Thursday Afternoon, 22 April -- Books

During the pandemic it hasn’t been easy for me to get going with new books. In the past I did most of my reading on the subway or in restaurants, and who’s been going to either of those places?! The only three I can really remember at this point are Hello Goodbye Hello, a charming book about celebrities encountering celebrities; the biography of Jane Digby, Lady Ellenborough (the most scandalous adulteress of her generation), and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. I’ve had a desultory time pretending I want to keep continuing with Field of Blood, about Congressional violence before the Civil War.

But in the last month of so I’ve been vacuuming my way through some new books:

Mink on Weekdays (Ermine on Sunday), by Felicia Lamport. Someone on Insta recommended this outrageous coming-of-age memoir from the 1920s. Felicia and her older sister live with their exceedingly wealthy parents in an atmosphere of Babylonian privilege where they are minded first by a German fraulein and then by a French governess. Their mother is really the main character; if Auntie Mame had been a Jewish mother, she would have been Felicia’s mother. Certainly they had a colorful upbringing! (Copies of this book for sale on the internet cost hundreds of dollars, so I was grateful the Athenaeum had it in their collection.)

The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era, by Gareth Russell. I’ve been reading about the Titanic these 44 years, as you know. This book concentrates on seven first-class passengers — the Countess of Rothes, Thomas Andrews (who designed the ship), Ida and Isidor Strauss, John Thayer and his son Jack, and Dorothy Gibson — and through them reaches out to a lot of different aspects of history: the rise of the Irish middle class, Belfast as a growing European city, anti-Semitism in the Confederacy, the decline of the landed nobility in England, mental health, and the growth of celebrity culture. Every page of it was worth it.

And the Band Played On: The Titanic Violinist and the Glovemaker: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Betrayal, by Christopher Ward. The author’s grandfather turns out to be the cutest violinist on the Titanic, Jock Hume, who went down with the ship and his bandmates. Jock left behind a pregnant fiancée, Mary Costin, and a feud with his impossible father Andrew, who had only a casual relationship with the truth. I’m still reading it — apparently a big court trial is key to the action — but this covers everything including the recovery of Jock’s body by the Mackay-Bennett and the history of the fiddle in Scotland.

The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria, by Greg King and Penny Wilson. With all my fascination with the Titanic and (to a lesser degree) the Lusitania, I’d never read anything about the sinking of the Andrea Doria. This really took me into a sun-drenched world of 1950s glamor, but one that ended in such horror. The authors looked particularly at the passengers whose cabins were at the point of impact with the Stockholm. Just as interesting: the heroic efforts of the medical staff on board to evacuate the two (or three?) passengers traveling in the ship’s infirmary to seek medical care in the States.

Bloomsbury Stud: The Life of Stephen “Tommy” Tomlin, by Michael Bloch (researched by Susan Fox). To say that Tommy got around is an understatement. He seems to have slept with all the Bloomsbury Group except Virginia Woolf — and yet his most enduring work is the bust he sculpted of her. His wife said something about him needing everyone to worship him with their bodies. It’s sad that he died before the age of 40, and that more of his work hasn’t survived.

The Dave Brandstetter Mysteries: Fadeout, Death Claims, Troublemaker, The Man Everyone Was Afraid Of, and Skinflick, by Joseph Hansen. Back in college a friend introduced me to this excellent series focused on a gay Southern Californian detective of the late 1960s through the mid-’70s. Hansen’s ability to describe atmosphere just can’t be beat; everything feels like a gritty, sun-warped down-at-heels California that has probably been significantly upgraded by now. Plot twists abound, of course, but there’s a gay plot or subplot near the core of every murder (not the way you’d expect, either). And Dave’s personal life makes a significant part of the story. As a gay man, he knows the only reason the insurance company employs him is because his father is chairman of the board — even if he is the best detective in the business. At the beginning of Fadeout we learn that Dave’s lover of 20+ years has just died. By the end of the book he’s bonding with another man who’s long-time lover has also just been killed. And there is so much smoking and drinking going on! Portable bars in every office, too. The 1970s was a very different era.

Monday Night, 19 April -- 'Tis But a Little Faded Flower

Where is the heart that doth not keep, Within its inmost core,

Some fond remembrance, hidden deep, Of days that are no more?

Who hath not saved some trifling thing, More prized than jewels rare—

A faded flower, a broken ring, A tress of golden hair?

— “‘Tis But a Little Faded Flower,” by Ellen Clementine Howarth

1) I first encountered this little poem as a song over the winter in Cecil B. DeMille’s Reap the Wild Wind; a minor character sings it at a tea party where Paulette Goddard meets Ray Milland for the first time. It charmed me so much I searched a little bit more in the internet, and found a folky version I actually prefer.

1a) Reap the Wild Wind has the feeling of a consolation prize for Paulette Goddard not getting cast as Scarlett O’Hara, the rarity of seeing John Wayne as the bad guy, Robert Preston (!) as a bully, a strong performance from Susan Hayward, and a giant squid. But I can’t recommend it.

2) The photo above was what remained of a cattlyea orchid corsage Mother must have worn to a college dance at some point between 1947-51. She kept it — and everything else! — all her life. Obviously it was one of the things my sister and I didn’t keep.

3) My KonMari journey this winter and spring has turned up a lot of answer d): all of the above. Trifling things, jewels rare, broken rings, chipped china, outdated picture frames, decaying papers, and memories in every emotional color.

