Mr. Blackwell, who was known for issuing his annual "Worst Dressed List" and for nothing else, has passed away at the age of 86. Born Richard Sylvan Selzer, he had a brief acting career before turning to fashion design. In 1960, he came up with the idea of his list and it proved to be a great publicity-getter…which, of course, was the whole point of it. Obits like this one tell us…
In 1992, he sued Johnny Carson for claiming that he had added Mother Teresa to his list, saying the comment exposed him to hatred and ridicule. NBC's response was that the "Tonight Show" host was obviously joking. "Did you see what he said about Mother Teresa? 'Miss Nerdy Nun is a fashion no-no,'" Carson had said. "Come on now, that's just too much."
Everyone, of course, noted the irony. Mr. Blackwell, whose only known function was to hold others up to ridicule for their wardrobe choices, was claiming outrage at being ridiculed. Around The Tonight Show, they assumed Blackwell instituted the lawsuit because he was hoping to settle for an appearance on the program…and abandoned it when it was clear that was not going to happen. He may also have been upset by one of Mr. Carson's monologue jokes: "I don't think it's fair of Mr. Blackwell to issue that list on the one day a year he looks at women."
Believe it or not, I actually have an anecdote about a personal encounter with Mr. Blackwell. He seems to have lived somewhere near me because every few months, I used to run into him in a little Italian cafeteria not far from my house. The first time it happened, we were side-by-side in the cafeteria line and I leaned over, nodded towards the ladies serving us and told him, "They'll give you an extra meatball if you don't critique their outfits." I have "recognized" many mid-level celebrities who were thrilled that someone — anyone! — knew who they were but none who were more pleased than Mr. Blackwell.
For obvious reasons, he always made me think of another public figure who was mentioned occasionally in Carson monologues and who even appeared several times with Johnny…a flamboyant gent named Jerome Criswell. Half-heartedly claiming some sort of psychic abilities (and not even convincing those eager to believe in such powers), Criswell wrote a column called "Criswell Predicts" and appeared on TV shows, including his own, to issue dramatic and usually-ridiculous predictions about the future. He had a little more than his allotted fifteen minutes of fame.
They were pretty much over by the seventies and he was rarely seen on television. Where he was seen was on the porch of a home he had on Las Palmas Avenue in Hollywood, about a block north of Sunset. It was where my friends and I often parked when we went to the comic book shops on Hollywood Boulevard and we'd see him there, unshaven and of course not in the tuxedo he wore when he appeared on TV. We'd yell, "Hey, Criswell! What do you predict?" And he'd grin and oblige us by calling back, "Gnats in New Mexico" or "Locusts in London," which were the kind of predictions he'd done on TV. One time, he told myself and my friend George, "I predict strap-on bikinis for you women and clamp-on bikinis for you men."
He seemed to enjoy putting on a little performance for us or for any who passed by and knew who he was. (To help the recognition along, there was a large brass plaque on the front of the building, not far from where he sat. It said, "CRISWELL PREDICTS.") It wasn't The Tonight Show but it was something.
Mr. Criswell passed away in '82, which was about the time I began running into Mr. Blackwell at the cafeteria. I don't know if they knew each other but it wouldn't have surprised me. I can well imagine them getting together and swapping tips on how to parlay a little gimmick into something resembling a career.