The Synthetic Sex Symbol

Frank Sinatra Never Short-Changed His Fans.
It was said of Frank Sinatra, ‘Every man wanted to be him and every women wanted to have him’.
His extraordinary life spanned 14 American presidents, many of whom became close friends.
Yet while his public reputation is undimmed, the man behind that golden voice remains both complex and controversial.
He was generous to friends and family, and tireless in his fund-raising.
It’s estimated his charity work raised billions of dollars.
But in private Sinatra could be selfish and unforgiving, with an almost pathological fear of solitude or boredom.
Most damaging of all, he never threw off accusations of involvement with organised crime.
Sinatra never short-changed his fans.
After his mother died in a plane crash on the way to see him sing in Las Vegas, he went ahead with the concert.
When Sinatra was introduced to Pavarotti, the great opera singer fell to his knees, took Frank’s hand and kissed it.
When Frank Sinatra died in 1998, he was buried with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a packet of Camel cigarettes.

Alma Cogan was known as the girl with the giggle in her voice.
Alma was the highest paid British female singer in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
Born in Golders Green, London, she became pals with John Lennon and once turned down a marriage proposal from Cary Grant.
After recording a few cover versions of Beatle’s hits, she embarked on a nationwide tour in 1966 but collapsed and died at just 34.

Charles Bronson was born in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, on November 3, 1921.
He was one of 15 children by his Lithuanian parents.
Christened Charles Dennis Buchinsky, he later changed it because he thought it sounded too Russian.
He was an aerial gunner in World War Two and received the Purple Heart after being wounded.

Judy Garland was the ultimate icon of Hollywood’s golden era.
The youngest of three daughters of a pair of vaudeville performers, she first appeared on stage, singing Jingle Bells, aged only two-and-a-half.
By her late teens she was a screen legend, virtually carrying MGM on her shoulders during the Thirties and Forties in a succession of hit movies.
Her zest for filming seemed inexhaustible, but a punishing workload took a heavy toll.
Between 1940 and 1943 she completed ten films.
By the time she was 28, the little girl who a few years before had travelled over the rainbow, now looked twice her age.
She died in 1969, aged just 47.

The Synthetic Sex Symbol.
Marilyn Monroe saw her future.
She created the synthetic sex symbol which would give her all the stardom she could have wished for, but would exact a terrible price.
There was little that she could do to alter her legs, too short for the fashion ideal, her hips were broad and, from some angles, she looked double-chinned.
Make-up, lighting and camera angles hid some of these deficiencies.
But then it was decided that her gum lines were too visible, so she was told to lower her upper lip when she smiled.
During the early Fifties she had surgery to remove the bump on the end of her nose and insert a plate in her chin to give it more definition.
Marilyn used her body to attract reporters.
She frequently didn’t wear knickers, purportedly so they didn’t spoil the line of her tightly fitted dresses, but she knew it also gave men tantalising flashes of naked flesh.
A perfectionist, Marilyn spent hours at the make-up table.
Part of the bump on her nose remained even after surgery, so she covered it.
She had freckles on her skin and hair on the sides of her face that she also concealed with make-up.
She put on fake fingernails to cover up the ragged edges of the ones she had bitten.
To make her lips larger and more lustrous, she applied four layers of lipstick and drew her lip line outside its natural shape.
She put Vaseline on her lips to make them look wet.
She would darken the mole on her face near her mouth to draw attention to them and used eyebrow pencil to darken her eyebrows and make them heavy and straight.
She put white make-up on her eyelids to make her eyes seem larger.
She used special creams and often went for facials at Elizabeth Arden in New York.
She liked dresses that were strapless or with a low V-neckline, and she wore them with dangling diamond earrings to draw attention to her bust and face.
She often said she didn’t wear jewellery, but she meant necklaces.
In 1954 she said she loved to wear clinging black dresses and black gloves up to her shoulder.
It was a look that combined elegance with eroticism.
The long gloves, adopted by striptease artists in the Thirties, could take time to get off.
She even chose her shoes for maximum effect.
After 1951, when stiletto heels arrived, Marilyn made them part of her signature style because she knew men found them sexy and they made her legs look longer.
( Lois Banner, Review magazine, 29.07.2012 )

I Needed A Lot Of Advertising To Get There.
Going out socially was the hardest part of my campaign to make good.
Some girls prefer to change hats.
I just prefer to change my hair colour.
I like to be really dressed up or really undressed.
I don’t bother with anything in between.
As soon as I could afford an evening gown, I bought the loudest I could find.
It was a bright-red, low-cut gown and it infuriated half the women in the room because it was so immodest.
I was sorry in a way to do this, but I had a long way to go, and I needed a lot of advertising to get there.
( Marilyn Monroe )

Marilyn Monroe Fans Never Forgave Him.
Born Bernard Schwartz to immigrant Hungarian Jewish parents in 1925, his early years were spent hustling on the streets of New York.
The death of his kid brother after being hit by a truck affected him for ever.
But Tony Curtis was determined to be a star, and with his thick black hair and dazzling looks, he was soon in demand as a swashbuckling adventurer in exotic action dramas.
By the mid-fifties he had become one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.
Yet it was his performance in Billy Wilder’s 1959 film Some Like It Hot that secured his status as a movie great.
Curtis had briefly dated the young Marilyn Monroe when they were both starting their careers and their pairing was enough to reignite their earlier passion, to the extent that Monroe became pregnant with Curtis’s baby, but she later miscarried.
Their celluloid love-making scene resulted in one of his most infamous asides, when he described making love to Marilyn as ‘like kissing Hitler’.
He later contended his remark was taken out of context, but many Monroe fans never forgave him.