The Beauty of Retrospect: Alexandra Steele

I first featured TV weather reporter Alexandra Steele back in February 2007, the same month I first featured  Norah O'Donnell.  Back then, Ms. Steele was with The Weather Channel, but she eventually got fired.

  

So where is she now?

I'm pleased to report that you can find her on CNN.  And I have no idea why the Weather Channel let her go.    

The Beauty of Retrospect: Teri Polo

Teri Polo began the twenty-first century as a rising star.  She ended its first decade and began its second as just another actress with a résumé of failure.  "I'm With Her."  "The Wedding Bells."  "Finnegan."  "Man Up!"  All were TV shows in which she starred.  All of them failed. One of them, "Finnegan," was canceled before it even aired.  And all those Fockers movies didn't help matters any.  By 2012, our heroine appeared to be on her way to becoming a doyenne of basic cable movies.

Well, her latest endeavor is a basic cable show . . . but it's a far more substantial gig than anything she could have done on the Hallmark Channel.     

In ABC Family's drama "The Fosters," Teri Polo plays Stephanie "Stef" Foster, one half of an interracial lesbian couple in San Diego raising a family of foster children along with her biological son by an ex-husband. Her partner is black, and two of their foster children are Hispanic siblings.  It's as heavy as it sounds.  Oh, and did I mention that her character is also a San Diego policewoman?

The well-received show is under the radar screen for obvious reasons, and it's on hiatus as of this writing, but it's coming back in January 2014 after a successful first season.  It should be on in its original time slot - 9 PM Eastern on Mondays. 

It looks like Teri Polo finally has a success.  Thank Jennifer Lopez, one of the show's executive producers, for that. :-)      

The Beauty of Retrospect: Norah O'Donnell

I first featured TV newswoman Norah O'Donnell back in February 2007, when she was at NBC and its sister cable channel MSNBC. She's changed jobs since.

In June 2011, she joined CBS News, still the gold standard of television journalism in the United States, and after a year and change as CBS's chief White House correspondent, she became a co-anchor of "CBS This Morning," the Tiffany Network's current morning news show.

There have been several attempts at a morning news show at CBS.  With Norah O'Donnell paired with Charlie Rose on this one, the venerable Columbia Broadcasting System (actually, the initials don't stand for that anymore, they're just corporate initials now) might hit pay dirt this time. 

How can it not, with Norah O'Donnell's smile and hearty laugh, not to mention her Irishness? :-)

Fun fact: Her husband is Washington, D.C. restaurateur Geoff Tracy.

The Beauty of Retrospect: Beverly Lee

As noted earlier on this blog, ethnic stereotypes have made regrettable appearances in American advertising.

These two ads clearly play on the Asian ethnicity of the model in the wrong way, especially the ad for Yves Saint Laurent's signature perfume.  A Chinese-American model for a product called "Opium?"  Not a good move.

But because the model is Beverly Lee . . .

. . . her classiness overcomes all of that - beautifully. :-)

The Beauty of Retrospect: Beverly Johnson

There's never any shortage of pictures of Beverly Johnson, the black supermodel of the 1970s.

There isn't a shortage of hairstyles she's sported, either. :-) 

Although she always looks striking in black and white, color film very much becomes her.

The first color photo in this post is,  I believe, from the March 1980 U.S. edition of Harper's Bazaar.  I don't remember where I found the second one.

It makes sense to post these pictures of Beverly Johnson, a trailblazer for black women, today, on the day of the commemorative civil rights march in Washington. 

The Beauty of Retrospect: Nancy Dutiel

Nancy Dutiel was one of the first models to turn my head when I was a teenager. I imagine she's turned enough heads in her life to give plenty of men whiplash. :-D

Both of these first two pictures in this post are from her late-seventies/early-eighties stint as Lancôme's U.S. spokesmodel, a job she handled with all the necessary elegance required.

The third picture, from 1981, is actually from an ad for Castleberry clothing. So it seems that our heroine was in great demand back in the day.

Incidentally, although her surname sounds French - and she may be ethnically French - I believe Nancy Dutiel is originally from Ohio.   

The Beauty of Retrospect: Seductive Eighties Glamour Shots

I've never posted a single entry on this blog with two separate pictures of two different women before.  But I felt it was appropriate in this post, in which I feature two women I've featured here earlier.

Both of these pictures show two high-profile models from the 1980s striking very similarly seductive glamour poses.  Both women succeed here in the art known as "making love to the camera." :-)

The black-and-white photo (from around 1988) is of the lovely Frenchwoman Anne Bezamat, who displays a classy sexiness with a pair of long opera gloves in a transparent patterned fabric, softly touching her cheeks with her hands while evoking a longing, inviting "come-hither" look with her lips gently parted.  What's the French word for "Yowsa?" :-D    

The color photo shows Texas-born Dianne deWitt, the coolest of the cool '80s blonde models, looking just divine with her delicately styled golden hair.  But her beauty is accentuated most by how she positions her left hand against her porcelain cheek.  (Note her finger through her blonde locks.).  She pouts her lips in the same manner as Anne Bezamat, but the effect is very different.  And her glamorous accessories - all that shining jewelry - add a nice touch. A very nice touch. :-)  

Of course, both women have natural features of their own - Anne Bezamat with her straight nose and prominent cheekbones, Dianne deWitt with her creamy complexion and her soft facial contours, both with their wonderfully evocative eyes - that make it easy for them to pull off such poses. :-) 

There's a reason why males who came of age in the Reagan years were obsessed with the fashion models of that period, even if they don't miss the music.

