Dona Drake was gorgeous! Travilla crossed racial lines when he married Dona, she’s 75% black and 25% white. Most Americans didn’t know this at the time….
Travilla dressed many of the leading ladies of Hollywood for the majority of his illustrious career, acclaimed all the way to the Oscars; best known for the iconic gowns from eight Marilyn Monroe movies. He and Drona were together for 45 yrs.
Charles Callaci was a pioneer of "interactive television". Here's a link to a youtube video which times out at 13:34. The first two minutes are from the above You Bet Your Life episode. The remainder is excerpts from one of his "Choo Choo Charlie" kiddie shows. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1vbeyxGVGH8.html
Wonder if they knew she was African American, they refer to her as mixed race.... But essentially she was Black. And also her and her husband were separated from 56 until her death in 89 but they remained married, had one child, he passed in 90 and their child passed in 2002.
I don't get it. Travilla was very particular about how his name was pronounced, with the double L sounding like a Y. That's the Spanish way of pronouncing it, yet he said the name was Italian. In Italian, the double L would be very strongly pronounced, as in "bella" or "allegro." What gives?
Maybe his family is from Veneto. From wikipedia: "Some varieties of Venetian also distinguish an ordinary [l] vs. a weakened or lenited ("evanescent") ⟨l⟩, which in some orthographic norms is indicated with the letter ⟨ł⟩;[31] in more conservative dialects, however, both ⟨l⟩ and ⟨ł⟩ are merged as ordinary [l]. In those dialects that have both types, the precise phonetic realization of ⟨ł⟩ depends both on its phonological environment and on the dialect of the speaker. Typical realizations in the region of Venice include a voiced velar approximant or glide [ɰ] (usually described as nearly like an "e" and so often spelled as ⟨e⟩), when ⟨ł⟩ is adjacent (only) to back vowels (⟨a o u⟩), vs. a null realization when ⟨ł⟩ is adjacent to a front vowel (⟨i e⟩). In dialects further inland ⟨ł⟩ may be realized as a partially vocalised ⟨l⟩. Thus, for example, góndoła 'gondola' may sound like góndoea [ˈɡoŋdoɰa], góndola [ˈɡoŋdola], or góndoa [ˈɡoŋdoa]. In dialects having a null realization of intervocalic ⟨ł⟩, although pairs of words such as scóła, "school" and scóa, "broom" are homophonous (both being pronounced [ˈskoa]), they are still distinguished orthographically. " Or perhaps other Italian dialects also have a similar feature.
Thanks for uploading these wonderful time-capsules of classic entertainment. Educational too! :-) Cheers from Brisbane, Australia this sunny Winter's Saturday.
Travilla made a fuss about his name pronunciation yet turns out Groucho was right: if it's Italian then it's pronounced like 'gorilla' not like 'tortilla' 😆🤣
You're assuming his name is pronounced in standard Italian and not some dialect that pronounces things differently. It turns out Venetian has an l that is pronounced like an e in some localities, for example.
In her one-woman autobiographical show, "The Lady and Her Music," pretending to be Hispanic is what was suggested to Lena Horne at the beginning of her career, as well, but she turned it down flat. Solidly talented Black women performers and these were their available choices. SMH
travilla later went on to design Marilyns white pleated dress in the 7 year itch you know the sidewalk scene... apparently debbie reynolds bought it.. later she sold it for $6 million
Near the end of the show, they ran out of time to play the game with the second couple. Groucho invited them to come back next week. Did they film only one show a week or more? I wonder if that couple just remained and filmed their segment after the end of this show? Today, they would tape the couple right then and there and not want to incur the expense of bringing them back. But this 1960 so who knows what went on then?
No, they recorded only one show at a time, as far as I'm aware (but it's entirely possible I just don't know all the facts). Remember that they recorded a full hour of material for each show and edited it down to the best 25 minutes later. I think it would have been too grueling to do more than one show. What is more possible is that they recorded just the following week's segment with the holdover couple the same night. Part of the reason Groucho always wore the exact same outfit was so that the editors were free to mix and match segments from different recording sessions. When they did this, they had to make sure there was no continuity problem introduced by the secret word being different on the different nights. E.g., they might have to choose a secret word for broadcast that was never used in any of the recording sessions if it would have created too many difficulties to edit around it otherwise.
Groucho Marx - You Bet Your Life By the way, Gary, how many cameras did they use on YBYL? And since it was film, I guess the director is limited as to what he can do with the cameras during filming, huh? Or did they use a video monitor outfit?
Joe Postove No, no video monitor was possible. The only film-based system in this era that was capable of doing that was Dumont's failed Electronicam system, used for the single Classic 39 season of "The Honeymooners" (and not much else). YBYL used 4 cameras, with the intent being that 3 could be actively filming at any given time while the film was being changed in one of the cameras (film reels only last about 10 minutes each). They would stagger the cameras so that no two would run out of film at the same time. One camera stayed on Groucho, one on the contestants, and one was for long shots.
Joe Postove Of the type you're thinking of, yes. It was a totally different manner of producing a show than with TV cameras. But remember that 90% of YBYL was static camera setups, with the contestants at the microphones and Groucho at his desk. Minimal camera direction required.
Travilla is a Latin/ spanish last name...he probably don't wanted to identify as such, which was probably what he was in those times...and that last name is pronounce with the two LL's,he was lying.
The fashion tips he gave are actually still useful to this day, go watch every style youtubers and you'll find out that what he said is still relevant until now, I'm a fashion student and I found his tips helpful. Yes ofcourse you should always dress for yourself and you don't need to follow any rules but for us people who are struggling with personal style it's pretty useful. But I do have to say that groucho is being pretty sexist