Esther of a Thousand Ideas

GOOD QUEEN ESTHER
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

~ Esther and Mordechai ~
Early 3rd century (244 CE) Roman Painting / Wood Panel
Dura-Europos Synagogue, Syria

Should you need a refresher course
on Esther's complicated dilemma,
please check out my daily blog from a year ago:

Don't Mess With Esther

. . . including the story as I learned it,
as depicted in my mother's childhood Bible storybooks.

You can also Click here for a helpful retelling of the conflict,
and here for an explanation of Esther's
role in the celebration of Purim.

****************

Artistic portrayals of Esther [and Vashti]

Both of the following
by Rembrandt (1606 - 69)

Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther, 1660

Haman Begging the Mercy of Esther, 1660

****************

Poetic portrayals of Esther and Vashti

Both of the following
by Stacey Zisook Robinson

Book of Esther: A Poem

That blush on my cheek?
It's paint,
And I have glittered my eyes
And robed myself in the finery
of silk and gossamer,
lapis and gold--
And whored myself for your salvation.

You asked for no thoughts.
You merely offered my body
to the king--
My life forfeit
If my beauty failed.

You asked for no ideas
And I gave you none,
Though I had a thousand,
And ten thousand more. [emphasis added]

Diplomacy was played on the field of my body,
The battle won in the curve of my hip
And the satin of my skin,
Fevered dreams of lust
And redemption.

That blush on my cheeks?
It is the stain of victory
And of my shame.

&

Vashti: A Poem for Purim

I remember when he crooned,
Come, dance for me!
And I would,
just for him.

And Oh! It was
glorious, all silk and
heat and lithesome.
I moved like fire
I moved like water

And later, he moved
with me, a different kind
of heat, and he called me
his queen.

When did crooning
turn to calling,
and calling to demand?

Dance, he says,
Dance for me, and move
your hips,
and wet your lips
and come - as if I were
his pet, a bitch to lap up
praise from her master,
kept on a collar and leash.

But I am queen.
I am fire,
and water,
and lithe.

I will not dance
when you call.

****************

Further intriguing connections include

1. a sci - fi character named Vashti
in E. M. Forster's 1909 story "The Machine Stops"

&

2. a three - part poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox,
produced on Broadway in 1906 as The Drama of Mizpah:

"The Revolt of Vashti"
"The Choosing of Esther"
"Honeymoon Scene"
[you can read the poems under Comments]

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Memento Mori

REMEMBER, OH THOU MAN
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

An important reminder for both Lent and the Ides of March,
"Memento mori" translates as "Remember you must die."

For this Fortnightly, I am recycling the following timely concepts because we are halfway through Lent and I need to remind myself. As I've said before, I remain perpetually perplexed by the inadequacy with which I have seen many elders approach their end - of - life, even though they've had a lifetime of eight decades or more leading up to it. I'm never quite sure how a bad diagnosis or a health calamity can come to anyone -- aside from the very young amongst us -- "as a total shock" or "a complete surprise" (those cliched phrases of denial). "It came out of nowhere" or "I didn't see it coming." Really? I mean, haven't we always seen it coming? -- especially once we surpass that biblical estimate of threescore years and ten.

One of the best ways to prepare, it seems to me, is read a book or two, watch some movies. The concept does not require excessive sophistication: you could start with Little Women, Old Yeller, Jesus Christ Superstar. So many characters dying all the time, right? Reading -- and contemplating what you have read -- will greatly enchance your comprehension of mortality, both your own and that of others. The following passages, each taken from a previous blogpost, serve as reminders that our days are numbered.


1. From Dust Thou Art

A a deep thought by Jack Handey
from The Lost Deep Thoughts
"Life is a constant battle
between the heart and the brain.
But guess who wins.
The skeleton."


2. Writerly

Death in the Afternoon
by Ernest Hemingway
". . . all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and . . . no true-story teller . . . would keep that from you" (from Chapter 9).

Foreword to the Second Edition of
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
"And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: 'How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of our Final End?' "


3. One Hundred Years From Now

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
from The American Scholar [See more.]:
An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge,
August 31, 1837
"So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean. Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing."

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)
CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios
from A Commencement Address delivered at Stanford University,
June 12, 2005
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."


