Friday, April 1, 2011

Delusions of self-government, revisited




 Oh, very well, 
but I want to know
how every penny is spent!







Alice Brady as Aunt Hortense
  emerging from Customs, Southampton
The Gay Divorcée
George Marion, Jr, Dorothy Yost,
  and Edward Kaufman, screenplay
Mark Sandrich, Director
RKO, 1934©


4 comments:

  1. some of it is spent in red undies, I guess!
    ;-)

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  2. If only our young man would purchase a suitable belt!

    Very apt as we are bracing ourselves for our forthcoming election.

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  3. Tassos, this is one of the most hilarious ladies in all cinema (known to me, anyway), and her remark has stayed with me for decades, possibly because it is one of her first in this brilliant comedy of sustained zaniness. Think of her as a genius at making the best of any indelicacy by correlating it with her own saving obliviousness. But this remark doesn't correlate literally with a payment of duties, and relates more the flight of fancy implicit, need I say, in the contemplation presented. Yet somewhere in the back of one's mind there is lurking, this beneficent screwball, whenever one is about to undertake a genuinely silly project -- originally, this picture had been reserved, for example, for a discussion of a different folly, but for following up on Mr Locke of the foregoing posting, I couldn't resist its mockery of this time in the U.S.

    As to the red undies - and indeed, our sentry's entire ensemble - I lack the acumen of my guests. I can say, however, that I admire how he refuses to allow attire to get the better of him. :)

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  4. Best wishes for an un-American outcome in your elections, Dink. As for the haberdashery, I couldn't venture to guess which is our ym; but, as you say, an investment in anything suitable sounds very sound, to me, too. Unless one has enough already, heaven forbid.

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