Commentary from Larry Solway
Just a few weeks ago my wife and I watched on TV, the elegance of a time we will never see again. It was the MGM hymn to itself: "That's Entertainment."
I confess. There was a thickness in my throat as I felt my whole life passing before me in a sea of memories.
My earliest stems from when I wanted to be an actor and I was eight years old and people who always ask eight year olds: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" My answer startles me now when I hear myself: "I want to be a movie star." When we watched "That's Entertainment" all the memories of my star-struck boyhood came swimming back.
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No, they don't make them like that any more. Today all we get is ad language and explicit sex. |
There was Judy Garland before she became a slave to her addictions and the victim of mindless studio-exploitive juvenile stardom and a life of careening self-destruction. And it was Bing Crosby before anyone of us knew that he was a terrible husband to his wife Dixie and a neglectful father to the boys.
It was the evanescence of Kathryn Grayson in "Showboat" opposite Mario Lanza - the unschooled tenor bound for a bad end.
It was Debbie Reynolds still cute. Donald O'Connor before he got fat. It was Fred Astaire, the transcendent performer and dancer.
At the end it was: "There are no stars like this any more." There are no more like the luminous Leslie Caron in "Gigi", the "Grande Cocotte" who was raised to pleasure men. She was achingly beautiful dancing with Gene Kelly. Chevalier sang "Thank heaven for Little Girls." The age of remembered innocence and Hollywood spinning fables in the midst of corporate slime. Sounding like a true dinosaur I said: "No, they don't make them this way any more. Today all we get is ad language and explicit sex."
We sounded like all the old fuddy-duddies, all the old Mrs. Grundys (my apologies to the real Mrs. Grundys - if they are reading this.) It was: "Things ain't the way they used to be," or: "In my day..." and how boring that all used to be when I heard it from people who were then younger than I am now.
It is 2001. I have spent the Holiday Season with my grandchildren and I have kissed my daughter and my son and her husband and his wife. And it is my 72nd New Year, although I confess that I don't remember the first five or six terribly well.
What can I resolve that I have not resolved a dozen times before? I quit smoking in 1979. I am still overweight, but intentions survive - so maybe this year. I don't mind that I haven't lived up to boyhood pipe dreams. I remind myself that my elders always told me that I would grow out of my idealism as I got wiser and older. And I still think of the (perhaps apocryphal) words attributed to Winston Churchill about how every wise young person is a socialist and something about getting older and still being a fool unless you are a conservative. (I know I got that all wrong, but you get the idea.) It means that you forget dreams of a better world or of social justice once you get a whiff of what the world is all about.
Well - here I am, my life flashing before me, as it did watching MGM's faux version of reality. Here I am resolutely unregenerate. Here I sit pondering next week's Forum - a firebrand denunciation of the schisms of The Left. I will write that we need to discover, not a compromise of principles, but a pragmatism that is both liberal and caring and resonates with more people.
I want no more of the internecine friction that pits us against ego-centred union leaders, or righteous cause-thumpers who believe they have been anointed to lead us out of the dark years of The Right.
So now, two and a half months away from turning 73 (older than Mel Watkins for God's sake!) and next week I'll be back shaking my fist at injustice and making a few more people angry along the way.
I still want to speak out. But I don't think I want to be a movie star anymore. Or do I??
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