Vodka Vixens

Julie Newmar

Monique Van Vooren (with Woody Allen)

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Tammy Grimes

Julie London

A Ray with Women

with Susan Hayward in I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955, MGM)

with Mamie Van Doren in The Beat Generation (1959, MGM)

with Diane McBain in Ice Palace (1960, Warner Bros.)

with Jayne Mansfield in The George Raft Story (1961, Allied Artists)

with Julie London in The George Raft Story (1961, Allied Artists)

with Shelley Winters in The Chapman Report (1962, Warner Bros.)

Born On This Day- September 26th... Song Stylist- Miss Julie London

Around this time of the year, the Husband & I have traditionally traveled a bit. We have had major, marked, momentous, meaningful journeys: Northern Italy, NYC several times, Vancouver BC, San Fransisco. Even in lean times we would pack up the dogs & rent a cabin on the Washington Coast. The trips to the coast were always very perfect, really. We would bring books, magazines, whiskey, pot & a big stack of perfect beach CDs. There was nothing as sexy, seductive & special as playing Julie London's or Chet Baker’s music on the sound system, as waves crashed, the wind rattled the little WPA era cabin that we frequently rented, & we would get a little drunk & a little dreamy while listening to Julie London’s perfect music.

Now, in the 21st century, I also hear a perfect sound for my mind wrapping around this season’s Mad Men. It could be made that the phrase “bedroom community” was coined with London in mind.


I love the economy of London’s singing. Her phrasing is spot on & yet surprising in its nuance. With her throaty, smoky voice, playfully seductive as any voice I have heard, London was a skilled temptress. But she never played the goddess. Her appeal wasn’t like an unattainable Rita Hayworth or Lauren Bacall. She cleverly cast herself as the not quite as wholesome, non-Doris Day girl, the chick at cocktail parties who would send every man in the room fumbling for his lighter whenever she reached for a cigarette. As a recording artist she was, perhaps more so than any other, entirely a product of her time. No wonder her career began in the mid-1950s, just as the USA was starting to discover sex as recreation, & ended in 1969.

The character London played on her albums was no pushover: My Heart Belongs to Daddy, An Occasional Man, Take Back Your Mink could reduce a real man to jelly. When suggested that Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast, her closing line was “pass the jam”.


If you only know London for her 1955 gigantic hit -Cry Me A River, (despite 100s of other versions, London’s remains definitive),or for her role as nurse Dixie McCall on the long-running NBC series Emergency, you would be surprised by the depth & breadth of her recording career From 1955-1969, London released 29 studio albums, a live session & greatest hits compilations. Among the adult pop singers, she rivaled the biggest sellers of the day: Sinatra, Mathis, Streisand in terms of output, & easily out sold Fitzgerald, Vaughan, & Tormé.


I was slightly scandelized & somewhat aroused by the covers of my parent’s Julie London Albums. They seemed to have some relation to my father’s Playboy magazines. There was- Julie, featuring a seemingly naked London reclining in a wire mesh chair & Whatever Julie Wants with her sporting nothing but a mink stole. I think I don't understand the vetting process... why is Julie London not a Gay Icon or the basis for a drag persona?

London fully appreciated her vocal limitations & her ability to make the most of them: “It’s a thimbleful of a voice, & I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, & it automatically sounds intimate.”