A woman over forty will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think.

If a . . . → Read More: Women Over 40 Rock!]]>

Whilst I have many annoying memories of Mr. Rooney, I have to say, a lot of Andy’s reasons why he values women over 40 ring true:

A woman over forty will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think.

If a woman over forty doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And, it’s usually something more interesting.

A woman over forty knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of forty give a hoot what you might think about her or what she’s doing.

Women over forty are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.

Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it’s like to be unappreciated.

A woman over forty has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. Women over forty couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her.

Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over forty. They always know.

A woman over forty looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over forty is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off if you are a jerk, if you are acting like one! You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

Yes, we praise women over forty for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of forty-plus, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some twenty-two-year-old waitress. (Ladies, I apologize.)

Thanks Andy!

The book reads like a Who’s Who of pop culture’s major players in the last . . . → Read More: My Interview With Penny Marshall: In a League of Her Own]]>

Though most famous (to me, anyway) as the Pepsi-and-milk-swigging half of Laverne & Shirley, Penny Marshall’s new memoir, My Mother Was Nuts, reveals her real life was as crazy as anything that went on in front of the cameras.

The book reads like a Who’s Who of pop culture’s major players in the last half of the last century. There are stories of Calvin Klein tearing up the dance floor at high school parties, hanging out with John Belushi, and smelling pillows for Steven Speilberg.

I’m so grateful CNN asked me to sit down with Ms. Marshall as she opened up about her incredible life:

Laverne aka Penny Marshall Image Source: Paramount Home Entertainment

On her unconventional appeal…

In her pre-fame days, the fact that Marshall didn’t fit the Hollywood stereotype was made abundantly clear to her While co-starring in a Head & Shoulders commercial with an unknown blonde named Farrah Fawcett, Marshall’s on-set stand-in wore a placard that read “Homely Girl” while the stand-in for Fawcett wore one reading “Pretty Girl”. Farrah kindly decided to cross out the word “Homely” and wrote “Plain”. In an episode of Love, American Style Marshall’s script cast her as “Homely Girl at Bar”.

After became a big TV star with her own series, she handled her fame with aplomb, though once at a party she and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’s Louise Lasser cordially congratulated one another on their success, then slipped into the bathroom, giddily jumping up and down squealing, “We’re famous! We’re famous!”

On her marriage to Rob Reiner…

Before either one of them well-known, Penny ended up dating and marrying Rob Reiner, who grew up across the street from Marshall in the Bronx, though they’d never met. “It was a very wide street,” Penny explained. At one point both auditioned for a new sitcom, but while Reiner was cast as Mike Stivic, it was Sally Struthers who ended up playing his wife Gloria on All in the Family.

On the ups and downs of Laverne & Shirley…

Penny’s brother, Garry Marshall, was a successful TV writer and producer when Jack Klugman convinced him to cast his sister as Oscar’s secretary Myrna in Marshall’s new series, The Odd Couple. Later Garry ended up casting Penny and her old pal Cindy Williams in a guest stint on another of his hit series, Happy Days. Penny and Cindy played Laverne and Shirley, two “fast girls” Fonzie recruited for a double date with Richie. Marshall and Williams soon got their own spin-off, as a slightly more wholesome version of duo. The show was an immediate hit, debuting as the number one rated show in the country, which was, according to Marshall, “great for my career, not so great for my marriage.” It happened that the TV show Laverne & Shirley pushed from the top spot was…All in the Family.

Laverne & Shirley’s success turned out to be a mixed bag in more ways than one. The show was funny, but on the set things weren’t always so hilarious. Surrounded by Penny’s kin and cronies, Williams felt outnumbered and overlooked which led to tension behind the scenes. Though an unhappy Williams ended up leaving the show before it ended, Marshall assures us that after two decades of silence they’ve finally patched things up: “I just talked to her last night!”

On Carrie Fisher…

Marshall’s relationship with best friend Carrie Fisher has endured through think and thin. “We always got along great because we didn’t like the same guys or the same drugs,” jokes Marshall.

On directing…

Though she’ll always be Laverne De Fazio to those who grew up on the series’ Lucy-esque shenanigans, Marshall went on to become a successful director. With her second film, Big, starring Tom Hanks, she became the first female director to have a film break the $100 million mark at the box office.  Marshall went on to direct several popular films, including the Oscar-nominated Awakenings, where she coped with Robert De Niro’s fear of cockroaches, and Robin Williams’ fear of being out-acted by De Niro.

