Greetings, music sloots, and welcome to a spanking new edition of Manor Music Monday, today en francais! What does that mean? It means we're about to explore a mesmerizing French chanteuse who briefly became a Hollywood starlet. Tonight at "Gober Moi, Cherie," the Manor's exclusive French music hall and dessert creperie, DJ Li'l Scratch will be playing all of her best tunes, each of which made the French swoon, thoughtfully smoke Gitanes, and ask themselves if they should be proud or ashamed for inventing mayonnaise and Pieds Paquets, or stewed sheep's feet. Shall we? Apres vous, mon ami.
Isn't she something? A lovely gamine, one might say. And tough as nails, too. Yes, it's the legendary Juliette Greco, whose sultry, commanding, deep-toned voice entranced nearly the entire world just after WWII. As a mysterious, sensual, femme fatale-like figure - whose devotees included Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Miles Davis, the latter whom she had a torrid affair with - she was frequently hailed as "the musical embodiment of the existentialist movement."
Born the daughter of resistance-fighting parents, she was once captured, imprisoned for several months, beaten and grilled daily by the Gestapo as a little girl in the 1940s. She never forgot about it. “I will fight until the last day of my life," she once said, "against oppression, against intellectual terrorism, and the denial of the only treasure that is worth preserving at all costs: the right to live as we choose."
Her singing career started when she began publicly reading poems to much acclaim at tony hotels and was encouraged to sing. From there, the spark was ignited and it wasn't long before she became a favorite of Europe's radicals and bourgeoisie alike. "Sous le ciel de Paris," a hymn to Parisian lovers, philosophers and a sailor's accordian, was released as a 45rpm in 1958 and became one of her biggest hits. As usual with noted French chanteusses, Juliette doesn't so much perform the song as live within it as an actor might, her voice seemingly casual, almost offhand, yet fully committed to the moment. It just gorgeous, and something, I think, only the French can pull off.
In time, with her fame rising, Hollywood came calling in the form of Darryl Zanuck, the 20th Century Fox mogul who was seriously smitten with her and determined to make her a star and his lover. He succeeded in the later. As a burgeoning star, she had small, but memorable roles in movies like "The Sun Also Rises" in 1957, though never quite caught on, despite receiving strong notices for her lead role opposite Orson Welles in "Crack in the Mirror," a 1960 box office bomb which is well-regarded today, but largely unavailable in the U.S. (even in a decent pirated version).
No matter, as she tired of Hollywood, despite her adoration for Zanuck and close friendship with Welles, returned to Europe and resumed her singing career, which flourished as never before.
In 1959, the hits kept coming, including "Coin de Rue," a wistful song about a bygone corner cafe, young love and a boy who once broke heart. Again, she approaches this song not like a singer, but an actor, her spontaneity and her depth of feeling bringing the lyric to vivid life.
Juliette was with us long enough to become a living legend. After three marriages, countless records, LPs, tours and television appearances, she was regarded by many come the 1970s as the very last of France's grand chaunteusses, and it's hard to argue with that. She kept touring to rapturous crowds until the early 2000s, silenced only by death at age 93.
What are you listening to this week? DJ Li'l Scratch wants to know. Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾
Credit: Warner Brothers It's April 25th, and you know what that means: Miss Congeniality Day! In the film, which came out 26 (!) years ago, Miss Rhode Island, played by the lovely Heather Burns, described April 25th as her perfect date. "It's not too hot, it's not too cold, all you need is a light jacket!" It is definitely too cold here in my neck of the woods, but hopefully some of you Peckers are enjoying the weather today!
Gen X beauty, the cool, detached, slightly subversive aesthetic embodied by women like Winona Ryder, the real Supermodels (Linda, Christy, Naomi, Kate, Shalom, Helena), Sade Adu, Lisa Bonet, Angelina Jolie, and Uma Thurman, to name a few, is having a quiet but very intentional resurgence, and companies are paying attention. This is the anti-performative face of beauty: matte skin, undone hair, minimal fuss, a kind of emotional distance that reads as power rather than effort. In a market saturated with hyper-curated routines, poreless skin, and influencer maximalism that no one with a life has time for, brands are rediscovering the commercial appeal of restraint. You’re seeing it in campaigns that lean into healthy, realistic skin, pared-down makeup, and a return to individuality over algorithmic perfection. It’s not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, though; it’s strategy. Consumers are fatigued by overkill and searches for unrealistic optimization, and Gen X beauty ideals offe...
Greetings music lovuhs, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday. Or perhaps should I say "tap-tap, tap-tap-tap" since it's National Morse Code Day, too. Send this to likeminded nerds: ( ... --- ...). It's the universal Morse code distress signal, dont'cha know. 'Cause we're living in stressful times, aren't we? It's time to decompress, if only for an evening, and at the Manor's exclusive "Tug Job" bar, vapory and snackery (warm, cheesy cassava bread is served all night!), DJ Li'l Scratch will be playing tunes by a performer whose career as a big band singer, Broadway, movie and TV star stretched over 50 years. Do you know who it is? If you guessed Fran Warren, you're right. And, yes, you can also add Sexploitation Queen to her resume, since she played the cranky mom in " Toys Are Not For Children ," a beloved 1972 psycho-sexual drama extraordinaire. Fran really did do it all! It was the early 1940s ...
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