4. Life or Death Matter

"Something is going to get all of us. We will all die. Healing involves our response to this certainty -- our understanding of our place in the universe and our purpose in this life." ~ Dick Wall


5. Altering Events " . . . years of
Sleepless nights and months of uneasy
Days will be rolled into
An altering event called the
'Good old days.' And you will not
Be able to visit them even with an invitation
Since that is so you must face your presence""
~ Maya Angelou ~

6. Michael Lipsey

"There is no ego too large to fit into a standard grave."

Repeated thanks to dear Michael
for so generously allowing me to share his
artistry, witticisms, and wisdom on my blogs:
Quotidian, Fortnightly, Kitti's List

7. Duo Dickinson

from "Ash Wednesday and the Baby Boomer"
February 12, 2024
"As the death toll of our generation keeps climbing, the debate, conversation, and all other distractions from our mortality are coming to an end, our end."

[In keeping with my continued theme of Connection & Coincidence, you should also check out what my friend Duo has to say about Incidence & Coincidence]


8. Nadia Bolz - Weber

from "You're going to die: A sermon for All Saints in a time of war.
November 6, 2023 [intended for All Saints, but fits right in with Lent]
"But while the false promises of immortality through self-improvement might sell product, they do nothing for us in any real way other than to make us feel like we can avoid the most inevitable thing in the world: That you will die."


9. StoryPeople

PERFECT ENDING
I'm not sure how it's going to turn out,
except I'll die in the end, she said.
So, really, what could go wrong?


10. And a closing thought from Henri Nouwen

Did I offer peace today?
Did I bring a smile to someone's face?
Did I say words of healing?
Did I let go of my anger and resentment?
Did I forgive? Did I love?
These are the real questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One more directive that I would add to Nouwen's list:

Did I contemplate my mortality today?

"Cold, indeed: and labor lost . . . "

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, March 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Leap Day Wizard Dreams

THE ONCE AND FUTURE WIZARD STORE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Chetopa, Kansas

Bissextile Day is here -- February 29th, the Leap Day of our Leap Year! A day for lords a leaping, and leaping lizards and leaping wizards, and leaping across the U.S.A.

Across Kansas

My family slept those level miles
but like a bell rung deep till dawn
I drove down an aisle of sound,
nothing real but in the bell,
past the town where I was born.

Once you cross a land like that
you own your face more: what the light
struck told a self; every rock
denied all the rest of the world.
We stopped at Sharon Springs and ate—

My state still dark, my dream too long to tell.

by Kansas - born poet William Stafford
I wonder if Stafford and his family ever drove through Chetopa and stopped by Wizzard of Odds? I like the way that he concludes his poem with a reference to his "state" (of mind? or State of Kansas?) and also with a recollection of a "dream too long to tell."

Another connection:

Driving Through Kansas
~for Garry Ritzky

One knoll:
a handful of mourners
crying somebody's dream.

Beyond:
a distance too blue to see.

The road slices wheat
stunned with crows
here for more than kill.

you know the crow
can caw his soul
into or out of any hell,

know too the tumbleweed
you bang into will roll
as long as mourners
bruise the hill.

The wind letters every mailbox,
and solid gray holds in trust
the farmer's good last name.

by Oklahoma - born poet Jim Barnes [more poems]

This poem takes place not in the dark of night but on a day of endless, distant blue. Like Stafford's "Kansas," it yields a dream. Driving past a roadside cemetery where a funeral is in progress, Barnes describes "mourners crying somebody's dream." Somebody else's, the deceased, the mourners, but not his own, or is it?

Like Stafford and Barnes, I too have driven and dreamed my way across Kansas.

Getting our Kicks on 166

My siblings and I remember this place, not from our childhood years, but from recent visits, although it seemed to be closed down the last time we passed through (May 2021). Not long after that, I had the strangest dream that I had to share with them. The store itself wasn't in the dream, but we kids were sitting all sitting around in a good mood (in some unspecified setting -- like maybe the outdoor lounge in my brother Dave's backyard. Our Grandpa Lindsey was there -- my mother's father -- and he was saying, "Aaron used to drive me over to Chetopa to the Wizard Store all the time to have my fortune told."

