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Lena Horne with composer, arranger and vocal coach Phil Moore in July 1949.

Lena Horne with composer, arranger and vocal coach Phil Moore in July 1949.

Lena Horne with composer, arranger and vocal coach Phil Moore in July 1949.

Moore worked as an arranger for MGM and arranged music for the 1938 film The Duke Is Tops. Moore also helped Horne and Dorothy Dandridge develop their nightclub performances and coached, arranged and/or wrote songs for Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland,Pearl Bailey, Ava Gardner, Diahann Carroll, Johnny Mathis and The Supremes. He died in 1987.

22-year-old Marilyn Monroe with Phil Moore

22-year-old Marilyn Monroe  with Phil Moore

 22-year-old Marilyn Monroe  with Phil Moore

Composer, arranger and vocal coach Phil Moore giving singing lessons to a 22-year-old Marilyn Monroe at the legendary West Hollywood nightclub, the Mocambo, in 1949. Ms. Monroe was quoted in Ebony magazine in 1960 as saying, “I will always be grateful to Phil Moore for his patience… he gave me confidence in my own vocal ability and made me realize that people would be willing to listen to me as well as look at me

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

http://youtu.be/urQVzgEO_w8

In an idealized New York City during the early ’60s, Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is a charming socialite with a youthful zest for life who lives alone in a nearly bare apartment. She has such a flippant lifestyle that she won’t even give her cat a name, because that would be too much of a commitment to a relationship. Maintaining a childlike innocence yet wearing the most perfect of designer clothes and accessories from Givenchy, she spends her time on expensive dates and at high-class parties. She escorts various wealthy men, yet fails to return their affections after they have given her gifts and money. Holly’s carefree independence is changed when she meets her neighbor, aspiring writer Paul (George Peppard), who is suffering from writer’s block while being kept by a wealthy woman (Patricia Neal). Just when Holly and Paul are developing their sweet romance, Doc (Buddy Ebsen) appears on the scene and complicates matters, revealing the truth about Holly’s past. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was nominated for several Academy awards, winning Best Score for Henry Mancini and Best Song for Johnny Mercer’s classic tune “Moon River”. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

My Fair Lady

http://youtu.be/EzAufG9zFSk

At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic expert Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). After delivering a musical tirade against “verbal class distinction,” Higgins tells his companion Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) that, within six months, he could transform Eliza into a proper lady, simply by teaching her proper English. The next morning, face and hands freshly scrubbed, Eliza presents herself on Higgins’ doorstep, offering to pay him to teach her to be a lady. “It’s almost irresistable,” clucks Higgins. “She’s so deliciously low. So horribly dirty.” He turns his mission into a sporting proposition, making a bet with Pickering that he can accomplish his six-month miracle to turn Eliza into a lady. This is one of the all-time great movie musicals, featuring classic songs and the legendary performances of Harrison, repeating his stage role after Cary Grant wisely turned down the movie job, and Stanley Holloway as Eliza’s dustman father. Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza on Broadway but producer Jack Warner felt that Andrews, at the time unknown beyond Broadway, wasn’t bankable; Hepburn’s singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Andrews instead made Mary Poppins, for which she was given the Best Actress Oscar, beating out Hepburn. The movie, however, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Harrison, and five other Oscars, and it remains one of the all-time best movie musicals

Sabrina 1954 AUDREY HEPBURN

http://youtu.be/P7mzrrL1ifI

SABRINA, starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden. The film’s promotional materials and trail made much ado about the film’s pedigree, which boasted of four osacr-winners in the three leads and the director, but the charm of this film is its Cinderella-like story of a chauffer’s daughter who blossoms into a stylish youg woman after spending time in Paris. Critics loved the film, which received six Oscar nominations including Best Actress, Best Director and Best Screenpaly. Only Edith Head took home the coveted stauette for her chic costume design.

Ophelia DeVore, the pioneering former model

http://youtu.be/HQOIWq-ItpM

Ophelia DeVore, the pioneering former model who went on to open a legendary modeling agency and a school for people of color, on why she took her business international. The video is by the National Visionary Leadership Project which was co-founded by Camille Cosby and Renee Poussaint.

Models and actors who came through her school included Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, Ellen Holly, Richard Roundtree

Donyale Luna (1 January 1945 – 17 May 1979)

Donyale Luna (1 January 1945 – 17 May 1979)

Donyale Luna (1 January 1945 – 17 May 1979)

was a model and cover girl. She also appeared in several films, most notably as the title character in Salome, a 1972 film by director Carmelo Bene, and several films by Andy Warhol.
In January 1965, a sketch of Luna appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.She became the first African American model to appear on the cover of British Vogue (March 1966); the photograph was by David Bailey.”

The Baroness: Rebellious Rothschild

The Baroness: Rebellious Rothschild

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/22/hannah-rothschild-nica-jazz-thelonious-monk-interview    Book Description Part musical odyssey, part dazzling love story The Baroness traces Nica’s extraordinary, thrilling journey – from England’s stately homes to the battlefields of Africa, passing under the shadow of the Holocaust, and finally, to the creative ferment of New York’s 1950s jazz scene. From the Back Cover Rothschild by birth. Baroness by marriage. […]

Keys to the Castle

Keys to the Castle

Some of the most amazing castles and chateaux in France that are still lived in today. First up: Chateau de Brissac. Located in the beautiful countryside of France, this place has been dubbed the giant of the Loire Valley. It is home to the Marchioness of Brissac, Larissa, and her family, and it’s also a […]