On A League of Their Own…

Marshall contended with the unique hormonal challenges of a large, mostly female cast. “Unfortunately everyone’s cycle synched up,” reports Marshall, “The mood swings – that poor crew!”

On her mother…

Throughout the book Marshall reiterates that her most salient quality is her desire to have fun, but life didn’t always make it easy. Her mother, as the title suggests, wasn’t exactly June Cleaver. In fact, she told a teenage Penny she’d been unwanted, saying, “You were a miscarriage, but you were stubborn and held on.”

On still coping with 9/11…

Marshall had many friends who were firefighters and as a native New Yorker remains very emotional when it comes to September 11^th. “When was recording for book on tape,” says Marshall, “I couldn’t get through that part – I just kept tearing up.”

On unplanned pregnancies…

Having sex with her college sweetheart to cheer him up after a football squad setback, Marshall became pregnant and embarked on a hasty teenage marriage. (At City Hall they were handed a newlywed’s “Starter Kit” consisting of a bar of soap, toothpaste, and a small box of Tide.) The pair spent much of their honeymoon watching news about Kennedy’s assassination, and things didn’t pick up much after that. Many years later she found herself once again pregnant and unmarried, and though close friend Joe Pesci gallantly offered to step in and act as father, she made the difficult decision to have an abortion. “I didn’t want to be tied to the kid’s (biological) father,” said Marshall, “And that situation was one of my life’s only big regrets.”

In the end…

But through the various heartbreaks and setbacks Penny Marshall knows how to surmount it all. Framed in her bathroom is the Waylon Jennings lyric that speaks to the secret of her success: “I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane.”

<My interview with Ms. Marshall first appeared on cnn.com as Penny Marshall is in a League of Her Own>

I’m not kidding, or trying to be cute. (Who in their right mind would think wanting to mount Mr. Rogers is “adorable”?)

I’d like to say it started when I was a little girl, but I’d be lying. Sure, I loved Mr. Rogers back then — and . . . → Read More: My Perverted Feelings for Mr. Rogers]]>

I have unclean thoughts about Mr. Rogers.

I’m not kidding, or trying to be cute. (Who in their right mind would think wanting to mount Mr. Rogers is “adorable”?)

I’d like to say it started when I was a little girl, but I’d be lying. Sure, I loved Mr. Rogers back then — and I then also loved Roy Rogers, Jesus Christ, my dog Ruben, David Cassidy, and half of the Monkees. But as I got older, and began viewing males as people I wanted to entrance with my budding feminine arsenal, I started to develop a type.  Concerned that my feminine wiles with training wheels would not succeed with men about town, or men about anywhere really, I set my cap on boys who seemed the easiest prey. Besides, as hot to trot as nubile me was, I was also completely terrified of the opposite sex and what they might do to me — slobber-wise, penetration-wise, and judgement-wise. By the time I was thirteen, I’d experienced enough “Show us on this anatomically-correct doll” type stuff  to make even the most seasoned Law & Order: SVU fan shudder, and I’d also watched hundreds of movies and TV shows where fellas done girls wrong, love-wise.

All this, and my own stubborn if not always obvious wholesomeness, made me go for boys (and men) who struck me as sweet, innocent, and non-aggressive (aka the type who wouldn’t strike me). I remember being all hot and heavy for Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and priests who longed for love but were forced to behave by Jesus. (I’m looking at you, Thornbirds.) Yep, men of the cloth seemed the easiest pickings, in a beggars-can’t-be-choosers sorta way, and I wanted to avoid choosers at all costs. I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of a real relationship, but I was dead certain I wanted to be chosen, and chosen hard. For that to happen, the sampling needed to be small, or not at all, ergo — priests! Insecure as I was, I was sure I could rock a priest’s world, Cosmopolitan Magazine-wise.

Mr. Rogers meets all my sweet, innocent, noble character and ectomorph criteria. Sweet? Check. The cardigans he wears, 200 in total, were all hand-knitted by his mother.

Innocent? Check. According to a Mental Floss story, “He was genuinely curious about others. Mister Rogers was known as one of the toughest interviews because he’d often befriend reporters, asking them tons of questions, taking pictures of them, compiling an album for them at the end of their time together, and calling them after to check in on them and hear about their families. He wasn’t concerned with himself, and genuinely loved hearing the life stories of others. And it wasn’t just with reporters. Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec’s house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host).” Also, like me, Mr. Rogers doesn’t smoke, drink, or eat the flesh of any animals.

