Helen Reddy, the Quintessential Queen of 70′s Pop, is back! Reddy (70) is stepping out of retirement to perform in a fundraiser concert in Panorama City, California for a great cause for 2 nights only.
In 2002, Reddy gave what she announced as her farewell performance with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and in 2008 was quoted as saying she “will never again perform before an audience.”
Reddy coming out of retirement to sing in 2012 is all the more a milestone as this year marks 40 years since her ground breaking hit “I Am Woman” topped the Billboard charts in 1972!
Obviously this is a pretty special event dear to Reddy’s heart to lure her out of retirement as she will be singing to raise money for the Arts. The venue is St. Genevieve’s High School, July 13th and 14th, tickets are $40 and you can buy them here
The Special Guest star at the shows is Lily Donat (Reddy’s granddaughter) which gives us a rare and special treat, making it a family affair. Maybe the audience will be treated to a duet of the Paul Williams penned ”You and Me Against the World“!
**REVISION (June 11th, 2012) to post: Lily Donat will no longer be performing with Helen, Helen will sing a duet with St. Genevieve High School senior, Rosalind Smith instead.
The Reddy Family sings on the Roseanne Show when Lily was just a toddler in 2002:
We are hoping to attend and live tweet the event if schedules permit. To read more about what Helen has been up to in recent years read our recent Helen Reddy post.
The official Poster for the event shows vibrant Helen Reddy as she appears today:
Helen Reddy Photo Credit: Gor Megaera
Helen Reddy, with Carol Burnett on The Carol Burnett Show (left) and speaking at one of her engagements in more recent years (right)
What ever became of Helen Reddy?
She was invincible, she roared and she foresaw Bobby Kennedy’s death?
She is Helen Reddy, queen of 70′s pop. The Australian singer/songwriter, embraced by women worldwide in the 70′s for her bra-burning anthem I Am Woman, is now living a quiet existence out of the limelight as a practicing hypnotherapist and motivational speaker.
Helen gave up show business, fame, fortune and live performances in 2002 and retired to Norfolk Island for a simpler life.
She had won a Grammy, appeared in feature films and on Broadway, sold millions of albums, had her own tv show and penned an autobiography “The Woman I Am”. In her Grammy award acceptance speech she thanked God, quipping “she makes everything possible!” and for Helen Reddy, she has!
This icon, who started in show business at the age of four, has always had a sense of her destiny. From an early age, she would tell her girlfriends at school in Australia, that she would one day go to Hollywood and be in the movies.
Reddy had an out of body experience at the age of eleven, which caused her to question her beliefs and created a curiosity into understanding her spirituality (before this experience she had made her mind up to be an atheist).
Throughout her adult life, Helen had dreams and premonitions of events to come. Most notably seeing the date, June 6th, 1968 etched in black in a vision while she was following the election primaries of Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy was shot after winning the California Primaries, and was removed from life support and declared dead on June 6th, 1968.
With the election of George Bush in 2000, Reddy had the premonition that America was going to change. At that time, she read a book by Louise Hay that changed her life and helped her to understand she needed to take responsibility for her own life. So Reddy contacted her friend Florence Henderson (that’s right Mrs. Brady) and enrolled in classes given by Flo’s husband Dr. John Kappas. At the age of 60, Helen Reddy received her degree in Clinical Hypnotherapy.
Helen, now 71, is still actively pursuing her past lives and spirituality. Although she retired from the limelight years ago to pursue her passion for Hypnotherapy, Helen has recently been drawn out of retirement and has creeped up in a few cameos and acting gigs that were uncharacteristic to say the least. Click here for clip from Helen Reddy cameo in Family Guy Star Wars special!
Recently, Helen was asked;
“How do you want to be remembered Helen Reddy?”
Rather than answering with her music or career, her answer was this;
“Being kind” and “Only one thing matters that the world is a better place for my being in it.”
Yes, Helen, we think it is.
