Saturday, May 4, 2013
IMMORTAL ANGELYNE
Oh, talking
about people growing older (which we weren’t, but are now), how many of you
have heard of Angelyne, the blond lady
with the come hither look, one hand idly resting on the pink wheel of her pink
Corvette as she blows you a kiss? You
know, the famous Angelyne who in the 1970’s tooled up and down Sunset
Boulevard, glowing in her tight pink blouse and tight pink short shorts? If you have no idea who I’m talking about, it
might be worth a google. Back then, her billboards
were everywhere around Hollywood, craftily placed near the studios and towering
over The Strip. Angelyne, looking down on
the hubbub and madness of show biz, her pouty red lips seeming to beg for
just one more something, her marvelous breasts spilling out over her rosy décolletage.
Rumor back
then was that she had a sugar daddy who paid for the billboards, hoping to
fulfill her dream that she might land a role and end up on the silver
screen. To my knowledge, she never did. She was the original Kardashian girl, never
got a lead role in a movie but had those billboards plastered all over the Strip
and on a good night you might see her in person at a stop light at the corner
of Hollywood and Vine and she just might blow you a pouty kiss or at least wave in your direction, and so she was
famous, in her own way, without ever having an actual film career.
Well, flash
forward - I saw her two weeks ago, working a parking lot at an Osh hardware
store in Woodland Hills! No, no, no - honest! Hang with me here for a minute: This was at the
west end of the San Fernando Valley near my hillside home studio, a long way from Old Hollywood, relatively
speaking, but of course Angelyne had the latest model of her hot pink steed to convey her about. She
was still the stellar attraction, still had matrons and their daughters and old men like me huffing across the parking lot to see her. And she was still curvaceously plump, still brimming out
of her impossibly tight pink outfit.
Unbelievable, I know, but true.
What on
earth was she doing, I asked myself, and in a flash headed over there to see
for myself: Yes, there she was,
gathering quite a crowd as they swarmed over to buy Angelyne t-shirts. Yep, she was selling t-shirts out of the back
of that shiny hot pink Corvette. “You’ll
like the Andy Warhol one,” she told me. “I
always was Andy’s favorite subject.” She
paused, thinking back, maybe about that other blond Warhol icon. “Well, one of his favorite...”
Now maybe
you think this is one of those sad nostalgia stories about one of those crippled old bag ladies wandering around Tinseltown with broken dreams, and although it easily might be, somehow I don’t feel it
is. Here is Angeline, forty years later, as
Ripley always said, Believe
it or not! My God, her makeup
was so thick I was afraid her face would crack, but it didn't and she was still flirty and
flouncy and somehow she made everything work and the show went on.
She was sexy Angelyne the legendary Hollywood Billboard Queen, bigger
than life and looking like she belonged in a Marvel comic book for
super-heroines.
I had to
have one of those t-shirts, for old time’s sake, you know. Cost me $20.
Don’t tell the wife.
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