Here’s where the thought bubble above my head reads, “OMG! We have sooo much in common!” as I practice writing “Mrs. Rogers” 100 times in my best cursive. Like me, Mr. Rogers loved animals, and they loved him right back. I’m sure you remember  Koko, the famous gorilla who could communicate in ASL, and understood thousands of words in English. She was also an avid Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood fan. When Koko got the chance to meet Mr. Rogers in person, she hugged him and then did what she’d seen him do a hundred times on TV: she took off his shoes! (I mean, seriously. I’m on overload, right?)

As for noble character, remember my mentioning Mr. Smith Goes To Washington a few paragraphs back? Well, my man Fred had his own “Mr. Rogers Goes to Washington” moment when his grope-worthy grace pretty much single-handedly secured PBS’ funding. CHECK.

And what else do Jesus, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Mr. Rogers, my childhood dog Ruben (and incidentally, my wonderful husband) all have in common? They’re all slim as all get out. In that same Mental Floss story we learn that Mr. Rogers “watched his figure to the pound. In covering Rogers’ daily routine (waking up at 5 a.m.; praying for a few hours for all of his friends and family; studying; writing, making calls and reaching out to every fan who took the time to write him; going for a morning swim; getting on a scale; then really starting his day), writer Tom Junod explained that Mr. Rogers weighed in at exactly 143 pounds every day for the last 30 years of his life.”

According to Junod, Rogers came “to see that number as a gift… because, as he says, “the number 143 means ‘I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say ‘love’ and three letters to say ‘you.’” That’s why he kept his weight at one-hundred forty-three pounds. I mean, come on. COME ON. Is that the sweetest thing ever? (The answer is, of course,  yes.)

Was poor prepubescent me perverted to have all these lusty-dovey feelings for this genteel and generous man whose aura many described as Christ-like? It’s not like I just wanted to get all freaky between the sheets just for the hell of it. It’s heaven I’m after. After rocking his world, I’d cuddle in close while Mr. Rogers tells me he “loves me just the way I am” as he falls asleep, off to dream about pie and brotherhood and helping sad, lonely children.

If loving Mr. Rogers is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

You don’t know you do, but you do. Knowing where you came from, how you came to be in the world, how you came to have that laugh or those eyes. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, you don’t care. But it’s the luxury of . . . → Read More: I Finally Found My Mother, Myself, and A Lot More]]>

You take it for granted.

You don’t know you do, but you do. Knowing where you came from, how you came to be in the world, how you came to have that laugh or those eyes. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, you don’t care. But it’s the luxury of not caring about something you have and can discard. For me, and lots of people like me, not knowing how or why you got here — it hurts. Without a backstory, a first act or a prologue, you feel just plopped down in the universe with no tether, no anchor, and no map or North Star to find your way.

It’s lonely being adopted, because you’re all alone with this nagging mystery. Everyone else knows where they came from and dismisses it as unimportant. You alone care, and you’re not only alone in caring, but sometimes punished for it. One day when I was about 13 I was at the eye doctor. He asked if there was a history of glaucoma in the family, and my mother piped up and started to say there was. I added that it actually wasn’t relevant for my medical history since I was adopted. I didn’t make a big deal about it, I just understood why he was asking.  Later, when we got out to the parking lot my mother slapped my face, snarling, “Why do you always have to remember that? I don’t, why do you have to?” Now as an adult I can feel for my poor mother’s fragility around the issue. Still, I wish back then someone could have been sensitive to mine.

I’ve always longed to know how I got here, and the day before Thanksgiving last year, I finally found out:

Many improbable and hare-brained things are hatched in our nation’s capital, and turns out I was one of them.

A half century ago, a Washington DC bigwig was driving his secretary home late one night. As wigs go he was one of the biggest (and his brother was even a bigger wig). The secretary was an average woman who’d left home on the farm at 16 and come to town 2 decades earlier with the influx of workers needed when World War II erupted. The two had a professional relationship, and if anything the secretary was irritated by the wigs’ size and its accompanying know-it-all-ness. After all, she’d been in government 20 years and she though this Phi Beta Kappa upstart was a little too big for his britches.

It’s hard to get a handle on just what happened that night. Only a few things are certain: Doris had sex for the second time in her life; she had sex for the first and only time her boss; and 9 months later the world got 10 more fingers and 10 more toes foisted upon it.

Eight months earlier a doctor had given poor Doris the bad news, but told her he could get the problem fixed. She would have gone that route, but she’d heard of girls dying in back-alley abortions and the prospect of bleeding to death on some dirty mattress somewhere was too daunting. She couldn’t get married because she “didn’t like any of the fellas I was going with enough to get married.”