That was the whole dream, just the frame of us all sitting there and Grandpa making that one remark. A strange and interesting dream, but very un-Grandpa like! I had to ask my brother Aaron if it was true! Of course, I knew it wasn't because, in fact, the Wizzard of Odds didn't even exist (or contained some other business) until at least a decade after our grandfather had died.

I usually forget every single dream, but I think this one is going to stay with me! Oddly enough, this is not the first Wizard Store dream that I have had -- and been able to remember. Around the same time that we discoverd Wizzard of Odds in Kansas, my sister Peg and my nephew Dan used to take me to a gift store in Maryland that we called The Wizard Store, even though its proper name was Flights of Fancy. In the dream, I was distraught, trying to catch a bus on a dark rainy night and repeating over and over to anyone who would listen, "Im trying to get to the Wizard Store," where I knew that Peg and Dan were waiting for me. What is it about these Wizard Stores leading to such wacky dreams?

Talking about our many drives through Chetopa over the years led to a conversation about the various family station wagons. How accurately could we remember?

The Pink Dodge

The Green Pontiac

The Silver Buick

Another Connection:
Our Grandma Lindsey's Map of Kansas Handkerchief

Too bad Chetopa got left out,
but Coffeyville and Independence made the map!

The Big Floor Map
at the State Line Rest Stop

My brother and I have a joke about this one:
Kit: Look! I'm standing in three states at once!
Four actually, since I'm also in a state of crippling despair . . .
Bruce: No fair counting Kansas twice!

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, March 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Classic Cinema, 1924 - 1945

KEYWORDS ARE YOUR FRIEND
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

New York Movie (1939)
Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967)

This post serves as a memory prompt and a keyword search for the growing list of movie classics that Gerry and I have been watching recently. Not to be lazy, but my goal here is modest, no reviews -- just a list of titles and stars.

It turns out that we were watching so many old-time classics that we couldn't keep them all straight in our heads. Thus, I have compiled these lists in an attempt to prevent all of our recent viewing from merging into one huge indiscernible dramatic mishmash.

Here are the movies we've been watching, loosely organized by year, with a few cross references and connections of interest thrown in for good measure.

For the specific day - month - year of every release,
try this website: The Numbers
1924 Battleship Potemkin

1927 Metropolis

1930 Anna Christie ~ Greta Garbo

1931 Susan Lenox ~ Greta Garbo & Clark Gable

1933 Baby Face ~ Barbara Stanwyck, John Wayne

1933 Duck Soup ~ Marx Brothers: Chico, Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo


1934 The Thin Man ~ William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan

1934 The Barretts of Wimpole Street ~ Norma Shearer & Frederic March & Charles Laughton & Maureen O'Sullivan

1934 Babes in Toyland ~ Laurel & Hardy
[see also 1998 The Impostors ~ a tribute of sorts to L & H with Stanley Tucci, Oliver Platt, Alfred Molina, Tony Shalhoub, Steve Buscemi, Billy Connolly]

1934 It Happened One Night ~ Claudette Colbert & Clark Gable

1934 Imitation of Life ~ Claudette Colbert
[see also 1959 Lana Turner]

1934 Of Human Bondage ~ Bette Davis & Leslie Howard


1935 Top Hat ~ Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

1935 The 39 Steps ~ Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll

1936 Modern Times ~ Charlie Chaplin & Paulette Goddard


1938 Jezebel ~ Bette Davis & Henry Fonda

1939 Goodbye, Mr. Chips ~ Robert Donat & Greer Garson
[see also 1969 with Peter O'Toole & Petula Clark]

1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ~ Jean Arthur, James Stewart

1939 Wuthering Heights ~ Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier and David Niven [and many more versions]

1939 The Women ~ Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Lucile Watson, Mary Boland, Florence Nash, Virginia Grey, Marjorie Main, Phyllis Povah, Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler, Butterfly McQueen, Theresa Harris, Hedda Hopper

And this isn't even the complete list!
Film scholar Victoria Amador refers to The Women as a
"gay camp classic film . . . an estrogen-soaked comic souffle . . . "
So many women!
1939 ~ Jamaica Inn ~ Charles Laughton, Robert Newton, Maureen O'Hara
[Based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier]

1940 Rebecca ~ Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier
[Based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier]

