Matches, Marbles, Money and Women
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
directed by Howard Hawks
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library
My dad's mother keeps boxes of photos and carefully labels all of them. On my mother's side, there are pictures but no names, and except for a portrait of my grandfather and the men he served with on an LCI in the Pacific - each man's name is written in his own hand around the border - all but my most immediate relatives are already mysteries. My dad's mom enjoyed pictures more. She was estranged from her father at an early age and grew up poor with her mother - a woman whose porch was always filled with geraniums - on San Antonio's West Side.
My dad's parents met at Brackenridge High School and dated on and off while my grandfather went to college at Texas A & M and at some point spent time in the Navy. There is a funny souvenir photo of him in Service Dress Whites at the "Starlit Terrace" of the Olmos Dinner Club in San Antonio, looking younger than I ever did when I began to date, and some pretty stranger on his arm. The pretty stranger is not my grandmother, but ask her about this and she will say only that she did much better than her future husband in that regard.
It is nice to see pictures of the people you knew only in their old age as men and women in their teens and twenties. My grandmother especially seemed to enjoy those years, and one of my favorite snapshots of her is a wallet-sized image taken on a humid Texas day. She wears a dress made of a heavier material that is tailored perfectly to fit her - she sewed, of course - and a pair of white sandals with a thin strap across each ankle. Her hair is up, and she leans with her hands behind her against a flagpole, anchored in a small marble square to a closely cut lawn. A row of cars is parked against the curb; there is plenty of chrome but also an old Model-T. It looks like a car show, but no one is there.
My grandmother is smiling, and though she is not a beautiful woman, she is radiant. She reminds me of Jean Arthur, who does not dress like Rita Hayworth in Only Angels Have Wings. Hayworth's Judy is the show-stopper, but she is flightier than Arthur's Bonnie Lee. Bonnie is practical but romantic, wise but gentle. You don't quite believe her when she says she performs in bars, but she knows how to put the rough men in that South American tavern at ease. That was my grandparents' gift, and the same thing has been said about Howard Hawks' movies by more astute writers than me: guests were friends, and the house was always a home.
directed by Howard Hawks
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library
My dad's mother keeps boxes of photos and carefully labels all of them. On my mother's side, there are pictures but no names, and except for a portrait of my grandfather and the men he served with on an LCI in the Pacific - each man's name is written in his own hand around the border - all but my most immediate relatives are already mysteries. My dad's mom enjoyed pictures more. She was estranged from her father at an early age and grew up poor with her mother - a woman whose porch was always filled with geraniums - on San Antonio's West Side.
My dad's parents met at Brackenridge High School and dated on and off while my grandfather went to college at Texas A & M and at some point spent time in the Navy. There is a funny souvenir photo of him in Service Dress Whites at the "Starlit Terrace" of the Olmos Dinner Club in San Antonio, looking younger than I ever did when I began to date, and some pretty stranger on his arm. The pretty stranger is not my grandmother, but ask her about this and she will say only that she did much better than her future husband in that regard.
It is nice to see pictures of the people you knew only in their old age as men and women in their teens and twenties. My grandmother especially seemed to enjoy those years, and one of my favorite snapshots of her is a wallet-sized image taken on a humid Texas day. She wears a dress made of a heavier material that is tailored perfectly to fit her - she sewed, of course - and a pair of white sandals with a thin strap across each ankle. Her hair is up, and she leans with her hands behind her against a flagpole, anchored in a small marble square to a closely cut lawn. A row of cars is parked against the curb; there is plenty of chrome but also an old Model-T. It looks like a car show, but no one is there.
My grandmother is smiling, and though she is not a beautiful woman, she is radiant. She reminds me of Jean Arthur, who does not dress like Rita Hayworth in Only Angels Have Wings. Hayworth's Judy is the show-stopper, but she is flightier than Arthur's Bonnie Lee. Bonnie is practical but romantic, wise but gentle. You don't quite believe her when she says she performs in bars, but she knows how to put the rough men in that South American tavern at ease. That was my grandparents' gift, and the same thing has been said about Howard Hawks' movies by more astute writers than me: guests were friends, and the house was always a home.
posted by NPK at 4:58 AM
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