June 8 movie: The Blue Gardenia. Fritz Lang again, this time a noirish drama about a young woman (Anne Baxter) implicated in a murder and trying to clear herself. It sounds grim, especially since she was defending herself against attempted rape. Believe it or not, the tone here is lighter than most noir.
I watched the movie because Nat King Cole appears, singing the title song at a nightclub of the same name. There's an overhead mirror behind him to show his hands on the piano. I read on IMDB that he must have forgotten that, because he plays a totally different arrangement than the music we hear (the single version he recorded at another time). I don't know enough about piano to recognize the music just by watching the pianist, so I wouldn't know. There is a bit of unintentional hilarity in the same scene: apparently the Blue Gardenia is sort of a tiki bar, and Baxter's date, trying to get her drunk so she won't resist later, plies her with a tropical drink called a Pearl Diver. It's one of those big fou-fou drinks with all kinds of garnishes sticking out the top. Baxter cooes, "Ooh, it's strong!" and then the two of them both stop talking and lock eyes in an intense look -- while sucking Pearl Divers through their straws. They look idiotic. All I could think of was my old friend Charles telling me that no one looks cool drinking through a straw.
Charles had tons of handy little bits of advice (like "Don't ever squint with your mouth open, it makes you look like a moron") which I still remember today. His best advice ever was how to adjust to driving an automatic car, when you've used to stick shift. To wit: "Remember everything you learned about driving? Well forget all of it. All you have to know is the left pedal means stop and the right pedal means go". It sounds crazy but the first few years I was driving, if I ever had to drive an automatic I found that advice incredibly helpful. I would find my left foot thumping on the floor for a clutch that wasn't there, and if I felt at all disoriented or confused I would just think "left pedal, stop; right pedal, go" and then I'd be okay.
Leave a comment