1940 The Shop Around the Corner ~ Jimmy Stewart & Margaret Sullavan

1940 The Great Dictator ~ Charlie Chaplin & Paulette Goddard

1940 His Girl Friday ~ Rosalind Russell & Cary Grant

1940 The Philadelphia Story ~ Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart

1940 The Letter ~ Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson

1940 Remember the Night ~ Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray.


1941 How Green Was My Valley ~ Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, and a young Roddy McDowall

1941 The Lady Eve ~ Barbara Stanwyck & Henry Fonda & Charles Coburn

1941 The Maltese Falcon ~ Humphrey Bogard & Mary Astor
& Jerome Cowan as Miles Archer
-- not the same as Lew Archer / The Name is Archer

1942 Mrs. Miniver ~ Greer Garson & Walter Pidgeon

1942 The Magnificent Ambersons ~ Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead

1942 Now, Voyager ~ Bette Davis

The title derives from this brief poem by Walt Whitman:

"The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."

Thanks again to Victoria Amaddor, Ph.D.
for additional insights & witty repartee

1943 Casablanca ~ Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman

1943 Shadow of a Doubt ~ Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotton, Macdonald Carey


1944 Laura ~ Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price

1944 Arsenic and Old Lace ~ Cary Grant

1944 Double Indemnity ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson

1944 Meet Me in St. Louis ~ Judy Garland


1945 Blithe Spirit ~ Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond, Margaret Rutherford

1945 Christmas in Connecticut ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, S.Z. Sakall

1945 Leave Her to Heaven ~ Cornel Wilde & Gene Tierney

1945 The Valley of Decision ~ Gregory Peck & Greer Garson, Jessica Tandy, Lionel Barrymore, Reginald Owen

1945 Mildred Pierce ~ Joan Crawford
[also 2011 ~ Kate Winslet]

For a continuation of the above list:
Classic Cinema, 1946 - 1986

For a list of current suggestions:
Barb Reviews the Movies
We always read and follow - up on these lively suggestions!

For a comprehensive contemporary list:
Joan Tollifson's Recommended Movie List
Thanks to my friend Diane Cox for sharing Joan's master list!

Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, February 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Classic Cinema, 1946 - 1976

SPOILER ALERT
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

It all started way back in early November 2022 when Gerry and I were watching The Big Sleep, with all those dark night driving sequences, leading up to an eerie, dreary mansion. Something about the droll way that the butler greets Bogart in the opening scene rang a bell in my brain. What other movie had we watched recently that began with a similar scary driving scene and a wacky butler?

How hard could it be to remember the name of an old black and white movie that begins with a man driving over a rickety wooden bridge to a big old house where he is staying for a house party / dinner party? Sadly my memory was embarrassingly hazy! I could recall neither the stars, nor the crime, nor any further details that might narrow down the possibilities.

All I could come up with were some behind - the - scene subplots involving cooking in the kitchen, or hiding in there, or something like that. Or maybe the host of the party decides to some of the cooking. There is definitely one of those scenes, like in an Agatha Christie, where all the characters are sitting around the dinner table questioning each other."

I called on my movie experts, Steven LaVigne and Victoria Amador, who wrote back with their hunches. Perhaps I was thinking of Crimes at the Dark House (1940) or Dead of Night (1945). These are good movies to know about, and I appreciated Steven's connections:

1. I haven't seen Dead of Night for a long time. I keep mixing it up with Dead of Winter starring Mary Steenburgen and Roddy McDowell. That's not the movie you're looking for, though; it's in color from 1987.

2. Crimes at the Dark House (1940), starring Tod Slaughter, was originally titled The Woman in White because it was loosely based on the 1860 Wilkie Collins novel The Woman in White, which was later made into a movie of the same name, in 1948.

However, neither one of these titles rang exactly the right bell. The plot summaries didn't quite match up with my memory, despite containing winding roads, dark and stormy nights, haunted houses. Of course, a lot of classic thrillers contain all / most of those elements; so I definitely needed to provide more information. Or better yet, we needed a good coincidence!

A few weeks later, I was flipping through my journal from the year before, and there it was: Murder By Death. I knew right away, that was it! Funny, it was not old, after all, as I had been incorrectly remembering, but a 1976 spoof with guest appearances by Truman Capote and Peter Falk! Mystery solved at last! Now it made sense why each of the other movies seemed similar but not quite right -- because Murder By Death includes motifs from all of them! As Steven sums up, the "problem with Murder by Death was that after the characters are introduced, the script doesn't really go anywhere. Same with Clue. They should both be much cleverer than they are."

