R.I.P, Old Friends

This morning, as I browsed my newly personalized iGoogle page (which includes Gmail, Google Reader, ToDo ,Weather, Google news, FoxNews, CNN, NYTimes, WSJ, NPR, and Wikipedia) I was assaulted on multiple fronts with the tragic news of the death of Tony Curtis and a picture of him cross dressing in Some Like it Hot.

I first fell for Mr. Curtis when I saw the film, The Great Race (Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Natalie Wood, dir. Blake Edwards, 1965). I was about ten, maybe twelve, and it's been a family favorite ever since. The pie fight, Curtis' gleaming smile, Jack Lemmon's manic laugh ("Up, Max, bring it up!!!), and a great Mercer/Mancini song somewhere in the middle. Tony wears white for the entire film, drives a white car from New York to Paris, seduces every woman he meets, and runs around a castle shirtless and fencing like some weird 1960s echo of Errol Flynn. Still, as stunning as Tony undoutably is, Jack Lemmon is really the comic star and therefore my favorite. Here's the pie fight - note his impeccable cleanliness until the very end:

Speaking of Lemmon and Curtis, the second film I saw Curtis in was Some Like it Hot (if you don't know the specifics of this one, take an intro to film course, people - this should be common knowledge). Curtis' fantastic parody of Cary Grant is spot on in his backward seduction of Marilyn Monroe. The cross-dressing antics of Lemmon and Curtis, the bizarre romance of Lemmon and his gentleman lover, and Marilyn at her curvy best. Favorite scene, you ask? Well, here you go:








Genius, genius, genius. Makes me laugh harder every time I watch it.

Growing up as I did immersed in old movies (I didn't see a PG movie til I was 9 - it was Little Women - and I really didn't see much made after 1975, except Disney, til I was in my late teens), actors like Tony Curtis were much more familiar to me than contemporary heartthrobs like Heath Ledger. I swooned with Ginger when she danced with Fred. I watched every Paul Newman movie I could find. I imitated Kathryn Hepburn's perfectly haughty New England demeanor (or her screwball, Bringing Up Baby-style shenanigans). Walter Matthau was like a slightly inappropriate uncle, Audrey Hepburn's style in How to Steal a Million informed my ideal of femininity, while Peter O'Toole's blue eyes and perpetually surprised brows still make my heart skip a beat. And - true confessions now - Jessica Fletcher, aka Angela Lansbury, is my ultimate hero and I have every intention of dressing exactly like her when I'm in my late 60s, early 70s. If I can also live in a small fishing village in Maine when I retire, write books, and be best friends with the local doctor, I won't be complaining, though I really hope my friends don't die quite as regularly as hers seem to. Honestly, that woman is a health hazard.

 Aren't they Divine?

I grew up in the past, is what I'm trying rather inelegantly to explain. And because of that, I've had to watch my favorite actors pass away with much greater frequency than the rest of my generation. Walter Matthau was the first. I was 15 and I put a picture of him above my bed to commemorate my mourning process. Poor Jack went next in 2001, fitting I suppose, that those grumpy old men didn't have to live long without each other (seriously, if you haven't seen Grumpy Old Men, watch it soon. It is awesome). Paul Newman was more recent, and also required a long period of mourning. And now Tony. I'll have to have some kind of private film festival in his honor this month, I suppose. Thank heaven for Netflix.

I really don't know how I'll survive the passing of Angela L. and Judi Dench. It may finally be too much for me.