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June 30, 2005
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Let me tell you something about Baby Moffet. I know Baby Moffet. I was Baby Moffet. And Thamantha Thmithee...you're no Baby Moffet! |
Lorna Swansong, Entertainment Reporter
TOP OF THE WORLD:
Hailed by critics as the most promising young actress of her generation, Lorna Swansong burst onto the entertainment scene as the adorable Baby Moffet in three classic Acme Studio films: Baby Moffet (1951), Baby Moffet Runs Wild (1951), and Baby Moffet is a Widdle Cuteums, Yes She Is! (1952). Numerous guest spots followed on such popular TV programs as "I Like Betty," "Trigger Finger Theater," and "Your Cheese of Cheeses."
At age 3, Lorna became the official spokesmodel for Doc Oakey's Atomic-Flavored Milk Powder. Her face appeared on billboards and posters across the country, featuring a catch phrase she invented herself: "Mmmm... Now that's atomic!"
Lorna's next movie, Baby Moffet Night-Night (1952), earned the child star an Academy Award nomination for a famous scene in which she sang a separate goodnight song to each of her 72 different stuffed animals. Song #37, "Night-Night Froggy Doggy," topped the charts and won Lorna a Grammy for Best Record by a Vocalist Under Five.
Having conquered the worlds of acting and music, Lorna set her sights on becoming a "triple threat" when dance legend Fred Astaire signed on to co-star in Tap Dancing Baby Moffet (1953). But the child star came crashing to Earth before the film was completed.
THEN...DISASTER:
Lorna was visited one night in her trailer by the film's director, the legendary Alan Smithee. Mr. Smithee had with him a young girl in a polka dotted dress. The name "Thamantha," printed on the girl's pink and white hair ribbon, might have meant something to Lorna if only she were old enough to read.
"I don't give autographs," Lorna told Thamantha. This was literally true, as Lorna hadn't yet learned how to form the letters that spelled her own name.
"I didn't athhhhk for one," Thamantha replied, spraying saliva through the gap between her front teeth.
Lorna screamed. "She got me all wet!"
"Children, please don't fight," said Mr. Smithee, putting a hand on each girl's shoulder. "This is awkward enough as it is."
"What do you mean?" asked Lorna, as she wiped her face with her sleeve.
Mr. Smithee dropped to one knee to look the young actress in the eye. "Lorna, you've done great work for the studio, but you're a professional so I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Would you like a lolly?"
"Yes, please," said Lorna, eyeing the oversized sucker that Mr. Smithee had just taken from his inside jacket pocket.
"Here you go. Now as I was saying, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. You've had a good run as Baby Moffet but now you're almost five, which is like eighty in child-actress years. It's time for you to stand aside and make way for the next generation of younger, smaller, cuter, and more photogenic actresses."
"Actrethethhhh like me!" Thamantha sprayed.
"What do you mean?" asked Lorna, wiping Thamantha's spittle from her eyes again.
"Thamantha is 11 days younger than you and test audiences rate her 13% cuter," said Smithee. "Her hair is three shades lighter and her dimples are at least one sixteenth of an inch deeper. Also, she's my niece. Taken together, these factors should explain my decision to recast Thamantha as the new Baby Moffet."
"But...I'm Baby Moffet," said Lorna.
"Not anymore, thhhhucker," Thamantha gloated. "Now you're Baby Hathhh-been!"
THE LEAN YEARS:
Unemployed at age 4, Lorna was shooed off the set. She couldn't get another movie script. She couldn't get onto another TV show. She couldn't even go back to her parents, because Lorna's family had signed away all custody rights in the standard Acme Studio Child Starlet contract. Between crying jags, Lorna wandered the prop rooms, slept under a blanket of discarded Variety newspapers, and stole her meals from a dumpster behind the studio commissary.
From the shadows, Lorna watched Thamantha Thmithee become the most popular child starlet since Shirley Temple. Tap Dancing Baby Moffet broke box office records, as did Baby Moffet Goes West (1953), Broadway Baby Moffet (1953), and Baby Moffet Meets Abbott and Costello (1954).
