Merry Christmas once again. Elizabeth, I hope you had a nice holiday in whatever way you celebrated, which I imagine was with your family. I went over to Pearl's, and this time my sister Vickie came over too, with her husband and eldest son (my nephew), so it was a reprise of our recent Thanksgiving dinner, only with tri-tip instead of turkey, and minus my other nephew who was working. Pearl's daughter created a very nice meal for us, and of course the wine and conversation both flowed.
I got home at about 6pm, totally beached, and was ready to take a short nap, or at least lie down and read one of my books for an hour or so, but then........
I looked in the fridge and saw that I was out of milk. If it was just me, I could go without milk for a day, or even longer. But the thing is that my coffee cannot go without milk. Not even for a single day. My days of being a black coffee drinker ended decades ago, and of course like you (referring to the General You here), I must have my coffee upon waking. It's not up for debate.
So, what to do? I didn't wanna get back in the car and drive anywhere. I was ready to go into a food coma. So I Googled the Christmas hours of our two most prominent local supermarkets - Ralphs and Vons - figuring they'd all be closed up......but Vons was open! Til 7pm. I had 45 minutes to score the all important milk. Strangely, probably because I am a bit nutty, I decided to walk down to Vons. It's not far, a little over a half mile from me, but the wind was blowing and it was chilly, and I was gonna be carrying a gallon of milk back to the pad. I am stubborn that way, however. I drive so much everyday, and in so much traffic with so many stoplights that I really hate driving if I don't have to. So even though I was a beached whale, I walked down to Vons, bought my gallon of milk and also a gallon of water, and carried one in each hand back home.
Man, what an achievement. Right? :)
But at least I will have milk for my coffee in the morning, and I won't have to use tap water to make it.
Remember the days when you could use tap water for everything? You probably still can, unless you live in Flint, but what the heck.
When I got back home, I did beach myself for the next 90 minutes, laying down to alternately nap and read my RFK book "Shadow Play". It contains no information I wasn't already aware of, but it's a good read anyway. I do a lot of JFK/RFK books and will have two more coming in the New Year. I think we've got JFK pretty much solved, but the Bobby Kennedy case is still a mystery.
By 9pm I had emerged from my coma and was ready for a movie, the romantic drama "Marjorie Morningstar" (1958), starring a now grown-up Natalie Wood (remember that we had just seen her as a child in "Miracle On 34th Street" a few nights ago). Here she is in the lead role as Marjorie Morgenstern, a nice Jewish girl from an upper-middle class New York family. She works as a summer camp counselor and also participates in a small theatrical company headed up by her witty and more worldly friend Carolyn Jones (who would go on to fame as "Morticia Addams"). When Jones suggests to Marjorie that they row a canoe across the summer camp's lake, to get to the resort on the other side, Marjorie jumps at the idea, because an "important" playwright works there at another slightly bigger theater. He is Gene Kelly, all muscular Irish dancing charm. He is 46 in real life, playing 32, and he is an artistic basket case. He is handsome, charms women by the dozen, but runs from commitment and cannot even finish the play he is working on. He even refers to himself as a "Peter Pan", for whom a syndrome was named in the 1980s. This is maybe the first time that term was used in the context of an artist who cannot or will not "toe the line" and "grow up", get a real American job and "quit dreaming".
The thing with Gene Kelly is that he really does have talent, but he seems to be bi-polar and can't stop shooting himself in the foot. Once he meets beautiful Marjorie, a dozen years his junior, he falls hopelessly in love, and yet he cannot commit to her, he cheats on her, he drinks heavily.....and still she returns to him because he represents a life of artistic freedom, which she feels in her soul but which her conservative religious parents are against. They want her to marry a nice doctor or lawyer, the old cliche story. She is completely smitten with the brooding Kelly, though, and no matter how erratic his behavior, she always seems to be chasing him down, or vice versa. Meanwhile, she has other suitors, most notably a tall, nerdy playwright played by Martin Milner (of "Adam-12" fame), who has studied under Gene Kelly and who has not outperformed him. Milner's plays have been Broadway hits. Kelly is still floundering. Milner carries a torch for Marjorie, she does not reciprocate. She loves Gene Kelly no matter what, even though, in the words of one Broadway producer after an angry Kelly meltdown, "this guy is a screwball".
He clearly is one. So what will Marjorie do? Will she heed the advice of her parents and marry a nice stable professional man? Will she finally accept the clumsy advances of the nerdy but successful Milner, who could actually get her on Broadway? Or will she continue to hang in there with the continuing psychodrama that is her romance with Gene Kelly?
It's a hell of a story. Natalie Wood was destined for superstardom after this role and she carries the movie, playing against a slightly wooden yet often crazed Kelly. Martin Milner and Carolyn Jones in their supporting roles both show great acting range in difference from their TV characters, and many other less well known actors fill out an excellent cast. "Marjorie Morningstar" was the kind of Big Studio romance you'd have seen in the late 50s, when societal norms were beginning to be questioned.
It goes on a bit too long and could have benefited from a fifteen minute trimming, but overall it was a very fine picture, a romance that examines the psychological aspects of falling in love from a young woman's point of view, a nice young girl whose heart is untarnished by cynicism and who has her own dream of a life in the theater.
Two Big Thumbs Up, then, for "Marjorie Morningstar", despite the minor quibble of length. ////
This has certainly been a wonderful Christmas Season. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Maybe next year we will spend it together. Whatcha think? xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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