Hughes Muse

Such pulchritude, let us peruse
It's worthy of multiple views
Those lips, pretty-pleasing
Our trigger she's squeezing
Here's looking at Mary Beth Hughes


Top and above: From Noir of the Week, Mary Beth Hughes fondles Erich Von Stroheim's gun and he takes a shot at her in The Great Flamarion (Anthony Mann, 1945); Below: Early 50s publicity photo courtesy of Brian's Drive-in Theater. Mary Elizabeth Hughes was born in Alton, Illinois. She starred in such low-budgeters as Free, Blonde and 21, Men on Her Mind, I Accuse My Parents, The Lady Confesses and Inner Sanctum, and appeared further down the credits in the upscale The Ox-Bow Incident and Young Man With a Horn. This one's for pal and Mary Beth fan, Andrew Pepoy.

Scott Spree

The question of Lizabeth Scott
leaves writers here tied in a knot
By some she's embraced
by others, laid waste
But Liz, none can say we forgot


*This is in response to an earlier exchange of limericks about actress Lizabeth Scott, whose appeal has divided our writers like no other subject. You can find those limericks here. Top two photos: Scott in promo piece for Desert Fury; With Charlton Heston in Bad For Each Other.

Herr Apparent

Obsessing about being German
he stresses his name is spelled 'Hermann'
Says Bitte for "please",
wears cross that's Maltese
and once rid a hamlet of vermin

Norm

The above video is loosely related to this limerick... and it's author.

Pieces of Fate

Each day doth begin with the dawn
and passes when daylight is gone
One cannot finesse
life's boardgame of chess
Man plays like a Knight but is pawn

Surly and Norm

Now and Sven

Svengoolie, in top hat and tux

each week hosts a fright flick that sucks
With chicken named Kerwyn
he jokes about Berwyn

and plot from the film deconstructs



Above: Chicago's own horror host Svengoolie and a rubber chicken (not Kerwyn). No, not all the films suck, but each Saturday night Sven pokes goodnatured fun at them. Svengoolie is Rich Koz, who is in fact the son of Svengoolie, carrying on the tradition from his horror host "father", Jerry Bishop, the original Svengoolie.

The Gynecologist Always Rings Twice

Two bodies, two minds and one soul
Two doctors, but who's in control?
Twin brothers who learn
the other don't spurn
or both will be down the same hole


Jeremy Irons depicts twin gynecologists in Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988).

Hollow Triumph of the Will

When taking the place of your double
First shave the right cheek of its stubble
Then mar your own mug
Like the scar on the lug
But a look in the mirror means trouble!


Paul Henreid finds impersonating his look-alike is a Hollow Triumph (Steve Sekely, 1948), another noir shot by the great John Alton. Aka The Scar and The Man Who Murdered Himself.

Twin or Lose

They're brothers, but one is insane
both ends of a dna strain
Identical twosome
one handsome, one gruesome
They're siblings like Abel and Cain



Frances Farmer, Susan Hayward and Albert Dekker as twin brothers in Among The Living (Stuart Heisler, 1941). Click on poster to enlarge.

Doubles Billing

Two siblings, one good and one bad
One wants what the other one's had
In playing two roles
at opposite poles
one actor is acting like mad



Another example of Hollywood's evil twin plot: Boris Karloff plays both a bad Baron as well as his good brother in The Black Room (Roy William Neill, 1935).

Twofer the Road

Let's call it the look-alike plot:
Two siblings, one's good and one's not
In double-exposure
one loses composure
One actor acts twice in one shot




Hollywood writers love the look-alike gimmick--and actors love to chew the scenery in dual roles. A subset is the evil twin plot, where usually the bad sibling impersonates the good. Among the actors who've done double-time is Olivia de Havilland in The Dark Mirror (Robert Siodmak, 1946). Top: Den of Geek!; Above: Shooting in the Dark; Below: filmsnoir.net.

The Gobel Prize

He lies like a corpse on the bed
They ought to examine his head
Too spent to respond
to good looking blonde
You'd think that the fellow was dead


George Gobel can't stand up to Diana Dors in I Married a Woman ( Hal Kanter, 1958). We're putting Diana Dors Week to bed.

Saw and Order

Sadini the Great's better half
committed a carnival gaffe
She failed to retract
from the saw in their act
They're flying her flag at half-staff

Here are links to The Sorcerer's Apprentice, an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents starring Diana Dors. Dors plays the wife and assistant of a carnival magician. Adapted from his own story by horror writer Robert Bloch, the episode was too much for the network, which refused to air it.

Out of Dors

The couped-up congestion began
when sex-bomb went out for a tan
Her blond-haired allure
would snarl Côte d'Azur
by jamming the traffic at Cannes

Diana Dors at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. (Getty Images)

Gal Gaol

A proven B movie technique
is giving girls' prisons a peek
Where cell-mates spend hours
together in showers
exposing raw facts, so to speak


In The Weak and the Wicked, aka The Young and the Willing (J. Lee Thompson, 1954), Diana Dors is Betty "A Bad blonde from the wrong side of the tracks!". The film is actually an earnest social drama, despite the following lurid exploitation taglines used in promotion: The sensational naked shame expose of women's prisons! SEE shocking secrets of the warped world of CAGED FEMALES! Women...Barred From Men! Confessions of an Ex-Convict Who Strips Bare the Raw Facts! The posters were found at Wrong Side of the Art! Click on images to enlarge.

Knock on Any Dors

Most movies Dors starred in were cheesy
her characters sexy and sleazy
She proved she could act
but couldn't change fact:
escaping typecasting ain't easy



Diana Dors plays a woman awaiting execution in Yield to the Night
(J. Lee Thompson, 1956), based on the real-life Ruth Ellis murder case. In spite of this, her best part, Dors was doomed to play the naughty nymphet.

