For my Sagittarian friends

ARIES IN RED

I will post an image of an Aries in a red dress every day this month.

The Bride Wore Red

Aries Joan Crawford, first glimpsed as a child by her 1979 biographer as

"a tiny figure in a bright red accordion-pleated dress."

Here in The Bride Wore Red.  "Anna scandalizes everyone late in the picture with the titular red dress, a year before Bette Davis would do the same early in the superior Jezebel." (Lawrence J. Quirk, Joan Crawford)

For Bette Davis see Aries in Red #13.

Red Aries #3: Lon Chaney

The red of Aries excites and vivifies, but it also shocks and terrifies.

Actor Lon Chaney (born 1 April 1883) developed his expressivity as the child of deaf parents. The silent screen is heavily populated with Aries, which must make itself known over all obstacles. Many of the most memorable were Aries-born: Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Wallace Beery, Harold Lloyd, George Arliss, Fatty Arbuckle, Freddie Bartholemew, not to mention Marcel Marceau, Houdini, Bill Irwin and David Blaine; there’s no silencing Aries.
For the range of his extreme characterizations Chaney was known as the ‘Man of 1000 Faces’,  recalling Aries Joseph Campbell’s mythic ‘Hero with 1000 Faces’. (In his one talkie Chaney played a ventriloquist with five voices.)

Chaney as The Masque of the Red Death
Opposite Joan Crawford in the gruesome 1927 silent The Unknown, Cheney plays Alonzo the Armless, a circus knife thrower. He excelled at the grotesque, the Hunchback of Notre- Dame, the scarred Phantom of the Opera, pathos and grotesque deformity are his Self. The Aries unconscious teems with primitive horrors, and a distinct terror of nothingness, as if recalling the suffocation of the womb.  

Chaney's talents extended far beyond the horror genre and stage makeup. He was also a highly skilled dancer, singer and comedian. In fact, many people who did not know Chaney were surprised by his rich baritone voice and his sharp comedic skills.  

Purposefully fostering a mysterious image, he  avoided the social scene in Hollywood. He tried not to be photographed undisguised and said “Between pictures there is no Lon Chaney."

Mars-ruled Aries is partial to the military. Chaney’s portrayal of a tough-as-nails marine drill instructor in Tell It to the Marines (1926), one of his favorite films, earned him the affection of the US Marine Corps, who made him their first honorary member from the motion picture industry, and provided a chaplain and Honor Guard for his funeral. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California, next to the crypt of his father. His wife Hazel was also interred there upon her death in 1933. For unknown reasons, Chaney's crypt has remained unmarked.

Aries in Red #4

Isn't it astonishing that Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Bessie Smith, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday are all Aries? Not to mention Alberta Hunter, Pearl Bailey and Mariah Carey. Aries Maya Angelou'a autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", evokes the nascent soul, emprisoned in the negations of blackness and femaleness.

 

Holiday in Red (#5)

Joseph Stone supplied this red rendition of Billie Holiday.

She tells an unforgetable story about a red dress in her autobiography, "Lady Sings the Blues":

When you did something against the rules [in the Catholic institution], at least they didn't beat you . . .

When you were being punished you got a raggedy red dress to wear. When you wore this dress none of the other girls were supposed to go near you or speak to you.

I'll never forget the first girl I saw wear the dress. She was a real wild one and she was alone in the backyard, standing on a swing. She kept swinging higher and higher, shouting and hollering, swinging higher and higher. She worked so hard she was puffing and huffing. And the kids stood around watching her, all eyes.

The Mother Superior tried to keep the kids moving and break up the crowd of gawking girls. The girl in the raggedy red dress kept on swinging and screaming. I guess she figured as long as she stayed up there on the swing no one could touch her. The Mother Superior just looked at ther, then she turned to a group of us and said: "Just remember, God will punish her."

In a few seconds there was a terrible jerk. As she swing to the highest point she could make on the swing, the chair broke and the girl flew through the air. Then there was a terrible thud and then nothing. When they found her, her neck was broken.

The first time I wore the red dress was at Easter.

Scarlet women (#6)

Red signifies prostitution as codified in 17th century French legal code and in "scarlet woman" and "red light district". Here are two Aries actresses playing mother and daughter putting on the red in a grim tale of prostitution, Freeway.Reese Witherspoon and Amanda Plummer

Aries in red #7

Sarah Jessica Parker was the third to wear Little Orphan Annie's famous red dress.

James Ensor, Aries in red #9

James Ensor, The Red Parasol

James Ensor, the Belgian fantast, was born on April 13, 1860. His canvases are always marked by the well-placed reds. Favorite themes are red-cloaked skeletons, red lips, red caps, red fire.

