thanks to Barry, Cliff and Alfred for identifying this lovely woman. :-) 

Actress Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver's first movie role was an inauspicious one.  She appeared near the end of 1977's Annie Hall, standing next to Woody Allen in front of a theater as his character's date. She had no lines, and the scene was shot from a distance.  It was even less than Jeff Goldblum's walk-on part in the same movie.

Two years later, she became a star as Ellen Ripley in Alien, a role she would play three more times. In between, she played Dana Barrett in two Ghostbusters movies.

Of course, Sigourney Weaver is more than just a talented actress who's appeared in a few blockbuster movies.  She made a name for herself in more serious fare, such as a televison reporter on the trail of a murderer in Eyewitness and as British Embassy officer Jilly Bryant in The Year Of Living Dangerously, about the 1965 fall of Indonesian President Sukarno.  She played both the dramatic and comedic ends of her talents in two 1988 movies, as doomed conservationist Dian Fossey in the biodrama Gorillas In the Mist, and as the duplicitous boss Katharine Parker in the Melanie Griffith vehicle Working Girl. 

Tonight (July 15, 2012), Sigourney Weaver debuts in the USA cable TV miniseries "Political Animals," playing Elaine Barrish, a  current secretary of State and former First Lady who of course is loosely based on Hillary Clinton.

But, this isn't the first time Sigourney Weaver has played a First Lady.  Anyone remember the hilarious 1993 political satire movie Dave? :-D

Fun fact #1: Sigourney Weaver's original first name is Susan.  She took "Sigourney" from an obscure character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's book "The Great Gatsby."     

Fun fact #2: She holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford and an Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale.

Fun fact #3: She was once engaged to reporter Aaron Latham, who later married Lesley Stahl.    

Model Nancy Umhoefer

Nancy Umhoefer is a model from the eighties, having originally come from Wisconsin.

She was represented by the Elite agency's Chicago branch.

Actress Liv Ullmann

Liv Ullmann is thought of as a Scandinavian actress, but she is in fact a child of the world.

Born in Tokyo to Norwegian parents while her father was working in Japan, she went on to live in Canada before her family returned to Norway.  She began her acting career there on the stage, then she worked in the movies with the great Ingmar Bergman in Sweden.  She now lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Oh yeah, her career.  Well, she appeared in some of Bergman's greatest movies, including Persona, The Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers, and Autumn Sonata.  She also appeared in Bergman's Swedish television miniseries Scenes From a Marriage, which was edited down to a 167-minute theatrical release for the U.S.   She's also been a director, making Sofie in 1992 with her Scenes From a Marriage co-star Erland Josephson.

Mainstream American audiences may remember her role in the 1977 World War II drama A Bridge Too Far. 

As of June 2012, she was planning to direct a film adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie with Michele Williams.

How well-traveled is Liv Ullmann?  She became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in the late seventies.  

Stage actress and dancer Emily Tyra

At the age of seven, Emily Tyra said she wanted to be Lucille Ball.

And so, her ambition could not be denied.

Starting out as a ballet dancer with the Boston Ballet and James Sewell Ballet companies, Emily Tyra made the move to theater upon arriving in New York.  She has not only played Candy in an Off Broadway production of The City Club, she's made it onto Broadway in a big way - as Delphine in The Little Dancer (directed by Susan Stroman) and as part of the ensemble in Hugh Jackman's 2011 show Back On Broadway.

Her resume includes regional productions of crowd-pleasing musicals such as Beauty and the Beast (not as Belle, inexplicably) and Singin' In the Rain, and she's even appeared in an episode of the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire."

Expect to see more of her. :-) 

Meryl Streep

The one and only. :-D

Meryl Streep's Wikipedia entry reads, "She is widely regarded as one of the most talented actresses of all time."

You don't say!

A New Jersey native and a Yale graduate, Meryl Streep made her major movie debut in 1978's The Deer Hunter, the only good movie Michael Cimino ever made.  She also appeared as a bitchy ex-wife to Woody Allen's character in Manhattan, as well as the lover of a U.S. Senator from New York in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (both from 1979), but it was her role as Joanna in the 1979 child custody battle drama Kramer vs. Kramer (opposite Dustin Hoffman) that brought her even greater widespread recognition.  These four roles generated nominations for seventeen acting awards between them, and Meryl Streep won twelve of them.  And she was just getting started. 

