One of my absolute faves.

Now, didn't we all hope that the First Bride for the First Brother would make it to age 100 and beyond?

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

On Thursday, September 16, 2021 at 5:39:06 PM UTC-4, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> One of my absolute faves.
>
> Now, didn't we all hope that the First Bride for the First Brother would make it to age 100 and beyond?
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

An actress died today who acted in a film with W.C. Fields. Talk about longevity! I last remember seeing her hock denture adhesive on the color television set.

If you'll pardon the tangent, I'm reminded of another Powell known for dancing - Eleanor. (She died in 1982.)

From a 1998(?) interview with Fayard Nicholas, quoted in 2000:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/07/05/appreciation/acc1782f-7576-495d-a343-32da762500f0/

....Two years ago, at a screening of "We Sing and We Dance" at the American Film Institute, Fayard Nicholas was on hand to take questions from the audience. (Harold was ill and could not attend.) Charming and lively, the elder Nicholas peppered his accounts with tales of the jazz eminences of the past with whom he and his brother had performed.

Finally, he was asked to name the world's greatest female dancer. "Eleanor Powell," he replied, referring to the celebrated Broadway and film star of the '30s and '40s. And the world's greatest male dancer? "Well," said Fayard Nicholas with a broad smile, "I'd have to say my brother."

I not only am delighted to see you invoke the fabulous Eleanor Powell, but indeed share the surviving Nicholas bro in his assessment of her as the greatest female dancer I've ever seen (and that INCLUDES the late Sinatra paramour Juliet Prowse!).

Indeed, I love her leg-work so much that Powell has made it into the Zanadu Hall of Fame, my roster of 75 personages whose 4x6" white-framed portraits greet every visitor to my Florida condo. (And the shot* I elected to represent Powell is her adjusting her bow tie after completing the most remarkable dance I've ever seen ANYONE pull off, i.e., that "Fascinatin' Rhythm" romp in "Lady Be Good"!)

Thanks so much, Lenona--make that Lenona.!--for giving me the excuse to sing the praises of someone to whom too many folks are totally oblivious!

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
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* Right up there in the Hall adjacent to (and among several dozen others, from antiquity through today): Georg Cantor; Marconi; Rene Descartes; Euler; Larry Wilson; Aristotle; Van Gogh; Jacques Plante; Thales; Streisand; Ronald & Nancy Reagan; Lavoisier; Walter Payton; Jeane Kirkpatrick; Giodorno Bruno; Dr. J; Sinatra; Penn & Teller, Georges Lemaitre; The Allman Brothers Band; Einstein; Savannah Guthrie**; Oscar Peterson; Steve Allen & Jayne Meadows; Bob Ingersoll; Camille Paglia; Asimov; Emo Phillips; Carl Sagan; RHL III; Clark Gable**; Abbott & Costello; Mark Knopfler; Bing Crosby; and oh, yes, that insufferably-idiosyncratic guy with the funny nose, the funnier hair and the funniest voice.
** Whom, as it happens, share the middle name Clark!

By the way, the Zanadu Hall of Fame is no static installation!

Rather, the Hall is a highly DYNAMIC display: a random-selected several of the 74* frames are shifted to new positions every couple of days or so...with the unintended effect of regularly gaslighting MYSELF!

STYBLE/Florida
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* The sole frame which is never position-switched being the one containing--you guessed it!--that quirky Nobel Lit laureate who might have enjoyed more success, had he ever just learned to sing.