Astrology cannot be captured by science. The two may be regarded as enterprises at right-angles. Scientific procedure requires the scrupulous eradication of subjectivity. Astrological procedure, on the other hand, requires the equally scrupulous  conservation of subjectivity. One must not confuse the truth of the horoscope with  methodical paragraphs of interpretive boilerplate. The truth of the horoscope is not to be found written on a page, it is something that unfolds within the experience of the Subject.

James Ensor, Skeletons warming themselves

Ensor, Self-portrait in red hat

Red Aries #10

Jayne Mansfield is Aries in Red #10

Aries in red #11

Kelly LeBrock, born March 24, 1960, never repeated the splash she made with her first film, The Woman in Red in 1984. See more of her. She seems to continue to have a good time. She married Aries Steven Seagal.

CASANOVA: Aries in red #12

Richard Chamberlain, b. 31 March 1934Giacomo Casanova (b. April 2, 1725) is an Aries archtype, the priapic libertine, irrepresible autobiographer, soldier, charlatan and adventurer, who once robbed a grave as a practical joke. Among his escapades his literal escape from the Venetian prison stands out as a dramatization of the Aries birth experience. He also stole and sold the secret formula of the red dye of British military cloth. Aries actors have often been cast as Casanova: David Tennant, Heath Ledger, Richard Chamberlain, while the not-Aries Donald Sutherland was distinctively miscast in Fellini's Casanova. Two other Aries natives are highpoints in the history of promiscuity: the Italian pornographer Pietro Aretino, (notably rendered in Titian red) Pietro Aretino (b. 20 April 1492) by TitianJohn Wilmot, Lord Rochester (b.1 April 1647)and the English poet-rake Lord Rochester. Closer to home, Aries actors Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty have famously notched bedposts.

Casanova costume for Heath Ledger (b. April 4, 1979)David Tennant (b. 18 April 1971) as CasanovaHugh Hefner, b. April 9, 1926

Jezebel: Aries in Red #13

Aries often steps forth with spirited conviction and brings about disastrous consequences. In Jezebel, just for wearing a red gown to the All-White Cotillion, Bette Davis is inundated with humiliation and catastrophe.

ARIES IN RED #14

Emma Thompson (b. April 15, 1959 )

Brenda Spencer (b. April 3, 1962). “A tiny girl, under five foot tall, with long red hair, epileptic. She stayed with her father after her parents divorced, living across the street from a school. On January 29, 1979, she took a rifle that her father had given her for Christmas, shot the custodian and principal dead and wounded six children and a policeman, because 'I hate Mondays.' ”   Astro Data  V, Profiles of Crime.


Marguerite Steinheil (b. April 16, 1869) Parisian courtesan, mistress of a president, murderess, known as the “Red Woman of Paris”.

Aries in red #15

Robert Downey, Jr.

Julie Christie

Blood-soaked, Aries #16

William Harvey (b. April 1, 1578) discoverer of the circulation of blood.

Two other Aries of note in the history of blood:

Joseph Lister (April 5, 1827) one of the greatest of 19th century surgeons, he performed thousands of amputations, and discovered antisepsis.

James B. Conant (March 26, 1893) a brilliant and creative polymath, president of Harvard University, began his professional life as a biochemist, and made significant contribution to the understanding of hemoglobin, and why blood is red.

Aries in red dress #17(Talk show hosts)

Graham Norton (b. 4 April 1963)

Rosie was born on March 21, 1962

I've been shlepping this Joe Ciardiello illustration of Dave Letterman (born April 12, 1947) since it appeared in the New Yorker in 1996. Now it's scanned and I can get rid of it! . . . . 

I was saving this one for a post devoted to Aries redheads:

O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963

One more of Graham Norton:

VanDyck n Descartes, Aries red #18

The great 17th century portraitist Anthony Van Dyck, a March 22 Aries, adored the ferric oxide pigment which has come to be known as Van Dyck red and made it the principal feature of many paintings. Red swags, red drapes, red trousers, dresses, robes, ribbons, tablecloths, stockings, capes, cloaks, rags, you name it.

Strange! That thy hand should not inspire
The beauty only, but the fire:
Not the form alone, and grace,
But act and power of a face. (Waller, To Van Dyck)

Van Dyck introduced to portraiture the goal of presenting, on a red curtained theatrical stage, distinctive, individual personality, dash and flair. His years (1599-1641) correspond to those of Descartes. His subjects all say, "Therefore I AM!" Descartes (born March 31, 1596-1650), the philosopher who ushers in the modern era, is ground zero for a methodical exposition of the zodiac as an approach to the post-modern Subject. (Which is in the works, but we're doing red dresses now.) We have no portrait of Descartes in red (although he was known to dress en militaire and carry a sword). Let Van Dyck represent him visually.

ARIES IN RED #19

Red Aries #20

Add Hugh Hefner to the list of Aries Casanovas.