"That should have been me chasing Lou Costello through that haunted amusement park," Lorna pouted. But Lorna was also hopeful. She'd heard the whispered conversations of studio executives, mostly while hiding in their office ductwork. Studio president Doug Acme thought Thamantha was becoming too old to play Baby Moffet, and Lorna would soon have the satisfaction of seeing the lisping upstart replaced by an even younger child. Or so she thought.
In 1955, Acme Studios rewrote and retitled Baby Moffet and the Space Aliens, then in production, to better suit their aging child starlet. The studio's gamble paid off big. Li'l Moffet and the Space Aliens became the first of seventeen smash hits in the beloved Li'l Moffet film franchise, which extended Thamantha Thmithee's wildly successful career into her early teens.
During this time, Lorna Swansong's only on-screen performance was as a stunt double for Wally the Wonder Dog in Wally Joins the Circus (1963).
BLACKLISTED:
In 1965, Lorna confronted her agent, Bernie Maxx of the Bernie Maxx Talent Agency. "Why can't you get me any work, Bernie?"
"What are you talking about?" Bernie asked. "I got you an audition just last week."
"For the role of an eighty-year-old man in a prune juice commercial? You knew I wouldn't get that part."
Bernie sighed. "Lorna, my hands are tied. Haven't you figured out by now that you've been blacklisted?"
"But...why?"
"What do you mean, why? You told a congressional subcommittee that Thamantha Thmithee was a Communist. That she had a poster of Vladimir Lenin in her dressing room and a copy of the Communist Manifesto on her bedside table. And, worst of all, that you'd seen her organizing a labor union among the studio janitorial staff."
"Oh, please. I didn't say those things because I'm a snitch. I said them to get Thamantha in trouble. Any other actress in Hollywood would have done the same."
"Any other actress in Hollywood would have chosen a target other than Thamantha Thmithee. She's so universally beloved, she could be Stalin's daughter and nobody would care."
"So you're saying I can't be an actress anymore?"
"No, I'm saying you haven't been an actress since 1953. If I were you, I'd find another line of work. Like busing tables. Or cleaning toilets. Or maybe you could find a quiet place to sit and write your memoirs, like all the other sixteen-year-old former child stars."
"My memoirs..." Lorna mused. "Bernie, you just might have something there!"
WRITING THE BOOK:
In October of 1965, Lorna Swansong began drafting her memoirs with the title, "Thamantha Thmithee Is An Untalented Hack Who Stole My Life." Thamantha, at that time, was riding high as the title character in television's number one comedy, Teen Moffet, in which she played a rock-and-roll surfer girl with psychic powers.
Lorna's book hit the shelves in 1969, and burned its way up the New York Times bestseller list. This might have pleased Lorna more if the list in question had been the non-fiction book list, rather than the "bitter twisted lies" category that seemed to have been created just for her.
"What's going on?" Lorna asked her publisher. "Every word in this book is true. Why aren't they marketing it as non-fiction?"
"Have you seen the non-fiction list lately?" her publisher asked. When Lorna admitted that she had not, the publisher produced a copy of the list. The best selling book on the list was "Lorna Swansong is a Bitter Loser" by Thamantha Thmithee.
Thamantha's book went on to earn the Nobel Prize for Literature. Lorna's book also won an award that year in the first and last ever Nobel Literary Booby Prize. Instead of a medal, Lorna received a pie in the face, thrown by the King of Sweden.
BACK ON THE BOTTOM:
More depressed than ever, Lorna developed a drinking problem in order to check herself into the Betty Ford Clinic (which was in those days still known as the Lady Bird Johnson Clinic).
"The next couple decades were a blur," Lorna now admits. "I was in and out of rehab so often, people thought I was a member of the staff. I guess I must have looked good in a lab coat because somehow, through a haze of drinks and pills, I worked my way up to Assistant Director. It was probably the happiest time of my life, if only I could remember any of it."