4) And just like Mother, it turns out I have caches of things from particular periods stashed away in different parts of the house. For instance, Laura and I found a leather satchel full of things from Mother’s days as a Bluebird (or was it the Girl Scouts?), including beadwork and a Hollywood fan magazine with Jeanne Crain on the cover. Inside the covered wooden urn I got in Haiti 40 years ago was a galaxy of pins and buttons that I decorated my lapels with in college and high school, a sheaf of fortune cookie fortunes (I had been told it was bad luck to throw them away), and other detritus from the early 1980s.

4a) That urn was a focal point in my dorm room freshman year of college. My roommate and I nicknamed it Father, and actually convinced a Young Woman of Surpassing Credulity that my father’s ashes were inside. She was not amused when she took off the lid!

5) Completing this process by Memorial Day weekend feels impossible, especially when I consider the large volume of correspondence and photographs from my mother’s family still to examine and absorb. But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up!

Thursday Morning, 8 April

1) Yesterday, waiting outside the Pru on Boylston Street to get in line for my first vaccine jab, I witnessed an interesting little street ballet between an older man and a younger woman. The former, a cabbie, took vigorous exception that the latter seemed to be parking her car within the zone designated for cabs. There were many expansive arm gestures and much walking back and forth — and in the woman’s case, much tossing of a fountain-style pony tail. He was very upset with her, but after awhile she was having none of it and stalked off to the mall. Unfortunately she had to return to her car to get her bag, which somehow required her to open a passenger door and her trunk. She would not engage with the cabbie. After her final departure, he called out “I hope you like your ticket!” and stalked off toward the Hynes . . . probably to drop a dime on her with a cop detailing the vaccination site. He came back looking defeated.

1a) Yes, I did get my first jab yesterday. Grateful for that.

2) My New Year’s resolution to complete ye Myrie Kyndo Tydying Yp by Memorial Day weekend is decidedly over deadline, but I forge ahead. Do you know there are something like 100 drawers in my home? Unexpected treasures include a $50 gift card, a 1974 uncirculated Eisenhower silver dollar given to me by my godparents for my 12th birthday, two Nutcracker staff pins from the Pastel Prison, and a St. Jude medal someone gave me in the 1990s — among much else!

2a) But if I’m really going to have a yard sale in May, I need to hop to it.

3) The other thing is, I’m now just over one week into Dry April, an effort to reduce some girth before summer. This is inspired by several people from different parts of my life (who don’t know each other) who all did Dry January. As Karen Richards so memorably said in All About Eve, “Why, I said to myself, not?” What I find I miss most is the ritual of the five o’clock cocktail hour rather than the cocktail itself. But that, and a dramatic reduction in cheese consumption, sees me shedding pounds, and that makes me very happy.

3a) Since wine is called for in a couple recipes for this Saturday’s Dress Dinner challenge, I may toss back a glass with dinner on that one night.

Black Widow of 1954

Six weeks ago, I enjoyed a somewhat reluctant obsession with a 1954 CinemaScope whodunit, Black Widow. It’s an ordinary premise — man accused of murder has to avoid the cops in order to clear his name — but this time it’s set among High Wattage Creatives on Broadway*. Broadway producer Van Heflin (remembered mostly as Joan Crawford’s romantic victim in 1947’s Possessed) is accused of murdering Peggy Ann Garner (remembered mostly as young Jane Eyre) — who he met at the home of the star of his current hit, Ginger Rogers (remembered mostly as the equal partner of Fred Astaire) and her husband Reginald Gardiner (remembered only, if at all, as the Comte d’Artois in 1938’s Marie Antoinette), while his wife is out of town — and that would be Gene Tierney (remembered mostly for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Laura, and Leave Her to Heaven). The New York City detective investigating is George Raft (remembered mostly as a gangster off screen).

Peggy Ann Garner, Ginger Rogers, Reginald Gardiner, and Van Heflin.

There are five reasons to love this film: the color and design, The “Dance of the Seven Veils” theme from Salomé by Richard Strauss, a couple supporting players, the cocktail party at the beginning, and the wardrobe and performance of Ginger Rogers.

Early CinemaScope films required greater than usual attention to set design, choreographing camera angles and movement, and the use of color**. We get here a series of Manhattan apartments that look so spacious that only Russian oligarchs could afford them now, decorated in bland-looking creams and pastels with deft placement of Asian art. The blandness was probably to keep anything from jumping out and looking too garish. Someone said of making George Cukor’s A Star Is Born: “We damn near made a black and white movie in color.”

Peggy Ann Garner, swept away by Richard Strauss.

Peggy Ann Garner, lounging in a windowsill, reflects “‘The secret of Love is greater than the secret of Death’ — that’s the way I’d really like to write . . . that’s the goal to try for, Death and Grandeur.” And all this to one of the more sweeping passages of “The Dance of the Seven Veils.” (Said passage begins at roughly 06:16.) It’s ravishing, just as Strauss intended. I am not going to tell you how this gets involved in the murder plot.

Yes, it’s really Cathleen Nesbitt!

