Thursday, April 19, 2012

Carmen

I really have no excuse for this other than a) it's a truly miserable rainy day, and b) Rita Hayworth - Margarita Carmen Cansino - was an exceptionally lovely actress.
(Although let me pause for a moment, however, and just grouse: what the fuck was wrong with the official female "dress code" of the Forties through the early Sixties? Specifically, the red granny panties that come up to Rita's waist. Gah! Was a woman's navel some sort of mid-century erogenous zone, or what? Whatever it was, women in pictures and films had to wear these awful DependsTM well until the surf films later in the Sixties introduced the notion that you could appear in public with your belly showing and not corrupt the children. Sorry. /rant.)
The saddening part of the combination of beauty and rainy days is that poor Rita's personal life was a dreary as the day today; she was a drunk with serious emotional issues and a career of finding lovers and husbands who were weapons-grade shitheels.

She also suffered from Glamor Girl Syndrome; "[M]en fell in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me." she said, and might well have been speaking for every public beauty whose partners take the parts that they played for the women they are. While it's very human to see what you want to see, when you do that with another person there's no real alternative but unhappiness.

So here's to the happy laughing Margarita of her glory years in the Forties when she was young and strong and lovely - awful swimsuit panties and all - who floated across our lives as a pair of legs long enough to bestride a chasm of troubles and a smile bright enough to lighten a gloomy day. If only you could have turned that brightness inwards, Doña; "Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your belly button comment may lead you into the realm of the bikini.

Or Star Trek, from Mariette "2 Buttons" Hartley's bio at imdb

Mariette was not allowed to show her belly button in Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek" (1966) episode, "Star Trek: All Our Yesterdays (#3.23)" (1969), due to censors. But Gene got even: he had Mariette show TWO belly buttons in Genesis II (1973) (TV)

btw, your Latin's improving.

"adimunt" not "adimiunt"

Keep it up, you'll get better. ;)

bb

Anonymous said...

And . . . . . on a message board I frequent, a thread popped up on Westerns, and the talk came round to Sam Peckinpah, known for "The Wild Bunch" and also for "Ride the High Country" with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea and Mariette's film debut.

All life therefore is connected.

btw #2, did you guys see "John Carter"? I was surprised how good it was despite the crappy press and reviews it got, and b/c I'm nosy.

bb