Sunday, October 11, 2009

Ending Every Sentence with a Proposition

When you get less than six hours sleep, you need to plan your day accordingly; no major intellectual or physical challenges; better to just slide through the day, even when it's a beautiful one like today.

Or at least that was how I justified starting my day with a romantic comedy. A film fan friend from northside rode over and we biked to the Bowtie Cinema to see that Doris Day/Rock Hudson classic, "Pillow Talk." 1959, holy crap, what a different world that was! Doris had matching gloves and hats and muffs for every ensemble. Rock romanced girls by taking them to dinner, then to a club for dancing and then for a drive; who puts that much effort into dating these days? Single girls in NYC had maids (the always hilarious character actor, Thelma Ritter) and some people had party lines because the city couldn't put in trunk lines fast enough to satisfy the demand for private telephone lines. My friend hadn't even heard of party lines, but then he's a few years younger and not as up on his cultural history.

One of the best scenes comes in a diner where a couple of customers are supposed to "punch" Tony Randall's character as he sits consoling Doris. Apparently, the actor actually hit Randall, knocking him unconscious and the shot was so good the director used it. I hate to admit it, but it was pretty cool to see a person hit for real and pass out. A girl like me (or a guy like my friend)doesn't often see such a thing in one's own life(or necessarily care to).

But, who am I trying to kid here? I was there for the romance, not the fisticuffs. As the Thelma Ritter character put it, "If there's anything worse than a woman living alone, it's a woman saying she likes it."

2 comments:

  1. Once, when I was about nine or ten a distant relative came over to my house and asked for my grandmother. That he, an adult in his mid-thirties was crying struck me as strange. Following her to the porch where this relative was now seated I noticed that he was holding his left forearm. While my grandmother started yelling at him for only coming over when he was in trouble or needing something I noticed what appeared to be a hole on the inside forearm. He had been shot by his father and wanted help. To this day I remember exactly what that wound looked like and how unsettling it was. Indeed, seeing someone actually hurt is not a pleasant sight.

    gabake01

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  2. Let's just say seeing a man knocked out cold once was enough

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