Bosworth Anniversary 1485-2017
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls:
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on, join bravely, let us to’t pell-mell
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.
Really shocked at how the King Edward hotel in Calgary looks today.
The Out-of-Towners
I managed to find and watch a film I have fond memories of.
A 1970 American comedy film written by Neil Simon, directed by Arthur Hiller, and starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis. It was released by Paramount Pictures on May 28, 1970.
Much of the film’s humor is derived from the interaction between George, the manic husband desperately collecting the names of everyone he encounters with plans to sue every last one of them, and Gwen, the mousy wife who accepts each new indignity with quiet resignation.
A number of comic actors, including Anne Meara, Sandy Baron, Ann Prentiss, Paul Dooley, Dolph Sweet and Anthony Holland, were cast in small supporting roles.
Originally, playwright Neil Simon planned his tale of a suburban Ohio couple’s misadventures in New York City to be one of a quartet of vignettes in his Broadway play Plaza Suite. He quickly realized, however, the comic possibilities were numerous enough to warrant a full-length treatment, and the action was more suitable for the screen than the stage. During filming in the spring of 1969, Hiller took full advantage of Manhattan, including Grand Central Station, Central Park, and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in his location shooting. Scenes were also filmed at Logan International Airport and South Station in Boston, and at MacArthur Airport in Islip, New York (standing in for the fictional Twin Oaks, Ohio air terminal).
The plot revolves around Gwen and George Kellerman, whose company has invited him to interview for a possible job promotion in New York City. From the moment they depart their home town of Twin Oaks, Ohio, the couple suffers nearly every indignity out-of-towners possibly could experience: Heavy air traffic and heavy fog forces their flight to circle around Kennedy Intl. Airport and the New York skyline repeatedly before finally being rerouted to Boston’s Logan Airport, where they discover their luggage – in which George’s ulcer medication and Gwen’s extra cash are packed – was left behind.
Just missing the train at South Station, they chase it to the next stop by cab, board it (it is extremely overcrowded), and wait two hours for seats in the dining car, only to discover the only food left is peanut butter sandwiches, green olives, and crackers. Upon arrival at Grand Central Terminal in New York by 2:00am, they discover that mass transit, taxicab drivers, and sanitation workers all are on strike. Making their way to the Waldorf-Astoria on foot past tons of garbage in a torrential downpour, they discover their reservation – guaranteed for a 10:00pm arrival – has been given away, and the hotel – like every other one in the city – is booked to capacity due to the strikes.
What follows is a series of calamities that includes two muggings (one while they sleep in Central Park), kidnapping by armed liquor store robbers while the Kellermans are riding in a police car enroute to an armory, a cracked tooth, broken high heels, accusations of child molestation, an exploding manhole cover, expulsion from a church, and an attack by protestors in front of the Cuban embassy. With each successive catastrophe, George angrily writes down each perpetrator’s name and promises to sue them or their company when he returns home.
The only thing that goes right for George is he somehow manages to arrive on time for his 9:00am interview, with rumpled clothing. Despite receiving a very lucrative offer, the two realize an upwardly mobile move to the big city is not what they truly cherish after the urban problems they have gone through, and they make the decision to return to their small town in Ohio, only to be subjected to one more major catastrophe—their flight home is hijacked to Cuba. Gwen says “Oh my god!” (which she had said various other times during the movie) ending the film……
Sandra Dale “Sandy” Dennis (April 27, 1937 – March 2, 1992) was an American theater and film actress. At the height of her career in the 1960s she won two Tony Awards, as well as an Oscar for her performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
Dennis was born in Hastings, Nebraska, the daughter of Yvonne (née Hudson), a secretary, and Jack Dennis, a postal clerk. She had a brother, Frank. Dennis grew up in Kenesaw, Nebraska and Lincoln, Nebraska, graduating from Lincoln High School (Lincoln, Nebraska) in 1955. She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Nebraska, appearing in the Lincoln Community Theater Group before moving to New York City at the age of 19. Dennis lived with prominent jazz musician Gerry Mulligan from 1965 until they split up in 1974. She also lived with actor Eric Roberts from 1980 to 1985. In an interview with People magazine in 1989, Dennis revealed she and Gerry Mulligan had suffered a miscarriage in 1965 and went on to say, “if I’d been a mother, I would have loved the child, but I just didn’t have any connection with it when I was pregnant…I never, ever wanted children. It would have been like having an elephant.”
Dennis has been identified as a lesbian by a number of Hollywood historians.According to Dennis’ biographer, Peter Shelley, Eric Roberts, upon being asked if Dennis was bisexual, spoke of her telling him about her many lesbian relationships and said that she, “appreciated the beauty of women. But Sandy also liked and appreciated what a very, very young man could do to a woman, I suppose.”
During Dennis’ lifetime, in-depth published interviews with her, such as one with The Christian Science Monitor during her stint performing in an ensemble cast at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1981, made no mention of a close relationship with a female. That interview included the following exchange about her marital status:
At one point I say, “When you were married to Gerry Mulligan…” but she breaks in, tersely: “I was never married to anybody.” I point out that “Who’s Who” says she was married to Mulligan. She says, “It’s not – I’m not fussy about that – the truth is I was never married. We had a long association but we never married…” But there it is in Current Biography: “In June, 1965, after a three-week courtship, Sandy Dennis was married to Gerry Mulligan, the jazz saxophonist and composer.”
She sits bolt upright and repeats: “I’ve never been married. And I’m not fussy about it. It’s just the truth is, that I was never married. It isn’t true that I was ever married, which means that I never got a divorce. The newspapers jumped to that conclusion. It’s so hard to get to somebody and say…Oh, they’re so funny about it.”
Death
Sandy Dennis died from ovarian cancer in Westport, Connecticut, at age 54.
