The Beauty of Retrospect: Juli Foster and Sheila Johnson

Two of my favorite models from the late seventies and early eighties . . . together in not one, but two pictures!

Juli Foster and Sheila Johnson were quite ubiquitous back in the glory days of modeling, appearing in numerous ads and magazines, so it was inevitable that their paths would cross eventually.  Both of these pictures. I believe, are from a catalog from the early 1980s.

   

Of course there was a distinguishing difference between them.  Sheila Johnson has a winning smile, while Juli Foster has . . . uh, no smile at at all.  Although, if you look closely at the photo directly above, Juli manages a slight, almost mischievous smile.  She must have been thinking about those garish tops she and Sheila were wearing! :-D

Of course, Juli Foster, whom I last featured here in February 2018, and Sheila Johnson, whom I last featured here in April 2018 (with Carol Perkins) and also in February 2018 before that, could make anything look great.

That's it for retrospectives now.  Back soon with my seventh series devoted to dancers.   

The Beauty of Retrospect: Dianne deWitt

November is almost over, and before I move on to my seventh - my seventh! - series of beautiful dancers for December, I thought I'd revisit a few models I've featured here before.  One of them is Dianne deWitt.

This is my first post featuring Dianne deWitt. one of the classiest cover girls of all time, since September 2016.  The above picture is from a late-seventies TV commercial for Revlon nail polish.  Her appearance in this commercial is just what you see here - a fixed stare into the camera.  It was more than enough to sell the product to the female viewer and mesmerize the male viewer. :-D

 

The more recent picture above, showing Ms. deWitt from the 2010s, shows that, while she's not active as a model anymore, she still has that impeccable class that you can't pick up in a Barbizon modeling course.  You either have it or you don't.

Model Yvonne Westling

Yvonne Westling is model who was primarily active in the early 1980s.

She was represented in Paris by the L'Agence agency.  Further biographical details about her are unavailable.

British actress Rachel Ward

If you watched a lot of TV or went to a lot of movies in the 1980s, chances are you remember Rachel Ward.

Originally a model who appeared on the covers of magazines such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan, she made the transition to acting at the beginning of the eighties, impressing critics with her performance as a prostitute in the 1981 Atlanta cop thriller Sharky's Machine, starring and directed by the late Burt Reynolds.  Two years later (1983) she played Meggie Cleary in the American miniseries version of Colleen McCullough's novel "The Thorn Birds," opposite Richard Chamberlain, a soap-opera-style story about three generations of a family in Australia and New Zealand.  It was one of the highest-rated miniseries ever in American television history.

She distinguished herself in several movies throughout the decade, including Taylor Hackford's 1984 thriller Against All Odds, the 1987 Australian romantic drama The Umbrella Woman (about a complication between a woman and the brother of her husband) and 1989's farcical How To Get Ahead in Advertising (doesn't the title alone make you want to see that one?). 

Rachel Ward has remained active in movies and television, albeit at a slower pace than in the 1980s.  Her most recent film as of this writing is 2016's The Death and Life of Otto Bloom, a pseudo-documentary about a man who experiences time backwards and can only remember the future.

And here's something you may not know about her: She has been married to Australian actor Bryan Brown since 1983.  They met while working together on "The Thorn Birds."

Actress/singer/blogger Bligh Voth

An actress, a singer and a blogger? Well, Bligh Voth and I have at least have one thing in common!

:-D

Bligh Voth originally hails from Washington, D.C., but don't hold that against her.  Now a New York resident, she has appeared in different stage productions, including a turn as Dyanne in Million Dollar Quartet, the musical based on the December 1956 Sun Records session involving Elvis Presley, Jerry lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash.

She runs two blogs, "Avocados Are For Rich People," a blog of varied opinions and observations, and the provocatively titled "Nasty Women of New York," a blog profiling the many and diverse women of New York who stand up against the misogyny and patriarchal attitude associated with the current White House occupant. (Guess how she came up with that blog's name.)

In her Web site's bio, the not-so-shy Ms. Voth, referring to herself in the third person, says she "loves fancy things, but secretly, is happiest at Olive Garden with that "'all you can eat' soup/salad/breadsticks deal."

To find out more about Bligh Voth, you can access her Web site here.

Model Alicia Thompson

Alicia Thompson is a model who was active in the late eighties.

She was based in Los Angeles, and she was represented by the Wilhelmina West agency.   

Model Chrissy Teigen

Chrissy Teigen is one of the hottest models of this decade (the 2010s).

Her best known modeling gig was in the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 2010, but she's also been in ad campaigns for Oil of Olay, Nike, and Gap Factory. She's been on television as well, as a host on several celebrity-news programs.  She gets her exotic looks from her Norwegian-American father and Thai-American mother. 

