Word: songbird
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...perhaps the newest and prettiest star from France, but she says that she can't sing or act-and "to pick up a mirror is to become demoralized." Her modesty is becoming, and her countrymen obviously forgive her. At 22, she sells more recordings than any other French songbird; she has been put into films with some success by Vadim, and only men become demoralized by her figure...
Except that it isn't. The performance of a supper-club songbird, in fact, is a coldly calculated exercise in group seduction. Every movement, every lighting change is as carefully mapped out as a market-research study and a subliminal soft-sell. There is, for instance, the old "arctic gust" routine, whereby the air conditioning in a club is turned up full blast a few minutes before showtime. The hapless audience, unaware of what hit it, naturally attributes the sudden lift in spirits to the personality of the performer. And when it comes time for the singer...
...Given the Bresler-Duddy treatment, almost any fledgling songbird can be preened into a passable nightclub performer. Take the classic case of Bobbe (nee Barbara) Norris, 23. When she moved into a one-room apartment in Manhattan last year about the only experience she could boast was singing at high school proms in her native San Francisco. A friend got her an audition with Columbia Records, which signed her to a recording contract and sent her to Norman Rosemont, a high-powered producer-manager, who got her booked into the elegant Persian Room in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel...
...Miller began to change when she began making recordings at her own expense, "just for the ducks of it." Her accompanist somehow induced a disk jockey to play one of her songs on his program. The reaction was such that Capitol Records signed her up and the Kansas songbird was at last...
...glamour-boy private pilot, both up to their pearly ears in self-parody. Arthur Hill adds knowing touches as the lovesick family lawyer, who hopes to bridge the years between himself and Pamela with the help of isometric exercises. Strikingly cast are Julie Harris as a ginmill songbird hooked on drugs, and Shelley Winters as a tubby former starlet whose sidelines include smuggling Mexican migratory workers into...