My heart skipped a beat seeing Yaz's photo of the character Emma Peel in leather, plenty of guys I know had a big crush on Diana Riggs at the time of The Avengers tv series.
I'm ok for a Jamie Bond. Bring it on. Halle Berry comes to mind.
Rachel Weisz speaks out against a female James Bond (transgender trends) |
The flirtatious Miss Moneypenny played by Lois Maxwell (Dr. No.... to..... View to a Kill) was one of my favourite characters in the Bond films. She actually lived in the town I pay taxes to for about 20 years until moving to Australia in 2001.
My heart skipped a beat seeing Yaz's photo of the character Emma Peel in leather, plenty of guys I know had a big crush on Diana Riggs at the time of The Avengers tv series. I'm ok for a Jamie Bond. Bring it on. Halle Berry comes to mind. (Feb 16, 2018 06:54 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: plenty of guys I know had a big crush on Diana Riggs at the time of The Avengers tv series. I certainly did, when they showed it here in the US. The strange thing (or one of the strange things, there were lots of strange things about that show) was how the stereotypical male and female roles were kind of subtly reversed. She was the more physically aggressive one, while he was more interested in clothes and antiques. (Feb 16, 2018 11:55 PM)Yazata Wrote:(Feb 16, 2018 06:54 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: plenty of guys I know had a big crush on Diana Riggs at the time of The Avengers tv series. I meant Diana Rigg. Don't know where the 's' came from. Watching her prance around in leather tights was always one of my favourite moments on the show. To me she seemed to be almost dancing, like a ballerina in most scenes whilst Steed seem to just plod around.
Debuting in *The Avengers* in 1962, Honor Blackman's character Cathy Gale was really ahead of her time in terms of television allowing a woman to be athletic and aggressively use martial arts on male antagonists. She also originally set the trend for wearing leather outfits, though usually not an outright catsuit. Rigg, her successor, actually hated wearing leather so they switched Emma Peel to a stretch fabric her second season, and eventually more conventional wardrobe. Her stint on *The Avengers* of course sealed Blackman being the choice for Pussy Galore in the James Bond film *Goldfinger*.
Hollywood even tried to mimic Blackman's skillful female role with the 1965 series Honey West, featuring a similarly mature actor (Anne Francis was circa age 35 at the time). They tried to hire Blackman herself but she declined. The next year *The Avengers* itself was imported to North American TV, so that contributed partially to *Honey West* being cancelled. And arguably ended for the '60s any native instantiation of a composed, self-reliant and expert-at-her trade heroine on the continent's entertainment landscape. Unless one counts parody-oriented "Batgirl" or someone like Agent 99 in the comedy *Get Smart* (who was at least competent, and certainly brainier than Max). I've never seen The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., but sounds like they pretty much girly-fied Stefanie Powers or neutered / constrained most of any physical adeptness her character might have had. EDIT: Ah, I'm forgetting some roles in other genres like Barbara Stanwyck's matriarch in The Big Valley. She could switch from being a genteel lady to a mean-ass rancher handling a shotgun or rifle in the blink of an eye. - - - (Feb 17, 2018 07:53 PM)C C Wrote: Debuting in *The Avengers* in 1962, Honor Blackman's character Cathy Gale was really ahead of her time in terms of television allowing a woman to be athletic and aggressively use martial arts on male antagonists. She also originally set the trend for wearing leather outfits, though usually not an outright catsuit. Rigg, her successor, actually hated wearing leather so they switched Emma Peel to a stretch fabric her second season, and eventually more conventional wardrobe. Her stint on *The Avengers* of course sealed Blackman being the choice for Pussy Galore in the James Bond film *Goldfinger*. It was a little before my time but this story about it on Must See TV with Joan Collins was interesting. Pussy Galore? What a name, eh, C C? The character is similar to Catwomen. In Fleming's 1959 novel Goldfinger, Pussy Galore is the only woman in the United States known to be running an organised crime gang. Initially trapeze artists, her group of performing catwomen, "Pussy Galore and her Abrocats", is unsuccessful, and so the women train as cat burglars instead. Hmm…I wonder how the female-feline connection came about. Do you think it was it from the Egyptian goddess Bast? (Feb 17, 2018 10:48 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: It was a little before my time but this story about it on Must See TV with Joan Collins was interesting [video] My brother, as well as Dad, watched syndicated reruns of it on the weekend when we were kids. (Mom and I were intermittent collateral damage of their viewing habits.) The oldest episodes were videotaped back in the UK, and only when ABC network in the US imported it, and was willing to pay for more expensive film, did it transition to that substrate. The latter was all we encountered in terms of the syndicated stuff. Accordingly, there was a time when I had no idea that anyone else had even preceded Diana Rigg as Steed's partner. The series also changed to being more facetious and sci-fi oriented after acquiring the North American audience. The era of Honor Blackman was more serious in tone, and even John Steed (Patrick Macnee) was slightly more sober in personality. Though there was a range of snarky and affable dialogue between Cathy Gale and Steed. A retro network called "COZI-TV" started rerunning ALL the surviving episodes of *The Avengers*, which is when I finally saw the videotaped stuff and Blackman's character, a few