A dancer, singer, highly regarded actress and metaphysical time traveler, Shirley MacLaine is certainly among Hollywood's most unique stars. Born Shirley MacLane Beaty on April 24, 1934 in Richmond, Virginia, MacLaine was the daughter of drama coach and former actress Kathlyn MacLean Beaty and Ira O. Beaty, a professor of psychology and philosophy. Her younger brother, Warren Beatty, also grew up to be an important Hollywood figure as an actor/director/ producer and screenwriter. MacLaine's mother, who gave up her own dreams of stardom for her young family, greatly motivated her daughter to become an actress and dancer. MacLaine took dance lessons from age two, first performed publicly at age four, and at 16 went to New York, making her Broadway debut as a chorus girl in Me and Juliet (1953). When not scrambling for theatrical work, MacLaine worked as a model. Interestingly, MacLaine's big break was the result of another actress's bad luck. In 1954, MacLaine was understudying Broadway actress Carol Haney The Pajama Game when Haney fractured her ankle. MacLaine replaced her and was spotted and offered a movie contract by producer Hal Wallis. With her auburn hair cut impishly short, the young actress made her film debut in Hitchock's black comedy The Trouble With Harry (1955). Later that year, she co-starred opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the comedy Artists and Models. In her next feature, Around the World in 80 Days (1956), she appeared as an Indian princess. MacLaine earned her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a pathetic tart who shocks a conservative town by showing up on the arm of young war hero Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running (1959). She then got the opportunity to show off her long legs and dancing talents in Can-Can (1960). Prior to that, she appeared with Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford in Oceans Eleven (1960). MacLaine, the only female member of the famed group, would later recount her experiences with them in her seventh book My Lucky Stars. In 1960, she won her second Oscar nomination for Billy Wilder's comedy/drama The Apartment, and a third nomination for Irma La Douce (1963). MacLaine's career was in high gear during the '60s, with her appearing in everything from dramas to madcap comedies to musicals such as What a Way to Go! (1964) and Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity! (1969). In addition to her screen work, she actively participated in Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and served as a Democratic Convention delegate. She was similarly involved in George McGovern's 1972 campaign. Bored by sitting around on movie sets all day awaiting her scenes, MacLaine started writing down her thoughts and was thus inspired to add writing to her list of talents. She published her first book, Don't Fall Off the Mountain in 1970. She next tried her hand at series television in 1971, starring in the comedy Shirley's World (1971-72) as a globe-trotting photographer. The role reflected her real-life reputation as a world traveler, and these experiences resulted in her second book Don't Fall Off the Mountain and the documentary The Other Half of the Sky -- A China Memoir (1975) which she scripted, produced and co-directed with Claudia Weill. MacLaine returned to Broadway in 1976 with a spectacular one-woman show A Gypsy in My Soul, and the following year entered a new phase in her career playing a middle-aged former ballerina who regrets leaving dance to live a middle-class life in The Turning Point. MacLaine was memorable starring as a lonely political wife opposite Peter Sellers' simple-minded gardener in Being There (1979), but did not again attract too much attention until she played the over-protective, eccentric widow Aurora Greenway in James L. Brooks' Terms of Endearment (1983), a role that finally won MacLaine an Academy Award. That same year, she published the candid Out on a Limb, bravely risking public ridicule by describing her experiences and theories concerning out-of-body travel and reincarnation. MacLaine's film appearances were sporadic through the mid '80s, although she did appear in a few television specials. In 1988, she came back strong with three great roles in Madame Sousatzka (1988), Steel Magnolias (1989) and particularly Postcards from the Edge (1990), in which she played a fading star clinging to her own career while helping her daughter Meryl Streep, a drug addicted, self-destructive actress. Through the '90s, MacLaine specialized in playing rather crusty and strong-willed eccentrics, such as her title character in the 1994 comedy Guarding Tess. In 1997, MacLaine stole scenes as a wise grande dame who helps pregnant, homeless Ricki Lake in Mrs. Winterbourne, and the same year revived Aurora Greenway in The Evening Star, the critically maligned sequel to Terms of Endearment. MacLaine's onscreen performances were few and far between in the first half of the next decade, but in 2005 she returned in relatively ful

