Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

To The Film Industry In Crisis

Saturday, August 09, 2014

Frank O'Hara by Harry Redl 1958

To the Film Industry in Crisis

Frank O’Hara, 1926 - 1966

Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals

with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants,

nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition

is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you,

promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you

are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry,

it’s you I love!

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we
love.

And give credit where it’s due: not to my starched nurse, who
taught me

how to be bad and not bad rather than good (and has lately
availed

herself of this information), not to the Catholic Church

which is at best an oversolemn introduction to cosmic
entertainment,

not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you,

glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous
Cinemascope,

stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all

your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms!
To

Richard Barthelmess as the “tol’able” boy barefoot and in pants,

Jeanette MacDonald of the flaming hair and lips and long, long
neck,

Sue Carroll as she sits for eternity on the damaged fender of a car

and smiles, Ginger Rogers with her pageboy bob like a sausage

on her shuffling shoulders, peach-melba-voiced Fred Astaire of
the feet,

Eric von Stroheim, the seducer of mountain-climbers’ gasping
spouses,

the Tarzans, each and every one of you (I cannot bring myself to
prefer

Johnny Weissmuller to Lex Barker, I cannot!), Mae West in a
furry sled,

her bordello radiance and bland remarks, Rudolph Valentino of the moon,

its crushing passions, and moonlike, too, the gentle Norma
Shearer,

Miriam Hopkins dropping her champagne glass off Joel
McCrea’s yacht,

and crying into the dappled sea, Clark Gable rescuing Gene
Tierney

from Russia and Allan Jones rescuing Kitty Carlisle from Harpo
Marx,

Cornel Wilde coughing blood on the piano keys while Merle
Oberon berates,

Marilyn Monroe in her little spike heels reeling through Niagara Falls,

Joseph Cotten puzzling and Orson Welles puzzled and Dolores
del Rio

eating orchids for lunch and breaking mirrors, Gloria Swanson
reclining,

and Jean Harlow reclining and wiggling, and Alice Faye reclining

and wiggling and singing, Myrna Loy being calm and wise,
William Powell

in his stunning urbanity, Elizabeth Taylor blossoming, yes, to
you

and to all you others, the great, the near-great, the featured, the
extras

who pass quickly and return in dreams saying your one or two
lines,

my love!

Long may you illumine space with your marvellous appearances,
delays

and enunciations, and may the money of the world glitteringly
cover you

as you rest after a long day under the kleig lights with your faces

in packs for our edification, the way the clouds come often at
night

but the heavens operate on the star system. It is a divine
precedent

you perpetuate! Roll on, reels of celluloid, as the great earth
rolls on!

Johnny Weissmuller by George Hurrell

Link to: To The Film Industry In Crisis