Romance and Mystery for the New Year

Want to stay home with that new flat screen on the first few evenings of the New Year? Here are a few of my favorite classic films of romance and mystery to enjoy.




1.The Quiet Man (1952) American fighter Sean Thornton (John Wayne) returns to Ireland, where his mother was born, to forget his past. He falls in love with a local beauty (Maureen O’Hara) and must fight her brother for her dowry, the one thing he does not want to do. Boasts the sexiest scene on screen: John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara kissing during a rainstorm.

2.Designing Woman (1957) A sportswriter (Gregory Peck) and a fashion designer (Lauren Bacall) meet on vacation and elope. When they return to New York to start their lives they discover they have practically nothing in common. This is a very funny, undiscovered gem that contains one of the best fight scenes ever filmed, in which one of Bacall’s male dancer friends (whom the sportswriter thinks is gay) defeats the bad guys with a few high kicks.

3.Letter to Three Wives (1949) As three married women (Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern, and Linda Darnell) board a ferry for an all-day charity event, they get a letter from the town vamp telling them she has run off with one of their husbands. But which one? Writer/director Joe Mankiewicz at his very best.

4.The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) The son of a famous movie producer uses his friends and his lovers to get back on top. With Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan,Walter Pidgeon and Gilbert Roland, a bittersweet look at innocence and the irresistible pull of success. The producer's advice to his star? "Love is for the very young."

5. The Lost Weekend (1945) This may make you put down your glass on New Year’s Eve. Ray Milland in his Oscar-winning role as a young man with “promise” who hides in a bottle. Lots of interesting things here: Jane Wyman looking really beautiful during the time she was Mrs. Ronald Regan, and actor Phillip Terry while he was (briefly) Mr. Joan Crawford. Howard da Silva as the memorable bartender.

6.The Awful Truth (1937) A couple of very beautiful people (Cary Grant and Irene Dunn) suspect each other’s infidelities and file for divorce. Ah but chaos ensues and you know you are in for a good time when Ralph Bellamy shows up. Back when Cary Grant was a very funny man, before he became frozen in our minds as a beautiful icon.

7.Rebecca (1940) An inexperienced girl (Joan Fontaine) marries a handsome widower (Laurence Olivier) and discovers he has a dark secret. A haunting film that is not much seen anymore but is nice and creepy in the best possible way.

8.The Spiral Staircase (1945) A big Victorian house, a crazy old lady upstairs, a mute (but beautiful) housemaid, a drunk cook, a very large thunderstorm, and a serial killer in the neighborhood. What more could a mystery-lover want? A terrific cast including Ethel Barrymore, Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, Elsa Lancaster, and Rhonda Flemming.

9.Mildred Pierce (1945) The best noir going. Joan Crawford as a humble housewife (okay, suspend your disbelief here) who rises to riches and fame with her—are you ready for this—diner! Along the way she changes into her shoulder pads, raises a really scary daughter (Ann Blyth) and learns that money and a diner won’t buy you love.

10. Moonstruck (1987) Just so you won’t think I like only films that
are older than I am. If you are looking for laughter and romance, not to mention now-especially-poignant shots of the skyline of Manhattan before 9/11, this lovely little film has everything. Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olympia Dukakis, Vincent Gardenia, Danny Aiello and a lot of memorable lines: “Do you love him Loretta?” “Look, its
Cosmos’ moon!” “Snap out of it!” “I’m so confused!”

Happy New Year!

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Snowy Letter(s) From Oregon

(Robin's note: I worked in Oregon for six years of my television career and during that time got to know the Oregon branch of my family, the Petersons. What did I do when the weirdos followed me home? Went to the Petersons' for safety. Where did I go on Thanksgiving and Christmas? To the Petersons' of course. The Petersons take in us all without judgment. I even introduced my friend Ray to my cousin Beth and he went and married her and now is, annoyingly, a member of my family! This Christmas the Petersons have been divided by the snowstorm: those in Portland can't get to Devil's Lake for the big Christmas, and those in Devil's Lake can't get to Portland. So they hunker down. Here's a guest blog, first from cousin Markie in Portland, and then from my (adopted) cousin Ray in Lincoln City.)


Christmas with the Petersons in Portland, about 1.5 million years ago. My grandmother is to my left--looking young in her seventies--and from left to right, Charlotte, Sally, and Beth Peterson.

From Markie in Portland:

Hi Robin, I'm sitting here looking out at what is proving to be the 'record snowfall in Portland history' and although it is beautiful it has certainly hampered many a Christmas plan. Travel has been snarled and at times non existent at the airport, bus terminal, train station and highways. The malls and local stores go through spurts of sales when drivers can get out to shop - maybe that will teach all of us not to wait until the last minute!

Most of the Peterson family has arrived in Oregon but to different locations and due to the weather and road conditions we will not be able to all get together for Christmas day but that's ok and a new adventure. It tends to bring out the best or the worst in all of us.

