Friday, June 13, 2008

ann rutherford in "waterfront lady" (1935)

a busy, busy week of teaching and report card writing and scrambling to meet a variety of personal and professional deadlines and so i am relieved that it’s friday and i have given myself the evening off so to speak.

the terms we know our weather by are so dramatically different to what we knew ten years ago and so it is important to redefine our relationship with it. what used to be predictable just isn’t as much anymore. for example - this should be late springtime but this morning it felt like early spring and this afternoon like mid summer!

i am a cyclist, travelling everywhere on two wheels instead of four. this morning it was eleven windy cool degrees so i wore a jacket for my bike ride in to school. on my ride home tonight it was in the humid thirties. right now it’s getting ready for a lovely big rain and i can hear the distant rumbles of an approaching thunderstorm. a great time for a good old film.

waterfront lady marked the big screen debut of movie star ann rutherford.
rutherford, a canadian actress (born in vancouver) was only eighteen years old when this film was made, and yet she demonstrates the poise and acting finesse that i would associate with someone much older and more worldly-wise. it was this quality that would establish her as an immensely popular leading lady.

waterfront lady (released in 1935) is about a gambling boat boss who bails out when the police bust the joint and a murder happens on board. he goes into hiding and takes the role of a sea swab named bill. luckily, everybody on the barge he ends up working on thinks he's a friend of one of the people who lives there, who is conveniently away. then things begin to unfold . . . . .

waterfront lady . . . . .

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