Doris told the big wig boss about her situation but other than a check he cut for $300 (“I don’t know what that was supposed to be for”) it seems the matter was closed. So about 3 months later she got on a bus to Miami Beach – she’d always wanted to see Miami Beach – and when she arrived she got a room in a small inexpensive hotel and began leafing through the phone book to find a doctor. So there she waited for the inevitable — me.

I was born April 17^th. The next day Doris sent in her letter of resignation. A woman she’d met in the hospital lobby 2 days earlier brought her a baby present; Doris doesn’t remember what she did with it.

She went back to Washington DC to get pack some things.  She says the big wig contacted her saying he would marry her and they’d raise the baby together, to which she replied, “Too late, Sonny Jim.” (When I asked Doris how he might marry her when he was already married, she shrugged.) She moved back to Missouri.

A year later “Mr. Wig” was giving a speech in Chicago and contacted Doris and asked to take her for dinner. She didn’t want to go –“I didn’t like his personality much” – but she relented because “I wanted to hear his excuses.” (I asked what she meant by that but she couldn’t elaborate.)

I asked what was said about, well, me, at that awkward dinner. “Neither one of us brought it up,” she explained.

Fast-forward a half a century later — Doris is eighty-eight years old and living in a sort of nursing home in Florida. She never married, never had any other children, but she hears from her nieces and nephews every once in awhile.  The day before Thanksgiving poor Doris gets a phone call. “Hello, my name is Sarah,” says the tentative voice on the line, “I was born April 17^th 1962 in Miami Beach…may I speak to you for a few minutes?”  A long pause. “Um, do you understand who I am?” asks the voice. Another even longer pause. “Yes,” says Doris in her high, child-like voice.

Well, I really didn’t know much to say after that. I thanked her for the gift of life, asked how she was doing, if she needed anything, and I told her I was a girl. I asked who my father was, and after some reluctance she did. His name was not on my birth certificate, he being so big wiggy and all, and so Doris is the only one who could tell me.  That afternoon I Googled my birth father, and my uncle, and ordered their books on Amazon.

I later learned that Doris had never told a living soul about what happened. She hadn’t confided in a single family member, not one girlfriend. She’d held this secret for over 50 years, and she continued to. She told me not to tell anyone who I was. Was it shame, a sense of privacy? As someone who as very little of either, it was hard for me to understand, but of course I respected her wishes. Still, it seems unimaginable to have gone through what she did completely alone. While she seems completely stoic and unemotional about it, I don’t know at what price her sangfroid came.

I asked if I could visit, and Doris hesitatingly said yes. Two weeks later my husband and I flew down to meet her. As we walked down the hall to her room I stopped and told my husband I couldn’t go through with it, but he just took my arm and we kept walking.

There were two women standing in her room and I had no idea which one was my mother. I thought it was the other woman and went to hug her before another voice piped, “I’m Doris.” She introduced my husband and me as friends from New York, Doris’ friend left, and the three of us sat down.  I was distracted as she talked about her schedule and administrative difficulties by how much we didn’t look alike. I certainly didn’t expect a doppelganger, but I saw no resemblance whatsoever. If I’d picked 100 women off the street at random I’d bet most of them would look more like me than Doris. Of course it doesn’t matter really, but it’s one of those things you look forward to, maybe one day seeing a face like your own in a world where there’d been none. I was hoping for something to tangibly place me in some sort of biological, historical narrative where my various plebian features – face, hair, ticks –might find familiarity, might find a home.  But instead of a kindred face or some telltale curly hair, before me sat a regular Midwestern blonde, blue-eyed woman you might see in Church on Sunday or the beauty parlor on Saturday. A lovely woman, but not the idiosyncratic twin I’d long imagined.

I heard a lot about Doris’s various jobs over the years. She’d worked for the CIA and liked her bosses there very much. I tried to get her to talk about Mr. Wig, and she did, but her stories were often somewhat convoluted and diverted easily. She wanted to show me her job reviews, but I was more interested in a shoebox of photos she’d brought out.  She said I could take as many as I wanted, as she had no one else who’d be interested. I selected several pictures of Doris as a child, a young woman in the 40s, and a few snapshots of her in the 70s and 80s. I was ecstatic to get photos of my grandparents, even my great-grandparents, as these were things I never expected I’d ever see or hold. She even gave me a portrait of her nestled between her 2 bronzed baby shoes.

