Paladin, Chapter 17

EXT - DAY. RANCH

POLLYANNA arrives at the ranch on horseback riding fast.  Her husband is waiting for her.  She dismounts.

BIG DAN: Where you been?

POLLYANNA: In town.

BIG DAN: Doin' what?

POLLYANNA: None of your business.

BIG DAN grabs her.

BIG DAN: Tell me the truth.

POLLYANNA: Let go of me, you big ape.

BIG DAN slaps her face.

POLLYANNA:  You'll pay for that.

BIG DAN: I'm waiting for answers.

POLLYANNA: My business is my business.  You'll get nothing from me.  Why don't you hit me again?  Does that make you feel like a big man?

BIG DAN: I am a big man.  I don't need you for that.

BIG DAN throws her down on the ground in frustration and heads into the ranch house.  POLLYANNA dusts her self off, gets up and sits on the porch.  In her anger, she recalls an event from her past.

EXT. UNKNOWN LOCATION - DAY

POLLYANNA is alone in isolated location with only some targets in the distance.  A revolver is strapped to her waist.  Every few seconds she rapidly draws her revolver and quickly fires it, successfully hitting the target.  After emptying her gun, she reloads and continues practicing rapidly drawing, firing and hitting the target.

__________

I will be on vacation next week.  Next blog post will be April 5th.    

Ides of March

Today is March 15th.  In ancient Roman culture it would be the Ides of March.  

The Ides were a monthly reference point falling on the 15th day of March, May, July, and October, and on the 13th day of all other months. Derived from the Latin for "to divide," the Ides originally marked the full moon. 

I learned about the Ides thanks to my Oswego High School Latin teacher, Ruth Young.

In modern times, the Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Senate.

Julius Caesar was assassinated because a group of Roman senators feared his immense, unprecedented power would destroy the Roman Republic and restore a monarchy.  

As many as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were involved. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar on the Ides of March. 

On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, "Well, the Ides of March are come", implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied, "Aye, they are come, but they are not gone."

This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March."

Barbra

Barbara Joan (Barbra) Streisand was born April 24, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Diana Ida (née Rosaen; 1908–2002) and Emanuel Streisand (1908–1943). Her mother had been a soprano in her youth and considered a career in music, but later became a school secretary.  Her father was a high school teacher at the same school, where they first met.  Streisand's family is Jewish.

In August 1943, a few months after Streisand's first birthday, her father died at age 34 from complications from an epileptic seizure, possibly the result of a head injury years earlier.  The family fell into near poverty, with her mother working as a low-paid bookkeeper. 

As an adult, Streisand remembered those early years as always feeling like an "outcast", explaining, "Everybody else's father came home from work at the end of the day. Mine didn't."  

Her mother tried to pay their bills but could not give her daughter the attention she craved: "When I wanted love from my mother, she gave me food," Streisand says.

In September 1960 Streisand auditioned as a singer at the Bon Soir nightclub in Manhattan, after which she was signed up at $125 ($1,368 today) a week. It became her first professional engagement, where she was the opening act for comedian Phyllis Diller. 

She recalls it was the first time she had been in that kind of upscale environment: "I'd never been in a nightclub until I sang in one."

Streisand opened on Broadway on March 26, 1964 with an acclaimed performance as entertainer Fanny Brice in Funny Girl at the Winter Garden Theatre. The show introduced two of her signature songs, "People" and "Don't Rain on My Parade".

Eight months later I almost had a chance to see Barbra at the Winter Garden, but didn't.  If I had played my cards right, I think I would have.

I was dating, off and on, another Jewish girl from Brooklyn.  I called for a date, but she couldn't because she was going home that weekend (from Penn).  

I hatched a plan.  I would go to New York as well, but to see the Penn-Columbia football game.  I would call her after the game to say hello.  I did and she invited me to have dinner with her and her parents at Barbetta's.  She said if she knew I would be in New York I could have joined them at the Winter Garden to see Barbra.  

When I called for the date, I should have invited her to the football game.  Even if she couldn't go, she would have known I would be in New York and I would have had my evening with Barbra.  I'm smarter today than I was in 1964 at age 19.  

Suddenly

Suddenly is a 1954 black and white American noir crime film.  The drama stars Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden.

The story concerns a small California town (by the name of Suddenly) whose tranquility is shattered when the train of the president of the United States is scheduled to make a stop there.  A hired assassin takes over a home that provides a perfect vantage point from which to assassinate the president.

This is Sinatra's first film after his Academy Award winning performance as Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity in 1953.  In Suddenly, he portrays a hired assassin, John Baron.

Baron boasts about the Silver Star he won in WWII for killing a large number of the enemy. He explains that he has nothing against the president but is being paid $500,000 (over $6,000,000 today) to kill him and money is his only motive.

It is worth noting that the president's name is never mentioned.

Sterling Hayden is the local sheriff of Suddenly.  He is also romantically involved with the widow who lives in the house Baron takes over.

Hayden's memorable films include The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Killing (1956), Dr. Strangelove (1964) and The Godfather (1972).