Mixed Metaphors

“Ever since I was a child, films, like good books, served as windows to worlds sometimes unfamiliar or far away due to distance in time or space. Movies depicted characters both fictional and historical, unraveled mysteries or documented adventures; they always engaged my emotions and attention. Some films are more familiar and familial, memoirs or morality tales that act like mirrors to my lived experience, or road maps of my internal journey. I prefer non-fiction to fiction. Most fiction, in my view, is simply reality in disguise, employed to protect the innocent and the guilty. As a memoirist I am most interested in the stories we tell and the stories untold about our lives.” – Excerpt from Stories We Tell/Stories Untold 

This is not the first time that I’ve written about my love of movies and memories of my mother. Art, whether expressed in words, music, or the visual arts transports us in time or space. I binge-watched the new six-episode documentary series on HBO Max, The Last Movie Stars, directed by Ethan Hawke, which chronicles the professional and personal lives of Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and their family, colleagues and friends. For me, it invoked memories of my mother’s love of Paul Newman and the movies, which she shared with her children. Viewing this series provided more insight to why she related so strongly with Paul and Joanne.

 

 

“A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again. Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again.” — Pauline Kael, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies

First, I consider myself a cinephile. As a child growing up in the 1950s 1960s, I remember my family’s first television. It is also one of my first memories, at the age of five sitting in front of the TV in our rental home in Racine, Wisconsin, escaping into whatever show I was watching. I was surrounded by cardboard boxes as my parents packed for our move to their first, and only home they bought, where they eventually raised their family of six children.

I imagine the TV was used as a pacifier or babysitter for me to stay out of their way and not add stress or demands on their time as they worked. TV later became a Saturday morning ritual and a reward we’d earn. On Saturday night with my siblings and mother it became a treat to watch scary movies with our mother. More about that later.

As an older preteen child, my sister Roz and I would save our allowance and on a Saturday afternoon after chores, we’d walk the mile or so to The Capitol movie theater in West Racine that featured Disney movie matinees. We’d have enough money for the movie and one or two treats, often popcorn plus either Goobers, Lemonheads, Jawbreakers, or Malted Milk Balls and the list goes on.

Sometimes during extended family gatherings at The Grams, my paternal grandmother and great grandmother’s downtown apartment, our aunts, uncles, and parents would allow our eldest cousin to take us to the Rialto or Venetian Theater for a movie matinee to get out their cramped apartment and the adults hair while they drank beer and gossiped or watched football.

As the eldest sibling, when my parents went out on a Saturday night I’d babysit, stay up late, and watch movies, sometimes films that my parents would describe as adult movies. I developed a preference for films that in some way mirrored my family life growing up. Themes with alcohol and marital strife, like The Apartment, and The Days of Wine and Roses, teenage rebellion films like Blackboard Jungle, and the benchmark of that genre, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.

Romantic melodramas starring actresses like Susan Hayward in Back Street, or Barbara Stanwyck, and comedies featuring women leads in How to Marry a Millionaire, or films starring Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday appealed to my need to see women in starring roles. However, some of my favorite films starred Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, often adapted from plays or stories by Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, or John O’Hara. More about that too later.    

When I became an adult and attended college, my soon-to-be-husband Frank, and his best friend, Hal Stern, a French Professor and curator of the University of Wisconsin – Parkside Film Society, attended many films together, afterwards we’d enjoy wine and a joint or two while discussing the films (it was the late 1960s!).

Hal introduced us to film noir, German Expressionism, Swedish films by Ingmar Bergman, French Cinema, including films by Francois Truffaut, my favorite, Jules & Jim, and the avant-garde and political films of the late 1960s and early 1970s by American directors. When Frank and I married in 1971, our honeymoon consisted of a hotel stay in Milwaukee for a week, and movie afternoons and evenings with dinner in between.

I created a cadre of filmgoing friends. We’d see films together followed by existential conversations, movies like They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Midnight Cowboy, Dog Day Afternoon, The Deerhunter, 3 Women and the list goes on.

In the more recent past, I expanded and fine-tuned my preferred genres which included documentaries, biopics, rom coms, dysfunctional family dramas, and films by a small group of directors, including women. I’d often go to films alone, sometimes two or three matinees on a weekend. Sometimes I’d invite a large group of filmgoing friends to a movie to celebrate my birthday.