What I remember most about our brief meeting was her telling me about the day I was born. She remembered lifting her head and seeing a tiny head full of black hair. She remembered waking up and seeing two men sitting in her room, waiting with papers for her to sign. She casually mentioned it took a long time to sign the papers and then drifted to another topic.  When I asked later why it took so long, were they complicated, were the men confusing her, she shrugged and said, ”Well, I guess I didn’t want to sign them.” I felt so sorry for her at that moment, and yet… I smiled a little inside.  Selfish and stupid I know, but that twinkle of an inkling of being wanted felt nice.

After several hours of friendly but superficial chat, I gave my husband the signal it was time to go. Though we’d booked a hotel for 2 nights, it was clear there was a ceiling on what I could take from the day.

Don’t get me wrong – I was and am thrilled to have found my birthmother. Here was something I’d wanted all my life, information to give me answers, closure, solace and maybe even comfort. At fifty I’d pretty much given up hope of ever getting any of that. The one fact I knew about my biological mother was her age, and I knew chances were good that she was no longer alive. I thought at this point the best I might ever get was just a name, Mary Smith or Helga Bagwonivitch, some flimsy ghost upon which I might pin the mystery of my existence.  I hadn’t dreamed she’d be still alive, much less that I’d ever meet her, that I’d hold in my hands an old photo of a 19^th century relative, that I’d one day sit in an airplane with my mother’s baby shoes on my lap.

Still, as happy and grateful as I am, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed.  No kindred spirit to look me in the eye and say “You’re fine”, no nurturing embrace to stroke my tangled hair or pain. Just a nice woman who’d tamped down both her attachment to, and the fact of, me. Another chance for me to be the person who loves more. Perhaps that imbalance was the most familiar thing about my mother, that lonely recognition of incongruent hearts.

As we walked out the door, I stopped and walked back to hug Doris one more time, and whisper in her ear, “Thank you… I love you, Mother.”   I heard her softly mutter “I love you too.”

Doris, Tom, Bob, Peggy, Pearl, Jeff, Jessica, Frank, Ringo, Ben and hundreds of others: from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

For half a century, I’ve longed to know who I am, where I came from, how my hair, my quirks, my me came to be.

Now, thanks to a company called kinsolving, I was able to learn my birth mother’s name, my birth father’s name and open a window . . . → Read More: I Just Met the Woman Who Gave Birth to Me]]>

I just met my birth mother.

For half a century, I’ve longed to know who I am, where I came from, how my hair, my quirks, my me came to be.

Now, thanks to a company called kinsolving, I was able to learn my birth mother’s name, my birth father’s name and open a window onto the landscape of all the lives who came before me, and who, through a quirk of fate and 10 minutes of clumsy desire, have funneled down to little ol’ improbable me.

Being adopted, for me at least, has always been a lonely proposition. Everyone in your family, everyone you know, is tied to others by blood, a shared history, by the shape of their noses and the bonds of familiar personalities. My appearance and especially my personality were completely discordant with the people I lived with. I always felt alien, out of sync and misunderstood.

Despite a host of best intentions, for me there was always the murmur of an undercurrent of otherness that I could never shake. This feeling, this solitary otherness, is by its very nature yours and yours alone. As a little girl I’d see films of astronauts floating in outer space, tethered to a chord in vast darkness with the underlying threat of their being cut loose and drifting aimlessly forever, the epitome of alone. I’d think to myself, “That’s me, that’s how I feel.”

When I finally got the news I’d found the woman who gave birth to me, that she was still alive at 88, I posted the news on Facebook. It seemed as worthy a nugget of information as a local shelter dog needing a home or the latest aggravating political tidbit.

What happened next blew me away. Dozens of people, some I knew, some I barely knew, many of whom I’d never met, responded to my post. There was an outpouring of encouragement, support, and kind words. What struck me most was that it was no longer my little solitary journey—now all of a sudden there were dozens, maybe hundreds of people who’d opted to bestow upon me a “thumbs up” and a complimentary little squib.

Something I’d assumed was of no interest to anyone but me was being shared and savored by kind people cheering me on. I’d been led to believe that my interest in my birthparents was somehow inappropriate, perhaps understandable but in poor taste. But here were all kinds of people sending me messages of strength, of support, of love. All of a sudden this sad little lonely mission didn’t feel so pathetic. The flood of Facebook friendliness made it feel both valid and valuable.

I can honestly say that Facebook completely transformed the experience. While naturally I’d wished I’d solved the mystery decades sooner, I can’t help but think that its delay was a gift in the end. While I’d finally uncovered my biological family, on Facebook I discovered a new kind of family, all kinds of people offering me their love, their support, their wisdom, their experience. Certainly it was overwhelming to finally find my past, but it was even more overwhelming to find this large, loving family available right here and now.