Among the company, the great Cathleen Nesbitt is wasted, absolutely wasted, as the maid. She has only two scenes, but I do rather wish they’d written a grander role for her. Reginald Gardiner makes the perfect milquetoast husband for Ginger; the word “hangdog” comes to mind. Virginia Leith has three or four scenes as an angry friend of the murder victim. She’s beautiful and she has a voice low, distinct, and musical — somehow that feels rare — but I can’t say I find her convincing as an artist from a Boston Brahmin family. It must be the accent.

Virginia Leith

But the true, glowing hot supporting performance here is that of Hilda Simms as Anne the hat check girl. Ms. Simms, a victim of the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy era, broke ground as a performer with the American Negro Theatre in its production of Anna Lucasta, “a beautiful young woman struggling to regain her respectability and return to her family after falling into a life of prostitution.” Just seeing her one scene with Van Heflin makes me mourn the performances she should have been able to give — an amazing talent stifled.

Van Heflin and Hilda Simms

Maybe it’s just because the damn pandemic has lasted a year - and counting! - but the party at the beginning is exactly what I want to do right now. Fill my house with well-dressed friends, a pianist, a bartender and a couple waiters and just have a damn hubbub!

Ginger Rogers at her own cocktail party.

And finalmente we come to the real reason for our being here, Miss Carlotta “Lottie” Marin, star of Star Rising, as given us by Ginger Rogers. Always the “all-American princess of dance,” doing everything Fred did but backwards in high heels, it’s an absorbing pleasure to see her serve us a brittle Broadway diva who really just does not care that you hate her. Physically she holds herself like an elegant but pugnacious fighter. In a couple scenes I could have sworn she was about to slug Katharine Hepburn off camera. Because her 1930s work always comes at us first, it’s really refreshing to see her as a sleek, powerful, intelligent woman, unafraid to do battle or make mischief.

And her wardrobe is stunning! It’s worth noting that the costumes were designed by Travilla, who went on to do the glamorous very-much-of-its-era Valley of the Dolls.

So there you have it. I’m not going to tell you who done it, nor which cast member was best remembered as a talking head in a science fiction film. Enjoy!

*With this set in 1954, it’s interesting to think of this cast of characters maneuvering in the same theatre world as those of All About Eve (1950), The Opposite Sex (1956), and Torch Song (1953).

**Learn more reading Ron Haver’s book about the making and restoration of George Cukor’s A Star Is Born starring Judy Garland and James Mason. It taught me a lot!

Friday Morning, 26 March

1) Off to the dentist very early this morning to fix a broken filling. Waiting for the anesthetic to kick in, I shared the plot of Valley of the Dolls since we had been talking about painkillers. And a good thing, too, ‘cause they actually had to give me an extra shot after the drilling commenced, something I never remember experiencing before.

2) Bone marrow, cheesecloth, basil, rosemary, garlic, strawberry chamagne jam, carrots, soy sauce, and now I have everything I need for this weekend’s Dress Dinner Challenge menu.

2a) Of this list, the cheesecloth is the most important item.

2b) Also, a surfeit of Easter candy, which was really unnecessary since Laura’s family sent me a beautiful Easter basket centerpiece from ye Byrdick’s.

3) It’s interesting to consider that I started this little personal blog four years ago this month at a particularly low point to have an alternative to sharing info I’d ordinarily post on ye Fycebykke. Now, I treat that platform more as a reluctant obligation — but not because of the friends I have there.

Friday, 12 March -- Books and Papers

Inga: “Zere’s nozzing here but books and papers.

Victor: “Books and papers . . . it is! This is my grandfather's private library! I feel it!”

This week saw, at last, the conclusion of my latest Marie Kondo sweep through my library, and — as of this morning — the recommencing of my disposal of papers. It has been quietly emotional as some things have resurfaced, either to retain or cast out.

My shelves are used more efficiently now, and while I still have a lot of books, I felt a rush of lightness when I realized Wednesday afternoon that I’d finally gone through them all. And I am surprised at some of the volumes I’m letting go. A few were gifts at different points in my life (The Portable D.H. Lawrence, The Movie Lover), some were momentary enthusiasms I know I won’t consult again (a history of ginseng, The Jefferson Bible, The 100 Thing Challenge), and some were actually duplicates of books I already have (Among the Nudists, The Swimming-pool Library). The Bible the church gave me when I was confirmed is on the pile. I use Mother’s Bible now, and the only reason I was keeping it was because it had my name embossed on the cover.

Earlier this year I shredded hundreds and hundreds of pages of old financial documents that I had carefully filed in chronological order in a couple enormous three-binders . . . and never consulted again. Today begins the next part of this leg of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, so of course it started with a six-page letter from Mother, written from the rental house in 1985, full of news of her relatives in Minnesota and a couple news clippings about Governor Edwards’ trial*. Letters and photographs, Ms. Kondo teaches us, firmly belong at the end of the process in the category of “Sentimental,” and I can already see the wisdom of that . . . and know how long that’s going to take.

Instead I turned to a plastic milk crate full of (this will not surprise you at all) my college notebooks. Laura and I tossed out Mother’s collection of her college notebooks without turning a hair, so I knew I wouldn’t be keeping this stuff. But I was looking for something specific, too. Probably the best paper I wrote in four years as an undergrad was a two-pager for Mythology on the symbolism of a Greek artifact at the MFA** that featured Herakles being mounted by a nymph. I got an A on that paper . . . but when I went to reclaim it, the TA couldn’t find it. So my notes on that paper are all I’ve got! And I found my Mythology notebook, so let’s hope my draft is in there.