I’d attend the Wisconsin Film Festival every year, and at the end of the festival, I’d post my annual festival Filmgoer’s Wrap-Up and Dispatches from the Wisconsin Film Festival. When I created this blog, prior to the Academy Awards every year, I’d draft my Filmgoers Guide to the Best Films of the year.

When more films and content were streamed by subscription services and On Demand, especially during the pandemic, I’d watch more content at home and post mini-reviews on social media under the title, Filmgoing, Content-Streaming Friends & Family and have a small following of people who look for my recommendations.

Did I say I love movies? I do!  

Memories of My Mother

I’ve been working on this reminisce of my mother and musing about the movies for at least a couple of weeks now. Sometimes my writing process is slow, and unfolds at its own pace. Often there’s a reason or it’s simply serendipitous. It’s certainly is true for this section of the story.

On Saturday, August 6^th, it was my parents’ 73^rd Wedding Anniversary had my mother still lived. She died six years ago, yet she continues to live in the stories we tell, in our memories, our hearts, and in the smiles and eyes of the generations that follow. I try to visit Dad every year when I’m able, on or near their anniversary. I’m the eldest child, and like many young couples, Mom was pregnant with me when they married.

I’m confident that regardless of the pregnancy, they would have married, perhaps when they were a little older and established. Dad was 18, Mom 16. Shortly after I was born Mom turned 17, Dad, 19. Both parents hailed from matriarchal families, and their respective mothers scheduled a summit and approved the union. My parents struggled for a few years and both worked hard, sometimes both full and part-time, eventually raising six children.

Every time I visit Dad, I learn more about his life and his relationship with his wife, best friend, love, longtime companion, soulmate, and my mother. Dad is the auditory, social member of the couple. Mom was the quiet one, however, though Dad appeared to be the leader of the family and disciplinarian, Mom was the matriarch behind the scenes. When Mom spoke, we listened, and we didn’t want to spark her anger or disappointment. 

Yesterday, during my visit with Dad, we talked about how they resolved conflict. Our parents never argued or fought in front of us, and we also never saw them resolve conflict and makeup. When they were angry, they didn’t talk to each other. They made up behind closed doors. Dad admitted he was afraid of Mom! This revelation surprised me. As I thought more about it, it made sense. He was abandoned by his father when he was young and was close to his mother and grandmother. I suspect he was afraid that if Mom got too angry, she’d abandon him, and he relied on the love and support of a women his whole life.

I attribute my love of movies to my mother. Throughout her life she too loved movies, and when my parents were young, movies were often their date night. When one of the grandmothers or other family members were unavailable to babysit me, my parents took me along. Sometimes the films were frightening to the preschool me. I remember being terrified of red, flesh-eating ants and quicksand after I saw a film set in Ceylon entitled, Elephant Walk.  It starred the young and beautiful Elizabeth Taylor and a herd of elephants; My senses were heightened and I was mesmerized and forever hooked on the movies.

During the late 1950s and early sixties, Saturday night was movie night with Mom and my sister Roz, and later siblings, Cindy and Rick joined us in front of the television. Dad would sometimes go out to the neighborhood bar and be gone most of the afternoon and evening. This was Mom’s opportunity for a movie night to watch one of her favorite genres with her kids (besides Paul Newman movies and romantic melodramas).

She was too scared to watch them alone. She’d let us stay up late with her. With Pyrex bowls filled with real buttered popcorn in our laps, and the lights turned off, we’d watch Creature Features, scary science fiction movies of the time, like It Came from Outer Space, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the original, The Day the Earth Stood Still. If we’d begin to fall asleep, she’d wake us up until the movie was over and then she’d send us upstairs to our bedroom; frightened and tired girls, scared of our own shadows and creaking footsteps on the stairs.

Years later, I was Mom’s moviegoing companion, and after I moved out of the house, Roz became Mom’s date. Mom and I would go to R-Rated films when I became 16-years-old. I remember seeing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff? with her and having to explain some of the story. I already had become an avid reader of playwrights, including Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, and Samuel Beckett. Some of the plays, especially Williams, had gay themes.

Mom apparently had an interest in lesbian pulp fiction too. When I was a young teen, probably 13-years-old, I found Mom’s book when I was babysitting one night when my parents were out. I was looking for something, and found this instead. I read it in one night before they returned home. It was the classic lesbian novel of the times, steamy seduction of the young ingenue by the older experienced lesbian, who ends up dead at the end. I was already questioning my sexual orientation before I read the book. Oh, my!

