Not Much, Except for Bacall

In anticipation for our family's first vacation to Disney World several years ago, Chris and Charlotte bought each member a small souvenir from one of the amusement parks; mine was a cook book from The Brown Derby.

Sure, I found it neat to make my pork chops the way Joan Crawford ate hers, or to make rice pudding the way Jimmy Durante ate his. More fascinating, however, were the pictures of Hollywood stars as they dined at the Derby throughout the decades.

Since then, I've allowed my fascination with Hollywood to grow into a healthy obsession. Except if you take into consideration my still wanting to frame Brown Derby caricatures and hang them in my dining room.

And when I say Hollywood, I don't mean the current crop of actors that are famous simply for being famous.

I'm talking of an era when a night on the town meant Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, and Ingrid Bergman all dolled up, not Tara Reid, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton dancing on a pole. When a night out with the boys meant whiskey and cigars with Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant, not calling 9-1-1 in front of The Viper Room.

Not that I think the morals have changed at all. For every Robert Blake, there's a Roscoe Arbuckle around the corner. For every Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, there's a Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman.

But I choose to overlook much of that and remember the stories of the Golden Age.

The Hollywood in which each Annette Bening and Warren Beatty story is able to mirror a Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall romance.

And speaking of healthy obsessions...

Lately, I've been recording old movies for when I can't sleep. So I've seen quite a few Bacall movies the past couple of weeks. I watched To Have and Have Not this morning and The Big Sleep a few days ago.

To Have and Have Not (1944) is the movie where Bacall and Bogart met and fell in love. Which is not exactly how the director, Howard Hawks, wanted things to turn out. I don't find much coincidence in the fact he gave Bacall's character the same nickname previously reserved for his then-current wife.

Hawkes, in his puerile jealousy, charged that Bogart fell in love with Bacall's character, not Bacall herself. And for this, Bacall was forced to play that sassy and sultry role for the rest of her life.

Granted, it's impossible to know what the private lives of others are like. Especially those of couples who lived together half a century ago. So I've been reading as much as possible I can about this particular couple.

Images I found (which I'll publish once Blogger lets me) show a couple who not only loved passionately, they also argued passionately. A couple that may have fallen in love for the same superficial reasons the rest of American did, but a couple that stayed in loved based on a much deeper connection.

Plus, I find it sweet and endearing he referred to her as Baby, even when talking to friends outside of her presence. I like the idea that a seemingly brutish and surly man can be weak at the knees for somebody so soft and tender.

Wow, I just realized that I started off this post wanting to talk about Hollywood in the first half of the 20th century. I was going to write that the only time I don't mind a slow queue at Disney is at The Great Movie Ride. The ride is housed inside a building designed to look like Grauman's Chinese Theater. The line takes you inside a room created to look like an old movie theatre (without the chairs, though). To keep your mind off the fact that the attraction at the end is rather lame, clips of famous movies are looped to remind you of the real Hollywood. It's easy to get swept up in this nostalgia (and the red carpet), especially if you've just emerged from The Brown Derby a few hundred feet from the front door.

Instead of that, I ended up slobbering over Lauren Bacall.

But can you really blame me?