Social media has its theorists, its gurus, its marketers and detractors. But I’m here to give witness to the fact that in this relatively new technology I found a surprising sort of support and solace as priceless as the bronzed baby shoes given me a few weeks ago –the day I met my mother.

(Originally published in a similar form in my 15 Minutes of Dame column)

Many people today recognize the image . . . → Read More: Have You Been Properly Carmen Mirandized? There’s More to this Bombshell Than Bananas]]>

If Carmen Miranda didn’t exist we’d have had to invent her. It’s almost impossible for me to imagine a world without a woman in impossibly high heels and an impossibly high tower of fruit on her head chic-chic-a-booming to an infectious samba. (And neither can most drag queens.)

Many people today recognize the image of the “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” as she still pops up in pop culture in everything from banana commercials, Woody Allen movies, to Bugs Bunny and Daffy cartoons. Some people may even know her from the spate of movies she made for Twentieth-Century-Fox during the 40s. But few are aware of what a huge star she was at the height of her career, or how a poor pint-size Portuguese practically willed herself to stardom.

Born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha (try saying that 5 times fast) in Portugal on February 9, 1909,  her family emigrated to Brazil when she was a young child. Her father christened her Carmen after the Bizet opera, and his love of music may have had something to do with little Carmen’s love of singing and dancing at an early age. Her convent education failed to put a damper on Carmen’s show biz aspirations, neither did dad’s intense mucho macho disapproval. (He beat her mother when he learned she’d supported Carmen’s audition for a local radio show.) Carmen’s sister contracted tuberculosis and at 14 Carmen went to work in a tie shop to help pay sis’s medical bills. She then moved on to a boutique where she learned to make hats, eventually opening up her own hat business. (This explains a lot. Try initiating a conversation about Carmen Miranda without mentioning the word “hat”; you can’t.)

Carmen was very drawn to the native samba music of Brazil, and her performing was so successful she became the country’s first radio contract singer in 1933. Her “South American Ways” led to Lee Shubert, as in Shubert Brothers, signing her to a contract which led to her stage debut in 1939, where she played opposite Abbot & Costello in “The Streets of Paris”. (How do those 3 things go together?)

“I say 20 words in English. I say money, money, money, and I say hot dog! I say yes, no and I say money, money, money and I say turkey sandwich and I say grape juice.” — Carmen Miranda

Her part was small (she spoke four words) but nonetheless our chica became a huge sensation. She was formally presented to President Roosevelt at a White House banquet and drafted into the government’s wartime-inspired Good Neighbor policy. The thinking was that if Americans were exposed to Carmen and her awesome Carmen-ness, the American public would be more kindly disposed toward South America, i.e., our Allies. In 1940, 20th Century Fox signed her to a contract for a one-time appearance in Down Argentine Way. The film was supposed to be an Alice Faye vehicle, but she got knocked up and Betty Grable stepped in. The movie turned Betty into a star and Carmen into a sensation, prompting Fox to give her a long-term contract. “Hollywood, it has treated me so nicely,” said Carmen, ” I am ready to faint! As soon as I see Hollywood, I love it.”

But haters gonna hate, and Miranda’s popularity in the United States pissed off lots of folks back home. When she returned to Rio she was met by cheering fans, but the Brazilian press started really laying into her for being a Latina bimbo pawn of American commercialism. Members of the upper class felt her image was “too black” and one Brazilian newspaper criticized her for “singing bad-tasting black sambas.”

See, while Carmen’s dad may have been besotted with opera, Carmen had adopted the indigenous musical genre, the samba, with roots in African religious traditions imported to the New World courtesy of the West African slave trade. Today, along with painfully thin strips of pubic hair, the samba is Brazil’s most conspicuous export and synonymous with their national identity. But back in the 30s it was considered low class, trashy, and “bad tastingly” black. Miranda, a convent-raised, bourgeois European girl, should get serious cred for being open and soulful enough to embrace the sensual cultural expression of the “lower-class” natives. (Some folklorists suggest the word samba is derived from an African word Semba, translated as umbigada in Portuguese, meaning “a blow struck with the belly button”.)

“Look at me and tell me if I don’t have Brazil in every curve of my body.” — Carmen Miranda

Bitchy Brazil society and mainstream media were down on our heroine for being somehow too Brazil and not Brazil enough. At a charity concert organized by Brazil’s First Lady, Miranda greeted the high society audience in English and was met with silence. When she began singing the audience booed her. She tried to finish her act but the booing escalated and Carmen left the stage to sob in her dressing room. Weeks later, Miranda responded to the criticism with the song “Disseram que Voltei Americanizada” (“They Say I’ve Come Back Americanized”). Still, the criticism devastated her and she didn’t return to Brazil for nearly 15 years.

