On the pop front, Ellen DeGeneres' cringe-making on-air meltdown over a dog, leading to her overwrought cancellation of several days of her show, should get a Raspberry Award for worst performance by a lesbian icon. Following Rosie O'Donnell's professional collapse amid lunatic rants and operatic kvetching, this has been a terrible year for Hollywood lesbians' public image. It's as if when the butch mask drops, there's nothing inside but a boiling candy kettle of infantile rage and self-pity. And now Ellen, the professed liberal, is narcissistically flouting the Writers Guild strike. Great going, gals!
Public television stations have been broadcasting a new release of a wonderful 20-year-old documentary, "Starring Natalie Wood," narrated by George Segal and skillfully directed by Susan F. Walker. What mesmerizing archival footage of a screen personality who seemed to burst with the life force and whose 1981 drowning in the idyllic Santa Catalina harbor still seems unreal.
Natalie Wood was one of the canonical stars for the rising baby boom generation. From "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) through "Splendor in the Grass" (1961) to "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" (1969), she seemed to be a proxy for young women's hopes, ideals and sexual anxieties. What this documentary reveals is how fresh and contemporary Natalie still seems, despite the passage of so many decades. Like Elizabeth Taylor, she was a child star who gracefully and seamlessly matured. And like Taylor (who is interviewed here), she radiated a fierce emotional intelligence that cannot be taught at any acting school. It's an inexplicable gift of nature.
The Chicago Tribune gave a rave review to Hell in a Handbag Productions' "The Birds," a satirical play by David Cerda and Pauline Pang inspired by my British Film Institute book on Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds.
Tippi Hedren and Veronica Cartwright, who starred in the original film, attended the Chicago premiere last month. The party photos are posted online: Tippi and Veronica can be glimpsed quaffing champagne in a limo and mingling with their vibrant stage doubles. The production photos of the charismatic Tracy Repep as Tippi/Melanie comically trapped in a minimalist telephone booth are not to be missed.
The play is a half-drag burlesque: The goody-two-shoes child Veronica/Cathy is played by a man, as is Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette in the film and David Cerda here), for whom my character (played by a "hawkish" Merrie Greenfield) conceives a sometimes buffoonishly irrepressible lesbo passion. Here I am effusively mourning over Annie's sprawled-out corpse, her foot caught in a rose trellis and her head heraldically ringed by stuffed birds. Love it!
Hell in a Handbag's production of "The Birds" runs through Nov. 17 at Berger Park Coach House in Chicago.
Camille Paglia's column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.
About the writer
Camille Paglia is the University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her most recent book is "Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems."
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