Barbara Bel Geddes, 1922-2005
Barbara Bel Geddes died of lung cancer on Monday. Though famous for her role as Miss Ellie on Dallas, Bel Geddes stood out to me for another performance–that of Scotty’s girlfriend Midge in Vertigo. A brassiere designer with sharp wit and enormous glasses, she doesn’t stand a chance against Jimmy Stewart’s obsession with breathy Kim Novak. Most heartbreaking is that Midge, savvy and watchful, knows this better than anyone else. She paints a parody of the mysterious Carlotta Valdes topped with her own head–complete with perky blonde bob and goofy spectacles. It’s a self-aware jibe at Scotty’s growing distraction, but the joke falls thuddingly flat. “Stupid, stupid girl!” she berates herself after Scotty, unamused, leaves.
“So, was it a ghost?” Midge says to no one when she spots Novak’s glamorous Madeline rushing from his apartment one morning. And later, visiting Scotty in the sanitarium after his breakdown, she arrives armed with LPs and bright, hopeful banter: “I talked to the woman in musical therapy, and she said that Mozart’s the boy for you.” Watch her face crumple as he stares past her. Watch her, defeated, leave his room and walk down the hall in her sensible shoes and sensible coat. We will not see her again.
