Lee Remick

Lee Remick, the actress, was born December 14 1935 in Quincy, Massachusetts.  She made her Broadway debut at age 18.

Remick made her film debut in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957).  She portrayed Betty Lou, a teenage baton twirler, who marries the protagonist, played by Andy Griffith.

Remick came to prominence portraying a rape victim whose husband is tried for killing her attacker in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959).  I consider this to be the best courtroom drama.

When her husband goes to bed early one evening after work, Laura (Remick), feeling bored and lonely, goes to a local bar to drink and play pinball.  Leaving, she is offered a ride by the proprietor who had previously befriended her and her husband.  On their way, he rapes and assaults her.

After arriving home, Laura tells her husband what happened.  He then goes to the bar and kills the rapist.  

Laura has several key scenes both before the trial and during it.  She flirts with her husband's attorney, Paul Biegler (James Stewart), and is intimidated by the prosecutor, Claude Dancer (George C. Scott).

In 1962, Lee Remick stars opposite Jack Lemmon in the romantic drama film Days of Wine and Roses.  They portray a couple who become alcoholics.  

There is a line in the movie that alcoholics often demonstrate obsessive behavior, pointing out that Kirsten's (Remick) previous passion for chocolate may have been the first sign of an addictive personality.  That doesn't apply to me.

Remick was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the above film, but it was won by Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker.  

Remick died of kidney cancer in 1991 at the age of 52.  Que pena!    

 

Behold a Pale Horse

Behold a Pale Horse is a 1964 American drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif and Anthony Quinn.  The story relates to the period in Spain and France twenty years after the Spanish Civil War.

Artiguez (Peck), a member of the defeated Republican forces, lives in exile in France and formerly conducted raids against the Franco government in Spain.  Vinolas (Quinn), a Spanish police officer, desperately wants to capture or kill Artiguez.  

A message is sent to Artiguez to come visit his dying mother in Spain.  It is a trap.  A priest (Sharif) is sent by the mother to tell her son not to come.  Artiguez comes any way.

On Saturday night, September 26, 1964, my brother Paul and I attended a screening of Behold a Pale Horse at a movie theater in Center City Philadelphia.  Just before the movie began, four large men sat down in the row directly in front of us.

Directly in front of me was Dick Modzelewski, a member of the Cleveland Browns football team that would play the hometown Eagles the next day.  Even though I only saw him from the back, I recognized him from his brush hair cut.  I was familiar with Modzelewski from his time with the New York football Giants, my favorite team.

The Browns beat the Eagles that Sunday.  I was in attendance at Franklin Field and saw Modzelewski a second time.  The Browns went on to win the NFL championship that year, 1964, the last time they did so.

I did not know that Modzelewski and I shared the name Blair, my first, his middle.  I also didn't know that he went to the University of Maryland, class of 1953, where my son Bret went, class of 2007.

Modzelewski died in 2018 at the age of 87.

I was reminded of all this when I saw Behold a Pale Horse recently on YouTube for the first time in more than 60 years.   

Paladin, Chapter 13

 INT. HOTEL LOBBY - NIGHT

PALADIN walks across lobby, climbs stairs to door of his room.  Enters his hotel room.  

INT. HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

As soon as he enters his dark hotel room, he realizes there is another intruder.  He coils up and draws his revolver.  Then he sees it's POLLYANNA sitting on the chair by the window.  She's dressed in attractive clothes.

PALADIN: First your husband, now you sneak into my room.  Didn't anybody teach either of you manners?

POLLYANNA: How come you told my husband we didn't sleep together in San Francisco?

PALADIN: I told him we didn't fuck.  That's such a crude word.  I never do that.  

POLLYANNA: Then, what the hell did we do back there?

PALADIN: That is for you and me to bury in our memories forever...never to discuss again.

POLLYANNA: Oh, yeah?

POLLYANNA starts to undress, first removing her dress, showing her undergarments.

POLLYANNA: You know, my husband is very boring in bed.  He doesn't give a shit whether I'm enjoying myself or not.  As you are aware, some men pride themselves in trying to please their women.

POLLYANNA is now topless, exposing her breasts.

PALADIN: I think you've gone far enough.  It wouldn't look so good if BIG DAN were to show up right now.  Do you know where he is?

POLLYANNA: I don't give a damn where he is.  I want you...now.

PALADIN: Well, you can't have me...now...or ever again.  I don't make love to people who lie.

POLLYANNA: Consider the $1,000 as a payment for such horizontal services.

PALADIN: Not gonna happen.

PALADIN grabs POLLYANNA forcefully and throws her out of his room along with her clothes.  

