Rosanna

Hack’s buddy, actor Eddie Frierson, recently gave an interview in which he was asked to name his favorite Halloween film. Frierson gave the offbeat (but excellent) suggestion of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 classic Rebecca, starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson. It’s the story of a late middle-aged widower named Maxim de Winter (played by 33 year-old Olivier aided by some pretty unconvincing white shoe polish in his hair), who marries a beautiful poor young thing who is never referred to as anything but “the second Mrs. de Winter” (a really excellent performance by Ms. Fontaine) and takes her to his magnificent mansion, only to have her life made miserable by the spectre of de Winter’s first wife Rebecca and her devoted but VERY unnerving housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Anderson).

Hack thought that it was a great suggestion for both a Halloween film AND as a subject for one of his trademark rip-offs, especially since today is the late Ms. Fontaine’s birthday and he didn’t have any other good ideas for covers for us to post.

Happy heavenly birthday to Joan Fontaine!

“And The Rest”

Mary Ann ran breathlessly to the train platform dragging her red gingham suitcase behind her. She threw her arms around Jonny, expecting to be rewarded with one of his trademark uvula-drenching tongue kisses. Instead, he softly pushed her away as the temperature of the station seemed to drop ten degrees.

“Sorry I’m late,” she stammered. “When my stern religious father heard about my plan to go with you to Van Nuys, he preached the scriptures about the whore in Babylon to get me to reconsider. He finally disowned me and cast me out, but here I am.”

“About that, doll,” said Jonny slowly as Boris lit a cigarette to give his partner time to recite the speech he’d spoken a million times before. “We said a lot of beautiful things, but it’s time to face reality. You could never fit in in my world any more than I could in yours.  But as a parting gift, here’s a free trip to Hawaii, including a 3-hour tour on the S.S. Minnow. They said it gets cold on the boat, so you should bring six months’ worth of clothes with you.”

“Buh..but…” the amazingly tanned farmgirl sputtered as tears welled in her eyes, “you promised to take me with you if I’d perform that disgusting sex act that’s illegal in my county, under pain of being shackled in the public stocks and marked with a scarlet ‘A’”.

Jonny’s eyes narrowed as the Last Call whistle blasted from their train.

“Them’s the breaks, baby.”

Happy heavenly birthday to the great Dawn Wells!

The Thin Man Needs a New Liver

Hack has been binge-watching the old Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, and he was taken aback by the profligate drinking in the films, especially by Nick Charles. That’s a bold statement considering that Hack is on his third liver, so he decided to write a realistic Thin Man novel, where Charles is at death’s door because of his drunkenness and hasn’t been able to sexually perform in decades. It’s actually a fun read.