Ah, the Paris, France - Paris, Texas axis . . ..   

The Latest Numbers and Statistics

I have now posted pictures of 726 different women since starting this blog in September 2006.  And though I didn't think I'd have any changes in the statistics regarding my top ten posts to report today, I in fact have three changes to report.  The most recent chart is below; feel free to click on it to enlarge it.  

The first change is that Weather Channel personality Crystal Egger and television actress Kaley Cuoco have switched places since I last posted a statistical chart in June 2013.  Then, my January 2012 post of Kaley Cuoco was fifth and my October 2010 post of Crystal Egger was sixth; now it's the other way around.  That may be due to the fact that Ms. Cuoco's show "The Big Bang Theory" is on a summer hiatus and the possibility that more television viewers are tuning in to The Weather Channel due to heightened concern about hurricane season.  Or maybe my followers just think Crystal Egger is more attractive.  (In June, Kaley Cuoco was ahead of Crystal Egger by only 28 pageviews; now Ms. Egger is ahead of Ms. Cuoco by 114 pageviews.)

The second change is that in June 2013, my May 2011 post of television reporter Atia Abawi was in eighth place, one spot ahead of my October 2012 post of model/photographer Barbara Minty.  Now, Ms. Minty is eighth, and Ms. Abawi is ninth.  As to why that is, I have no idea, and I hesitate to offer any speculation.

The third change? My September 2009 post devoted to model Sheila Johnson (at number two) has surpassed 10,000 pageviews - only the second post to do so, following my July 2011 post of NBC-TV reporter Kristen Welker . . . although that post remains number one by a margin so wide it's hard to see any other post on this blog overtaking it any time soon.  Note, however, that the same posts that filled out my top ten list in June 2013 are my top ten posts today.  That fact, at least, has not changed.

It's retrospectives - posts of women I've already featured - for the rest of August.  Tomorrow, I'm posting something different - a single post devoted to two different women. :-) 

Model/actress Leigh Nicole Ward

You may have never heard of Leigh Nicole Ward before.  But you just might hear of her in the not-too-distant future.

The young model and actress, who goes by the name Leigh Nicole, is based in Boston and has appeared in several small films and a few local commercials.

She's also an accomplished dancer, having studied ballet for eighteen years. And, as of this writing, she's only 26.

It's not a question of whether she makes the big time, but rather, when. :-)

Check out her Web site.

Fashion model Jane-Lee Salmons

Can't forget the Motor City.

Before Veronica Webb, the hottest model to come out of Detroit was easily Jane-Lee Salmons.

She had a prolific career that started in the late sixties and continued through the seventies.

She even has a movie to her credit - Greetings, a 1968 feature which was only director Brian DePalma's second film. She played - what else? - a model in a movie that spoofed sixties culture and starred a very young and unknown Robert DeNiro.   

Actress Margot Robbie

Margot Robbie is an Australian actress who has been making attempts to break through in the United States.

She's best known in her homeland for playing Donna Freedman on the soap opera "Neighbours."  She got a starring role in the U.S. as stewardess Laura Cameron on an ABC-TV period drama, the "Mad Men" clone "Pan Am." Like other "Mad Men" clones on American broadcast television, though, "Pan Am" was quickly canceled.  You might say it was "grounded."     

That hasn't deterred Margot Robbie from trying to become a star in America.  As of July 2013, she was in negotiations to star in the upcoming movie Focus, opposite Will Smith.  

Canadian TV actress Missy Peregrym

Like Jessica Paré, Missy Peregrym is a gorgeous young Canadian actress from la belle province of Quebec.  But Ms. Peregrym has found stardom in America by working north of the border - specifically, in "Rookie Blue," a Canadian police drama set in Toronto.  

Airing in Canada on the English-language Global Televsion Network and in the United States on  ABC-TV, it stars Ms. Peregrym as Andrea "Andy" McNally, a rookie policewoman who always tries to do the right thing even if it means failing to follow standard police procedure. 

Missy Peregrym has also been a presence in American television productions, appearing in six episodes of NBC's "Heroes" as Candice Wilmer and as a regular in the CW series "Reaper" as Andi Prendergast.

Athlete/model/actress Stacy Oversier

Yes, Stacy Oversier has been all of these. :-D

Stacy Oversier was a rhythmic gymnast, and she trained in Los Angeles under Russian coach Alla Svirsky.  She went on to be a member of the American rhythmic gymnastics team eight times and a member the World Championship Team three times.  She was chosen as the most beautiful female athlete in 1986 by Sport magazine. :-)

When Bruce Weber photographed her along with other Olympic hopefuls for another magazine, he sent some of her photos to Vogue's Grace Coddington, who had her booked for a session with Patrick Demarchelier in Paris, and her modeling career quickly began.  The above photo is from the cover of a special edition of a fitness magazine from the year 2000, when she was with the Elite agency, focusing on her abilities as athlete as much as on her modeling skills. :-) 

Her films have included the action movies The Guardian and Invincible. 

Fashion model Barbara Neumann

Barbara Neumann was a top model in the late seventies, working in Paris through the FAM agency.

She later went from being a model to managing models - male models. She was the director of the men's divisions of the Ford and Wilhelmina agencies, both in their Miami Beach, Florida offices.