The Beauty of Retrospect: Kristen Welker, My All-Time Champion!

And she is, Kristen Welker, the most popular woman on my blog! :-D

I'd wanted to limit my retrospective posts to two before going on to my next A-Z round of original subjects as part of my effort to cut back on revisiting the same women time after time after time, but the immense popularity of my earlier - and, until today, only - post showing NBC's exotically lovely White House correspondent (who provides updates on MSNBC on a more or less regular basis) demands that I present a sequel. Hence, this third retrospective before the next series of new faces. Feel free to click on this image to enlarge it, the better to appreciate Ms. Welker's beauty! :-)

The photo above shows our heroine doing what she does best - reporting on the news coming out of the White House, with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue itself in the background.

Okay, let's see how many pageviews this post gets!  At the very least, the numbers it generates by the time I report on my statistics again - probably late April - should shake things up a bit.

I'll be back soon with another round of beautiful women appearing here for the first time. :-)

The Latest Numbers and Statistics

I have now posted pictures of 671 different women on this blog, though there are obviously more pictures - spread out across 960 separate posts - than there are single subjects. (Don't ask me to count the number of pictures used! :-D)

I now have the latest statistics for the ten most popular posts of all time - all time, as always, defined as since May 2008, when Blogger.com started keeping such records. Feel free to click on the image below to enlarge it.

Compared to December 2012, when I last posted statistics, not much as happened at the top. As always, my July 2011 post showing NBC reporter Kristen Welker remains the most popular one by a wide, wide, wide margin, with my September 2009 post paying tribute to model Sheila Johnson (the first of several such posts) a distant second - 17,228 to 8,570, resulting in a much wider gap between the two than before. My February 2011 post of model-actress Joan Severance and my January 2012 post of actress Kaley Cuoco remain at number three and four, respectively.

There are couple of changes farther down. My July 2011 post of actress Piper Perabo and my January 2012 post of actress Erin Gray were separated from sixth and seventh place, respectively, by only two pageviews. Now they're separated by 464 views, with my October 2010 post of The Weather Channel personality Crystal Egger in between, at 3,410 pageviews. My post devoted to Ms. Perabo has thus knocked my post showing Ms. Egger out of fifth place to claim that position.

Farther down, my April 2009 post of model-turned-newswoman Willow Bay has been knocked out of the top ten, while my April 2011 post of German model Margrit Ramme has dropped from eighth to ninth - though she's still the most popular non-American woman on this blog - and my February 2011 post of actress Meg Ryan has dropped from ninth to tenth. (Last time, my post of Ms. Ryan was at 1,400 pageviews, but that number has since been adjusted downward by two.) These changes are the result of the surge of interest in my May 2011 post of NBC television reporter Atia Abawi, which has since entered the top ten and is now at number eight with 1,704 pageviews. She has a long way to go here before she can catch up with her colleague Kristen Welker, though, whose entry has gotten about ten views for every view Atia Abawi's entry has gotten.

So it's settled: Kristen Welker is a big hit here. So I've decided to post another picture of her . . . and then we'll see if my second post paying tribute to her is as popular as the first.

The Beauty of Retrospect: Karen Graham, 1975

I always seem to find more photos of Karen Graham, whose portfolio is nothing short of immense. Here's another photo I found of her, from 1975 - presumably from a fashion magazine editorial feature.

Her dress is a Pucci design, but do you think I really care about that? :-D

The Beauty of Retrospect: Isabelle Adjani

I'd like to feature a couple of retrospectives before I go to the next A-Z round of new subjects (and the latest stats), so tonight I present another look at Isabelle Adjani, France's greatest living actress whose name isn't Catherine Deneuve.

Isabelle Adjani has been very active since I first featured her in March 2008. In fact, in 2009, she appeared in her first theatrically released movie in six years - Skirt Day, in which she played a high school teacher who has to deal with bored students in a violent environment. It earned her her fifth César Award for Best Actress. (The Césars are the French equivalent of the Oscars.) In Skirt Day, her character takes her class hostage in an act of desperation to reach them. To Sir, With Love it is not.

Ms. Adjani's more recent movies include Mammuth (2010) and De Force (2011).  She plays the mother of a young, headstrong Indian woman in the Hindi film Ishkq in Paris, the release of which has been delayed repeatedly but, as of this writing, should be released some time in 2013.

Fun fact #1: Isabelle Adjani isn't ethnically French. She's half-Kabyle, as her father was an Algerian immigrant in France, and half-German.

Fun fact #2: She was romantically linked to Daniel Day-Lewis from 1989 to 1995.

