Screen Crush

My initial reaction when seeing this week's blog theme was that I've never really had a screen crush on a famous actress. Singers maybe, Anita Harris and Grace Slick to name but two; well actually, to name both - it's a short list. However, when the only alternative appeared to be writing about driving through swarms of insects with the car's wipers struggling to clear the squish away, I thought I'd better try a bit harder on the original tack.

I suppose that, along with most young men, I did have an eye for a beautiful actress (Jane Asher, Julie Christie, Britt Ekland and Jane Fonda spring readily to mind) but that hardly constituted a crush on any of them, certainly when compared to a few of my friends who had posters of their favourite actresses on their bedroom walls, and one or two who used to go and see e.g. Barbarella or Far From The Madding Crowd umpteen times just to feed their fixations. I always thought that screen crushes were more a feature of women's lives, young and old. They were the ones who chatted about and maybe fantasized over Cliff Richard (little did they know), Terence Stamp, Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Elliot Gould and a raft of movie males. Apparently these days it's Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. I'm probably generalising, but am I wrong? Ladies, you tell me.

For me, it was always more about the film (storyline, cinematography, emotional connection), or even the physical experience of being in a picture house than it was about any individual actor or actress.

The first time I went to a cinema was to the Odeon in Peterborough in 1961. My Dad took me to see a film called 'The Purple Hills'. It was a rubbish Western. I was bemused. I had no interest in Westerns and I didn't realise he had. Only later did he confide that he thought he was taking me to see 'The Purple Plain', a classic WWII movie based on a novel by H. E. Bates! We had better luck with the likes of 'The Dam Busters', 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' and '633 Squadron', though I was surprised (and pleased) when he took me to see 'From Russia With Love', and all of this before we even had a television set in the house.

King Edward Picture House, Blackpool 1913

Most towns had several picture houses in the middle of the last century, before television became widespread. Peterborough probably had half a dozen. Blackpool, the 'home of entertainment',  had at least twice as many as that, including the lovely King Edward (also known as Central Picture House) which still stands unused today on Central Drive. Fixated on the silver screens of the Tivoli, the Regent, the Palladium, the Rendezvous, the Clifton Palace, the Princess, the Odeon and more, ordinary people (the collective 'we') could pay a shilling or two to spend a few hours in a different, larger-than-life world of heroes and heroines, the virtuous and villainous, engaged in the tales of  adventure, comedy, glamour, romance and thrills being beamed over our heads from the projection room, through the pall of cigarette smoke. There were adverts for a raft of tobacco products and even ash-trays on the backs of the seats... but I'm beginning to stray off-script now. 

Having given this screen crush thing some serious thought (while doing battle with the fitness machines at the gym), I'd probably have to say that the closest I have come was in 2006 when I went to see 'Starter For Ten', Tom Vaughan's adaptation of the David Nicholls novel. Combining a coming-of-age theme with University Challenge, it featured alongside James McAvoy and Benedict Cumberbatch a young Rebecca Hall, making her feature film debut. Watching her felt uncannily like watching someone I knew intimately, maybe in some past or future life, or parallel reality. It was a curious sensation that I've never been able to explain. Rebecca must have been about twenty-three at the time.

Rebecca Hall (i)

She'd already made her professional acting debut while still in her teens before heading off to read English at Cambridge University. That was in a stage production of 'Mrs Warren's Profession' directed by her father Sir Peter Hall (founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company). Her mother was equally renowned, the American opera singer Maria Ewing, though her parents separated when she was still quite young. While at Cambridge, Rebecca acted regularly with the Marlowe Society and even set up her own theatre company (like her father) before dropping her academic studies to concentrate on an acting career. It proved to be a good move.

Film and stage roles followed in quick succession, which saw her working with directors such as Woody Allen (in 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'), Oliver Parker (in 'Dorian Gray'), Nick Murphy (in 'The Awakening'), Sam Mendes (in 'The Winter's Tale' and 'The Cherry Orchard') and her father again (in 'Twelfth Night'). She was the outstanding actor (teamed again with Dominic Cumberbatch) in the award-winning BBC adaptation of 'Parade's End' for which she won BAFTA's best actress accolade. Rebecca Hall likes roles that demand psychological and emotional depth on the part of the actor. She enjoys playing complex women (as in 'A Promise', 'Christine' or 'The Night House'), but is also happy with sci-fi scripts and blockbusters, as evidenced when she replaced Jessica Chastain in the 'Iron Man' franchise and signed up to be in several 'Godzilla vs King Kong' escapades.

Researching her maternal ancestry, she discovered that her mother's 'mixed race' heritage was part African-American (her great-grandfather had been born a slave) and part Dutch settler. It was possibly out of that research that she hatched a desire to make a film of Nella Larsen's landmark 1929 novel 'Passing', with its exploration of the cultural meaning of race in American society. She wrote the screenplay but didn't know where to take it until David Bowie persuaded her that she should direct the project herself, which she finally did, making her directorial debut in 2021, filming the story in black and white.

Rebecca Hall (ii)

She continues to act in challenging roles. The psychological thriller 'Resurrection' is the latest. She also lends her support to the Me Too campaign, has distanced herself from previous association with Woody Allen and donated her fee for appearing in his 2019 movie 'A Rainy Day In New York' to the Time's Up movement which was launched to help combat sexual harassment in the film industry.

Reading back over what I've typed in appreciation of Rebecca Hall, it strikes me that the real screen crush being depicted is not mine for her, but actually Rebecca's own for the cinema, for her love of acting and directing for the big screen. Long may it continue to be so.

I didn't write any poetry for the blog this time. However I thought you might like this poem on theme by the American poet Lynn Emanuel.

Blonde Bombshell
Love is boring and passé, all that old baggage,
the bloody bric-a-brac, the bad, the gothic,
retrograde, obscurantist hum and drum of it
needs to be swept away. So, night after night,
we sit in the dark of the Roxy beside grandmothers
with their shanks tied up in the tourniquets
of rolled stockings and open ourselves, like earth
to rain, to the blue fire of the movie screen
where love surrenders suddenly to gangsters
and their cuties. There in the narrow,
mote-filled finger of light, is a blonde,
so blonde, so blinding, she is a blizzard, a huge
spook, and lights up like the sun the audience
in its galoshes. She bulges like a deuce coupe.
When we see her we say good-bye to Kansas.
She is everything spare, cool, and clean,
like a gas station on a dark night and the cold
dependable light of rage coming in on schedule like a bus.

                                                         Lynn Emanuel (2015)

Finally, I'll leave you with a selective résumé of Rebecca Hall's acting and directing* credits, obviously all worthy of attention in my opinion: Starter For 10 (2006), The Prestige (2006), Wide Sargasso Sea (2008), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Dorian Gray (2009), The Awakening (2011), Parade's End (2012), A Promise (2013), Red Riding (2013), Christine (2016), The Night House (2020), Passing* (2021), Resurrection (2022). As mentioned, she has also appeared in the Iron Man and Godzilla v Kong franchises, but my screen crush doesn't extend that far!

The End. Thanks as ever for reading my witterings, S ;-)