Hon, if you don’t recognize the names of these old movie stars, you are undoubtedly young enough that you don’t need to brood about a birthday. 
Maybe it’s all in the proper use of props. Having been left alone for far too may hours with daytime TV as a preschooler, at an impressionable age I witnessed, on a frequent basis, greiving women on early-1960’s soap-operas seeep framed portraits of their dead husbands off tabletops and clutch them to theri breasts, usually while other characters were tryig to pesuade these women to love again. It was many years until I realized that nobody in realy life actually sweeps pictures off of tabletops and clutches them to their breasts.
Another dramatic gesture not found in real life is the swooning lamentation, practiced by women in silent films. To pull this one off, at a moment of duress, one tilts one’s head up with eyes shut and brings the back of one’s wrist to the forehead. Again, props can be utilized for the overall effectiveness of this in the form of a fainting couch.
Drama Kings have equal opportunity, and for them the prop of choice is the cigarette. Without one, world-weary soldiers of fortune such as Humphrey Bogart or Jean Gabin would simply stand there looking “well, what do I do with myself now?”
Lacking a cigarette, a would-be Drama King has to go for broke and attempt a full Roderick Usher: brooding, agitated, distracted. Shut up in a moldering library, snatching a volume of poetry from the stacks, reading a few stanzas, then tossing it aside to stare out the window at the dying afternoon. Or, Gatsby-like, standing a good mile from the object of one’s desire and reaching out as if to grasp the light from her house.
Don’t forget the James Dean brand of drama.
Atta boy, Luther!
As to male drama queens - one as to look no further than Charlton Heston in either Planet of the Apes of The Ten Commandmants.
So if you want to be a Drama King, get yourself a loin cloth, wallow around in the mud, and WAIL, BABY, WAIL!
Nice one! This made me laugh out loud.
I prefer the descent into madness when the chips are really down. However, I can’t think of anyone who can capture my brand of insanity. Here’s the outline: make-up smeared all over my eyes. The hair is wild. There is always a half-empty drink in my hand. I’m shreeking at anyone who tries to calm me down. And I play sad music really loud on my stereo.
I dunno…maybe Liz Taylor in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff”?
Perfect!
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God, I love that film.
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I’ve always been the Melanie type…long-suffering, the single tear slipping gently down my cheek as I continue on with my petit-point, a sodden handkerchief tucked discreetly in my bosom. But Melanie dies. I want to be Scarlett, just once. I’m currently trying to work myself up into a confrontation (Saturday evening, 7:30, apartment 2-C…be there!) and I could really use some Scarlett. I’m tired of being easy to leave…I want drama and smashed crockery and scars, dammit! If I can’t have the man, I want to inspire fear! Nice girls get dumped, drama queens get noticed! And I’m tired of being invisible. I think I’ll need a hat for this.
Just remember that in the film, when Rhett brought Scarlett the new hat from France, she put it on upside down. It may be hard to be very confrontational if you’ve got your chapeau on incorrectly.
I offer you an anecdote about Joan Crawford to inspire you. Once when some studio head was messing around with her contract, her billing or something like that, she blasted him, saying ‘Don’t fuck with me.’ I myself have used this very phrase on several occasions. It works well, when delivered with blazing eyes and stiff conviction.
Let 'em have it!
Another drama queen checking in. On occasion, I have imagined myself all Rosemary Clooney and “Love you didn’t do right by me…” Sadness is much more bearable when you’re wearing a slinky dress and singing in a swanky lounge.
I think that’s a quote from Mommie Dearest (the movie; though neither the book nor the movie should be confused with anything Joannie ever actually said or did): “Don’t fuck with me, boys, this ain’t my first time at the rodeo.”
Aren’t you supposed to join the Foreign Legion?
I think Steve Martin did a movie where he was silent and brooding…counting his money, drinking methodically, and doing woodwork. Very effective.
Don’t worry, guys! There is a poet and a poem for every situation. In this case, you sad-eyed gentleman may draw upon Tennyson’s poem *Tears, Idle Tears. *
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
Automatic cool points to CBCD!
Drama queen club membership? Count me in, baby. dons tiara and fabulous high heels
Miss Scarlett O’hara?
Ah, but if you watch closely, she knew she was putting in on backwards, and was trying to help Rhett feel all superior and masculine about the latest French fashions.
Where does Carole Lombard fit in? I think she put up with Clark Gable’s infidelities, but she was no slouch, either. And Mae West, Liz Taylor?