The journey through those notebooks showed me that my handwriting used to be smaller, rounder, and a bit more precise than it is now. It also revealed some very bad poetry, bad doodles of vintage costumes, and sometimes notes about how I was feeling at the start of class. I did not find the syllabus from the professor that ended with “No extensions, no compassion,” but since I’ll never forget that line, I’ll never need to have that copy!

I’m so glad I’m taking this journey now.

*That took me back to the world before the internet, when the world press was not just a click or two away!

**Later I realized this work had been donated by E.P. “Ned” Warren, a noted homosexual of the period.

Friday, 12 March -- Alfred Hitchcock Day

For reasons unknown even to the internet, today is Alfred Hitchcock Day. Because you may not have seen these, here are some publicly available Hitchcock films that you should see, in random order.

REBECCA

Possibly one of Hitchcock’s most famous films, Rebecca is the dead first wife of dark and brooding Laurence Olivier. His second wife, mousy and insecure Joan Fontaine, becomes obsessed with Rebecca’s memory while the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers — Judith Anderson in her greatest and most sinister performance on film — works to undermine her mental health and her marriage. Add in George Sanders as Rebecca’s louche cousin, Gladys Cooper and Nigel Bruce as the in-laws, and delightfully awkward Reginald Denny as the estate manager once infatuated with Rebecca, and all you need to add is a sunken sailboat with a body in it . . .

JAMAICA INN

Significant as the film debut of Maureen O’Hara, she plays a spirited but bereaved Irish girl come to live with her aunt and uncle on the Cornish coast. Alas, she discovers her rough uncle is running a gang that plan shipwrecks and murder the crews to rob the cargo! Robert Newton (probably best remembered as Inspector Fix in Around the World in Eighty Days) tries to help her out, but what sort of game is he playing anyway? Emlyn Williams makes for a cocky shipwrecker with a chip on each shoulder, and I am especially fond of Marie Ney as the long-suffering Aunt Patience. Look also for my beloved Mabel Terry-Lewis (the Comtesse de Tournay in The Scarlet Pimpernel) as an aristocratic dinner guest near the start of the film.

But the honors really go to Charles Laughton as Sir Humphrey Pengallon, the local squire and magistrate, who wants only “to live spaciously, as a gentleman.”

NOTORIOUS

Ingrid Bergman — at her best in my view — starts out as the good-time-girl daughter of a Nazi war criminal. Cary Grant persuades her to start spying for the US government, which means moving to Rio de Janeiro and ingratiating herself with Claude Rains . . . who already has a crush on her. As I’m fond of saying, hilarity ensues, this time involving poison.

If you loved Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers, you’ll really love Madame Konstantin as Claude Rains’s Nazi mother. She smokes a cigarette in bed like a gun firing bullets into your heart. Louis Calhern appears as Cary Grant’s boss (I believe it was in his contract that no fewer than three references to his good looks remain in the finished film). But I was truly delighted to see Lenore Ulric, known only for her performance as Greta Garbo’s rival Olympe in Camille, show up as a party guest. Such enormous eyes, and her line “Young men have such short memories” speaks volumes.

SPELLBOUND

Ingrid Bergman again, this time as a cut-and-dried psychoanalyst at a sanitarium who falls in love with her new boss, Gregory Peck . . . even after he has a freakout. And this being Hitchcock, of course there’s a murder involved. Leo G. Carroll as Himself appears as the outgoing head of the sanitarium, but the best performance is from Michael Chekhov, the son of Anton Chekhov Himself, as Bergman’s peppery psychiatry professor from college. Seeing Bergman deal with a hotel drunk is priceless.

Medically, this film is laughable. Besides all the outdated notions about psychiatry, how on earth is this sanitarium run?! The doctors spend all their time together as a group (including at meals in the same dining room with patients) — and they have to be surgeons as well as psychiatrists! That said, this film is best known for its groundbreaking dream sequence designed by the surrealist Salvador Dalí — and it’s amazing.

THE PARADINE CASE

I just wrote about The Paradine Case recently here, so no need to repeat myself.

There are lots of other amazing Hitchcock movies, but these are the ones on my Yewtybbe list. Certainly you should check out The 39 Steps (though I find it exhausting), To Catch a Thief, Rope, Stage Fright, Rear Window, and Lifeboat. I’m probably leaving out one of your favorites. I’ll conclude by adding that I’ll never see The Birds again, and it’s a horrible movie to see on a date. Don’t ask me how I know.

Saturday Evening, 27 February -- Zhpeek to Meeee eeen Franche (Hanh Hanh Hanh)

1) My education included two years of high school French, plus passing acquaintance with Carmen, but I am not anything like fluent. So it’s odd that over the last few days my focus has been drawn to two French language films. The first was introduced to me through the miracle of ye Instygrymme: Le collier de la reine, apparently a masterpiece of post-WWII French cinema. Filmed at Versailles Itself and in the studios, this black-and-white pearl of a film radiates stateliness and guile.

And since it is absolutely and completely without subtitles, it really helps to know the story already. But I am picking up little bits here and there (e.g. “Je me sens mieux” means “I feel better” and “illustré juge” “illustrious judge,” and so on). It continues to exercise a hold on me.

Marion Dorian as Marie Antoinette.