One of the movies I remember seeing with my mother when I turned 17 was The  Fox. From IMBD, the film, “Based on D.H. Lawrence’s novella about two young women – sickly, chattering Jill Banford and quiet, strong Ellen March – who are trying, hopelessly, to run a chicken farm in Canada. A gentle but powerful man named Paul Grenfell who used to live on their farm returns and puts things in order. But his proposal of marriage to Ellen awakens the homosexuality dormant in the girls: Jill uses her weakness to make Ellen feel protective, and the women become active lovers.”

Though I enjoyed watching those adult-themed films with my mother, it was our dates, either at home watching films with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, sometimes costarring, or our movie dates in the theater in films featuring Paul Newman that inspired this remembrance, For the Love of Movies (& Memories of My Mother).

Memories of Paul Newman

I binge-watched the six-episode HBO Max biopic directed by Ethan Hawke, The Last Movie Stars. The series is based on transcripts of interviews conducted for a memoir Newman worked on with a friend, which he later abandoned and burned the original tapes. Hawke enlists Hollywood friends to read the transcripts, representing Paul, Joanne, family members, directors, actors, and their friends. George Clooney reads Paul, Laura Linney, Joanne.

The transcripts tell the story, not only of the acting couple’s film choices and careers, but chronicles their marriage as one of the longest married in Hollywood. Their marriage had its ups and downs, challenges with alcohol, making a blended family work, and the suicide of Newman’s son from his first marriage.

What makes this series more personal and poignant for me is that our mother loved Paul Newman, his talent as an actor and his magnetic and masculine presence. She had a large b/w poster of Newman except for his blue eyes. It was in the basement by the washer and dryer, and when she did laundry, she said, “I’m going to visit Paul now!”

Our father resembles Paul Newman, especially when they were both young men. At Mom’s funeral visitation, there were a number of memory boards and photographs. One memory board featured a photo of Paul Newman, it was larger than any other photo displayed. Someone asked, “Why is Paul Newman’s photo on the memory board?” We answered, Mom loved Paul Newman. Dad responded, “Mom may like Paul Newman, but I got my shoes under her bed before he did.” 

I have my own memories and fan relationship with Paul Newman. In high school, in 1967 -1968, I worked on the school newspaper, as its first editor the year the school, J.I Case, opened in Racine, Wisconsin. I also won the naming contest for the paper, Just In Case (an early example of my love of word play).

In 1968, Newman campaigned for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the presidential primary. Newman campaigned extensively for McCarthy during the Wisconsin primary. I was dispatched to our small municipal airport, Racine Horlick Field to cover Newman’s campaign event.

I had recently seen Newman’s movie, Cool Hand Luke, with my mother. The themes of the film represented the tenor of the times. A famous quote from the movie, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

After the press event, Newman sat in the back seat of a small limo to return him to the chartered plane. I ran to the window across from where he sat. My intention was to capture a quote for the article I would write for the paper, but like my mother before me, when I saw his graying, longer and curly hair, and those robin’s egg blue eyes, all I could do was gush like a fan girl. “I LOVED you in Cool Hand Luke!” Mom was envious, though happy, that I met Newman in person and confirmed how blue were is eyes.

Newman remained a Hollywood political figure, campaigning for civil rights and against the war. One of the things he was most proud of was his appearance as #19 on President Nixon’s enemies list.

Whenever a Paul Newman or Joanne Woodward film appears on TV, or a streaming service, I’ll watch it for what might be the second, third, or fourth viewing. There were elements of both the characters they played and who they were in life, that to some degree mirrored my experience with my parents. I can’t watch Paul Newman in a movie, without thinking of my mother.

I’m grateful For the Love of Movies (& Memories of My Mother).

Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!

A Filmgoer’s Guide to the Best Films of 2021

Filmgoer’s Wrap-Up: 2019 Wisconsin Film Festival

Rom Com Love Bomb

Another Trip Around the Sun

Home for the Holidays

A Triptych of Films About Family Love

The Ties That Bind

Stories We Tell/Stories Untold

A Tribute to Life Itself

Additional Content on the Subject

The Last Movie Stars

In Photos: Racine’s former theaters