There’s an old joke in certain theatre circles about how easy it is to confuse Chita Rivera with Rita Moreno and vice versa. Well, I feel the same way about Cornelia Otis Skinner and Ilka Chase. Both were witty and popular authors who occasionally acted in films. Both were the daughters of famous people. Both were engaging speakers who had devoted followings. Both cut their teeth on the stage. Both were statuesque brunettes whom one might label belle laide rather than beautiful. They were born a year apart, and died a year apart. Sometimes when I am singing their praises, I get them mixed up. Was it Ilka Chase who played Bette Davis’s stylish sister-in-law in Now, Voyager or was it Cornelia? Was it Cornelia who played the spooky Miss Holloway in the classic horror flick The Uninvited? Or was it Ilka? Well, thanks to IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, one can answer such troubling questions immediately. But comparing their life histories at this site only underscores their similarities. Both were to the manner born, with a high style hauteur and glamour, as evidenced in the scene below, from Oscar Wilde’s play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, showing Cornelia Otis Skinner with Cecil Beaton and Miss Penelope Dudley-Ward, shot by Horst.

The other night I finally got to see a film I’ve wanted to watch for decades, the elusive The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, featuring Cornelia Otis Skinner in a small but significant role. Based on the scandalous murder of architect Stanford White, it has been reissued in a restored DVD version as part of The Joan Collins Collection. Collins had played the title role. For years the movie had been out of my reach. But now courtesy of Netflix, it’s easy to find. The finished picture is a storied flop, primarily due to its archaic direction by Richard Fleischer and creaky script (co-written by Charles Brackett of Billy Wilder fame). But I think the bulk of the burden of failure belongs on the shoulders of Ray Milland who plays Stanford White as a sort of aging popinjay. His performance is merely phoned-in, as we like to say today, and his scenes showing him kissing Joan Collins are frankly sickening to watch. His performance is stiff and awkward, as if he were terrified that his toupee might fall off at any moment, particularly in the bizarre scene in which he pushes Joan Collins on the eponymous red velvet swing. The look in his eye is one of demented ecstasy. Farley Granger is his usual charming self, but ultimately unconvincing as the equally demonic and deranged Harry K. Thaw.

But Joan Collins is surprisingly good as the seductive beauty Evelyn Nesbitt. Marilyn Monroe was rumored to be up for the part, but Joan Collins, coming off her triumph in The Virgin Queen, opposite Bette Davis, captures better the spirit of the times. It would be hard to imagine the Playboy pin-up Marilyn Monroe as a Gibson Girl. It’s a shame Joan Collins’ career suffered due to the lackluster reception of this picture. She could have made some wonderful films and really given Elizabeth Taylor a run for her money. But she was relegated to horror films and pop tripe such as The Bitch and The Stud, born from the pen of her equally divine sister Jackie Collins.

The person who steals the picture, however, in my opinion, is Cornelia Otis Skinner who portrays Harry K. Thaw’s mother with equal parts gravitas and pathos. In a chilling bedside scene, Skinner cajoles Nesbitt into promising to take the stand in defense of her lunatic husband Thaw in order to get him acquitted of murder. Rather than play Mrs. Thaw as a harpy who browbeats Nesbitt into submission, Skinner manages somehow to imbue her character with an almost tragic nobility, recalling an incident when she accidentally smothered her other child to death while taking him into her bed one night. It was her favorite son, Harry’s older brother, and because of her sense of shame and guilt, and terror that it might happen again, she figuratively smothered Harry K. Thaw and turned him into the mentally maimed mama’s boy who became a murderer. Ironically, the melodramatic point she makes is salient for in real life Harry K. Thaw later became a notorious sadist who used to beat up rent boys and bell hops during homosexual liaisons in London’s swanky hotels.

Cornelia Otis Skinner was born in 1901 in Chicago. Her father Otis Skinner was a well-known actor. After attending Bryn Mawr, she sailed to France and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. Back in the States, she wrote clever short pieces for the fabled New Yorker, eventually writing several books that won a wide audience. Her specialty was the wry memoir which she honed in books entitled Nuts in May, Dithers and Jitters, Excuse It Please!, and The Ape In Me, among others. On Broadway she produced and starred in several “monodramas”, one-woman shows, including Mansion on the Hudson, and The Wives of Henry VIII, both of which she also wrote.

As an author, she penned best-selling biographies of Sarah Bernhardt and the theatrical team Lindsay and Crouse. One of her finer efforts was Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, a tony retailing of the Belle Epoque. With Emily Kimbrough, she wrote the hugely successful Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, which chronicled their travels throughout Europe as young girls. This was later made into a film starring Gail Russell. It was not, despite its title, the lesbian romance many hoped it would be. Cornelia Otis Skinner did in fact marry Alden S. Blodget and had a son. She died in 1978.

