Here’s To Flamboyance –
May It Ever Strut Its Stuff!
CT.Com
April 29, 2004
Photo: Steve Tackeff
Mama Jo said there’d be days like this. There’d be days like this, Mama Jo said. (With no apologies to The Shirelles.)
Jo McKenzie, a gubernatorial aide and executive director of the Governor’s Residence, popularly and affectionately known as “Mama Jo,” has been repeatedly maligned lately for being – of all things, God forbid – “flamboyant.”
We’re not getting into any government matters in this column. Java’s just here to say out loud and proud that Mama Jo is flamboyant, and that is a good thing in this super-drab world.
“Flamboyant” is the word – obviously a hideous one in Hartford – persistently used to vilify this distinguished 72-year-old grand dame of the state Republican Party.
McKenzie wears a short, sassy haircut by Matthew Phillips of West Hartford; she buys all of her relaxed-looking, fluid clothes from Michelle St. John of New York City, whose boutique clothing bears the label Ona. She owns about 30 pairs of eyeglasses, and she adores big bossy costume jewelry like many-stranded pearls and oversized earrings.
And sometimes she wears – of all things, again – a cape.
Horrors.
McKenzie is an entrepreneur who developed distinguished restaurants like the Copper Beech Inn in Ivoryton and Robert Henry’s in New Haven and has run all kinds of elaborate political events like inaugural balls.
She makes a grand entrance because she doesn’t know how to make any other kind.
Brava to that.
Being flamboyant, McKenzie is in good company.
“It’s better to be looked over than overlooked,” is the attitude of “My Little Chickadee” blond-bombshell actress Mae West.
Known for her “famous walk,” taking “one foot at a time,” West was just 5 feet tall, so she wore 6-inch platforms attached to her shoes.
She was walking tall way before Joe Don Baker and The Rock did.
West always made an entrance and peppered conversations with quotes like, “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” and “I’ve been in more laps than a napkin.”
And as a tribute to flamboyance, she said, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”
When one speaks of making a dramatic entrance, there was Loretta Young, famous for swishing and swirling onto her show in a full-skirted gown. She was the epitome of style and elegance, a movie actress who turned into a fashion icon.
As for a dancer with grace and verve, there’s Ginger Rogers, whose gowns flounced as she seemed to float through the air.
And, as we’ve repeatedly heard, she did everything Fred Astaire did except backward and in high heels.
When you think of flamboyant men, there are, of course, performers in the extreme, like Liberace and Elton John.
But there was a gentlemanly flamboyance to silent-screen star Rudolph Valentino, always in a chapeau, smoking a cigarette or a pipe. He looked chivalrous and handsome, whether turbaned as “The Sheik,” a dewy-eyed duke in “Monsieur Beaucaire” or devastatingly handsome as Julio in “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
For today’s flamboyant favorites, there is the queen of dramatic entrances, the divine Miss M, Bette Midler.
“I’m back, and don’t I look fabulous?” is one of her greetings on tour.
The more she shows off, the more her fans crave it.
Who other than Bette would zoom around stage as Dolores DeLago, an aging mermaid in a wheelchair singing show tunes?
Go ahead. Call her flamboyant. Then you can kiss her brass.
When we’re thinking of Mamas, like Mama Jo, we can’t help but think of Hartford’s Sophie Tucker, known as the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” who was gutsy, smart and funny. Back in Vaudeville in the ’20s, she was singing daring feminist songs like “I’m Living Alone (And I Like It).”
Tucker had this view:
“From birth to age eighteen, a girl needs good parents.
From eighteen to thirty-five, she needs good looks.
From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality.
From fifty-five on, she needs good cash.”
To that we add: From then on, it doesn’t hurt to carry yourself with a little style.