Beth, Ray and family arrived from California on Sunday via Highway 101 to Lincoln City and are with Mom and Dad. Tim and Betty Ann arrived from Anchorage on Monday night at midnight to my house on the east side of Portland and near the airport. Their luggage wasn't certain it wanted to come from the land of the Midnight Sun to the land of "Snowzilla" but eventually did arrive 12 hours later. Ken and family are holed up in Scappoose with what was to be our Christmas dinner. Brian is in Salem. Charlotte, Bruce and Barb are all on the Westside of Portland and Sally is on the coast close to mom and dad. Tom may be the only smart one by making the decision to stay in Hawaii and wish us Mele Kalikimaka via AT&T. (Robin's note:I guess I should interject here that the Peterson cousins are ten, including two sets of twins, all children of my mother's sister, her genetic opposite!)

We, like many Oregonians are separated by less than 80 miles but are experiencing what many Mid-Westerners and East Coasters must feel at this time of year when the weather conditions make getting together difficult or impossible - but for us this is a new adventure and one that we haven't experienced before - Christmas rain never made getting together this difficult!

We'll make alternate plans, figure out ways to 'beat Mother Nature', give a lot of money to At&T, Verizon and T-Mobile but we'll get through this 'record snowfall' and happily enjoy the sights, sounds and yes, snow of this wonderful season.


Hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year with all that it will bring.

Martha

From Ray in Lincoln City/Devil's Lake (Robin's Note: Ray is a sportswriter so his prose must be viewed through that perculiar lens.)

Here in the badlands of the Oregon Coast, where the heat at the Safeway is intermittent and there is only one Starbucks, we are the only part of the state that isn't snowlocked.

We live vicariously through the relentless traffic and weather reports ("Nobody's moving and the weather sucks for the fifth day in a row; here's some of the same B-roll you saw an hour ago") and we await the next truck that falls off the road.

The rest of our family is in the belly of the beast, and with the east-west highways closed, our Christmas has been bifurcated into Peterson West and Peterson East. On the other hand, there is food and wine and presents and televised football, basketball and hockey, plus a one-screen theatre called (of course) the Bijou, and a six-lane bowling alley and an indoor batting cage and miniature golf course and an outlet mall, so what need have we for mundane things like family?

Of course we kid here -- we would trade the Emerald Bowl for two more Petersons and a Macey. Beyond that, though, we're not so sure. Then again, the holiday is what you make it, so we intend to be happy even if we're half as happy as we could be.

(Robin's note: What is that Emerald Bowl anyway, something to do with jewelry? Sounds great! Merry Christmat!)


(Robin's final note: My friend, Ray and my cousin Beth back when they met and before I had the chance to warn her about him. Now its too late. They have children!)
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Tribute to Van Johnson

In the next few days you'll be reading a lot of tributes to Van Johnson, who died December 12, at the age of 92. He was one of the best actors who arrived in the generation that followed Spencer Tracy and John Barrymore at MGM.

In my mind I see him at his best in three films in which he is cast against type: his type being the gosh-darn boy next door with the freckles and strawberry blonde hair.

I can watch him again and again as the soldier Holly in BATTLEGROUND (1949), the William Wellman directed movie about the Battle of the Bulge in which he jitterbugs one night with a French girl in the doomed village of Bastogne, saves the lives of the men in his unit on another, and spends the entire battle trying to cook eggs in his helmet liner and never quite succeeds. Holly. He stands for all the average men we loved who fought against terrible odds in the last freezing battle on the German front in WW II.

Then, I see him as the perpetually troubled Lt. Maryk, the conscience of the throughtful movie THE CAINE MUTINY (1954), in which we learn a little something about leadership. It is true the great scene stealer Humprey Bogart, rolling those ball bearings around and around in his hand as he twists his lip telling the tale of how he's been betrayed over those strawberries, is tough competition. But the movie belongs to Van Johnson and his conscience, listening to all sides, pondering what is right to do when his ship is in danger in a typhoon. The scar Johnson got on his face in that terrible accident during the filming of A GUY NAMED JOE adds character to a face that might have otherwise been just too pretty for a part such as this one.

And then I see him as the tortured writer in the LAST TIME I SAW PARIS (1954), in which he can't quite seem to get his life together with the gorgeous and equally troubled Elizabeth Taylor. This role is probably one that might have been cast for Montgomery Clift or James Dean or Marlon Brando, but truth be told Johnson was their equal and then some. When he sits in the Paris bar looking back at his wasted life in France there is much on his face that makes us believe it had happened just as he recalled.

There has always been much talk about his beginnings as a chorus boy. If you look carefully in the party scene in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS you can see him twirling about in all his chorus boy glory. Stories also circulate about his interest in the boys who plied his old profession. Well there you are. It was Hollywood, not the Church of the Nazarene.