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Photo Credit: © Bonnie Morrison
Roy Rogers was a beloved cowboy who won our hearts singing and trotting around on his trusty horse Trigger in movies and television. His career spanned decades until his death in 1998, with his lovely, loyal wife Dale Evans passing away in 2001. But what ever happened to Trigger?
Trigger, a Golden Palomino stallion who was in his own right already a star when the two met in 1938, (you may remember the strikingly handsome horse Maid Marian, played by Olivia de Havilland, rides in Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)). This was an incredibly smart and special horse. My favourite clip epitomizes just how smart and unique this horse was as he steals the scene from Bob Hope in the western comedy Son of Paleface (1954). Rogers and Trigger spent almost 30 yrs together, Rogers son Dusty Rogers puts it best when he was quoted as saying:
“Trigger was just as popular — if not more popular — than Dad was. Dad would tell you if he were here that if it weren’t for Trigger there would be no Roy Rogers. They were a match made in heaven. And you can see it when you watch the movies or the shows — they’re like one unit.”
So what ever happened to Trigger? Well…..the original Trigger is still with us, technically anyways. Rogers had Trigger stuffed back when Trigger died in 1965 at the age of 33 (he stuffed his loyal dog Bullet too), he was put on display at the Roy Rogers Museum in Victorville, CA for years until the museum moved to Missouri, then later, when it closed in 2009, poor old Trigger was sold at the Christie’s auction to RFD-TV, their plans are to put Trigger in a museum as reported by cowboysindians.com. There were jokes for years that Roy would have had Dale stuffed too, good thing he went first?
This year, 2012, a friend of mine travelled to Pasadena to get the full Rose Bowl Parade tour, when thumbing through her pictures, I was astonished to discover the photo above of the Roy Rogers Centennial Float from the parade, and there was Trigger (the real Trigger, in all his taxidermied glory)!
Since their magical friendship endured almost 30 years, I guess how better to honour it than to decorate a part of the float with his long dead companions?
Happy Trails Trigger.
Roy and Trigger
photo from http://www.mcqueenonline.com
In honour of one of Hardly Hedda’s favourite classic male leads, here is a link to some amazingly candid, sometimes racy (#9 is a partial nude) unpublished photos as seen at LIFE. You’re welcome!
Although Mcqueen died way too young (at 50) he has left an indelible legacy of films, not only impressing upon folks who share his love of fast cars and bikes and all things manly, but also upon the swooning scores of women who would agree that a gruff, boyishly handsome rogue like Mcqueen is worth his weight in gold compared to the contemporary metrosexuals who spend more time in the bathroom primping themselves than in the bedroom!
Rape is too strong a word to throw around lightly, especially comparing the use of a musical score to a brutal violent act!
To bring you up to speed on the strange case of actress Kim Novak of Vertigo fame, and her tyrade against the film The Artist. Basically her most controversial comments included “I want to report a rape. I feel as if my body — or, at least my body of work — has been violated by the movie, The Artist.” as she told Variety magazine.The comments referred to The Artist and its use of Bernard Hermann’s theme from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo which starred Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. read more of her original comments at THR,
Then Michel Hazanivicius, the director of The Artist has responded. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” Hazanavicius told CNN. “I used music from another movie, but it’s not illegal. We paid for that, we asked for that and we had the permission to do it,” The Artist went on to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Actor etc… so really Ms. Novak`s comments didn`t really sway Hollywood or the Academy in any way, but there is more…
Now…Kim has gone and done it again..in a report from The AP`s Derrick J. Lang about her upcoming Turner Classic Movies honours, she said “It was very painful,” said Novak. “When I said it was like a rape, that was how it felt to me. I had experienced in my youth being raped, and so I identified with a real act that had been done to me. I didn’t use that word lightly. I had been raped as a child. It was a rape I never told about, so when I experienced this one, I felt the need to express it.” read more of her latest comments at THR
Really awkward to comment on this as obviously Novak has been dealing with some terrible issues since her traumatic childhood incident, but comparing that to a musical score piping through a few scenes of The Artist just seems really far fetched and dare I say dramatic….but then again..it is hollywood folks!