years ago. (Cluelessly never thought to just look around on youtube for footage.) Blackman apparently even published a self-defense judo book for women back in the 60s, which appears on the cover to be either her or Cathy Gale putting the kabosh on an attacker (have only seen a blurry thumbnail of it). Quote:Pussy Galore? What a name, eh, C C? Surprising that it made it past the censors of those days. Though if I remember right, they did make the studio change Sean Connery's original response to first hearing her name from something like "Indeed" to whatever tame item is in the movie. Blackman may also be the only so-called "Bond girl" actress to have ever been older than the actor playing James Bond. Quote:In Fleming's 1959 novel Goldfinger, Pussy Galore is the only woman in the United States known to be running an organised crime gang. Initially trapeze artists, her group of performing catwomen, "Pussy Galore and her Abrocats", is unsuccessful, and so the women train as cat burglars instead. Probably the only or oldest option we've got available in terms of earliest subject-applicable recorded history. Since it was once mistakenly thought that cats were domesticated in -- and not until -- Egypt and its era, that's also where Katherine Sullivan Barak started her research in Spinsters, Old Maids, and Cat Ladies: A Case Study In Containment Strategies. She renders an interesting theogonical account of how Bastet served as a bridge between Isis and the Greek goddess Artemis. All of which sported protective maternal properties and were worshiped by women, and had association with cats. As well as engendering female leadership roles in the religions and the areas of society which they influenced. Various cults that were intellectually descended from this Isis-Bastet linkage and reverence spread all over Europe during ancient times and lingered as pockets of rural rituals, practices, skills, and folk wisdom into the Middle Ages. The resonance between women and cats in those Isiac faith traditions also survived to eventually run headlong into ideological Christian anxieties (or the latter as recruited and fire-stoked to serve local political purposes). In turn, that ancient symbolic relationship endured all that mess to still hang around as our now vague in origin, verbal baggage. Katherine Barak: [...In "The Histories", the Greek historian Herodotus...] documented the popularity of the goddess Bastet during the Late Dynastic period when he witnessed the annual festival held in her honor in approximately 460 BCE. He reported at least 700,000 people journeyed to Bubastis, Bastet’s sacred city, for the celebration. People danced in the streets, music was constant as women played sistrums, and the whole affair was accented by abundant sacrifices of cats specially bred for the occasion as well as gratuitous drinking. Written in the mid-fifth century BCE, "The Histories" hypothesized that Greeks had evolved from ancient Egyptians. Herodotus saw similarities across art, mythology, architecture, and cultural beliefs that connected Greeks and Egyptians. When writing about religion, Herodotus used Hellenic names for the Egyptian gods and goddesses. Hathor became Aphrodite (Roman name Venus), Isis was frequently referred to as Demeter (Roman name Ceres), and Bastet was associated with Artemis (Roman name Diana). (Feb 18, 2018 06:04 AM)C C Wrote: A retro network called "COZI-TV" started rerunning ALL the surviving episodes of *The Avengers*, which is when I finally saw the videotaped stuff and Blackman's character, a few years ago. Joan Collins said that when Honor decided to move on the producers knew that their next Avengers girl had to continue in the same vein as Cathy’s self-assured action woman, but this time they also wanted her to radiate even more in the way of man appeal. That’s why they called her "M" appeal (Emma Peel). So, they searched for a younger person, but as far as looks are concerned, out of all the bond girls, and even to this day, Honor Blackman can still hold her own. C C Wrote:Surprising that it made it past the censors of those days. I know, right, because even "Catwomen took an extended hiatus due to the newly developing Comic Code Authority in 1954". C C Wrote:Probably the only or oldest option we've got available in terms of earliest subject-applicable recorded history. Since it was once mistakenly thought that cats were domesticated in -- and not until -- Egypt and its era, that's also where Katherine Sullivan Barak started her research in Spinsters, Old Maids, and Cat Ladies: A Case Study In Containment Strategies. Wow! Interesting. No doubt that it's as Thanks for the info, C C!
Too bad someone used Julianne Moore as Poppy, the female villain in Kingsman: Golden Circle, which I thought was a great spoof on the organized bad guy taking over the world genre. I think she would have been great.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43111120
Interviewing a male stripper... I ask: "And do you enjoy that - the touching?" "I love it," he replies. "It's not so much the touching itself, it's the way people are having fun. You walk away, they giggle with their friends. It's more the joy that is created from it rather than the sensation itself." ... I am wondering how he feels about recent workplace developments: Formula 1's banning of the "grid girls". Or the darts "walk on girls". What about boxing's "ring girls" in Vegas? "It's complicated," he acknowledges. "Because if any one of those girls was proud to do that, proud to be there, proud of their body - enjoying the money, thought it was easy, and were there 100% voluntarily then it's hard to argue against it. Punchline (male stripper says)... "That said, with all these stories coming out, things have been wrong for so long that we might need to overcorrect for a while before we find the middle ground." |
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