One by one, the whole family disappeared leaving me alone with my pineapple and the remote control. My youngest daughter asked “Who comes to Maui to watch TV?” Not too surprising from Dr. Advice, but I expected better from her.
We may not have had any popcorn, which you are supposed to have in order to enjoy a movie, but there was plenty of fresh pineapple, and a papaya still left on the kitchen counter after dinner, and the prospect of Audrey Hepburn on the TV screen. Though we usually trundle off to bed by 9 p.m., Audrey would not appear until 10, and I didn’t intend to miss “Charade” starring her and Cary Grant, who you may remember was no slouch in the looks department.
They ran some preliminary shots of Audrey’s previous movies, and my oldest daughter joined me, she is very well-versed in movie trivia, from living in Southern California where it all happens. Those not in the know, say “It’s all so L.A.”! When the “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” short shot came on, she said she heard that Truman Capote really intended the novel of the same name to be about the life of a wild, beautiful young man in New York in the ’40s and ’50s. Because of the anti-homosexual bias of the times, though, he had to create a woman as the main character. I know that Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Holly Golightly. Do you think some authors write a book with certain people in mind in case it gets picked up as a movie?
In the old Hollywood days, everyone smoked and drank martini’s, and the only one who never got into trouble for being drunk was William Powell as “The Thin Man”. The cops who pulled him over on the bridge (I forget which bridge) simply wished him a good day and sent him on his way still holding his martini. The gorgeous girls of Hollywood, sported fabulous clothes, had hair which never looked like they just got out of bed, gazed soulfully at their leading man, were never pictured in the kitchen fixing dinner, or scrubbing their bathrooms. Why wouldn’t we all want to be them? New York was impossibly glamorous and chic–and so was Audrey Hepburn, effortlessly stylish, charming and graceful. Just as she was in her private life.
By the time the feature movie started, both daughters and a ten year old great-granddaughter were curled up on the couches with me, ready to watch Cary, for perhaps the second or even third time, rescue Audrey from George Kennedy, the bad guy. Dr. Advice was snoring away in the other room.
Pachofa-Unfinished 