1a) The most 1940s things about this film are the use of lipstick and the face (and one wig) of Marion Dorian, who plays Marie Antoinette with frightening dignity and aristrocratic warmth in turn.

2) And then last night I put on Diva for some audio-visual wallpaper. This movie is all about my freshman year of college, my first real exposure to foreign films, and the Nickelodeon Cinema (may it rest in peace) in its original location, now the BU School of Engineering. The Nick was always screening Diva — I think it was there something like five years, unheard of today — and as I remember it it was always shrouded in scaffolding lit by bare bulbs. For me it was like going to the movies in wartime Berlin. And the films I saw that year! Diva (obviously), Bob le flambeur, La Nuit de Varennes, Veronika Voss, Betrayal, Eating Raoul (OK, that wasn’t a foreign film . . . but memorable!) Most of them I haven’t seen since, but they remain a part of that unique year in my life.

2a) I had never heard “Ebben, ne andro lontana” from La Wally before, and the excitement of hearing it is the same every time I see the movie. Every time. And that white satin dress — iconic! In the novel (this is the second of five novels about the characters Gorodish and Alba) this dress is red and slit up her thigh. While that style was very popular in the late 1970s (think Victoria Principal in Dallas), it wouldn’t have worked in 1981 for an opera singer with a distinguished stage presence.

2b) On Apple TV, Diva has subtitles, but they are not the same as the subtitles I grew up watching. The way “tendu” is translated, for instance. The first time it was translated as “bent” — “It’s the most bent thing I’ve got!” In the ballet world I’ve learned it should be “extended.” On Apple TV it’s “crooked.” One character’s name is a slur; he is now referred to with a kinder but inaccurate reference that is also a lot more syllables. And even this scene is not quite as I remember it being translated, though I couldn’t tell you why.

3) Finally, for some reason this evening Edith Piaf popped up singing ”La Vie en Rose” (of course). Her voice is one of the Great Unique Voices; no one can really sing like her, though many have tried.

Thursday Afternoon, 25 February -- Time Capsule

Today I felt compelled to ferret through a large-format cache* of ephemera that has been protruding from under the day bed in the study too long. I continue to preen myself on not listening to all of you telling me just to throw everything away, because inside this time capsule was my college diploma.

But mostly I found visual-type stuff, especially large wall calendars from the 1980s and 1990s: Japanese woodblock prints, Victoriana, one, um, male photographer of the mid-1980s; and my beloved signs of the zodiac from Paper Moon Graphics, with which I decorated my second college apartment. It’s always something, rediscovering the tastes of one’s youth . . .

Among the other treasures that still bring me joy:

• Prints I got at Colonial Williamsburg in the summer of 1980.

• A selection of 8x10 prints I bought at the National Gallery on that same trip, which decorated almost every dorm room and college apartment.

• The original birthday card from 1987 or 1988 drawn by the in-house cartoonist at The Tab and signed by almost everyone on the staff for me.

• In a folder, the fabulous narrow posters for LCLT’s Twelfth Night in 1982, in which I appeared as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

• A styrofoam head of Mae West that had come off a figure of her that I think Arthur gave me sometime in the early 1990s. I think I nicknamed her Frankenmae. Yes . . . yes, I did nickname her Frankenmae.

• My college graduation mortarboard, complete with tassel.

• An envelope full of letters I’d written to my gramma in high school and college.

Finally, there were two copies of an issue of Stuff magazine from 1991, that time just before the Internet came along to change how we communicate about local arts culture forever. That there were two copies tipped me off that I’d saved them because I must have been in there for some reason or another, and I was correct. Turns out that was the year a group of us won third prize at the Artist’s Ball (which used to be held by United South End Artists) going as the Hollywood sign, and there we were, the line of us, on page 69 in the Party Pics section. The theme was “Stars and Creatures of Hollywood’s Double Features.” I remember the woman who won first prize that year, dressed as an alarmingly lifelike gargoyle with flashing red eyes . . . but whether she was supposed to have been from The Wizard of Oz or The Hunchback of Notre Dame no one thought to ask.

This is the enjoyable part of the process.

*Read: big, disintegrating paper delivery bag from a caterer I did business with in the early 1990s.

The Paradine Case

The late Louis Jourdan came up in conversation yesterday during a chat on ye Fycetyme with friends, which led me to remark on his, um, forceful appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case, his first Hollywood film. One friend surprised me by saying he’d never seen it, so of course I will have to pour out a few thoughts now!

When people think of Alfred Hitchcock they think of Rebecca, Psycho!, Rear Window, The Birds, and all those movies he made with Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Other Blondes Wearing Nile Green. My own two favorites are from “second string'“ Hitchcock films — notable, finely crafted films with stellar performances, but just not pushing themselves to the front of the Hitchcock pack. The other is Stage Fright, but The Paradine Case comes first.

Long story short: Allida Valli (also known as Valli), while playing the piano before dinner, is arrested for murdering her husband in the very recent past. The dignity and hauteur she displays through her arrest and arraignment could not be more stimulating. Her family solicitor, delightful Charles Coburn, meets her in prison and arranges for one of the brightest stars of the bar to take on her case, Gregory Peck. After meeting Valli in prison, it doesn’t take long for Our Boy to become completely infatuated with her, a fact not missed by his loyal and loving wife, Requisite Hitchcock Blonde Ann Todd (appearing by arrangement with J. Arthur Rank Organization). Hilarity ensues (as I’m fond of saying), especially when Peck obsessively visits Valli’s country house and ends up meeting her murdered husband’s valet . . . Louis Jourdan, with eyes of coal-black fire and skin like creamy velvet. Just how will his testimony affect the trial? I’m not telling!