These days she's recognized as the wife of soul singer John Legend. :-)  

Model Nena von Schlebrügge

Nena von Schlebrügge was born in Mexico City to a German father, who was a cavalry officer for the Kaiser in the First World War, and a Swedish mother.  That's not the most interesting thing about her.

Nena von Schlebrügge's parents fled to Mexico to escape fascism in Europe.  She went to Europe after the war, where she became a teenage model, eventually moving to New York to pursue modeling as an adult. She found herself working with the top photographers in the fashion business, including Norman Parkinson (who discovered her) and Gleb Derujinsky, and she appeared in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.  The picture below is from Vogue, from March 1962 and taken by Horst P. Horst.

She later appeared in filmmaker Edie Sedgwick's Ciao! Manhattan, but her scenes were cut.  By then, 1967, she married Buddhism expert Robert Thurman, and she embraced his cause to preserve Buddhist and Tibetan culture. They are still married today.

And yes, she's the mother of actress Uma Thrman, an earlier honoree on this blog.  She sired three other children as well.

Nena and Robert Thurman founded the Tibet House US Cultural Center of H. H. the Dalai Lama, whose purpose is to present and preserve the heritage of Tibet. Since 2001, Nena von Schlebrügge has been the managing director of the Tibet House-owned Menla Mountain Retreat, which is the home of a medicinal spa.

Not just another pretty face.  Below is a picture of her today. 

And if you think all of that is astonishing, here's another fun fact for you - before she met Robert Thurman, she'd been married to Timothy Leary for a year.  

Actress Kelly Reilly

Kelly Reilly is an English actress who has made big splash in America. 

She plays Beth Dutton in the Paramount TV series "Yellowstone," about a family who owns the largest ranch in the lower 48 states. Beth is a financier who helps run the ranch but battles with personal demons.

Ms. Reilly got her start playing a role on the British television drama "Prime Suspect," which led to other small television roles.  Her breakthrough came in the 2008 film Eden Lake, a horror movie in which she played a nursery school teacher who makes a journey to a lake in the English countryside.  This led to, among other things, two Sherlock Holmes moves as Dr. Watson's wife,  and as a heroin addict in Robert Zemeckis' 2012 airline thriller Flight, starring Denzel Washington. 

Ms. Reilly is no stranger to American television, by the way.  In 2014 she starred the ABC series "Black Box" as Catherine Black, a famed neuroscientist who studies and solves issues concerning the human brain while trying to keep private her own bipolar disorder from the world.

"Black Box" was not a hit but "Yellowstone," having just been renewed for a second season, should ensure that Kelly Reilly will be around a little longer this time.  

New Zealand TV newswoman Alison Pugh

Alison Pugh is a television reporter in New Zealand, so most of you are likely hearing about her from the first time here. That is, unless, you live in New Zealand. 

Ms. Pugh works for 1 News Now, the news channel that's part of TVNZ network, as a reporter; she's based in Christchurch, New Zealand's third largest city, situated on South Island.

She joined TVNZ in 2009 and soon became part of the on-camera staff of the morning show "Breakfast" that September.  Ms. Pugh was the co-host of "Breakfast" from 2014 to 2016, though she's remained a part of the 1 News team as a part-time reporter after having a child.

She holds an communications honors degree and journalism graduate degree from Canterbury University.

Colombian model Carla Ossa

Sofia Vergara isn't the only Colombian woman to take the world by storm. There's also Carla Ossa.

Represented by Elite Model Management,  she has appeared on the covers of numerous magazines in South America and in Germany, where she has had a lot of success.

You can also find her in catalogs for the German mail-order clothing brand Bonprix.  She's even done ads for Burger King.

Carla Ossa has too large a portfolio for me to encapsulate sufficiently on a single blog entry.  Expect many retrospective posts of her here in the future. :-)

Actress/singer Idina Menzel

Idina Menzel is a Broadway actress of intense beauty.  You might even say her beauty is . . . wicked!

Ha ha!  Yes, that was a play on the musical that made her famous.  She originated the role of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch Of the West, in Wicked, about the witches of the land of Oz.  But that was not her first major role on Broadway.  She originated the role of performance artist Maureen Johnson in Rent, the Broadway show about struggling actors in the bohemian area of Manhattan.  There she met fellow cast member Taye Diggs; they were married for eleven years beginning in 2003.

She has played other roles, though, most notably Elizabeth, a woman who moves to New York City for a fresh start and imagines two different possible paths on how to live her life going forward, in the Broadway musical If/Then.  Coincidentally, it premiered in 2014, the same year she divorced Taye Diggs.  (She's currently married to actor Aaron Lohr.)

She's also played vocal Shelby Corcoran on the musical comedy.dram series "Glee."

These days, Idina Menzel concentrates more on voice-acting for animated movies and on records than musical plays.  She released her latest LP, idina.live, in October 2018.  It's her seventh album.