Lorna's final shot at stardom came with a 2003 call from Bernie Maxx Jr., who had taken over the talent agency from his father. "No, who is this really?" Lorna asked.
"No joke, it's your agent," said Bernie Jr. "It's been almost forty years since my father tossed you out of his office, and I know we've been out of touch, but I'm about to make that all up to you. Disney is remaking Baby Moffet On the Moon, and the director thinks you'd be perfect for Baby Moffet's grandmother."
"Grandmother? GRANDmother?! Just how old do you think I am?!!"
"If I had to guess, based on the fact that your most recent headshot is in sepia tone..."
"Never mind. I'll take the part!"
ONE LAST CRUSHING DEFEAT:
When Lorna arrived at the Disney lot for the first day of shooting, she was shocked to find Thamantha Thmithee sitting in the director's chair. "Good to thhhhee you, Lorna," said Thamantha.
Lorna wiped Thamantha's spittle from her eyes. "It's good to see you too, Thamantha. It's been forever, hasn't it?"
"It thure hath. I hope enough time has gone by tho we can put our differenceth athhhhide."
"Well...sure, why not. We're both grownups now."
"Ekthellent. I'm tho glad you agreed to be in my little film. I wrote the thcript, you know."
"You don't say? That would explain why my character falls into so many vats of raw sewage over the course of the movie."
Thamantha laughed. "Yeth, you were always good at phythical comedy. Oh, Lorna, I'd like to you meet Thally. Thally will be playing Baby Moffet."
"Hello, Sally," said Lorna through gritted teeth.
"Thally," the young girl corrected her.
"Awww!" cooed Thamantha. "Doethn't Thally look jutht me when I was that age?"
"It's uncanny," said Lorna.
Thamantha dropped her voice to a whisper. "I had mythelf cloned. Seven hundred times. The clones will be thawed at three year intervals, so I can be Baby Moffet forever and ever and ever!"
Lorna grabbed Thamantha by the collar and shook her until security arrived. "I'm Baby Moffet! I'm the original! Me! Not you! Meeeeeeee!"
As Lorna was dragged away by the Disney Brute Squad, Thamantha called after her: "Your career is over! You'll never work in this town again, Lorna Thwanthong!"
And Lorna never did.
TURNING THE CORNER:
In December of 2004, LWN's newly-appointed editorial director came by Lorna's clinic and introduced himself. "My name is Ed Dir, and I've been looking for an entertainment reporter for a news parody website."
"And you want me?" Lorna asked.
"Well, actually--"
"Of course I'll accept. I'm done with making movies and doing guest spots on television, done with recording hit songs, and I don't think I have another award-winning book in me. But reporting, that sounds mindless and totally perfect!"
"But you don't--"
"Maybe this is what I was meant to do all along. Maybe I've finally found my calling. Maybe this is just what I need to make a new start. Mr. Dir, where do I sign?"
"I wasn't actually offering you the job," said Ed. "As I was saying, I've been looking for an entertainment reporter and having no luck at all. The stress is really getting to me, and I'd like to check myself into your clinic for a few days of rest and recovery."
"Oh," said Lorna. "Then let me show you to your room and give you some heavy tranqs."
"Thank you," said Ed. By the time he woke up, three days later, Lorna had already forged his name on an employment contract and faxed it in to the LWN head office.
INTO THE FUTURE:
As LWN's most jaded reporter, Lorna Swansong provides a "been there, done that" attitude to an otherwise neophyte website and serves as LWN's resident expert on holding grudges. She handles television, movie, music, and literary reporting with an insider's attitude, while maintaining very few personal connections within the entertainment industry. However, she does remain only one of only two staff members whose name is the answer to a question in Trivial Pursuit.
Staff members also rely on Lorna to supply them with street-legal narcotics.
(This entry will be revised as necessary.)
Disclaimer: This story probably isn't true, names have been changed, and any quotes are most likely made up.
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