Eleanor Divina, Part 5
As I Thumb My Way Towards Eleanor’s End.
Chances are I was still sucking my thumb when during my parochial school sick day—
Oops…Sorry, it’s been a while.
So, allow to me retrace my steps a bit here. I’ve been habitually referring to Eleanor Parker for a total of about four Vlogs now. They’re all of them posted here, on Facebook, and Instagram… And you can also see them on my YouTube Channel if you’d like to join me in my roundabout roundelay obsessions.
So, back to my parochial school fever and channeling into our family TV set on that long ago day...
It’s no wonder that it was very hard for me to extract my thumb from my mouth back when I was a wee tyke. Those childhood days of getting lost while watching movies on Dialing For Dollars, and its afternoon counterpart, Boston Movietime, airing afternoons on a competing Channel. I’ve come to associate many other movie memories with that impossible habit of mine to break. I remember my developing a taste for pretty much every bitter tonic that my parents bought from our town pharmacy in their efforts to dissuade me from inserting while staring at movies like Woman in a Dressing Gown, Auntie Mame, Friendly Persuasion and Rodan—all of them fondly associated with that habit.
Which suddenly reminds me of that ugly Lesley Ann Warren eggplant pizza episode I had when the babysitter—
But, I digress...
So, getting back to Eleanor…I was home from school with a fever— in my pajamas—watching Ms Parker’s attempts to wrestle unsuccessfully in Caged with what seemed like an endless series of sadistic prison plights.
That flu embedded a whole string of tawdry images into my craw. As I was—even at that early age—something of a library freak when it came to cross referencing…Once I’d returned to good health, I was to find out that this actress playing a criminal waif in Caged was the same woman who so deliciously tormented Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music!
When My Mom and my Aunt Rita took me to see the on screen musical in 1965, I was so taken by her being so resplendently Viennese formal that it just didn’t gel at all that I’d only recently been watching her in a prison smock on our black and white TV set.
Caged is pretty straightforward and scary stuff for an impressionable kid. And, Ms. Parker’s descent from waif to wanton is beautifully and indeed tragically realized.
You’ve got to love this woman!
Well, you really don’t actually. But, I do.
Just sayin’.
See you here next time...I hope.
Till then...
Be well.
And, stay engaged.