Model/artist Jennifer Yarrow

Jennifer Yarrow may look like another pretty face from the modeling trade, but there's more to her than meets the eye.

She's currently an abstract painter, based in Kelowna, British Columbia, and as of this writing she's planning an exhibit of her work. She has also been a teacher in the Waldorf system of education, developed by the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. The Waldorf method involves teaching children in elementary and middle school by encouraging the development of their artistic expression and social capacities, which is meant to foster creative and analytical modes of understanding.  Ms. Yarrow taught at a Waldorf school in Minnesota.

She is also, as of this writing, working on her memoirs. 

Television actress Dreama Walker

I have a Dreama today. :-D

Dreama Walker is a young actress who has mostly made her mark on television. Her most recent role was as June Colburn, an underemployed Midwestern girl in New York forced to share an apartment with a con artist-party girl named Chloe, in the ABC sitcom "Don't Trust the B---- In Apartment 23." Chloe, the b---- in question, was played by Krysten Ritter, featured earlier on this blog.

Alas, ABC canceled the show in early 2013, despite positive reviews.

Dreama Walker has appeared on in several other TV shows, including a recurring role on "The Gossip Girl," as well as several movies, including Gran Torino. So, despite her recent setback, there's reason to believe that this Dreama isn't going to fade.

Actress/model Beth Tegarden

Beth Tegarden is a model who has made the transition to acting.

As an actress, she's appeared in obscure movies and a few one-shot TV roles.

Her most notable role is in the 1997 movie Tender Loving Care, in which she played a distraught mother of a car crash victim.

Actress Heather Alicia Simms

Heather Alicia Simms is a familiar (and beautiful) face to avid TV viewers.

She has played different parts in the "Law & Order" franchise, and she has appeared on the daytime drama "As The World Turns" and the nighttime drama "Third Watch." 

She also appeared in the movie Broken Flowers, and she's also worked in the theater.  

Model Chris Royer

Christine Royer - commonly known as Chris - is one of the most elegant and most stunningly lovely fashion and beauty models of the 1970s.

In her heyday, she did many editorials for Vogue, as well as ads for Valentino. She was also associated closely with the designer Halston, and she was regarded as his inspiration.

She remained involved in fashion and beauty in her post-modeling career, going on to serve as vice president of Revlon's Ultima II division. Since 1997, she has been president of CRC, a consulting firm that specializes in strategic licensing and marketing. Many of CRC's clients have included M.A.C. Cosmetics, Conair, and Lulu Guinness.

She has remained synonymous with Halston, serving as an archivist for the designer's work and as a consultant for books and documentaries about him.

The 666th Woman

When I did my count at the start of the current A-Z round of women on this blog, I realized I'd be coming up  to my 666th subject.  This presented something of a problem, because no one wants to be associated with the "number of the beast."  Then I started thinking . . . what woman is there who is exclusively associated with the darkness?  Indeed, what woman who is so associated would have enough of a sense of humor to appreciate being the 666th woman on my blog?

They were easy questions to answer.

 

Ha ha! But of course - who else could it be but . . . Elvira, Mistress of the Dark?  She's best known as the host of "Movie Macabre," a weekly horror movie presentation on KHJ-TV in Los Angeles in the eighties  which returned as a nationally syndicated feature in 2010.  Basically a modern reworking of the 1950s LA horror movie hostess Vampira, Elvira is distinguished by a tight-fitting outfit showing ample cleavage,  coupled with a sarcastic sense of humor and a biting wit delivered with a San Fernando Valley Girl attitude.  She became a national sensation and even got herself a movie - simply called Elvira, Mistress Of the Dark - in 1988.

In real life Elvira is Cassandra Peterson, a Kansas-born actress who had small roles in various movies in the seventies (including the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever).  She even auditioned for the role of Ginger Grant in the third "Gilligan's Island" reunion TV movie (Tina Louise has been trying to dissociate herself from that role since 1967) before getting the role of a lifetime.

Please note that this post was published at 7:06 PM - sixty-six minutes past six o'clock.

Elvira would love that. :-D    

TV newswoman Maryam Nemazee

Maryam Nemazee is an Iranian-British TV news reporter who's quickly gained an international reputation.

  

She worked for the BBC's Channel 4 and for the privately owned British Channel 5 before joining al-Jazeera English, where she hosted their primary news programs and a debate show. In 2010, she joined Bloomberg television, where she hosts the London-based weekday show "The Pulse with Maryam Nemazee," which reports international business and finance news. At Bloomberg, her credits include interviews with several prominent statesmen and bankers . . . and British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.