In Hollywood, Cornelia Otis Skinner made only three films, distinguishing herself in small roles, unusual character parts, such as Mrs. Hammar in The Swimmer, starring Burt Lancaster, and the aforementioned Mrs. Thaw. But it was as Miss Holloway in The Uninvited, also starring Gail Russell and Ray Milland, that she will perhaps be best remembered. Without question, the finest ghost story ever filmed, The Uninvited is a masterpiece of mystery and menace, primarily because of Skinner’s eerie performance as an evil spinster, dressed in masculine attire, who heads a sinister institute for girls. Skinner maintains a strange hold over the young Gail Russell and is finally revealed to be a murderess who killed the woman she adored in a jealous rage. The lesbian overtones are subtle but obvious and quite shocking for a movie made in 1944 at the height of the Second World War.

Who can forget the creepy scene in which Skinner is sitting alone in her enormous office, listening to Wagner’s Liebestod (the Love Death theme from Tristan und Isolde) while staring at the portrait of Mary, the woman she killed? Apparently lesbians across the country fell in love with this movie and used to go to the theatre en masse dressed as Miss Holloway! Watching Cornelia Otis Skinner weave her magic in it, I can see why. She oozed an aura of intelligent elegance.

So did the indomitable Ilka Chase (1900-1978), above. Like Skinner, she excelled in small roles in just a few pictures. Ironically she appeared in a film called The Floradora Girl which was based on the theatrical troupe in which Evelyn Nesbitt had first made her mark. Her performance in Now, Voyager as Lisa Vale, the chic sister-in-law who helps pull Bette Davis out of her ugly duckling doldrums is the key to the film’s success. She makes the perfect foil to Gladys Cooper, who plays Bette Davis’s cruel and heartless mother. Ilka Chase was the daughter of Edna Woolman Chase, the fabled editrix of Vogue magazine (below).

It could not have been easy for young Ilka to follow in her mother’s stylish footsteps. Ilka was no beauty. But she compensated for her lack of looks by carrying herself with a kind of haughty grace and a disarming sense of humor. After making her society debut in 1923, she took to the stage, playing an assortment of roles. Her biggest success was in 1938 in the Broadway debut of Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women. Ilka tackled the part that Rosalind Russell had in the film version. Ilka had a lot in common with Russell, but lacked her sex appeal. She was relegated in Hollywood to cameo parts in forgotten flicks with intriguing titles like Free Love, Fast and Loose, Soak the Rich, The Gay Diplomat and On Your Back. What Ilka had in spades, however, was common sense. She was always dispensing good sound advice, kind of like a high society Eve Arden. She later had her own radio program entitled “Luncheon at the Waldorf.”

Not to be outdone by her cinematic clone Cornelia, Ilka also published several books, most notably Past Imperfect, an autobiography that summed up her elegantly checkered past perfectly. She also co-wrote Always in Vogue with her mother Edna. It’s one of those clever chronicles of the haut-monde that collectors continue to clamor for. To many of my generation, however, Ilka Chase will always be best remembered for her portrayal of Julie Andrews’ wicked stepmother in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella which was first shown on television in 1957. Despite her disagreeable character, she was a joy to watch, especially in her scenes with the hilarious Kaye Ballard.

Ironcially, in terms of the Ilka Chase/Cornelia Otis Skinner confoundment, Joan Collins called her own memoir Past Imperfect. I wonder if she chose that title as a nod to her old friend Cornelia, thinking it was she rather than Ilka Chase who had used it before. It makes perfect sense considering how easy it is to confuse the two!

The Olympics have always been a time for hero worship and myth-making. Back in ancient days, the winners at the Olympiad were treated as living gods. Today they are treated as commodities, teasers between commercials. “Stay tuned. Don’t touch that dial. Michael Phelps in 44 minutes.”

One can’t watch the Olympics today without wondering what it would be like without all the hysteria and hoopla and hyper-marketing. I seem to recall that in my childhood the Olympics still retained an aura of sanctity, of being above crass commercialism, if not, alas, politics. One expected nations to push their athletes, and even in some cases to force them into training. That came with the territory of staging an international competition, especially in the Cold War. But somewhere along the way the line between sportsmanship and pop entertainment has been blurred. The biggest mistake was allowing professionals to compete against amateurs. I understand the reasons behind the change, but honestly, what’s the point of Kobe Bryant being on an Olympic basketball team? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. We’ve lost something basic and wonderful about the Olympics: the beauty of innocence and authenticity. Today it’s the media that create the myths, leaving it to the viewer to look behind the hype for the reality of these heroes’ lives. (Photo below: Jonathan Horton, current US gymnast.)

The first time I recall seeing the Olympics with any understanding of what I was watching was in 1968. I was eleven years old. Held in Mexico City, the Olympics were splashed on television in what used to be called “living color.” (As opposed to “dying color”?) Even then I knew I was drawn to the Olympics for my own personal reasons. I enjoyed watching these handsome athletes compete against each other. The beauty of some participants was obvious to me, but it was their achievements which dazzled the eye and inspired the imagination. Who can ever forget the famous Fosbury Flop in the high jump? Dick Fosbury proved that doing things ass-backwards can sometimes work out in your favor!