Behind Locked Dors

She's living in room 43
and giving the misters her key
In order to stay
you'll just have to pay
White slavery isn't for free

Room 43 , aka: The Girl in Room 43 and Passport to Shame (Alvin Rakoff, 1958).

Dors Truly

"Come hither" says dyed diva Dors
the sex oozing out of her pores
Inside her lamé
the men long to stray
and to her they'll crawl on all fours

Surly



Swingin' Dors

What guy wouldn't crawl on all fours

to enter Diana Dor's doors?

No need for a quilt
she's thermally built

So hot she will melt your s'mores!

Norm

Uh... sorry, Mom. It's a politically incorrect week on actress Diana Dors. Dubbed "The Siren of Swindon", Dors was Britain's blonde bombshell. Photo source: Doctor Macro, from Lady and the Prowler (John Farrow, '57).

Ticker Tapeworm

Each moment that is will not last
The present is soon in the past
The older one gets
the more one regrets
and passes the time very fast

The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; The Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future is the Bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before. -Herman Melville, lousy limericist

Daddy Dearest

Defender of torture and slaughter
he carries the Right's dirty water
He's planned for the day
his heart will give way
by training his Stepford Wife daughter


Liz Cheney introduces her father at CPAC, February 2010 .

Sugar and Spice and Nothing Like Nice

They say that like father, like daughter
Liz Cheney has daddy who taught her
On knee of her pater
she learned to say "traitor"
and torture the pony he'd bought her

The daughter of torture advocate and former Vice president Dick Cheney is at it again.

From Here Two Eternity

Please join us and hoist up your beers
We've written these two endless years
With Swiss-crafted timing
each day we've been rhyming
silk purses right into sows' ears

Today is Limerwrecks' 2 year anniversary. Gosh, it seems like only 3 years. To all of you who've given me feedback and encouragement, thanks, Mom! A special tip of the cap to John (El-ahrairah) Barry, Mike (Goatdog) Phillips, Vince (Walt Hitman) Waldron, Gordon, Ben, Dame and Ruth for all their help behind the screens. And lastly but not leastly, an inappropriately long and sloppy kiss to Jim (Norm Knott) Siergey and Pete (Backthrow) Fitzgerald, who've been here since the beginning and for some reason still put up with my endless kvetching and kibitzing. There wouldn't be a Limerwrecks without them. That's right, it's their fault.

And lastly again, but lastly for the last time, to all you lurkers out there in the shadows of the internet...boo!   --Surly

To Peter and Jim you-know-who
I raise up a mug of cold brew
Like Brits 'cross the pond
of warm beer they're fond
But don't call a toilet 'the loo'

Community Chest

The bimbo said "Drinks are on me."
and meant it quite literally
In striking bad taste
the party girl placed
a cocktail on each double-D

Norm and Surly

The Name of the Dame Is Keely

I don't mean to get all touchy-feely
But it's time we salute my gal Keely
Just today, her birth-date
She's hit Seventy-Eight
Seventeen more than ol' Horace Greeley



Sultry siren Keely Smith, former spouse and singing partner of Louis Prima, who both rocked Las Vegas in the 1950s, turns 78 today, and is still going strong.

Claire-voyance

The "Queen of Film Noir" is forever
To reach her all others endeavor
True love at first glance
as cute as lace pants
Claire Trevor looks better than ever



"Every Western had its saloon floozie, every gangster picture its moll--or several. These were the broads, the beaten-up dames (sometimes literally), hand on hip, cigarette dangling from their lips, usually blonde, cynical, warm-hearted and tough. No one was more sure-footed in these parts than Claire Trevor..." David Shipman, The Great Movie Stars--The Golden Years.

Steve at Back Alley Noir reminds us that yesterday would have been the 100th birthday of actress Claire Trevor. Trevor played it tough but tender in films such as Stagecoach, Dead End, Street of Chance, Murder My Sweet (where Moose Malloy found her "Cute as lace pants"), Crack-Up, Born to Kill, Raw Deal and Key Largo.

Weed Whacked

I find that most folks are aghast
on learning the cash I amass
And when they have learned
just how it was earned
they judge me for pedaling grass

Norm

3D Double D

A gimmick is luring the masses
who squint in their blue and red glasses
Expecting to see
effects in 3-D
like sexy, dimensional lasses



The Stewardesses (Al Silliman Jr., 1969). Our earlier limericks about 3D are here. Poster found at Wrongsideoftheart.com

Oscar Buzz Saw

The actor's performance: unglued
The scenery: audibly chewed
As drama: pure tripe
Its style: overripe
Pursuit of an Oscar: quite shrewd

Tonight is Hollywood's annual night of hype and histrionic hyperventilation.

Romantic Bi-angle

Don't bother to beg "pretty please"
You're not what I want in a squeeze
Though his eyes might be beady
I prize George Macready
Now him I would like on his knees!


Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford and the always sinister and sleazy George Macready form a perverse triangle in Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946). That's it for Romance Noir Week.

Rx Marks the Spot

For trouble she fits the description
He met her and had a conniption
When tempted by sin
the doctor is in
Her love is a deadly prescription

Charlton Heston is a doctor tempted by spoiled rich girl Lizabeth Scott in Bad For Each Other (Irving Rapper, 1953), which isn't really a noir. Sounds more like an update of The Citadel. Photo: Hollywood Pinups.com.

Paint Misbehavin'

When falling in love with a dame
the portrait and girl ain't the same
Two dreams of a wife
One's art, one is life
but one can't be kept in a frame

Gene Tierney and Dana Andrew in Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944). You'll find our earlier limerick on Laura, here. And a brief passage on the Portrait in Noir can be found at filmsnoir.net, here.