But back in the USA, the “Brazilian Bombshell” pulled in audiences in movies theatres, Broadway theatres, and nightclubs. She became one of the first Latinas to leave footprints in the cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater and by the end of 1941 she was earning $5,000 a week. By 1945, Miranda had become Hollywood’s highest-paid entertainer (and incidentally, the top female tax payer in the US).

By the way, it may surprise you to know that this formidable force of nature was really tiny — some say she was 4’8”, and even the tallest report only has her at 5’2”. She ingeniously had high platform shoes and towering headdresses that helped give the impression of height. Carmen’s fabulous shoes and hats were an inexorable part of her persona.Today Miranda’s famous for those enormous heels  and fruit-laden hats, and her costumes and style were fairly influential during the war years. In 1939 Saks Fifth Avenue developed a Carmen-inspired line of turbans and jewelry. In fact, many costume jewelry designers made “Mirandized” fruit jewelry highly prized by collectors today.

But in the Post-War years, Americans’ taste for fabulousness had worn thin. The public lost interest in musicals and Miranda’s gaudy naughty novelty. Her career declined and in January 1946 her contract with Fox was terminated. She tried to branch out, going so far as to portray an Irish-American gal in the film If I’m Lucky, but audiences finished the sentence with, “I will get my money back” in their heads. To put it bluntly, Carmen had jumped the shark.

In 1947, Miranda married American movie producer David Sebastian. The marriage was tempestuous and it looks like Sebastian was physically abusive. They separated in ‘49 but later reconciled. (Picturing our feisty Carmen being slapped around by some douche-y Hollywood tool fills me with a feverish mix of anger and sadness.) This rocky relationship with this utter creep probably contributed to her escalating amphetamine and barbiturates habit. Factor in her heavy smoking and drinking, and it’s clear Sebastian wasn’t the only one handing Miranda’s body a beating.

Still, Carmen was a popular attraction at nightclubs, and she even teamed with The Andrews Sisters to produce and record several singles. She made her final film appearance in a 1953 Martin and Lewis movie (the aptly titled Scared Stiff), did a European tour the same year, but after collapsing from exhaustion during a club performance in Ohio her doctor suggested she return to Brazil to rest. She was still smarting from the criticism she’d received years ago, but was overjoyed when she received a warm reception this time, and she stayed in Brazil for several years.

In August 1955, though she felt unwell, ever the trooper Miranda taped a segment for the “The Jimmy Durante Show” but collapsed after her number. Around 4 in the morning she suffered a fatal heart attack in her bath. In accordance with her wishes, Carmen’s body was flown back to Brazil. The government declared a period of national mourning and 60,000 people attended a mourning ceremony while more than half a million Brazilians escorted her funeral cortège. (Even in death her image was daunting; during her funeral the Catholic priest presiding over the service only agreed to perform the ceremony if Carmen wasn’t wearing any make-up, so her corpse would be “pure”.)

Today Carmen is primarily remembered as a camp icon who embodies either fruity fabulousness or stereotype stupidity. But there was a woman under those hats, a heart and a brain and the will to fashion her own self-determined, self-perpetuated creation. She was a promotional genius, a branding savant and creative force to be reckoned with. The fact that this Carioca caricature is still recognized and even revered today is testament to Carmen’s savvy and staying power.

A few years ago a documentary, Bananas Is My Business, detailed her life’s struggles and successes, including interviews from actors and early boyfriends (“She had eyes like the headlights of a car,” sighs one beau). We see a woman who was almost always “on,” who wore her public persona “like a mask that could not be penetrated.” Her life was a mix of contradictions. She was a victim of Hollywood machinery but also an astute manipulator and purveyor of her image. She was an effervescent spitfire who suffered addictions, depression, an abusive marriage and electroshock therapy. She felt trapped by but never resented her alter ego.

Maybe those paradoxes are part of what attracts me. When I was in Rio de Janeiro a few years back I even made a pilgrimage to the Carmen Miranda Museum, where you can see several original costumes and clips from her films. I see Carmen Miranda as a complex woman with brains, bravery, audacity and a playful, joyous spirit. Of course I love her for her flamboyant fabulousness, but I also admire her savvy and her strength. Carmen has gumption, guts, and glamour. She was, in a word, a dame.

