“Patricia Neal, an Oscar Winner Who Endured Tragedy, Dies at 84,” New York Times

Walk the Angry Beach (1968)

The Go-Go’s (circa 1978)

At school, kids called her “Belimpa” and mocked her for having only one outfit. She dreamed of being Marcia Brady but obsessed over Charles Manson. This pull between light and dark continued through high school, where she was both a cheerleader and a shoplifter — not that those are necessarily opposites.

The rest of my review of Belinda Carlisle’s memoir is here.

Via filesmattwolf.

Related: Does Mark Jude Poirier have special psychic powers? Here’s an excerpt from his story of February 4, weeks before the recent events at SeaWorld Orlando:

We drove to Wildwood Aquarium, left Alice at her apartment, even though it had been her idea to go. The week before, a German visitor to the aquarium had been killed, bitten in two by Sammy, the angry orca, as he held a fish for it. The crowd had cheered when the water turned red, then pink. People posted videos and photos on the Internet, but they had barely mentioned it on the news because the garbage strike was in full force then, and the city smelled like death.

You can read the rest of “Aquarium Souvenir” at Significant Objects.

It begins with shoes. Shots of women’s shoes. Oxfords, pumps, heels. I find this very auspicious. The whole thing is off to a promising start. The theater at the 92nd Y’s annex in Tribeca is small and so it feels a bit like a private screening. Hilton Als gave a charming introduction, and you can bring alcohol in, which Louchette and I have done, so that is nice for the atmosphere as well.

I told Louchette that I’d read The Group a while ago, that I didn’t remember much from Mary McCarthy’s novel, except, of course, that Lakey is a lesbian. Or, rather:

Every now and then [the Baroness] would go over and say something to Lakey; they heard her call her “Darling” with a trilled r. It was Kay who caught on first. Lakey had become a Lesbian.

The other thing I remember is the word “pessary” and the lengths one of the girls (Dottie) goes to get one only to be stood up by the indifferent painter who told her to get it in the first place. She ends up leaving it under a bench in Washington Square Park. Pessaries and Lesbians with capital Ls—enough to make any book a classic.

Sidney Lumet’s movie does not disappoint. As I said, it begins with shoes. And then the bright young women in the shoes, going about their campus lives as the titles roll. They march about the lush grounds, brisk, full of optimism and promise, even though it’s 1933 and the economy is terrible.

I find I am much more tolerant of period pieces shot in other periods. There is something about the telescoping—watching in 2009 a movie shot in 1966 about young women who graduate from Vassar in 1933—that feels both melancholy and multi-historic, collapsing two pasts (real and imagined) onto one screen. There is beautiful 19-year-old Candice Bergen and there is FDR’s first term.

There is young Larry Hagman who marries Joanna Pettet. He is a playwright and you will quickly see that he is also a kind of pretentious hack—or if only he were a hack. That would mean he was making some money. She will end up being the breadwinner, the one who pays for their apartment with the beautiful curved bookcase and the Swedish furniture.

There is young Richard Mulligan, a painter who is hot for icy Candice Bergen but settles for lovely Joan Hackett. This is before Soap, before Empty Nest. I’ve always found him charming in a Jack Buchanan kind of way. Something about the height and gaunt face. Something about being imposing and absurd at the same time.

But young Richard Mulligan is not at all charming. He takes Joan Hackett back to his apartment in Greenwich Village. The walls in the hallway are two-toned, dark green and dirty beige. The floor is tiled and I think of Meghan Daum’s essay about her fantasy of literary life in New York City, the sandbagging credit card debt, and then the relinquishing of that dream. I remember that her fantasy of living in New York included an apartment with hexagonal tiles in the bathroom. She was very specific about the tiles and I could understand the fantasy perfectly because of that.

Joan Hackett walks through the tiny-tiled hallway, following an indifferent Richard Mulligan to his apartment. Later, he tells her to get the pessary, though he doesn’t say “pessary.” He says something like “Go see a doctor and we’ll both be happier.” No one says “pessary” in the film. That is my only complaint.

There is a young Hal Holbrooke before he marries Dixie Carter, before his endless Mark Twain impersonation. In the movie he is an editor and very appealing until you realize he’s obsessed with psychoanalysis and how his treatment is stalling while his wife’s isn’t. I wish Mariah Carey were his therapist.

It’s not until the end credits that I realize there is also a young Jessica Walter, better known as Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development. She is a bitch the entire time and it’s great fun to despise her. (This is fun too.)

There is also madness. The jolly father given to sudden manias divorces his wife, comes to live with his daughter, and starts renovating her apartment. This is taken in stride, but then there is the much darker story of Joanna Pettet, who becomes more and more obsessed with Hitler and the war while Larry Hagman cheats and boozes. At some point in the small movie theater I remember it will end with a funeral.

And when I do see them all in black at the end, back on the campus grounds, no parents, it seems very gay. As in homo. The group you make when you are outside the family. I imagine a double feature with The Boys in the Band.

Back at home, I find my copy of the novel. I didn’t mark it up much. “10/94” on the first page for when I read it, and on the last page, a few scrawled notes:

to the manor born. to the manner born
restive, fealty
drink recipes – cosmopolitan, trolley car
Nancy, Mary, Nelly

(Tech rehearsal for In the Air screening.)

In the Q&A I mention the last film I saw, which was Liza’s new film In the Air. This was a screening for the cast in Portsmouth, Ohio, just last week. The film is a portrait of a deindustrialized steel town in Appalachia and, among other things, it’s about the effect the local circus school has on the community there. One of the things that has really stayed with me was how extraordinary it was to be in same space with the cast, who are all non-actors, while they watched themselves projected on the big screen. And it felt very unusual to see a movie about a place in that exact place. I love going to the movies—I love the whole element of voyeurism. But this was really different. This was more like bearing witness—to the people who were on the screen and in the audience at the same time. I’ve never had a filmgoing experience like that, and I’m not sure I can really quite capture how unique it was. You can read Tom Bridwell’s account here and Liza has posted photos here and here.

Also, I loved answering the question about what movie I’d want to live inside and imagining all the night clubs I’d go to that exist only in films like Piccadilly, Mulholland Drive, Who Killed Teddy Bear, Sweet Charity, The Wrong Man, Pillow Talk, Klute, Taking Off. This is clearly a list to be expanded.

For now, here’s Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Krupa in Ball of Fire playing “Drum Boogie” with matches.

Bea Arthur, star of ‘Golden Girls’ and ‘Maude,’ dies at 86, LA Times
Golden Girl Bloopers, YouTube