dual personalities

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July 5, 2012

Good news!

by chuckofish

July is Leslie Howard month on TCM.com! Here is the line-up for the Star of the Month.

So set your DVR for Tuesdays in July when they’ll be showing some well-known Leslie Howard movies like Pygmalion, Of Human Bondage and The Scarlet Pimpernel and some not-so-often seen ones like Berkeley Square and The Animal Kingdom. What a treasure trove!

You can see my favorite Leslie Howard movie The Petrified Forest (1936) next Tuesday–so mark your calendar! This movie was based on the play by Robert Emmet Sherwood, which Leslie Howard had starred in on Broadway. He insisted that Humphrey Bogart reprise his role as Duke Mantee, “the world-famous killer” in the movie. He did and the rest, as you know, is history. Bogart was duly grateful and even named his daughter after Leslie years later.

Bogart has lots of good lines which he makes the most of:

“Since I’ve been a grown up, I’ve spent most of my life in prison… I’ll probably spend the rest of it dead.”

and

“You can talk sitting down; I seen ya’ doing it.”

But Howard, as the dreamy Alan Squier, gets plenty of his own:

“So that was once a tree? Hmmm. Petrified forest, eh? Suitable haven for me. Well, perhaps that’s what I’m destined to become, an interesting fossil for future study.”

and

Gramp Maple: “But let me tell you one thing, Mr. Squier. The woman don’t live or ever did live that’s worth five thousand dollars!”

Alan Squier: “Well, let me tell you something. You’re a forgetful old fool. Any woman’s worth everything that any man has to give: anguish, ecstasy, faith, jealousy, love, hatred, life or death. Don’t you see that’s the whole excuse for our existence? It’s what makes the whole thing possible and tolerable.”

I even included an Alan Squeir quote on my senior page: “I had a vague idea I’d like to see the Pacific Ocean and perhaps drown in it. But that depends.” My mother raised an eyebrow at my teenage angst, but no one else ever commented!

Above all else, Leslie Howard was a great British patriot, who used his Hollywood fame to further the cause of England in WWII, by making several propaganda films like Pimpernel Smith and The First of the Few.

He died at the age of 50 in 1943 when the plane he was in was shot down by the Nazis. They thought he was a spy and they were correct. According to Sir William Samuel Stephenson, the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, the Germans knew about Howard’s mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.

I’m surprised no one has ever thought to make a movie about Leslie Howard. Wouldn’t he be an interesting subject?

8 Comments
July 4, 2012

I hear America singing

by chuckofish

As you know, the United States Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on this day in 1776. In our family we have always made a Big Thing about the 4th of July, because we are a patriotic family (of course) and because it is our brother’s birthday.

We always had a shindig (with favors) and set off firecrackers galore and other explosives. We blared Sousa marches from our open windows. Normally a quiet, reserved family, we were LOUD.

Sadly, we are experiencing a drought this year in our flyover state and so we will not participate in any of these fun activities. We may play some patriotic tunes inside this year, but God forbid we should open a window! The temperature is broiling out there. And we won’t be setting off any of our own fireworks either as there is a serious danger of fire due to the dryness issue. Almost all the local displays are canceled. Sigh. Only the big one on the big river will go on.

We will be sure to tip a glass or two, however, in toasts to our absent family and especially our absent bro who turns 61!

Since July 4 will be celebrated indoors this year, we will no doubt spend it watching movies first enjoyed with our brother: Stagecoach, Tall in the Saddle, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, How the West Was Won, El Dorado, The War Wagon…Sounds good to me.

It is also, we should note, the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), Stephen Foster (1826), Calvin Coolidge (1872), Louis B. Mayer (1882), and Stephen Boyd (1931)! Reason enough (and more) to party hearty.

P.S. I’ll be wearing my flag pin, made by daughter #1 years ago at Philmont. I know you’re jealous.

3 Comments
July 3, 2012

Sibs

by chuckofish

My dual personality wrote about our brother the other day, posting some pictures from her graduation weekend back in 1981(!). Here is another photo of the three of us just before we were about to leave for Bradley International Field in Hartford in our brother’s blue station wagon (the “Blue Goose”). We look a little worse for wear, don’t you think? We’d probably been up late celebrating. We were some wild and crazy guys back then.

7 Comments
July 2, 2012

Embarrassing picture Monday

by chuckofish

It’s been a long time since our last “Embarrassing picture Monday post”, hasn’t it?

Recently I came upon this classic of daughter #1 on her way to a youth group “mystery” party at church when she was in middle school. She was all dressed up to play some part (femme fatale?).

She hasn’t changed so very much, has she?

4 Comments
June 30, 2012

He’s a Yankee Doodle Dandy

by chuckofish

and an excellent brother to boot! When I visited him in Maine, he took me exploring in a canoe

Every mountain man carries a side arm

and when I graduated from college he took me to climb my first mountain, Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Back then, he climbed a mountain a day.

Above the tree line and the bugs

I, by contrast, was out of shape, improperly attired (no hiking boots) and generally horrified by the swarms of black flies. He was endlessly patient, though, and just kept encouraging me to “take one step at a time and go slowly, but keep moving”. I made it and have to admit that I was very proud of myself. Here I am about half way up, trying to look game.

