In 1993, when I was a sophomore in college, I received one of the greatest Christmas gifts ever given to me. Earlier in the year, my aunt Gayle and uncle Frantz had driven down to Indianapolis to visit my great aunt Dort. Her husband, my great uncle Mac, had passed away in late 1992, and she had, as I understand it, asked them to come down and go through some of his personal effects. Among them were diaries that his sister--my paternal grandmother--had kept during her youth. She started writing them in 1928 at the age of 11 and continued through 1936 at the age of 20. She wrote in them every single day during that nine-year span. The discipline to do that, especially at that age, still astounds me. Even at 51, I still don't have it.
Rather
than immediately tell the rest of the family of their incredible find,
Aunt Gayle and Uncle Frantz decided to transcribe them into an easily
readable format (not an easy task). One of them would translate my
grandmother's handwriting and the other would type it up. Occasionally,
there were a few things they didn't quite understand--keep in mind,
they couldn't just Google something at that time. Fortunately, one of
Grandma's oldest childhood friends, Marietta, was still alive at that
point and was able to clarify certain elements. (If one were to think
of Grandma's diaries as a story, Marietta would have also been one of
the characters in it.) Once the transcription was finally complete,
they were printed, bound, and presented to us as Christmas presents.
As
moved as I was by this gesture, except for 1928, I didn't read them for
about six years. I felt kind of weird about it. I know I wouldn't
want someone reading a diary that I would have kept at that age. Hell,
I'm not even sure I would want to read that myself! I almost felt like I
was invading her privacy. She was--and still is--one of my favourite
people and I had a hard time doing that to her.
In
the spring of 2000, I finally figured that enough time had passed since
her death that it would be alright for me to read them. If I thought
receiving them as a gift was moving, that's nothing compared to what I
felt reading them. It was a little weird picturing my grandmother as a
slightly boy crazy teenager. I mean, after all, I only knew her as a
grandmother. But the story she told through her diaries was a riveting
one. If nothing else, it was a great document of the city of Goshen,
Indiana, during the Great Depression.
I've often said that reading those diaries was like living through The Godfather Part II without
the organized crime--I would live my daily life as the manager of the
Barnes & Noble music department, and in the evening, after doing
whatever I was doing at that age, I would go home and read about what
had happened 70 years earlier to a family member from whom I descended.
She talked about her interactions with people I knew--namely Marietta
and Uncle Mac--as well as people I had heard about, usually with the
same last name as someone who went to school with my father or Aunt
Gayle. I also felt like it was a nice opportunity to get to know my
great grandparents a little bit, as they died before I was even born.
Included
with the diaries were genealogical charts and family histories and a
few letters that Uncle Mac had written to Grandma when they were
adults. One letter, written in 1973, caught my attention. In it, he
made some references to the fact that she was about to become a
grandmother for the first time. I realized that, in a roundabout way,
he was referring to me as I was born the following April. I felt
connected to the diaries and the events in them more than I had before.
Even though it was Grandma's story, it eventually led to my own. If
only Francis Ford Coppola had filmed it...
The
one discovery I made about myself in all of this is that my love of
film was even more hereditary than I thought. I always assumed that it
was something that had been passed on to me from my father. In reading
her diaries, I realized it went back another generation. In them, she
chronicled every movie she saw during that time. I had to remind myself
that when she would have written in them, film was still a relatively
new art form. "Talkies" had only been introduced the year before
Grandma started writing these diaries. No one thought that so many
movies of that time would still be loved and watched nearly a century
later. I know Grandma was entranced with what we now call "Old
Hollywood"--she always read movie magazines that talked about everyone's
favourite stars and the films they were making. As I understand it,
Uncle Mac even went on to teach a film class at Butler University.
Today, I still have many wonderful, large "coffeee table books" about
old movies ranging from westerns to musicals that belonged to both of
them over the years. I don't know why it never occurred to me before
that that is where my love of the movies comes from.
In
the intervening three decades, more diaries have been found--not always
in chronological order, but found nonetheless. My sister Heather has
taken it upon herself to transcribe them. As I understand it, Google
has been very helpful with questionable references. I've been surprised
and delighted to go through the whole Godfather II thing
multiple times over the last few years and getting caught up in my
grandmother's life during the first years of our involvement in World
War II.
For
my birthday, Heather gave me the recently transcribed diary for 1938.
(According to her entry for 1 January, she did not write one for 1937.)
As always, I was most curious to see what (now) classic films she had
seen when they were originally released in theaters. I particularly
enjoyed--even when I was 26--reading her thoughts about movies that I'm proud to say I've
actually seen. She saw this week's film in January, 1938. For some
reason--perhaps because I actually have two copies of it in my film
library--I somehow felt closer to her. She seemed to enjoy it as much
as I always did.
In
the film, Irene Dunne and Cary Grant play Lucy and Jerry Warriner, a
high society New York couple on the verge of divorce. Each suspects the
other of things that never actually happened. While waiting for their
divorce to become final, we get to witness all kinds of relationship
mayhem as she takes up with an Oklahoma oilman (the great Ralph Bellamy
in an Oscar-nominated performance) and he with a wealthy socialite who is
described as having "millions of dollars and no sense" (played by Molly
Lamont). Jerry also gets visitation rights to their dog, Mr. Smith
(played by the great Asta of The Thin Man series, who would go on to work with Grant again in Bringing Up Baby the next year).
The
film is one of the screwiest screwball comedies of the era--an apparent
specialty of Grant's. It was nominated for five other Academy Awards
including Best Picture, Leading Actress (Dunne), Best Screenplay (Viña
Delma), and Best Editing (Al Clark). Leo McCarey won the film's sole
award, taking home the Oscar for Best Director. Based on a play by
Arthur Richman, this week, in honour of my grandmother, I'm happy to
recommend 1937's The Awful Truth.
Until
next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember
that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for
you.
Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!
The Reverend Will the Thrill
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