How do you feel about the “Brazilian Bombshell”? Have any questions about Carmen you’d like answered? Let me know.

I’ve been obsessed with Pre-Code movies for decades. Here’s why:

Most people believe old movies are stodgy, quaint relics of a time when asexual women did what they were told and upright, wholesome men stalwartly upheld good Christian values. But most people are wrong. Very, very wrong.

These people assume the post-World War . . . → Read More: Fabulously Perverted and Sexy Pre-Code 30s Movies! Part 1]]>

I’ve been obsessed with Pre-Code movies for decades. Here’s why:

Most people believe old movies are stodgy, quaint relics of a time when asexual women did what they were told and upright, wholesome men stalwartly upheld good Christian values. But most people are wrong. Very, very wrong.

These people assume the post-World War II world view was a continuation of an ethos and perspective that went back to Victorian times. It’s natural to assume that Zeitgeists grow progressively more lenient and decadent as time goes on. The assumption is that immorality and sexuality — and the populace’s access to its depiction — moves in a straight march of continuously escalating depravity that evolved or devolved into what we know today. But while “Leave It to Beaver” is a celebration of the 1950s ideal, twenty years earlier mass media reveled in a very different kind of “beaver.”

Movies made prior to 1934 were, according to one contemporary reviewer, “more unbridled, salacious, subversive, and just plain bizarre than what came afterwards” with a “moral terrain so off-kilter they seem imported from a parallel universe.” Pre-Code films are loaded with near nudity, licentious men, prostitutes, sluts, well-bred ladies who just really liked sex, homosexuality, drug use, and lots of other things that we wouldn’t see again on the screen for decades to come.

In addition to all that sex, sin, partial nudity, and all the great gratuitousness for which I’ve long been grateful, these early Talkies were made during a rich period of experimentation. “There’s a remarkable freedom of creativity in the era, as film studios tried out talkies and whole a generation of stars rising in these new pictures, “says Danny Reid. “The ability to create risky and adult content gave rise to a variety of movies that looked at moral issues in depth, and challenged America at its lowest point.”

But the reason I really love Pre-Code movies is how they provide a gateway into this other world, a universe teeming with humanity, humor, paradoxical tension between the pure and the profane, innocence and cynicism.

In this world, mordant wisecrackery exists right alongside idealistic romanticism – sometimes co-existing within the same person (cough*Capra*cough). America was going through the Great Depression; hunger, poverty and joblessness coupled with post-World War disillusionment, had made people scrappy, savvy and sardonic. Yet at the same time America still maintained its stubborn innocence, illusions and idealism.

As a child in the 70s, I found this coupling of world-weary wit and optimistic integrity a nice escape from the humorless, virtueless and bloated Love Boat shenanigans that permeated the “disco era”. There was a sexiness, an authenticity, a raw energy, an honesty in these black-and-white movies that was missing from my contemporary pop culture. You got nipples – but you also got niceness – with a Pre-Code potboiler, and you got seldom got either or both with most 70s fare.

Seventies pop culture was either dirty and silly or saccharine and silly. But with Pre-Code, explains blogger Danny Reid, “We had sexual liaisons unsanctified by the laws of God or man, marriage ridiculed and redefined, ethnic lines crossed and racial barriers ignored, economic injustice exposed and political corruption assumed, vice unpunished and virtue unrewarded — in sum, pretty much the raw stuff of American culture, unvarnished and unveiled.” For young me, it felt more true, more real, than the narratives about life I was exposed to on TV, in movies and in song. At age 10 I fell in love with Pre-Code movies, and I’ve been head over heels ever since.

Sadly, pressure from clergy and morality groups made Hollywood institute a new puritanical Production Code that brought Hollywood’s most delightfully lascivious period to a screeching halt. Enforced by douchebag anti-Semite Joseph Breen, “the code” kept sex, even the suggestion that sex sometimes occurred (think married couples’ separate beds), drugs, sin, and to a great extent economic and racial injustice off the screen for the next 30 years.

In subsequent posts, I’ll talk about the amazing women of Pre-Code cinema, steer you toward some of their coolest, sordid-est movies, and suggest further reading on the subject. Meanwhile, New Yorkers should check out this month’s Film Forum Pre-Code festival. Focusing on “Hollywood’s Naughtiest, Bawdiest Year: 1933”, it’s chock full of the crème de la crème of these amazing movies.

P.S. Look, even classic cinema’s lady-like First Lady of the screen, the “Perfect Wife”, is nude in a decadent bath Pre-Code: Myrna Loy takes a bath