Are we there yet?

He also taught his sisters how to shoot. Hey, dual personality, do you remember the time we went plinking and the dog came out of nowhere and relieved himself on your down vest, which you had taken off? I have never laughed harder. I couldn’t find a picture with my darling sister in it, but here I am ready to take action against unsuspecting rotten vegetables:

And, finally, what is cooler than a brother who plays the fiddle at the top of a waterfall in the middle of the woods?

a waterfall somewhere in Maine

So cheers to the best brother — and happy (early) birthday!

8 Comments
June 29, 2012

Hot as satan’s hoof

by chuckofish

Last week I replaced the pillows on my wicker sofa in the Florida Room. Unfortunately, it has been way too hot (108-degrees yesterday!) to enjoy this room except in the early hours of the day. Zut alors!

We are in the middle of a drought as well. Maybe tonight would be a good night to watch “The Rainmaker”–that’s the movie (1956) with Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster, not the John Grisham one released in 1997 with Matt Damon. Or maybe not. It’s not a great movie.

I must say I’m feeling a little like Lizzie Curry these days.

What would be a good choice of movie to watch tonight? That is, of course, if the electricity holds out!

(Props to the boy for using his blog name in my post.)

12 Comments
June 28, 2012

Lest we forget

by chuckofish

Earlier this week the boy was a volunteer escort on an “Honor Flight” to Washington D.C. You can read all about it on his blog here.

This is an awesome program. Honor Flight Network is a non-profit organization created solely to honor America’s veterans for all their sacrifices. They transport veterans to Washington, D.C. to visit and reflect at their memorials. Top priority is given to the senior veterans – World War II survivors, along with those other veterans who may be terminally ill. Check out their website here.

Pretty cool, don’t you think?

3 Comments
June 27, 2012

It’s good to be curious

by chuckofish

I hope you enjoy this “remixed” Mr. Rogers as much as I did!

Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) was an American educator, Presbyterian minister, songwriter, author, and television host. He was most famous for creating and hosting Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968–2001).

In 2002 he gave the commencement address at Dartmouth College (which he had attended many years before). It was a good speech. Here’s a snippet:

I’d like to give you all an invisible gift. A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some, like my astronomy professor, may even be in Heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you and encouraged you and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside yourself. And I feel that you deserve quiet time on this special occasion to devote some thought to them. So let’s just take a minute in honor of those who have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute.

Whomever you’ve been thinking about, imagine how grateful they must be that during your silent times you remember how important they are to you. It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our lives from which we make our choices is very good stuff.

Good stuff, indeed!

P.S. I found this YouTube treasure on the wonderful SouleMama blog. Check it out here.

2 Comments
June 26, 2012

To dance beneath the diamond sky

by chuckofish

Our mother died twenty-four years ago today. She was 62 years old. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and that I don’t miss her.

She was, indeed, a pilgrim and a stranger in this world, but I like to think of her in heaven, dancing “beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands…” My mother was no fan of Bob Dylan. She feared the change he heralded, but she did like “Mr. Tambourine Man” a lot and that line in particular. I always thought it described her alter-ego perfectly.

Here is a poem that I found in one of her notebooks. It seems appropriate today.

Life

I made a posie, while the day ran by:
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But time did becken to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away
And wither’d in my hand.

My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Times gentle admonition:
Who did so sweetly deaths sad taste convey
Making my minde to smell my fatall day;
Yet sugring the suspicion.

Farewell deare flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye liv’d, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my sent be good, I care not, if
It be as short as yours.

–George Herbert

6 Comments
June 25, 2012

They died with their boots on

by chuckofish

I missed Errol Flynn’s birthday last week on June 20, so I thought I would give him a shout out today on the anniversary of the battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand.

They Died With Their Boots On, a highly fictionalized version of George Armstrong Custer’s life, is nonetheless one of the best of Flynn’s 8 pairings with the inimitable Olivia de Haviland. It is also the last of the movies they made together. Made in 1941 and directed by Raoul Walsh, it features a veritable who’s who of Warner Brothers character actors, including a young Anthony Quinn as Crazy Horse, Sydney Greenstreet, Hattie McDaniel, Regis Toomey, Charley Grapewin, and on and on. But it is Olivia and Errol that make the movie.

I wanted to show the scene where the two part for the last time before George leaves for what we in the audience know will be his death in battle at the the Little Big Horn. (The scene is unfortunately unavailable.) It is a genuinely touching scene by two great actors. Errol is always at his best with Olivia; he seems to be trying and not just calling it in, so to speak.

It is also a particularly poignant scene because we know this couple will never star in another movie together and that Errol’s career will quickly dissolve as his personal life begins the inevitable downward spiral to an early death. As children watching, we knew this because our mother was a big Errol Flynn fan and she told us. Indeed, Errol Flynn’s life was in itself a cautionary tale–beauty, brains and talent are not enough. Olivia de Haviland knew this and she wisely distanced herself from the doomed Flynn.

In a side note, our great-grandfather, the original ANC, fought at the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, 1876. A youth fresh from Vermont, he was the trumpeteer.

6 Comments