Ann Todd, Ethel Barrymore, and Joan Tetzel.

Along for the ride are the judge, Charles Laughton; the wife he has browbeaten into twittery, fumbling, terrified submission, Ethel Barrymore; and Charles Coburn’s unmarried daughter, sharply observant Joan Tetzel, who also happens to be Ann Todd’s best friend. And it’s a pleasure to see Leo G. Carroll as the prosecutor and Isobel Elsom (best remembered as Mrs. Eynesford-Hill in My Fair Lady) as a country innkeeper who finds a dead owl in a chimney.

Valli is arraigned. Charles Coburn second from right.

There are many reasons to love this film, starting with the performances. Valli is vabulous; her performance is a gray rainbow of all the dark emotions, warm, majestic, contemptuous, despairing. This was her first Hollywood film, too, along with Jourdan, but she really spent most of her career in Europe. Jourdan, her co-debutante, displays marvelous intensity. I am especially fond of his scene at the inn with Gregory Peck, not least because of my love of double entendre.

While Peck and Laughton deliver performances up to their usual standard, I am most drawn to the women in The Paradine Case. Ethel Barrymore could not be more desperately wonderful, so deeply in love with a man whose faults she can’t help but see. But it’s really Ann Todd and Joan Tetzel who carry this picture over the threshold. Joan Tetzel fearlessly communicates unwelcome opinions to the men whether they like it or not (they usually don’t), and Ann Todd . . . oh, I just love her! Watch the movie and you’ll fall in love with her, too.

Then there are Travis Banton’s wonderful gowns. La Barrymore, dignified in grey lace, but just dowdy enough. All of Ann Todd’s ensembles (except for one of her courtroom outfits) speak of quiet good taste, and I love the way she wears a streamer on her white chiffon dinner gown in two or three different ways. Joan Tetzel looks sharps and sleep in high-necked form-fitting black, but by far and away Valli sweeps them all off the screen in the full-skirted black gown in which she’s arrested. With her high diamond earrings and Very Important diamond brooch on her bateau neck, and the contemptuous curves of her hair and features . . . wow!

Add a haunting, suspenseful score by Franz Waxman — be on the lookout for Appassionata No. 69 — and the stunning news delivered to the courtroom that changes everything, and you just can’t go wrong. Enjoy!

Charles Laughton creeping on Ann Todd after dinner.

Friday Midday, 19 February -- Time Capsule

Over the last year or more — since before the pandemic, really — an accretion of unwanted stuff has built up in the small space between the piano and the kitchen door: lots of books from the last time I Konmari-ed my library, a stack of padded UPS envelopes that had been used as padding in a gift package, cardboard boxes in which to put those books, and other stuff. It’s almost all gone now, so three cheers for “Slow and steady wins the race.”

What took up most of my time was an orange (p)leather magazine basket that had more in it than I thought. Now almost everyone would have said to me “Robert, just throw it all out! You won’t need any of that.” And thank goodness they weren’t here to tell me that, ‘cause the original copy of my mortgage was in there, and who knows when that might come in handy. But what I don’t understand is what some 1959 correspondence relating to my parents’ mortgage was doing in there. Or why I even have it in the first place.

I expected to find a year or two’s worth of copies of a local magazine a friend used to edit and some theatre programs. And they were there. In addition, a number of other items brought as far back as 40 years, including:

• A small sheaf of birthday cards from my 25th birthday in 2003. ;-)

• Lots of real estate docs related to my move to JP the same year.

• Family reunion registration forms from 2009 and 2011.

• Evidence of every workplace I’d been in since 1986.

• Two memorial service programs for dear friends from different parts of my life.

• Alumni board materials from 2006.

• The menu from my 2011 Christmas luncheon in français de la garbage.

• The January 1994 issue of Tech Review in which my photograph appears in coverage of the Ig Nobel Prizes (which were then at MIT and on the Board of Governers of which I served).

• Drawings made specially for me by Niece Who Must Not Be Tagged when she was little.

• A map of the Estate of Marie Antoinette from my 2008 visit to Versailles.

• A very important high school casting notice.

• Travel postcards from three different friends.

• Several letters from Mother, including one 1986 note on a Postit: “On the television, a chiropractor: ‘Why live with pain?’ Bill chimed in: ‘Because I’m married to her!’”

• Photocopied newspaper obituaries of a couple family members.

• A pink plastic ring made to look like a gemstone.

Needless to say, this has been absorbing if not always pleasurable; in mining one can bring up diamonds, coal, and . . . something less solid and more unpleasant, all at the same time. And I know I’ll find more of these time capsules as my journey continues, and will enjoy them all.

President's Day 2021

1) My Valentine’s gift to myself was not to read the news after Saturday afternoon.

2) Today’s Bible verse, Proverbs 28:9-10: “He who closes his ears from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. He who causes the righteous to go astray in an evil path shall fall himself into the pit; but the upright shall inherit good things.”

3) The fact is, Daddy needs a change of scene, and the pandemic has made that all but absolutely impossible.

