Hollywood tangent continued

Being the kind of workhorse that I had been at that time, I did not really pay much attention to films, or t.v.  Teaching is hard work, especially when you are activiely working with youth in the areas of pep clubs, cheerleading, songleading, athletics, school plays, and just the work of grading and correcting paper work.  One of the early casualties of being a teacher is that the eyes go. I soon had to have glasses because I did so much paper work.

When at Kent State University in Ohio, I had had to take a speech therapy kind of exercise to correct my speech and my breathing problem.  One of the things that I had to do is seen in the movie My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn when she has to also do the thing that I had to do, which is to learn to breathe properly using a candle.  Once I saw the movie, I recognized the similarity, thanks to ABC t.v. for showing it in a rerun. Otherwise, I would never have noticed it at all.

I never saw myself as that little cockney girl, but I know that others have as they have said so. I honestly do not think that anyone would find me that challenging to try to remake into a LADY!

I have always been a bit of a tomboy, and admit that I like casual clothing better than too formal.

Anyway, I did not think anything about the fact that people who have speech problems have to do similar exercises, but when at Azusa, one of my students told me that I looked like some soap opera star who was an attorney, I began to take notice that Hollywood was using me.

In the faculty room, the other teachers even pointed out to me that they had heard things that we had said in the privacy of our lounges come back through t.v. shows.  I did not spend that much time watching t.v. then  as I have already said, but soon, I learned of a new show called All In The Family. At the time it was told to me I had known nothing about it, but I said oh, probably not on a major network...HA! To my surprise, when I saw it, I recognized immediately the stereotype characters.  If for no other reason than the words coming out of their mouths.

The setting of All in the Family is Queens, New York.  I know that area a wee bit.  But I will let that sleeping dog lie for the time being.  It was a skit in AITF with a statue of St. Therese, the Little Flower, that made me realize that this was no coincidence about Queens and resemblances to the family members.

Archie Bunker looked a lot like one of the faculty members with whom I worked, Edith looked like the mother of a faculty member, and there was little doubt that Sally Struthers was a lookalike for me in some ways, and that Meathead also bore a resemblance to another who worked in the school system.  We all realized it.  Now, there is an entire family whose children attended school there upon who this entire group could also resemble.  In the end, we all have people who resemble one another, but this entire cast looked like casting from the school system. I still did not have enough time to watch it that much.
\
The old style piano is very funny to me which is the opening scene in which Archie and Edith open the show, singing offkey.  (Jean Stapleton did appear here locally to convince my mother that I am right about some things, as my mom always used the phrase piss and vinegar a lot...so Jean was nice enough to say it to prove to my mom that Hollywood is bugging us!)  My contention is that we are being observed all the time since one of the other faculty members told me that to my face when we took a little side trip to her home away from home.

Someone in downtown L.A. told me that it is a one horse town, and I became finally convinced that I am the one horse in that town...in that time period for sure.

Because it is not just All In the Family, or the Mary Tyler Moore Show, or LaVerne and Shirley, or Happy Days, but an entire host of shows which includes soap operas, All My Children, General Hospital, and One Life To Live, Days of Our Lives, The  Edge of Night, and Another World, and As the World Turns...they all do it.

Maybe by now it should be DID.

How they do it?  They showed me.  In department stores, all one had to do was to walk through the entertainment section with t.v.'s and when live, they would parrot it right back. They are that good, that quick, and that professional. I caught on when a girl came to autoworld, and demonstrated that if I walked this way, she would walk that way, that if I did this, she did this, and so I caught on.

The Queens part is that an old boyfriend had told me that I am always on stage, and to always remember to be on stage, to act, to pretend, to feign.  I have not forgotten him yet.  His family lived in Queens.  That is how I know Queens.

So I do just that.  I play games, I act,  and I wear clothes as crazy as can be because as Danny told me in Sacramento, it is on the clothes.

I also warn people.  There is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Richard Dreyfuss made that perfectly clear to me.  Hollywood will do it for whatever reason it is that they feel the need or compulsion.  Don't ask me why.  I just know that there is nothing to do but realize as Shakespeare said, the world is a stage, and we are the players.

Play on, world.