Word: glamming
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...alone conjure images of mayhem, torture and death. Heavy-metal rock, with its raw lyrics, pummeling beats, banshee vocals and buzz-saw guitars, seems custom-made for leather-clad lowlifes with tattooed biceps and lobotomized brains. Teenagers love it. Always have. But during the early 1980s, when the insipid glam-rock of Duran Duran ruled the charts, heavy metal was the idiot in the basement, shunned by music-industry executives and dismissed by critics as adolescent noise...
...rocker has ever fused stage and private personalities with such dedication and calculation as David Bowie. The painted perversity of Ziggy Stardust spearheaded Glitter Rock and Glam Rock back in the early '70s. But as the centerpiece and major instigator of all this, Bowie was after something more than a shock and a trend. He wanted a confrontation with the innate theatricality of rock. In 1972, when he first hit the stage as Ziggy, decked out in makeup, dye job and psychedelic costume, the rock world was ready. Too much karma, too much good vibes, too much hippy dippy: audiences...
...start, there's a whole slew of old Hollywood gems. Grand Hotel, 1932 with Garbo, sums up a lot about the Golden Age--it's crummy, really, but irresistable because there's just so much glam. With the Barrymore's, Joan Crawford and Wallace Beery. Along with it at Quincy House is Astaire and Rogers' Top Hat, whence cometh "Cheek to Cheek" and others. Many people's favorite--not mine, but wonderful by definition. Music is Irving Berlin...
...serpents are gilded with Theda Bara eye makeup and cheap-glam feather boas, but their style is belly dance rather than hippity-hop Charleston. The set, too, is twenties and thirties: the glitter of aluminum foil stars and moons is like the old movie palaces with their ugly statues, fancy organs, and ceilings domed in twinkling lights to look like the midnight sky. The effect is hokey but not distracting--it's just instant dreamland...
Despite 1960's troubles, the underwriters will all show their customary profit this year. Movie insurance turns on a working combination of independent brokers who know show business and glam-ourproof actuaries who know just what table the show must go on. They protect themselves with .such features as the "48hour clause franchise" (no payoff if shooting is held up less than three days) they raise premiums to cover special risks: film versions of Broadway plays are often expensive because groups of stars are generally on-camera at the same time and if one is out the whole production...