PALADIN: And don't come back.

POLLYANNA screams.

PALADIN locks door and window to prevent anymore unwelcome visitors.

POLLYANNA: Fuck you, you son of a bitch.

She quickly covers up as a couple of hotel guests arrive on the floor. 

JFK again

Early in September 1960, I was with my family in a Boston hotel lobby when U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Candidate for President of the United States, walked through it on his way out.  

On October 30, 1963, I was in the upper level of Convention Hall in Philadelphia to hear a speech given by President John F. Kennedy to a group of local members of the Democratic Party at a fund raising dinner.  I remember all the invited guests on the lower level of the Hall wore tuxedos.  The public sat up above and had to provide their own food and drink.

A little before 2 PM on Friday, November 22, 1963 (sixty-two years ago yesterday), I walked into my freshman English class in College Hall at the University of Pennsylvania.  Before the professor arrived to begin the class, one of my fellow students walked in with a transistor radio which was broadcasting the news.  He proclaimed that Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.  I remember my crazy first reaction was “What was he doing in Dallas?”  

We all, now including the professor, sat glued to our seats until we heard the official notification from the radio announcer that the President was dead.  The professor then cancelled class and left.  I returned to my freshman dorm and a weekend all Americans alive at the time will never forget.

The thing I remember most about JFK, besides the Cuban Missle Crisis, was his sense of humor, which was excellent.  He was the first president to have live regularly scheduled news conferences which I occasionally got to watch on TV.  There were 64 of them during his presidency which lasted 1,037 days, an average of one every 16 days.  JFK was glib and, whenever he could, he would elicit some laughter from the assembled journalists, usually of the self-deprecating kind.

As I did not have easy access to a TV, most of my recollections from those tragic days in November of 1963 were from radio and newspapers.  I didn’t see Lee Harvey Oswald, the arrested and accused assassin, shot to death by Jack Ruby in the Dallas police station, live on television.  

We Americans, after having been punched in the stomach, were all in a sort of trance, sleepwalking from moment to moment, incredulous of what had happened to us as a nation.  How would we get past this?  Many of my colleagues didn’t know much about who was the new president (Lyndon Baines Johnson) and few had any confidence in him. 

The thing that sticks most in my mind from that weekend was going to Franklin Field on my college campus to watch the home town Eagles play a football game against the Washington NFL franchise, the two worst teams in its Eastern Conference.  Unlike every other sporting event that weekend, the NFL decided not to cancel its games that Sunday, two days after President Kennedy had been assassinated.  

It was an extremely controversial decision.  As I had previously purchased a ticket and did not want to lose my investment, I along with 60,670 others entered the stadium to witness a meaningless game.  In a gesture to attempt to satisfy their critics, the NFL decided not to telecast any of its games as was normally the case.  Besides, most Americans were too busy watching the continuous news coverage of the assassination.

While I was waiting for the game to begin, I heard some of my fellow football fans in the stadium talk about the assassination of Oswald.  Years later, I would be able to watch a vídeo of this second killing for myself.  Before the game started, someone sang the Star Spangled Banner and virtually the entire assembled mass joined in.  It was a very moving experience.  Oh, by the way, the Eagles lost the game.  

Burgess Meredith

Burgess Meredith was born November 16, 1907 (118 years ago today) in Cleveland, Ohio.  It was the same year as John Wayne and my mother.

Burgess Meredith's stage performances on Broadway in New York City attracted the attention of several Hollywood film producers. Unlike most other movie actors, Meredith never signed a long-term contract with a single studio, preferring to work on individual film projects.

In 1939, Meredith portrayed George in the film Of Mice and Men.  To save his friend Lennie from a lynch mob, George kills him.

In 1941, Meredith is Harry in the Ginger Rogers romantic comedy, Tom, Dick and Harry.  With a last minute kiss, he wins the girl. 

In 1945, Meredith acted as Ernie Pyle, a real life journalist, in the drama, The Story of G.I. Joe.  Pyle is allowed to accompany C Company, 18th Infantry of the US Army all the way to the front lines against Germany during World War II.

In 1966, Meredith portrayed the villainous Penguin in that year's film version of Batman.

In 1976, Meredith won the part of Mickey, Rocky Balboa's trainer, in the box office hit, Rocky.  He had some great lines, such as "you're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder" plus "women weaken legs."  

Before he became famous, Rocky worked as a collector for a loan shark.  But it is not until Mickey calls him out for it that he truly sees he needs to change.