Agreed! All the effort is in the elaborate set - up. Yet, you never know what will start you off on a scholarly path. After all the work I did (with a little help from my friends!) to retrace my viewing steps and retrieve Murder By Death from my memory bank, it has become a show that I will not soon forget. Nor will I get it confused with The Big Sleep!

From this wild goose chase, Gerry and I learned that we need to keep a movie list. We've been watching so many cinematic treasures that we've missed over the years, or forgotten about -- old black and whites, film noirs, box - office hits of yore, whodunits, musicals, holiday favorites. It would be a shame to forget the specifics, as we wander nightly from genre to genre.

We also owe our seemingly random but somewhat intentional viewing of American classics to this incredibly informative World War II documentary:

Five Came Back ~ on Netflix
exploring the war-related works
-- and continued popular cinema --
of John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston,
Frank Capra, and George Stevens

and to the Facebook page: The Name is Archer,
a gold mine of legend, lore, references,
connections, and literary allusions.

***************

So, for now -- with a promise of more to come --
here is our once and future film survey,
stretching from 1946 -- the year of The Big Sleep,
to 1976 -- the year of Murder By Death:
1946 May 2
The Postman Always Rings Twice ~ Lana Turner
[and 1981 ~ Jessica Lang & Jack Nicholson]

1946 May 24
Dressed to Kill ~ Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
[no connection to the 1980 film with Michael Caine & Angie Dickinson;
in fact, the title doesn't really fit either movie]

1946 August 15
Notorious ~ Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains

1946 August 30
The Killers ~ Ava Gardner & Burt Lancaster

1946 August 31
The Big Sleep ~ Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall
[& 1976 Murder By Death]

1946 November 1
Stairway to Heaven: A Matter of Life and Death ~ David Niven & Kim Hunter

1946 November 21
Best Years of Our Lives ~ Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright

1946 December 16
Great Expectations ~ John Mills / Anthony Wager, Valerie Hobson / Jean Simmons, Alec Guinness

1946 December 20
It's A Wonderful Life ~ Jimmy Stewart & Donna Reed


Check this very helpful website
for the specific day - month - year of every release:
The Numbers

1947 Out of the Past ~ Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer, Virginia Huston [also 1984 Against All Odds ~ Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward]

1947 The Voice of the Turtle ~ Ronald Reagan & Eleanor Parker

1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir ~ Gene Tierney & Rex Harrison

1947 Miracle on 34th Street ~ Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood, Edmund Gwenn


1948 The Winslow Boy ~ Margaret Leighton & Robert Donat
[also 1999 ~ Rebecca Pidgeon & Jeremy Northam]

1948 The Red Shoes ~ Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring

1948 Sorry, Wrong Number ~ Barbara Stanwyck & Burt Lancaster

1948: Road House ~ Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm, Richard Widmark


1949 Criss Cross ~ Burt Lancaster & Yvonne De Carlo

1949 Twelve O'Clock High ~ Gregory Peck, Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe

1949 Shop Around the Corner ~ Jimmy Stewart

1949 The Heiress ~ Olivia de Havilland & Montgomery Clift
[based on Henry James' Washington Square]

1949 The Third Man ~ Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard


1950 In a Lonely Place ~ Humphrey Bogart, Martha Stewart, Gloria Grahame

1950 Sunset Boulevard ~ Gloria Swanson & William Holden

1950 All About Eve ~ Bette Davis, Celeste Holme, Anne Baxter, Marilyn Monroe

1950 Come Back, Little Sheba ~ Burt Lancaster, Shirley Booth, Terry Moore
[also 1977 ~ Laurence Olivier, Joanne Woodward, Carrie Fisher]

More by William Inge (1913-1973)
1953: Picnic
1955: Bus Stop
1957: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still ~ Michael Rennie & Patricia Neal

1951 A Place in the Sun ~ Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters

1951 Strangers on a Train ~ Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker
[see also The Lady Vanishes 1938, 1979, 2013]


1952 Carrie ~ Jennifer Jones, Laurence Olivier, Eddie Albert
[based on Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie]

1952 Singin' in the Rain ~ Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor

1952 The Thief ~ Ray Milland

1953 The Big Heat Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando


1954 Hobson's Choice ~ Charles Laughton, Brenda de Banzie, Prunella Scales, Daphne Anderson, John Mills, [a treatment of King Lear]

1954 Three Coins in the Fountain ~ Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, Maggie McNamara,

1954 Rear Window ~ Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr

1954 White Christmas ~ Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger


1955 Daddy Long Legs ~ Leslie Caron & Fred Astaire

1955 All That Heaven Allows ~ Rock Hudson & Jane Wyman

1955 To Catch a Thief ~ Cary Grant, Grace Kelly

1955 Not as a Stranger ~ Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame


1956 Baby Doll ~ Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach
[based on Tennessee Williams' one-act play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1955).


