In 1951 my mother took me to see the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir with Rex Harrison, Gene Tierney, George Sanders and Natalie Wood as a child. Because I was 9, Harrison’s booming voice did not scare me. I loved the film and fell in love with Gene Tierney.
I saw the film again in Mexico with my mother and with my Rosemary. In Vancouver some years ago my daughter Hilary says we saw it together.
Obviously there is some memory and a consistent tradition with this film and my family. While I live alone with two cats since my Rosemary died on December 9, 2020 I am lucky to have two daughters. Alexandra who lives in remote Lillooet I don’t see too often, but my younger daughter Hilary who lives in Burnaby I see once a week.
Luckily (again!) she is a snob like her mother and her father. She likes to see good films, particularly the ones with little violence. And so it was that on Tuesday she screened The Ghost and Mrs. Muir on her TV after we had dinner. I brought the ravioli and she made the salad.
Somehow it was almost like we were seeing the film for the first time as we forgot some of the details. That made it even more fun.
We both noticed that the prominent portrait of Harrison on the film compares ever so nicely with the portrait of Gene Tierney in the 1944 film with Dana Andrews, Laura. Famously Dana Andrew’s character falls in love with Tierney by just seeing her portrait. He is told that she is dead. We know better!
Dana Andrews the ultimate film noir actor
Hilary and I will be seeing Laura next. I will be bringing a Safeway barbecued chicken for dinner.
I fell in love with Tierney in 1951 and that emotion was not repeated until I saw my first Grace Kelly film, Rear Window, Eva Marie Saint in Raintree County and Audrey Hepburn, in Roman Holiday. To this day Eva Marie Saint must have been in my mind when I fell for my blonde Rosemary.
When Rosemary and I had a garden in Kerrisdale I purchased Rosa 'Sexy Rexy' as I thought it had been named after Rex Harrison. That was not the case. That rose grows in my Kitsilano garden. Guess who I think about when I see it in bloom?
Thank you Hilary for the memories.