Newsweek magazine dubbed her "a star for the '80s" in 1979, and it turned out to be an accurate prophecy.    She spent 1980 performing on stage (which, some would argue, makes her a "real" actress), but beginning in 1981, it was difficult to pass a movie theater without seeing a Meryl Streep movie on the marquee.  Consider this list:

The French Lieutenant's Woman
Still Of The Night
Sophie's Choice
Silkwood (as ill-fated corporate whistle blower Karen Silkwood)
Falling In Love
Plenty
Out Of Africa (as Dutch baroness and writer Karen Blixen, who wrote under the name Isak Dinesen)
Heartburn
Ironweed
A Cry In the Dark
She-Devil (opposite Roseanne Barr in a comedy)

This isn't a partial list of her eighties movies; it's a complete one. And critics loved Streep in these movies even when they didn't necessarily like the movie. I don't have enough space to list all the awards and award nominations she got in this period.

She continued in the nineties with movies such as The Bridges of Madison County, directed by and co-starring Clint Eastwood (better than the book, I am told),  Marvin's Room, and Music of the Heart (as a violin teacher), but her more recent roles have gained her even more recognition in recent years, such as The Devil Wears Prada (as a totalitarian fashion magazine editor), Mamma Mia! (the movie version of the Abba jukebox musical), and The Iron Lady, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a role that had audiences cheering for Mrs. Thatcher regardless of their politics.

See how good Meryl Streep is? :-)

Again, there are too many awards and nominations involved from this later period to mention.

The Beauty of Anonymity Update: Model Identified!

In April 2012, I featured the photograph below of a model from a 1974 Wella shampoo ad, asking if anyone had any idea of who it was. Thanks to help from two blog viewers, I have a name.

She is Pamela Huntington, and according to my sources, she is a model and television actress who appeared in many TV commercials in the 1970s.  I've also been led to understand that she played Blair Warner's mother on the sitcom "The Facts of Life."

Thanks to Barry and to Marlene for the identification.  Good work, mates! :-) I may have an ID for one of the other three anonymous models I have featured here, but I have yet to verify it.  I'll keep you updated on that, plus any responses to my other ID questions. 

Actress Meredith Salenger

If you remember Meredith Salenger, you remember her movie roles as teenager in the 1980s, such as the 1985 Disney movie The Journey of Natty Gann, about a Depression-era teenage girl looking for her father.

Well, she's all grown up now, and she has a law degree, as well as a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard.  She currently spends her time working at the Agency for Dispute Resolution in Beverly Hills.

But she hasn't turned her back on acting completely.  Since graduating from law school, she's appeared in movies such as Third Wheel and My Apocalypse.  She currently plays Lisa Sanders, a mom, in the cable TV series "Hollywood Heights," about a teenager who becomes a pop star.  (Meredith Salenger plays the star teen's friend's mother.)  

Paloma Picasso

The one and only. :-) 

Even people who aren't into fashion design or European abstract art know who Paloma Picasso is.  Having said, that, I hope you'll indulge me in adding some details.  

The daughter of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and French painter/author Françoise Gilot, Paloma Picasso made a name for herself as a jewelry designer, and she started at the bottom - designing necklaces from rhinestones bought at flea markets.   

In 1971, at 22, she began designing jewelry for the Greek jewelry company Zolotas, but in 1980, Miss Picasso's career took a turn for the better when she began designing for Tiffany & Co. in New York.  Her Tiffany designs employed different stones of varying colors and shapes in whimsical patterns, making her as much an international household name as her famous father.  A subsequent line of bath and cosmetics products - including a "Paloma" perfume (her name means "dove" in Spanish) - certified her as a legend . . . and made her name synonymous with classy Christmas presents. :-)    

Fun fact: Paloma Picasso was one of two celebrities in the running for a "Do you know me?" American Express credit card commercial in the mid-eighties.  She got chosen instead of the other front runner . . . Alice Cooper. :-D  

Another fun fact: Some of her work is permanently displayed in two American museums, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.