Category: Classic Beauty

Classic Beauty: Sally Blane

Classic Beauty

I’ve spoken about Loretta Young and her sister Polly Ann before, and in the intro to the latter, I said the following:

Actor David Niven once described the Young sisters (Polly Ann, Elizabeth and Loretta) thus: “Each one was prettier than the others.”

So if I’ve looked at Loretta and Polly Ann, then where’s Elizabeth Young?

Here she is;  only she changed her stage name to Sally Blane.  In the early years:

And later on:

Good grief.  Small wonder that David Niven was so frequently a guest at the Young sisters’ house, the old dog.  Here he is with Loretta:

Classic Beauty: Diana Dors

Classic Beauty

It is difficult to read her biography without sorrow for Diana Dors’s career, which consisted mainly of exploitation, outright abuse (e.g. abortions forced on her by her lovers) and a succession of movie roles promised but never fulfilled.

Most of the above came from her appearance — although it must also be said that she was also a naughty, naughty girl — so let’s see what all the fuss was about.

Let’s look at the tout ensemble  now:

We’ll save the color pics for another time.

Classic Beauty: Anne Jeffreys

Classic Beauty

She was the last actress to dance onscreen with Fred Astaire, had an opera-trained soprano voice (which she used on Broadway) and starred in many movies and TV series over the years.  None of which compares to the beauty of Anne Jeffreys:

Imagine finding this little present under the Christmas tree:

And she didn’t get any uglier as she got older, either:

Just wonderful.

Renaissance Man

Architecture, Beauty, Classic Beauty, Culture, Fine Art

What do you call a man who was a professor of Architecture at Turin University, photographer, writer, skier, inventor of engines and designer of race cars, acrobatic pilot and mountaineer?  Carlo Mollino.

I have to say that I’m not enamored of his exterior architecture designs — there’s way too much Gropius and not enough Athens, never mind art nouveau;

…although not all the time:

His interiors are a little too Scandi and not enough Edwardian:

…although his Teatro Regio in Turin is incredible:


…from the inside;  the outside?

…and of his furniture we will not speak.


(Follow the link above for a full exposition of all these, and more.)

But how can you not enjoy his design of something as mundane as a bus?

And then there was his Basiluro race car, which at Le Mans 1955 (yes, that Le Mans race) managed to reach 135mph with a 750cc engine (!) until it was forced off the track into a ditch by a Jaguar:

However, it was Mollino’s photography which first caught my attention (guess why):

And my favorite:

His ultimate expression was this statement:

“Humans matter only insomuch as they contribute to a historic process; outside of history, humans are nothing.”

And Carlo Mollino sure left his mark on the historical process, in so many fields.  Che uomo!