Mickey dismisses Rocky as someone with talent who became a "leg breaker" instead. When Rocky insists it is a way to make a living, Mickey spits back "It's a waste of life."  That is one of my favorite movie lines.

Meredith's last film role was Grandpa, near the end of his life, in Grumpier Old Men (1995), as Jack Lemmon's father.  "You realize that pretty soon you'll be gone and that all you'll have is the experiences...that's all there is."

Burgess Meredith died September 9, 1997.        

    

  

Phillies Karen

I love baseball.  And I love going to baseball games...at any level, Little League, high school, college and professional, both Major and Minor League.

The ultimate baseball game souvenir is a baseball batted into the stands.  Of course, a home run ball is preferable to a foul ball.  In all the times I went to a baseball game, I never caught a ball, neither a home run nor a foul.

In early this September, a Philadelphia Phillies fan, who now lives in south Florida, attended a Phillies-Miami Marlins baseball game at LoanDepot Park in Miami with his family.  

In the fourth inning, a Phillie hit a home run into the left field stands near where the fan was sitting.  He went to where the ball landed and grabbed it and returned to where his family was sitting and gave the ball to his young son.  

Soon, a woman, wearing a Phillies jersey, approached the fan and berated him for entering her space and "stealing" the souvenir that was rightfully hers.  She demanded the ball.  Normally, in such situations, possession is what counts.

The media named her Phillies Karen (a pejorative slang term used to describe a middle-class, often middle-aged, white woman who is perceived as entitled, demanding, and who uses her privilege to get her way, often at the expense of others).

"She just screamed in my ear, ‘That’s my ball,’ like, super loud,”  said the fan. “I jumped out of my skin and I was like, you know, like ‘Why are you here?’ You know, ‘Go away.’”  

After a brief, tense exchange, the fan took the ball from his son’s mitt and gave it to her, and she walked away.  “I had a fork in the road: either do something I was probably going to regret or be a dad and show my son how to deescalate the situation.”

This reminded me of a similar event when my son Bret was young and playing basketball for MQ-FM.  I was asked to be one of two coaches at the annual all-star game.

I had 11 players on my team, including my son.  11 is an awkward number for a sport in which 5 players can be on the court at a time.

I was given no advice nor information as to how to substitute my players.  The other coach was substituting his players rapidly, almost every minute.  I had devised a different system which I thought was fair.  

Because the two teams were substituting differently, some spectators became frustrated.  One of the league directors approached me shouting angrily.  He demanded I start substituting like the other coach or he would replace me.  I tried to explain my alternative strategy, but he wouldn't listen.  

My immediate idea was to tell him to go f__k himself, but then I looked at my son sitting on the floor.  I didn't want to do anything to embarrass him or me.  I did what the director wanted me to do.  I de-escalated the situation.  And that was the last time I volunteered to help MQ-FM. 

The Parent Trap

The Parent Trap is a 1961 American romantic comedy film.  It stars Hayley Mills in a dual role as a pair of teenage identical twins who switch places with each other in order to reunite their divorced parents, played by Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith.

Teenagers Sharon McKendrick (Mills) and Susan Evers (Mills) meet at a girls summer camp. Their identical appearance causes jealousy, resentment, and a rivalry in which they continually get each other into trouble and disrupt camp activities. As punishment, they must spend the remainder of the camp season rooming and dining together in isolation. 

Sharon and Susan overcome their mutual dislike when they realize they are identical twin sisters, whom their parents, Mitch (Keith) and Maggie (O'Hara), separated upon divorcing shortly after their birth. Eager to meet the parents from whom they were separated, they decide to cut their hair identically, coach each other on their lives, and switch places.

Hayley Mills was born April 18, 1946 (8 months after me) in London, England.  Both of her parents were actors. In 1959, she was cast in a film (Tiger Bay) in which her father (Sir John Mills) co-starred.

Mills was given the lead role in Pollyanna (1960).  The role of the orphaned "glad girl" who moves in with her aunt catapulted her to stardom in the United States and earned her a special Academy Award of Juvenile Oscar, the last person to win the accolade. 

In the summer of 1961, The Parent Trap was featured at the Oswego Theater.  I must have seen it at least a half a dozen times.  Why?

I developed a crush on Hayley Mills.  I even fantasized about how I would go to Hollywood where we would meet and become boyfriend/girlfriend.  It never happened.

Strangely, I never saw her in any of her other movies.  It was as if I fell in love with her characters in The Parent Trap and didn't want to mess up my mind with her being something different.

Occasionally, I hear in the media about Hayley Mills and am glad she is alive and well.  I am then reminded about that wonderful summer of 1961.