1957 The Seventh Seal ~ Max von Sydow

1957 An Affair to Remember ~ Deborah Kerr & Cary Grant

1957 Witness for the Prosecution ~ Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton [also 1949, 1982, 2016]

1957 The Three Faces of Eve ~ Joanne Woodward, Lee J. Cobb

1957 Sweet Smell of Success ~ Tony Curtis & Burt Lancaster & Martin Milner

1957 Paths of Glory ~ Kirk Douglas


1958 Marjorie Morningstar ~ Natalie Wood & Gene Kelly & Martin Milner

1958 Touch of Evil ~ Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich

1958 Vertigo ~ Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak

1958 Party Girl ~ Robert Taylor, Cyd Charisse, Lee J. Cobb


1959 North by Northwest ~ Cary Grant, Eva Maria Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau

1959 Anatomy of a Murder ~ Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick


1960 The Apartment ~ Shirley MacLaine, Jack Lemmon, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, Edie Adams, Hope Holiday

1960 BUtterfield 8 ~ Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher

1960 Psycho ~ Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Janet Leigh

1960 Elmer Gantry ~ Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Shirley Jones, Patti Page, Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe

1960 Inherit the Wind ~ Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly, Dick York,

1960 Where the Boys Are ~ Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Hutton, and Frank Gorshin

1960 Breathless Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo
[French New Wave crime: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard]


1961 The Children's Hour ~ Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner
[also 1936 These Three]

1962 Light in the Piazza ~ Olivia de Havilland, Rossano Brazzi, Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton,

1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ~ Bette Davis & Joan Crawford

1964 Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte ~ Bette Davis & Olivia de Havilland


1963 The Birds ~ Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette


1964 The Night of the Iguana ~ Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner, Sue Lyon

1964 Carol for Another Christmas ~ Eva Marie Saint, Percy Rodriguez, Peter Sellers, Britt Eckland


1965 I Saw What You Did ~ Joan Crawford & John Ireland


1966 Georgy Girl ~ Lynn Redgrave, Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates, James Mason, and Redgrave's mother Rachel Kemps

1966 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ~ Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis


1967 Up the Down Staircase ~ Sandy Dennis, Eileen Heckart, Patrick Bedford, Jean Stapleton

1967 To Sir, with Love ~ Sidney Poitier & Lulu

1968 Targets ~ Boris Karloff


1971 The Last Picture Show ~ Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and Cybill Shepherd

1973 The Long Goodbye ~ Elliott Gould
[satirical neo-noir; based on 1953 novel by Raymond Chandler]

1974 Chinatown ~ Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway

1975 The Day of the Locust ~ Karen Black, William Atherton, Donald Sutherland
[based on 1939 novel by Nathanael West]

1976 Murder By Death ~ David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith
[Niven played detective Dick Charleston and Smith played his wife Dora Charleston, a little intertextual pun on Nick & Nora from The Thin Man]

1995 Devil in a Blue Dress ~ Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals
[American neo-noir set in late 1940s]


Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, February 14th ~ More Classic Cinema, 1924 - 1945

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
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www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Five Kings

STAR OF WONDER, STAR OF NIGHT
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Small (4" x 5") drawing in crayon, with no name or information,
found in my Grandma Rovilla Lindsey's 1964 diary.
I don't know if it was drawn by her, another family member,
a friend, or perhaps a Sunday School student???

