January 5, 2015

Ridge Spring News

INFORMATION:

Judy Adamick will hold Water Color classes for 6 weeks from February 3^rd to March 10^th.  Cost will be $75.00. She will also teach acrylic classes for six weeks from February 5^th through March 12^th for $75.00.  For more information call Judy at 803.685.5814.

Jane Autrey is a new business in Ridge Spring.   She does Insurance Services  803-685-0090.  This includes Home, Auto, Farm, Commercial, Life & Health.  Her office is at 106 Noble Street - Behind Cumbee Place and her hours are Office Hours; Mon, Tues, Thurs & Fri 9am - 5pm

Miranda Brooks: The 2015 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Brunch will be held at the Multi-Purpose Center at the Ridge Hill Baptist Church on Saturday, January 17 at 10:00 AM.

Pastor George Key:Helpful Hands Community Mission Worship will begin on 1st & 3^rd Sundays of the month beginning in February.  Services will begin at 1100 AM. “Family Night” will be on the 2^nd Sunday Evenings at 5:00 PM.  The Worship Services will be held at the Historical Star Center. Again services will begin February 2015

There will be a Harvest Festival Meeting January 13^th, Tuesday, at the Cumbee Place.  Please come had help in the search for a chairperson for 2015 and discuss how to use some of the Harvest Festival funds.

FYI: The RSM Band will need to replace their uniforms before they go to competition next year.  A spaghetti supper is in the works to begin helping to raise the money.

David James has been kind enough to fill in for me this week.  He contributed several collections of books to help the Harvest Festival Bingo and I appreciate his support.  Thank you, David

By David Marshall James

Seventy-five years ago this just-past December, “Gone With the Wind” premiered at the Loew’s Grand Theater in Atlanta.  The year 1939 is considered Hollywood’s greatest; the superlative output was due in large part to the imminent shut-off of markets for U.S. films in war-torn Europe.  Therefore, during the late 1930s, the studios hurried their major projects into production.  However, in September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and the curtain rang down on the European market until after World War II.

GWTW dominated the Oscars that year, garnering all the major acting awards, except for Best Actor (Robert Donat, “Goodbye Mr. Chips”) and Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell, “Stagecoach”; Mitchell also portrayed patriarch Gerald O’Hara in GWTW).  Victor Fleming received Best Director honors for GWTW; he was director-on-record for both GWTW and “The Wizard of Oz.”  George Cukor also helped direct both films, yet his sole 1939 credit is for “The Women,” which featured an all-star cast, including ingenue Joan Fontaine.

Fontaine died in late 2013.  Her older sister, GWTW Best Supporting Actress nominee Olivia de Havilland, lost to fellow cast member Hattie McDaniel in 1939, but would go on to win two Best Actress statuettes during the 1940s.  De Havilland continues to reside in Paris, and is even interviewed in the latest issue of Garden & Gun magazine.

Nominated for Best Actor in 1939 was Mickey Rooney (“Babes in Arms,” his third pairing with Judy Garland).  Moreover, Rooney was the no. 1 box-office star in the World that year.  I was surprised to hear acerbic novelist and essayist Gore Vidal state, a few years before his death, that he considered Rooney the greatest actor, ever, in Hollywood.  Rooney would never match the popularity of his Andy Hardy series and his musicals with Garland, all of which were highly profitable.  Nevertheless, he continued acting on-screen until a few years before his own death, this past year.  I recently caught him in “Night at the Museum” (2006), stealing scenes from Ben Stiller and Dick Van Dyke. 

To quote Garland, “There’s nothing like aristocracy in vaudeville,” and most of today’s movie actors would benefit immensely from a few years spent trouping in vaudeville. 

Maybe not Meryl Streep, who has been acting in films now for 35 years.  I howled when I read Joan Rivers’ “bucket list” for her funeral:  “I want Meryl Streep there, crying in five different accents.”

It was not to be, but Joan couldn’t have scripted a much-more-effective passing this past autumn than the one she received, what with the week-long coma and the daily updates on the NBC “Nightly News,” among other channels.  Joan was a star after the old-style, dressing to the nines and loving every minute of it.  As she observed, “If you’re rich and you’re ugly, it’s your own damn fault.”

Joan obviously enjoyed every minute of being a star, strutting out on a stage (it didn’t have to be grand), entertaining audiences.  She didn’t suffer whiney celebrities gladly.  I heard her on PBS’s “Theater Talk” a few months before her death, reminiscing that, when she was a child, Ray Bolger escorted a group of young people backstage following a performance of his “Where’s Charley?” on Broadway.  “I knew I was in a temple,” Rivers recollected.

While in a coma, Rivers was laid out in her hospital bed beautifully coiffed and made up, wearing her favorite fur coat, which reminds me of the death of another Mickey during 2014, back in the spring.

That would be socialite/philanthropist Mickey Easterling of New Orleans.  You probably haven’t heard of her, and you may not believe the following story.  In either event, Google her name.

I knew of Mickey because she was the mother of a good friend in the high school I attended in Metairie, LA.  Mickey came across as the love child of Liberace and Auntie Mame, jet-setting to glittering locales in an atmosphere of free-flowing champagne.  One of my favorite “Mickey stories” is of her sprinting past security at Louis Armstrong International Airport in order to see her daughter off on an Australian honeymoon flight.  (This was a good fifteen years before 9/11.)

In a flowing Zandra Rhodes gown of turquoise and gold—with a full train, no less—Mickey wheeled around to her uniformed pursuers, proclaiming, “Do I look like a g.d. terrorist to you?”  By the by, she wound up in the jet cabin, ordering champagne for everyone.

Small wonder, then, that when Mickey died, she was laid out in the Saenger theater on Canal Street in New Orleans, the restoration of the Saenger being one of her pet projects.  Check that:  She was propped up on a bench, a glass of champagne at one hand, a cigarette in the other, and draped in a feather boa.

Her ashes were carried to one of her favorite ports of call, Tangiers, as the finale to a scenario that I don’t think even Tennessee Williams could have conjured, as much as he would have loved it.

Here, then, to the Graduating Class of 2014—Mickey, Joan, and Mickey among them.  I would have to say that those three finished summa cum laude.  And here, then, to going out in style.

Reminders: 

Ridge Spring Library hours: Mon/Tues 8:30 a.m. - 12 p.m; Thurs 8:30 am - 12:30 pm; Fri 12:30 pm -4:30 pm; Sat 9 am -12:00 pm

Every 2^nd & 4^th Monday:  Kids' Corner Story Time 10:30-11:30 a.m., at the Ridge Spring Library. 

Every 2^nd Monday:  RSM Elem PTO meets at 6:30 pm in the media center. 

Every Friday & Saturday:  AARS hours 10 – 4 or by appt, free admission

Every first Tuesday of the Month:  AARS meets at 6:30, 685-5783

Every Wednesday:  AA meets at Recovery Works

Every Monday & Friday:  Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings 7 pm at Recovery Works (enter on Ponderosa Drive; park in Visitor Parking Area)

Every 3^rd Thursday:  FORS at Cumbee Place 5 pm