London is incredibly depressing today. Grey streets under grey skies and grey people huddling home in the cold. I even dared turn on the central heating for half an hour. Running back and forth to the gas meter to calculate how much this cost. The house barely got any warmer ~ and yet 20p went down the drain in not much more than 20 minutes! So I'm not doing that again. Normally I either go to bed, or wander around in coat, scarf and wooly hat. (Indoors.) It's been far too cold to watch television...
... But eventually I took more methadone (more than prescribed) and started feeling relatively "fine". So I searched for a DVD to put on and found something called Million Dollar Hotel. (I don't even recall where it came from, I just found the DVD in my house a couple of days ago...) Well if you're thinking of watching it, I can tell you that Million Dollar Hotel is weird bordering on plain odd. Even though it does star Mel Gibson. It's a terrible movie. So I shoved A Star Is Born into the player. This was disc 2, the Pantages Theater TV Premier, as shown to millions of gawking Americans back in 1954. It's weird how so very few of the actors are still recognizable today. Even Elizabeth Taylor, supposedly the last great movie star showed up failing to gain a personal mention; she was merely "Mrs Michael Wilding".
If you're wondering why the gemstone illustrations and what they are, the top 2 feature fancy coloured diamonds in varying saturations; the orange heart is a rare padparadascha sapphire. And finally an Ethiopian black opal... And they're just there for the sake of it. To brighten an incredibly grey day.
I would have spent all day in bed, but I slept so long last night there was no hope of sleeping any more. This is the type of day that is only worth sleeping through. (I sometimes wonder why I bother living at all. If life was down to "bothering" I can assure you I'd have died of indifference long ago...)
So there's not so much to say. Have a look at this old premier footage (same stuff I was watching) if you want a real blast from Hollywood's past...
A STAR IS BORN PREMIER, PANTAGES THEATER, HOLLYWOOD, 1954
I like the bit where the guy who says he named Frances Gumm "Judy Garland" says that even if she was called Tel Aviv Windowsill she would still be a rare and fragile talent... (interesting that he chooses fragile... which she certainly was)