"O Star of Wonder, Star of Night,
Star with Royal Beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to Thy perfect Light."
from the Christmas carol We Three Kings
by John Henry Hopkins Jr. (1820 – 1891)

Here's a refreshing and lovely
21st Century rendition by Pink Martini

Even though this chorus is so familiar, along with the well-known verses in which each of the three magi describes his gift, I felt there could be more to the story. In observation of Epiphany and MLK Day, I have written some additional verses:

Artaban, Fourth Wiseman am I
Precious jewels procured for the child
Ruby, sapphire, pearl of luster,
Each traded to spare a life

A Fifth King in latter day
comes alone to show us the way
Martin Luther King Junior
Preaching equality

Artaban and Batlthasar,
Caspar and Melchior,
Martin Luther King Junior
Five of the Wisest Kings

O Kings of vision, seeking right
Trav'ling through the darkest night
Westward leading, still proceeding
Toward the way, the truth, the life.

Thoughtful Cartoon Concept
More on Facebook
More on the QK

As conveyed in the lyrics of last month's post -- "three members of an obscure Persian sect" . . . "three of the wisest of men" -- tradition holds that three kings made their way to Bethlehem, but I am not the first to expand the number. You can see Martin Sheen portray The Fourth Wiseman in a dramatization of the story by Henry van Dyke, Jr. (1842 - 1933); and you can hear Jethro Tull's musical rendition of We Five Kings.

Nor does the speculation stop with five. In the droll yet introspective and quasi-historically accurate Cunk on Christmas: Moments of Wonder (2016), comedian Diane Morgan, aka Philomena Cunk, asks Reverend Canon Ann Easter: "How many Three Wiseman were there?" They both agree: "There could have actually been 15 three wise men." Right?!

More Wise Man Humor
[shared on facebook]

In the following song, the quirky Sparks stick with the traditional three wise men, but their edgy tribute to the magi is anything but conventional. In their unusual twist on the carol, "the girl with everything" receives "gifts to aid amnesia . . . a really pretty car . . . a partridge in a pear tree." Among other "imported gimmicks," she is given her own wall and a ball point pen, but has her good fortune improved her understanding of life? Will she be able to read the writing on the wall?

Something for the Girl With Everything
(1974)

Something for the girl with everything
See, the writings on the wall
You bought the girl a wall
Complete with matching ball-point pen
You can breathe another day
Secure in knowing she won't break you (yet)

Something for the girl with everything
Have another sweet my dear
Don't try to talk my dear
Your tiny little mouth is full
Here's a flavour you ain't tried
You shouldn't try to talk, your mouth is full

Something for the girl with everything
Three wise men are here
Three wise men are here
Bearing gifts to aid amnesia
She knows everything
Yes yes everyting
She knew way back when you weren't yourself

Something for the girl with everything
Here's a really pretty car
I hope it takes you far
I hope it takes you fast and far
Wow, the engines really loud
Nobodys gonna hear a thing you say

Something for the girl with everything
Three wise men are here
Three wise men are here
Where should they leave these imported gimmicks
Leave them anywhere
An-an-anywhere
Make sure that there's a clear path to the door

Something for the girl with everything
Something for the girl with everything
Something for the girl with everything
Something for the girl with everything

Three wise men are here
Three wise men are here
Three wise men are here
Three wise men are here

Here's a patridge in a tree,
A gardener for the tree
Complete with ornithologist
Careful, careful with that crate
You wouldn't want to dent Sinatra, no

Something for the girl who has got everything,
Yes, yes, everything
Hey, come out and say hello
Before your friends all go
But say no more than just hello
Ah, the little girl is shy
You see of late she's been quite speechless,
Very speechless
She's got everything

by the Sparks Brothers
Russell and Ron Mael


To conclude on a tender note.
in keeping with a star of wonder and light,
leading the wise men, seekers and seers,
whether three, four, five or fifteen . . .
The Star Carol

Long years ago on a deep winter night
High in the heavens, a star shone bright
While in the manger, a wee baby lay
Sweetly asleep on a bed of hay

Jesus our Lord was that baby so small
Laid down to sleep in a humble stall
Then came the star and it stood overhead
Shedding its light 'round His little head

Dear baby Jesus, how tiny Thou art
I'll make a place for Thee in my heart
And when the stars in the heavens I see
Ever and always I think of Thee

music by Alfred Shaddick Burt (1920 - 1954)
lyrics by Wihla Laverne Hutson (1901–2002)
sung by many, including Peggy Lee
and Simon and Garfunkel

Previous Fortnightly Post ~ Ever Bright Christmas Night
Also about "Three of the wisest of men."

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, January 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts ~ We Five Kings www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com