I don't know if this is the right phrase or not. From the Dialect blog, "Say 'Ouistiti' for the Camera: Charles Timoney gives the would-be traveller in France some sage advice in his, Pardon my French: Unleash your Inner Gaul published in 2008. Excerpted below is one of his finds: Should you ever be asked by a French person to take their photo in front of some famous monument somewhere, there is no point in pointing their camera at them and saying brightly, “Say cheese!” For a start, if you stand in front of a mirror and say cheese with a silly French accent, it will not produce the photogenic rictus that you were hoping for. The main problem, however, is that a French tourist will not be expecting to be asked to say “cheese” because in France,when being photographed, people say “ouistiti!” Like “cheese,” the success of the photograph depends on the accent used when saying the word. If you sayouitsiti – it means “marmoset,” by the way [a very small monkey from Central & S. America - The D.] – in a flat English accent reminiscent of the cartoon dog Droopy [?], you will look thoroughly miserable in the photo. If, on the other hand, you say it enthusiastically in a strong French accent, the two last syllables force your mouth sideways into a broad grin. Just in case you are planning on asking a French person to take your photo one day, there is a slight chance that in place of ouistiti he may let his fondness for things culinary win through and ask you to say “omelette!” Well, now, with this suggestion before me, I set to work attempting to find confirmation for “Ouistiti!” as an authentic and viable French expression. I chanced upon a father and son from Nice, France, who came into my line at work. I asked them if anyone ever says “Ouistiti!” when they take a picture and they both laughed and said, “Non.” They told me that Ouistiti is a big yellow monkey cartoon character (which others confirmed but of whom I could never find a good photo). When I inquired as to the for-realz picture taking exclamation they told me that, “Smell the little birds coming out!” was in fact the more acurate phrase. When pressed, they assured me that this phrase makes you smile wide when you say it. Later, another woman from Nice indicated that she had heard of neither ”Ouistiti!” nor “Smell the little birds coming out!” She did however give me a translation for the phrase and rendered it, “Sont le petite oiseau!” which I can’t for the life of me figure out. (They are? Smell or feel? It’s?) A gut feeling told me not to trust her so I grilled her for her substitute exclamation. But she claimed to have none. “I just take ze piture,” she insisted. Fine. A third encounter confronted me with a French family from Paris. I duly inquired as to their preferred photo-snapping phrase and the mother couldn’t think of one until I suggested “Ouistiti!” She said that yes, yes, of course, she had heard that one. ”But,” she admitted, “I just say ‘cheese’.” So much for Dr. Prof. Timoney’s thinly-veiled Anti-American assertions. She had also never heard of “smell the little birds coming out,” but, to be fair, I didn’t have the French translation in front of me so you can’t expect the crude English version to jog her memory. Cute family though. Makes me wanna be French again. Finally, though, a fourth encouter with the rare species of European put many things into place. Bruno from the South of France, whom I met at a pajama party claimed that “Non” - ’Ouistiti’ is in fact a load of merde and that he had never heard it said. (But yes he had heard of the cartoon monkey by the same name.) He gave me no substantive subsitutes that I can recall (it was a party remember) but, fortuitously, our Bruno from the South of France did provide The Dialect with the etymological tip about the birds - le petite oiseau – that we had been in need of. Bruno described the old cameras with the dude that hunkered down underneath the cloth as he fixed the camera just right. The photographer then climbed out from beneath the contraption, all the while admonishing the children to keep their eyes fixed on the camera lens. He told them to keep watching the camera – so you don’t miss the little birds coming out. *** Who of our faithful Dialect readers can help us with this simple French quandary? Since we cannot figure out this rudimentary French expression, we are hoping that you can. What’s the French photo-phrase for the little birds? Who uses it, how do you say it, and what does it mean?