dual personalities

Quelle lovely, quiet weekend! I had no plans so I caught up on my house/yard work, read a lot and watched several movies. Our wonderful weather continued and I spent a lot of time in my Florida room, which is usually off-limits in August because of our flyover heat.

Meanwhile, daughter #2 celebrated the Rocky Mountain wedding of her oldest bff in Denver.

Three of those gals are now old married ladies–hard to believe!

Since I am in-between Longmire books (and waiting for #12 from the library) I read Fair Land, Fair Land by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. This is the third and final book in his trilogy of historical fiction on the discovery and settling of the American West. Written when he was in his eighties and published in 1982, Mr. Guthrie had rounded out a life’s work that began in 1946 with the highly acclaimed The Big Sky. In this book he resolves the fates of two of his most famous protagonists, Boone Caudill and Dick Summers. (As you know, Dick Summers is one of my favorite characters in fiction.)  Although not as strong and polished in my opinion as The Big Sky and The Way West, I enjoyed the book until the end, which was needlessly abrupt. I get it that Guthrie was “mourning the passing of the West into the destructive hands of the white man.” He made his point–and it is a good one. I just wish he had tied up a few loose ends. And did Dick have to meet so meaningless an end? No, he emphatically did not.

I then started Precious and Grace, the next in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Funnily enough, it also has a main character who, like Dick Summers, is frequently looking back to better days.

She was remembering what Gabarone had been like in those days of greater intimacy. She thought of it as the quiet time; the time of cattle; the time of bicycles rather than cars; the time when the arrival of the day’s single plane was an event; the time of politeness and courtesy.

Sigh. Aren’t we all?

I watched several good movies including The Undefeated (1969) starring John Wayne and Rock Hudson and a score of fine supporting actors. This is the movie that Hudson always claimed saved his foundering career. He was eternally grateful to John Wayne.

I remember seeing this movie when it came out, but I had not seen it in a long time and it was immensely enjoyable. The script by James Lee Barrett is darn good and there is a lot of action and smart repartee between the two stars. Hudson was 44 years old and way to young to be put out to film pasture.

I also watched two movies I had dvr’d starring Simone Signoret: The Deadly Affair (1966), a John Le Carre spy thriller, and the star-filled Ship of Fools (1965). I enjoyed them both.

I had never seen The Deadly Affair, which stars James Mason in the George Smiley part and Maximilian Schell as–big surprise–the communist agent. It is a dreary British movie, typical of the mid-1960s realism school full of “shocking” characters like Mason’s nymphomaniac wife. But it is well done and I enjoyed it, mostly because I could imagine my parents going to see it at the movies and enjoying it. They loved those “sophisticated” cold war films.

I had seen Ship of Fools and read Katherine Anne Porter’s book, which was a bestseller in its day.

I always found Oskar Werner very appealing in this movie even as an adolescent–so sad and sensitive. Lee Marvin is pretty hilarious as the American ballplayer, and Vivien Leigh in her final film is spot-on perfect.  There is a lot of “acting” going on in this movie, and the message is pretty heavy-handed, but Ms. Leigh is terrific and worth watching the film for.

The wee babes came over for dinner on Sunday night with their parents. I gave Lottiebelle her first cherry accessory from the Women’s Exchange.

How cute are they/is she?

Now it is back to the salt mine. Have a great week!

*Col. John Henry Thomas in The Undefeated.