Bob Beamon’s spectacular long jump of 29 feet, 2.5 inches was a record that lasted 22 years (thanks in part to Mexico City’s altitude). It seemed to me in watching him perform that he was in fact not human. His accomplishment went beyond the possibility of normal man. That same Olympics was tainted, announcers informed us, by the behavior of two African-American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who raised their fists in support of black power during the awards ceremony. Both were banned for life from participating in the Olympics. Today it seems inconceivable (at least to me) that such a minor protest could cause such an uproar. And I can’t help but admire their willingness to risk everything for a purpose greater than themselves.

As the Olympics progressed, heroes emerged who became for me icons of grace and physical perfection. Bruce Jenner seemed like a demi-god in the Decathlon — an All-American hunk who brought to mind images of Apollo. His image would be tainted later after he appeared in the high-camp Village People movie Can’t Stop the Music, cavorting in painfully revealing hot pants. Jenner graced Wheaties boxes as well as the cover of Playgirl. His vanity got the best of him, however, when he got a terrible nose job. The man who had looked like a demi-god suddenly looked like just another dumb mortal.

Mark Spitz was another one of these gods-on-earth. His golden haul in the Munich Olympics was one of the only bright lights to balance the tragic turn of events there after 11 Israeli athletes were massacred by Palestine terrorists. Announcer Jim McKay deserved a medal of his own for his compassionate yet trenchant coverage during the ordeal. Watching Spitz compete was like watching Omar Sharif from Lawrence of Arabia throw off his robes and dive into an oasis. He is one of the lucky ones who did not see his reputation tainted by scandal or poor choices in show business, if you discount his appearance on the Sonny & Cher Show when he appeared as stiff as a diving board. Another star of that Olympiad was young Olga Korbut who transformed gymnastics from a dull routine to a dazzling display of impish charm and Russian chutzpah.

One of the great icons of the Olympics, at least in my book, is Kurt Thomas who brought men’s gymnastics into the fore. His boy-next-door good looks and his tight muscular physique captured the hearts of young girls and countless boys the world over, making him one of the first Olympic teen idols. Today he is also remembered for starring in Gymkata, a gymnastics martial arts flick which some consider to be the worst movie ever made.

Another of the great hunks of gymnastics was Mitch Gaylord, who vaulted to stardom in 1984. Armed with matinee idol looks and biceps the size of watermelons, he became an instant icon. Soon he was appearing in Soloflex ads, replacing Scott Madsen. He also leaped to the big screen in a film called American Anthem which was kind of like Flashdance on a pommel horse. His later films did not do as well at the box office.

No Olympian, as far as I’m concerned, was as mesmerizing as Romania’s Nadia Comaneci. She wowed audiences with her elegance, grace and astonishing athleticism. She was the first female gymnast to score a perfect ten. And in my opinion, no other athlete has ever come as close to perfection as she did. This summer they’ve changed the scoring system and eliminated perfect tens. But no one can take away what Nadia did for the sport.

Another perfect ten was Greg Louganis, who did more for diving than any athlete before him and who was the first Olympian (I’m pretty sure) to come out of the closet. Louganis, despite his soap opera private life, did more to help gay rights than all the protesters in Act Up put together. I was lucky enough to interview him once at his home in Malibu. He was absolutely friendly but not the most talkative of interviewees. I later learned he had dyslexia which is why he let his lover manage most of his business transactions. That proved to be a mistake. Louganis went on to become a staple of television, promoting AIDS awareness, but somehow has managed not to tarnish his image. He remains a powerful role model for us all.

Today’s hero-du-jour is without question Michael Phelps. With size 14 feet and a chip-toothed smile, he is a kind of goofy super-hero: part Aquaman, part Cecil, the sea monster from the cartoon “Beany and Cecil.”

My only quibble with him and how he is being presented is the frenzied focus on the medal count and his speed. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but it should be enough to simply win the competition, rather than to turn every event into a race to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. The focus should be on the thrill of victory, not on the stats. But then again, who am I to talk? I’m the one who just mentioned his size 14 feet! As for those controversial NASA-designed Speedo swimsuits, why not do as the ancient Greeks did during races? Strip down and compete in one’s birthday suit! Then no one can complain of an unfair advantage.

Which reminds me. Alexandre Despatie, above, is due up today. A brilliant diver from Canada, he rocketed to fame in the Athens Olympics four years ago. His sparkling eyes and devilish smile guaranteed him prime time coverage on the web.

Bloggers around the world posted images of this promising young man. He won a silver medal in Athens. No doubt the pressure on him to perform big time was intense. Let’s hope he pulls it out this go-round and comes out on top.

(Addendum: Well, Alex managed to win another silver at the Beijing Olympics despite stiff competition from the Chinese. Considering what he was up against in He Chong, Despatie’s coming in second was a major surprise and he deserves tremendous kudos for his terrific form!)