Monday Morning, 8 February -- The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots

1) Thanks to the Royal Collection Trust on Instagram, I reminded that today is the anniversary of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Fotheringay Castle. I became fascinated by Mary at the same time I discovered the Presidents and First Ladies in third grade. (Thanks Mom and Dad for that World Book Encyclopedia!) That’s no small reason why I sat her at Etiquetteer’s right in that list of 13 dinner guests from all history.

A sample of Mary’s embroidery I saw at the V&A in August, 2019.

2) Mary was beautiful, powerful, headstrong, emotional, devout, and a talented needlewoman. Unable to avoid execution, she at least stage managed it superbly, for History. Who else would think to wear a tawny velvet petticoat and sleeves so that the blood wouldn’t clash with her white linen underclothes?! Nor did she enter the room as a penitent, but as an anointed queen in a gigantic black velvet robe of state spangled with gold. As I’ve said before, it’s all about accessorizing!

2a) I may have to take some time today to reread the relevant chapters of her biography by Stefan Zweig.

3) Then of course there’s Monty Python’s eternal imagining of the scene.

Monday Morning, 1 February

1) “This is the day . . . to clear your mind” the calendar said two years ago, the day Mother died. I think about that so much.

1a) I’d forgotten about the “My train of thought derailed. There were no survivors” part, but that’s a powerful part of the impact this had.

2) Because I couldn’t get back to sleep (not unusual), I got up about 4:15. Candlelight parlor coffee and devotional. I asked Mother to direct me to some good advice in her Lamsa Bible, and it opened to the book of Zephaniah. The what? Who’s even heard of this book of the Bible? And the page had none of Mother’s notes on it, so perhaps she never read it either. But I smiled as I began Chapter 2, because it was without doubt a message from Mother: “Gather yourselves, bind yourselves together, O people without discipline; Before you become like the chaff which is driven away . . . “ That is definitely something she would say to me at this particular time.

3) These days I feel like I want to clear my mind with sleep, but that doesn’t seem to be working. When I clear the house . . . that may clear my mind, too.

Thanksgiving, 2013.

Sunday Night, 31 January

Apparently today is the 100th birthday of “that great Irish tenor, Mari O’Lanza,” so I want to share a few favorite clips.

“Be My Love” was my musical obsession about ten or 15 years ago. It doesn’t hurt that my beloved Kathryn Grayson is the soprano.

Somehow I remember seeing The Great Caruso on television at home, and Daddy just laughing and laughing at this scene of Caruso’s reaction to the birth of his first child during the famous Sextette of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Because it is, it is, it is HILAROUS to see and hear him singing “I-I-I-I-I-I-I-T’S A-A-A-A-A-A GIRL!”

“Because You’re Mine” from the movie of the same name, was also a musical obsession for awhile. (Thank you, the Yewytybbe! When you bring me stuff like this, you’re doing your job!) Even more poignant, his partner here is Doretta Morrow, the actress who created the role of Tuptim* in The King and I. Her unique voice — there are very few singers who don’t sound like they could be someone else, and Doretta Morrow is one of them — was taken from us too soon by cancer. The movie itself . . . don’t bother.

*”Something young, soft and slim//Painted cheek, tapering limb//smiling lips, all for him//eyes that shine just for him//So he thinks, just for him.” I’m weeping.

Tuesday Morning, 19 January

1) Parlor coffee and devotional. Mother’s Lamsa Bible opened to I Timothy, chapter 2, which begins: “I beseech you, therefore, first of all, to offer to God, petitions, prayers, supplications, and thanksgiving for all men,//For kings and for all in authority; that we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all purity and Godliness,//For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour//Who desires all men to be saved and to return to the knowledge of the truth.”

1a) Mother had underlined “we may live a quiet and peaceable life,” whereas today, almost 24 hours before the inauguration, I’d emphasize “return to the knowledge of the truth.” But it was very comforting to read this today, to begin the day.

2) Then in Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, #183 spoke immediately to the actions of the outgoing President and his wife: “Don’t hold on to anything too firmly. Fools are stubborn, and the stubborn are fools, and the more erroneous their judgment is, the more they hold on to it. Even when you are right, it is good to make concessions; people will recognize you were right but admire your courtesy. More is lost through holding on than can be won by defeating others.”

2a) With the benefit of hindsight, sadly, I see how I myself have used stubbornness to disadvantage . . .

3) I feel like after the nation gets through tomorrrow, I’ll be able to exhale and really throw myself into planning and activity for the rest of the year. But since the insurrection January 6 I’ve felt like I’m milling around in the theatre lobby during intermission of a play that’s not being produced very well, but that no one feels they can walk out on.

Sunday Night, 17 January

1) Feeling unsettled and unhappy in my writing this morning, I left the house a little after 10:30 for a vigorous walk through the cemetery. And I wore my cape. It’s one thing to walk through the wind, and quite another to walk through the wind pushing a sail. It certainly adds to the workout.

2) While I was there I saw a very small heart-shaped stone of dark gray granite, with a sort of 1960s hippie-dippie-looking inscription: “To Max.” I bent to clear some leaves away . . . and heard the soft gentle sound of the crotch of my khakis ripping. That’s the second pair this pandemic! Daddy has certainly put on the COVID-19.

