Watcha Watchin’?
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
I’m sure you’ve noticed sometimes something you read or heard doesn’t quite sink in at the time and pops up days or even weeks later. I read an article a few months ago suggesting the classic musical Gigi condones paedophilia.
I immediately passed it off as social media BS until I thought about it this morning in the shower. Being blessed with an operatic range surpassing that of the late Luciano Pavarotti, which relegates him to the level of the even later Ernest Tubb, I started to sing Maurice Chevalier’s immortal ‘Tank ‘eaven for leetle gulls, dey grow up een de mos delightful way’ and eet (oops! I was still doing my Maurice there), it reminded me of the article I read a while back. I started thinking, should an old geezer, especially a French one, be singing about leetle gulls?
Maurice had to be 70 in the movie. Later, he began to make moves on Hermione Gingold who was a century or two past her prime at the time also. Had he been successful in bedding her, MGM would have been well-advised to have a team of heart specialists on hand – one for each of them. Of course, if you have to die, I can’t think of a better way to go – just not with Hermione.
The article was not all that worked up about Maurice since he seemed fairly harmless, but was more concerned with Louis Jourdan, a sauve, handsome and obviously wealthy boulevardier. Louis ends up marrying Gigi who appeared to be barely out of kindergarten at the beginning of the picture. If you will recall, at the start of the movie he was hustling Eva Gabor who didn’t appear exactly virginal. Eva is not to be confused with her sister, Zsa Zsa, the classic example of the simple joys of maidenhood in movies from the 1950s until her death, likely in a three-way, in 2016.
Gigi had one of those sudden age spurts which often happen in the movies or when they are sitting beside me in Grade 11, and became quite handsome. It’s amazing what a few dabs of make-up and a push-up bra can do for a fairly plain young miss.
Leslie Caron (Gigi) must have had a thing for old guys, or they did for her. Before hooking up with Louis, she romanced Gene Kelly in An American in Paris seven years before and Gene was no spring chicken as my mother used to say.
But this young girl thing started me thinking, are there other movies out there that need investigating for their morality? Are there little bits in my old favourites overlooked by the censors that could possibly lead today’s young lads astray? Should they be banned from primetime TV or at least relegated to the wee hours when young people are fast asleep and only us old geezers are glancing at late movies while on our way to the bathroom for the third time?
We won’t investigate the James Bond films since they are obviously true to life and likely could happen, although Roger Moore in bed with Grace Jones in A View to a kill was a scary moment and does make one wonder how Roger survived.
We also won’t revue the 1963 disaster, Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison even though the little tramp tumbled the two Roman generals, both married as I recall. Not because of the sexual content of the film but because the movie was even longer than her reign. Even Cleo’s death was a bit odd and I suspect was due to a mistranslation. I don’t think it was an asp that bit her, I think it was where she was bitten and it was spelled wrong. A snake was never mentioned in any hieroglyphics I’ve read.
We will, however, take a long look at everyone’s favourite, Casablanca. Consistently at the top of the list of the finest wartime love stories ever made, we can even now picture the tears in Ingrid Bergman’s eyes when Bogie says goodbye as she boards the plane to fly off with her husband and out of his life. We will remember forever his words, ‘We will always have Paris.”
But is that the real love story here? What about the love no one talks about? Yes, Claude Rains and Humphrey Bogart walking off into the fog, when Bogie says, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” they are holding hands.
(Image Supplied)
