Rant #2,487: I'm A Girl Watcher

Now that non-entity actress/model/poseur Elizabeth Hurley has put up another photo of herself in a bikini--and we are all supposed to be stunned at how good she looks at her current advanced age of 54, and yes, myself and millions of others look at the photos as if we are looking at apes in a zoo--there has got to be something more important to talk about.

I fond the impeachment hearings are balderdash, and at the same time, as boring as watching paint dry, so I certainly don't want to talk about that. Why talk about a smokescreen of nonsense when you have Hurley showing us her curves?

It's raining outside, so let's blame that on the President too--or maybe on Hurley, since her swimsuit is made for the water.

And talking about water, my father needs to drink plenty of water in his current position in the hospital. He is doing, I guess, OK, but they still do not know why he was running fever and was sick the other day. His vital signs are good--and I mean all good--but his cultures have not yet come in, so they do not know what ails him. We are all hoping that he gets released from the hospital as soon as possible, but they are not going to release him before they find out what the deal is.

I am a little more relaxed today knowing that he is getting better, and not having to rush out early in the morning to take my mother to the hospital. We aren't going until later in the morning, and as I might have mentioned yesterday, the facility my father is in is a bit of a ride away from us. But my father always has said that if you have a car, you can get anywhere, and he is right, and this situation proves that.

I had my first round of physical therapy yesterday, and it really went pretty well. I love to ride the stationery bike there, and I also did some other exercises that made me feel like I accomplished something. I have some exercises to do at home, and I hope to being that regimen sometime today. The physical therapist believes that my current ailment is related to the pinched nerve in my neck that I suffered seven years ago, and is atypical sciatica, so now we have a game plan and we can attack it. I feel better already.

What I wanted to talk about yesterday was pretty innocuous, but it is related to Hurley and all the other actresses over the years who have posed in various stages of dress and undress to gain attention.

And it really has nothing to do with talent. Hurley IS a beautiful woman, but let's face it, she has absolutely no talent other than standing there and looking pretty.

Playboy used to be the magazine that numerous female personalities gravitated to when they wanted to show the world how "feminine" they were, as if posing in the nude in the magazine was a validation of their womanhood. I never got that thinking, but evidently a spread in Playboy did ge people to think, and occasionally, it did open doors for these women that were closed to them previously.

One of the women personalities who took the Playboy route to further her career way back when was Lainie Kazan, who was one of those singers who rose to fame--and to a certain degree, some level of infamy--in the era when the entertainment industry was looking for the next Barbra Streisand.

Streisand made such an incredible impact on the industry with her God-given talent and unique look that Hollywood figured that there must be some other women who could fill that role for them, and they mined several female singers of various distinctions as their own Streisand.

One was Liza Minnelli, who had the pedigree, the talent and a unique look of her own to lead to the goldmine. Over the past more than 50 years, Minnelli stands as the only one of this short list to even approach Streisand's success, having her own star turns in the movies, on record and on stage.

Talent coordinators had to look no further than Streisand's home of Brooklyn, New York, to find the next Barbara, and one of these singers was Julie Budd, who being as young as she was and with plenty of talent, became the darling of the industry for awhile, and was pushed by the likes of Ed Sullivan as the next big singing star. Fame was fleeting, and Budd simply became another singer, as was Roslyn Kind, Streisand's half sister, who may have had the pedigree, but ultimately, she too was just another singer.

And then we have Kazan, who was as exotic as Streisand, just a little older than Barbra was--she has two years on Streisand--and heck, they even went at the same time to the same high school, Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn, the very same school that my mother went to 10 years before these two did.

Kazan went the same route as Streisand did, right to Broadway, and she was Streisand's understudy on at least one or two of the Broadway shows Barbra starred in, including "Funny Girl."

All of this time, Kazan was recording one LP after another of similar material that Streisand was recording, and through her record label, MGM, she appeared in several movies that highlighted her in a sexy way. In fact, for a time she was marketed almost as a "sexier" alternative to Streisand, as Kazan not only had great talent, but let's say, she had curves to spare, which were often shown off in sexy outfits that she wore on TV and in films.

And in films, she often would drop everything, even though to the camera, you didn't see much.

So it was only natural, I guess, that in the October 1970 issue of Playboy, she had a nude pictorial, which included some topless photos and that was pretty much it. But Kazan did the shoot as part of a business partnership with Publisher Hugh Hefner, who opened up performance venues with her name on them, places where she could showcase her talent.

But it helped Kazan break into the Las Vegas nightclub scene, which became her real bread and butter for years to come.

And like Streisand and Minnelli, she has carved out quite a career on stage and in films, earning a Tony Award for the original Broadway production of "My Favorite Year" after being one of its stars in the earlier movie adaptation.

She also was one of the stars of the popular "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" franchise, playing an extremely ethnic Greek mother, a role she seemingly was born to play.

Why talk about Kazan? I was sifting through my record collection the other day, and I found that I actually had three of her LPs, all gotten from the $1 bargain bin at my local record store. I listened to the records as I digitized them, and I found that yes, Kazan had lots and lots of talent, and her voice often sounds like that of Streisand, but huskier and rougher than Barbra's was at the time, in the mid 1960s.

In fact, she sounded so much like Streisand that I guess it was too close, and even with the rougher edges, you can really see where Streisand's voice stood out from Kazan's, and really, from the rest of that group I mentioned earlier. Heck, there really is no comparison.

So, we went from Hurley to Kazan in one fell swoop, because each used the then current technology at hand to promote themselves when the chips might have been down for them.

Maybe Hurley can take a page from Kazan's book, and take some acting lessons and show Hollywood that you do have some talent.

Good looks can only get you so far.