The "Floozie" and Doxie" Appreciation Thread

Cafe Society
#1

I was watching “Pal Joey” on TCM this week . . . Pretty awful and lifeless. The high point was the wonderful Barbara Nichols, who played a cheap, gum-chewing stripper with all the zest of five Miss Mazeppas.

Got me thinking how the 1950s and early '60s seemed to be the last great flowering of the floozie and the doxie . . . There were some great ones, too: Joan Shawlee (Sweet Sue in “Some Like It Hot,” Pickles Sorrell in “The Dick Van Dyke Show”), Janis Paige, Jean Carson (in the “Twilight Zone” episode “A Most Unusual Camera”), the clarion-voiced Dolores Gray . . .

The perfect Doxie wore a bubble hairdo (preferably bright gold), spike-heeled shoes, and a very tight dress. Reminds me of my dear Aunt Mary, who was a sixteen-year-old dance instructor when my much-older Uncle Bob married her aorund 1955. She taught my sister and I to cha-cha, then ran off with a gigolo and was never seen again . . .

#2

Two images that sum up my thesis:

Joan Shawlee in “Irma la Douce”—http://www.neosoft.com/~meeker/jshawlee.html

And Jean Carson in “The Twilight Zone”—http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/hellodoll/autographphotos/image12.htm

#3

What about Vivian Blane as Miss Adelade, in the 1955 film adaptation of Guys and Dolls?

#4

Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday. Or anything else…she had the voice, the bright-gold bubble hairdo, the clothes and shoes, but especially that voice.

#5

So what technically is a doxie? How is that different from a floosie? I gotta know.

#6

so, eve, pal joey’s not worth it? i ask because ive got it in my netflix queue, because i recently saw gilda and i fell in love, and i mean LOVE, luv, with miss rita hayworth. rooowwwwrrr!! where has she been all my life?

#7

Oh, yes, yes—Vivian Blaine in “Guys and Dolls” and Judy Holliday in “Born Yesterday” are CLASSIC! Also, the great Jean Hagen in “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Lao—A “doxie” is . . . Well, a moll; a dame, a flooze. One of the essentials is to sound like Fran Drescher talking through a kazoo. And you have to look really CHEAP. The closest thing we have now, really, is Debbie Mazur (but she needs to bleach her hair!).

Essvee—If you love Rita, “Pal Joey” is kinda sad, as she’s not given much to do, and seems rather unenthusiastic. Go look for more of her her 1940s musicals.

#8

Shelley Winters always struck me as cheap as they come - so I’ll nominate her.

And let’s not tell essvee about Rita Hayworth’s famous lingerie shot with the figure-enhancing shadows. Talk about scorching. Too bad she ended up such a wreck.

#9

oh cmon!!! which movie? could anything be better than rit’s opening shot in gilda? im weak in the knees over here!!!