Funny Ladies

100 Years of Great Comediennes

Plot

Silverman's amusingly sketches a panoply of comediennes, including the durable (so far) likes of Lucille Ball, Mae West, and Cher; the due-for-reassessment likes of Marion Davies, Thelma Todd, and Mabel Normand; and the partially recalled likes of Dorothy Parker, Marjorie Main, Minnie Pearl, and even Totie Fields. There is Tallulah Bankhead, the stentorian, gloriously uninhibited daughter of a powerful Alabama politician, who insisted that 'cocaine isn't habit-forming--I should know, I've been using it for years,' and who, asked how she could have performed oral sex on one of the ugliest men in New York, supposedly replied, 'Dahling, anything to get away from that face.' The chapter on Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous fittingly follows the chapter on 'domestic goddess' Roseanne. To appreciate the actress-writers' limited-run smash, Silverman suggests we 'imagine Lucy and Ethel on acid.' All this and the inside story on the derivation of ZaSu Pitts' first name, too. Not to be passed up. - Mike Tribby; 160p-