THE FRIENDLY PERSUASION

Daughter: "Mama's so strait-laced!" Gary Cooper: "I think I can loosen a few laces"--The Friendly Persuasion

Thursday night I went to the Poetry Meetup at Hart House and recited my translation of passages from Sophocles' Prometheus Bound. (It's actually drama, of course, but I think it works on the level of poetry.) Irene was there, whom I hadn't seen since we tried to start the theatre group a year ago.  She'd written a play of religious satire, but the others wanted to do a zombie play.  Then later on we started to develop a mystery, but that fell through...

Yesterday afternoon at the acting class, we did the Man on the Moon scene from memory. We're going to put the scene aside for now, though I think Nancy would like to come back to it sometime.  Linda and Chris were also doing a scene from Loraine Hansbury's A Raisin in the Sun.  Some of us arrive early just so we can chat with Nancy before the class itself.

Last night I went to a Karaoke Meetup at the Piper's, near our house north of St. Clair Avenue.  There were more people than I expected, and I waited two hours between songs. Jim with the sinus-clearing voice was there.  The poor waitress was stuck handling the bar and all the tables by herself!

This afternoon I saw William Wyler's wonderful The Friendly Persuasion, for the third time, with the Classic Movie Meetup at a screening in the Central in Mirvish Village. (We also got a buffet lunch, which is no great shakes but that isn't important.) Those Gary Cooper movies seem to get better and better with every viewing!  It's a compelling, often funny story about an Indiana Quaker family finding their principles put to the test during the Civil War.  It's easy to forget that Cooper often had a droll touch in movies like this one, and I also liked Dorothy McGuire as his wife.  Pity that whenever we see Anthony Perkins today we think of Psycho.  Pat Boone's theme song "Thee I Love" raised guffaws in the audience.