3) Like many of us, I am longing to feel the heavy weights of the last four years fall from us, but I am very anxious about Wednesday. But I have my champagne ready, first to toast a departing helicopter, and then our next President.

Tuesday Morning, 12 January

1) Parlor coffee and devotional. I called on Mother’s spirit to direct me to something appropriate in her Lamsa Bible, and it came open at II Kings, chapter 11, which I never recall reading before. This is the story of Queen Athaliah, who slew all the members of her family in order to occupy the throne — except for one child, her grandson Joash, who was raised in secrecy until the age of seven. Then he was revealed as the true king. Athaliah, witnessing this in the temple, cried “Treason!” She was later executed.

2) How many of us just do not go back to the source material? In yesterday’s column I was advocating for everyone to go back on their own and read our Founding Documents for themselves, and not to treat the pronouncements of their Preferred Demagogues as “the pure milk of the Word.” It is really the same with whatever the established text of your religion is. We all need to make the time for individual study and do the work!

3) With freedom from a 9-to-5, I allegedly have all the time in the world for reading, which I very much want to do. Yet somehow the days pass, and I never get any further in the books I want to read, and the copies of The Economist loom larger and larger.

New Year's Eve Day 2020

1) Fast away the Old Year passes indeed! In a bit of a flurry since this morning preparing: laundry, dusting, tidying, dishwashing, finishing the 75th Etiquetteer column of the year, and putting 16 more Christmas cards in the mail. Anything sent after today will have to be a New Year’s card, but at least I’ve been able to mail a card to everyone who sent me one.

2) Tonight will be my first New Year’s Eve in my own home in over 30 years. So steak, baked potato, spinach, hollandaise, salad, poached pears, and a bottle of pink champagne at a formal table. I am not even going to attempt to get into my black tie. It was far too challenging last year; now that I’ve packed on the COVID19, it’s an impossibility.

2a) None of this is going to work unless I clear off this dining room table and find my blender.

2b) But I won’t be alone, because at 11 I’ll be zooming in with the bestest friends with whom I always spend New Year’s Eve. And it will be beautiful!

3) For A/V wallpaper, Dinner at Eight, Sunset Boulevard (of course!), and Noel Coward’s Cavalcade.

Wednesday Morning, 30 December -- 50+50=100

Fifty years ago today was the 50th wedding anniversary of my paternal grandparents, Ira and Mary Ella. Which means that 100 years ago today was their wedding, which took place in the parlor of Granny’s parents’ boardinghouse on Canal Boulevard in New Orleans. Granny wore a green traveling suit with a fur scarf, and Grampa was so poor he had to wear his doughboy uniform because he couldn’t afford a suit. (I should have thought about looking for the information sooner, but Heaven knows where it is in this house full of papers.)

Grampa in France.

He did provide an inexpensive gold ring, though, engraved inside “LOVE IS REFLECTED IN LOVE. To M.E.” Granny was not really much of a jewelry person, and she eventually gave this little ring to my father to use for himself when he married Mother. But Daddy was not much of a jewelry person either. He thought he had lost it. After Mother died, I remember turning his jewelry box upside down and giving it a vigorous shake. Among the basketball charms, never-worn cufflinks, and tie bars, Granny’s little ring revealed itself. I treasure it now.

The Evans sisters: Mary Ella (my granny), Fannie, Sister, Kate, Lal, and Johnnie. I believe they are outside the boardinghouse.

Aunt Betty once told me how they met. Granny was visiting friends in Opelousas, Grampa’s hometown. Grampa had a friend at the house where she was staying. While working in the kitchen, the girls saw Grampa coming up the walk. Granny took one look, turned to her friend, and said “That’s the man I’m going to marry.” And she did!

Granny and Grampa were both popular and loving people (but they could be stern with grandchildren), and they were “fruitful and multiplied:” five children and eighteen grandchildren. So somehow someone came up with the idea of a banquet for their 50th anniversary. (When you have just turned seven years old, these things just happen.) People came from near and far, and there was a play about their lives in which all the grandchildren had to appear as themselves. (I think Mother might have written it, but I don’t remember.) I remember us rehearsing at our house, and the crowd of people in our living room.

The banquet itself was held in one of the function rooms at the Chateau Charles on Highway 90, and it was at this event that I fell in love with an E-shaped banquet table. I don’t remember much about the evening (I talked to one cousin recently who doesn’t remember it at all), but I remember the bright lights, the smiling, everyone dressed in their best, and the occasion of getting to sit with all the grownups at that enormous, beautiful table.

Of course there were photos taken of family groups, and you already know how much I treasure the portrait above of all of us together. It makes me think of the hubbub of every Christmas Eve of my childhood, when everyone would be there, and everyone moving and talking at once. Granny, raised in a boardinghouse with six siblings, was always happiest with a crowd around, and I know Christmas Eve must have been the happiest night of the year for her. I’m the same way: I want everyone to be there.

And this is our little family that night. Daddy looks like he’s ready to go home to bed! And doesn’t Mother look beautiful? I remember that rust-colored suit; she would wear it to church on Sundays.

Today is not only a wedding anniversary. Four years ago this evening my father died, after a long decline. He had told me months before how much he wanted to see his parents. Today it is better for me to “ponder these things in my heart” rather than on the page. Tonight I’ll raise a glass in his memory, and to my family established throughout the nation, but who I hold close.