But go back and look at some of his best films and see if you can resist his smile. I never could, and who would want to?
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Cycling the Left Coast of my Mind: Notes from California

I love coming back to my California home town and biking around on my Mom's old English three-speed Raleigh. It is getting here by air that is the problem.

Air travel is so dreary these days I won’t even be able to double you over with laughter when I tell you about the travails of flying from Orlando to San Jose via Atlanta this week. Unlike the CEOs of the Big Three Automakers, I live my life without my own personal fleet of jets. And, in an effort at economy (so I’ll be able to continue to afford Marc Jacobs handbags) I got myself a super discount seat in coach, flying between Thanksgiving and Christmas on travel days no one else wanted.

Nowadays the coach seats have become so small and the passengers have become so fat, I have begun to understand why the airlines have decided to charge extra for luggage. The weight allotment of years past for passenger + suitcase is now being more than taken up by the gross weight of just one average passenger. Everybody in coach on my flight weighed at least two hundred pounds, and those were the slender people. The woman next to me was a really pretty young lady who weighed at least three hundred pounds. Her left elbow, when her arms were nestled snuggly on her abdomen, hit me about mid bosom and I spent most of the flight trying to sit on my left hip to avoid the unwanted intimacy.

I did have a friend waiting for me in San Jose, but the airport is so torn-up she had to circle several times before she could figure out how to reach Passenger Pick Up. Then, headed out of the airport, we accidentally got on the freeway headed to Los Angeles, not Los Altos. No matter. We managed to exit on another freeway loop, also under construction like everything else in California, and I dragged myself into the folks’ house at 11:10 p.m.

My father had been asking my mother about seventeen times every day for a month when I was arriving. And when I walked into his bedroom he was awake, but he stared at me for about five seconds before he smiled, threw his hands in air and said “Robin’s here! Hooray!” That was definitely worth traveling three thousand miles on Fat People Airlines to hear. By the next day my father’s muddled mind had transformed our reunion, and he was telling people a different story altogether about our meeting. He said he had been traveling on a bus and couldn’t believe he ran into his daughter Robin on the very same public transport.

“And then,” he told our friends, “I discovered my wife was on the bus too. It was amazing.” My Mother just rolled her eyes, but I’m always fascinated to learn what his brain does with these events. I think when they happen at night, they are especially confusing because he gets them mixed up with his dreams. While he waited for me Wednesday night he dozed and dreamed there had been a big air accident, and when I arrived he asked me how I had managed to get to Los Altos safely without getting involved in the “disaster.”

I thought for a second he had read my mind and agreed that being forced to sit for five hours with all those Plus Size and Big and Tall Fashions was somewhat of a disaster. But it was not the kind that had troubled my father. So he was relieved.

The next morning, since I was visiting, he was convinced it was his birthday, though his actual birthday is still ten days away. He’ll be 89 years old and that is also something that is a little vague in his mind.

“I’m 90 years old today,” he said that first morning. Looking at his usual bowl of Cheerios he said: “I think I deserve a better breakfast than this!” He wanted me to take him for pancakes, which I often do when I visit—but my sister is coming and the two of us are going to take him in a few days. Since he is completely deaf it is sometimes hard to make complex points such as: Not your birthday. No pancakes today. Sis and I will take you in two days. Mom took over and wrote him a note telling him that it was NOT his birthday.

But throughout the day he continued to think it was. Mom likes to go to the commissary at Moffett Field when I visit, so she can get those cut-rate groceries, and my father as a retired officer is eligible for this. I play the role of chauffeur. When Dad saw we were headed to Moffett Field he thought we were going to take him to the Officer’s Club for a birthday party, and later he said he had been practicing the speech he would give. When we parked the car he looked at me and said “I don’t think this is the right hat.” I didn’t know what he meant until he told me later he thought it would be a military party for him and his ball cap wouldn’t be right what with all the military headgear that would be on display. He’s forgotten that Moffett is no longer a Navy base and the Officer’s Club there is defunct. Not to mention it wasn’t his birthday and even if it were we weren’t planning a big military ho-down in his honor. The good news is that he was relieved when he found he didn’t have to give that speech.

California is a land all its own. When I ride my mom’s old bicycle to the coffee shop at the Rancho Shopping Center so I can use the Internet there, people always comment on the bike. It is a vintage English Raleigh (a garage sale find I am sure) and it looks quaint next to all the fancy California bikes ridden by gaggles of cycling club members. Once on a visit I told my parents I was arrested and charged by the police with Not Wearing a Complete Outfit While Cycling, and it took them a while to tell I was joking.

Today at the Los Altos Bakery (“Free WiFi!”) two fit-looking gray-haired sinewy gents in cycling gear chatted me up about the Raleigh bicycle. The guys were so muscular and trim, so California Silicon Valley, I wanted to think it was me they found attractive. But it might have been my Raleigh. Even sex appeal is different in California.
Mom and Dad on their matching Raleighs in better days.

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