March - Women's "Herstory" Month (page 2)

StAnn

The Virgin Mary

Sojourner Truth

Harriet Jacobs

Anne Frank

My dear friend, Dorothy Gordon, who is 84 years young and still going strong

An exponent of the Method style of acting, Geraldine Page was best known as a stage performer, particularly for her work in the plays of Tennessee Williams. Her performances in the film versions of Summer and Smoke, as a shy spinster hopelessly in love with her neighbor, and Sweet Bird of Youth, as an aging movie star suffering from a nervous breakdown, established her as a successful and important actress and indicated the wide range of her acting abilities.

In 1953, Page was brought to Hollywood to play opposite John Wayne in Hondo as Angie Lowe, a homesteader with child, abandoned by her husband. Warner Brothers executives were unimpressed with her despite an Oscar nomination; she was not offered another Hollywood film until the 1960s. After the two Tennessee Williams roles, she became somewhat typecast as a spinster or neurotic, as evidenced by her characters in Toys in the Attic, Dear Heart, and You're a Big Boy Now. Her eccentric image was pushed to its sinister extreme, epitomizing evil behind a sweet facade, in such films as The Beguiled and Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice?, while her comic abilities were showcased in Pete 'n' Tillie (notably her frustration when police demand to know her real age).

Woody Allen used the accumulated resonance of her desperately vulnerable character roles when he cast her as the self-pitying wife and overbearing mother of Interiors, a woman whose well-ordered existence is shattered by her husband's desire for a divorce. Life becomes a strain: a spilled drop of wine at her birthday celebration provides an exquisite moment for Page to eloquently communicate long suffering.

Her stage career continued to be her prime focus, working both on and off Broadway, and accepting only occasional television parts and movie roles. In 1984, Page was awarded a seventh Oscar nomination for The Pope of Greenwich Village, the record for actresses who had yet to win.

The following year, the losing streak was ended with her glorious performance in The Trip to Bountiful as Mrs. Carrie Watts, an aging widow now living in a two-room Houston apartment with her son and overbearing daughter-in-law. Aware her time is near, Mrs. Watts is anxious to make one last trip to Bountiful, the place of her youth. As a woman coping with the sorrows and frustrations of old age dependency, Page brilliantly communicates Mrs. Watts' tendency for self-dramatization: she will make it to Bountiful if she has to walk the last 12 miles from Harrison. The emotional journey Mrs. Watts takes on this trip allows Page to use effectively the sense memory skills of her Method background: upon her arrival at the homestead, her simple statement "I'm home" is accompanied by a facial expression that magnificently encompasses both the joy of arrival and a sadness over those not present.

—Doug Tomlinson

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WOMEN'S HISTORY

My favorite female author is Betty MacDonald, whose autobiographical works describe her life as a little red-haired girl with a slightly off-center (maybe way off-center) grandmother - Gammy - who wore her corsets backwards and dumped all the icebox leftovers into her cookie batter. Betty and her siblings (Cleve and Mary) couldn't down the hockey pucks, but the new kids on the block loved them; they tasted like their regular snack of dried dog food.

THE EGG AND I tells the story of a young wife's struggle to tame the wilds of the Pacific Northwest while inhabiting a little chicken ranch huddled in the lap of the forbidding and hostile Cascades (I believe I have my ranges straight). Speaking of ranges, have you ever attempted to cook on a wood burning stove? One with a mind of its own? You've got to meet STOVE! As well as all the dumb clucks, running around with their heads chopped off - well, so to speak ...

To be continued ...

MissingLink

When's Men's History Month?

BTW - Harriet Tubman is hot!

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WOMEN'S HISTORY

Josephine Baker (or Joséphine Baker in francophone countries) (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French expatriate entertainer and singer. She became a French citizen in 1937. Baker was most noted as a singer, while in her early career she was a celebrated dancer. She was given the nicknames the "Black Venus" or the "Black Pearl", as well as the "Créole Goddess" in anglophone nations, while in France she has always been known in the old theatrical tradition as "La Baker".

Joséphine Baker is noted for being the first woman of African descent to star in a major motion picture, to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and for being an inspiration to generations of African-American female entertainers.

Wikipedia