“[Tom Lefroy] has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove – it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same colored clothes, I imagine which he did when he was wounded.”

This observation, noted in a letter written by 20-year-old Jane Austen to her sister, suggests that Austen, as well as Lefroy, were familiar with Henry Fielding’s novel. It is she, after all, who infers that Lefroy’s morning coat is an homage to the garment worn by a wounded Tom Jones, who had been wounded in a dispute over a lady’s reputation.

There are a few references to Lefroy in Austen’s letters that were written in the early part of 1796. From Steventon, she writes of their “profligate and shocking” flirting, and that she found him to be “gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant”. Several days later, she looks forward “with great impatience to a ball at which “I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him however, unless he promises to give away his white coat.” It is interesting that she writes with the same blithe self-confidence of Lady Susan Vernon, the focus of her recent novella, announcing that she “bequeaths” all of her beaux to a friend, “as I mean to confine my future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care a sixpence” – yet, she cares enough that “my tears flow as I write” at the thought of his imminent departure.

Tom Lefroy

Jane Austen

There is a gap in 1797, before her correspondence resumes the following year; this is the period in which she converted her epistolary Elinor and Marianne to Sense and Sensibility, which provokes some interesting speculation about what may have influenced the character of Willoughby. There are certainly points where Lefroy’s hero and Austen’s most complex scoundrel intersect.

Tom Jones and John Willoughby both have expectations that are kept at bay, to a different degree, by the course of their own conduct. In the end, both are rewarded – again, to a different degree. Jones gets the lady and his claim to fortune; Willoughby gets a lady, who comes with a fortune. Tom Lefroy, who lived in the real world, could not hope for the serendipitous good luck of fiction. It is unlikely that the great-uncle who funded Lefroy’s education would have behaved as Jones’ benefactor who “…threatened [Tom Jones] with the entire loss of his favor”, or that Lefroy would have forfeited his uncle’s good will by the sort of conduct that had Willoughby, “…formally dismissed from [his relative’s] favor”; still, Austen’s poverty would have been viewed as an impediment, by Lefroy’s relations, to their marriage.

Jones and Willoughby have similar encounters with the charming heroine. Marianne Dashwood injures herself in a fall, and winds up in the arms of Willoughby. Sophia Western is tossed from her unruly horse into the arms of Tom Jones. When the ladies receive their farewell letters, Sophia laments that, “I have thrown away my heart on a man who hath forsaken me…He hath taken his leave of me forever in that letter”, while Marianne wails, “Willoughby, where was your heart, when you wrote those words?” In both works there is a somewhat satirical contrast between the natural and the conventional, expressed, to varying degrees, in the manner in which illegitimacy affects the course of romance.

Still, in literature and life, Austen must accept the “mortifying conviction that handsome young men must have something to live on, as well as the plain”, and her novels’ marriages do not take place until that “something to live on” is certain. Yet, in Sense and Sensibility, chronologically closest to the brief Austen/Lefroy relationship, Austen is able to propose an ideal resolution through her fiction: Willougby – as dissolute as Tom Jones and as good-looking and pleasant as Tom Lefroy – is  reinstated by the rich cousin upon whom he is dependent, not by marrying the woman he had wronged, or by marrying a wealthy woman, but by marrying a woman of good character – a rapprochement that, ironically, he might have effected by marrying Marianne.  Did Austen secretly hope that Lefroy might count on the same benevolence?

Certainly, there was no engagement between Austen and Lefroy, and she cannot claim to have been jilted, but he was not forgotten. (Perhaps this was what enabled her to write so feelingly, in her next effort, of the effect of Bingley’s absence on Jane Bennet). Two years after Lefroy’s departure, Austen writes of a visit from his aunt, that, “…of her nephew she said nothing at all…She did not once mention the name of [Lefroy] to me, and I was too proud to make any enquiries.” Only weeks later, in early 1799, Jane writes of a cold and its effect on her eyes, and describes a ball with little enthusiasm. “I do not think I was very much in request. People were rather apt not to ask me till they could not help it. One’s consequence you know, varies so much at times without any particular reason.” Yet, she retained enough consequence to be solicited – and to decline – “Lord Bolton’s eldest son” for a partner. Perhaps her “indifferent” vision is the result of tears, shed upon learning of the engagement of Tom Lefroy, who was married in March of 1799.  When she does go on to write “Whenever I fall into misfortune, how many jokes it ought to furnish my acquaintance in general…” she echoes Marianne Dashwood’s lament upon Willoughby’s desertion: “I must feel – I must be wretched – and they are welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can.”

Clive Francis as Willoughby (1971)

Greg Wise as Willoughby (1995)

Peter Woodward as Willoughby (1981)

But I will, anyway. On May 8th, Ordinary Magic, by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway will be released. From Amazon’s book description: “In Abby’s world, magic isn’t anything special: it’s a part of everyday life. So when Abby learns that she has zero magical abilities, she’s branded an “Ord”—ordinary, bad luck, and quite possibly a danger to society. The outlook for kids like Abby isn’t bright. Many are cast out by their families, while others are sold to treasure hunters (ordinary kids are impervious to spells and enchantments). Luckily for Abby, her family enrolls her in a school that teaches ordinary kids how to get around in a magical world. But with treasure-hunting kidnappers and carnivorous goblins lurking around every corner, Abby’s biggest problem may not be learning how to be ordinary—it’s whether or not she’s going to survive the school year!”

And what is the book blogiverse saying?

“I definitely recommend this must read book for those who love magical adventures and stories with a twist.”  Ms. Book Queen

“… the author has crafted an allegory that successfully lampoons mindless prejudices...” Kirkus

“…a very frank look at bigotry for a middle grade level…Ordinary Magic was a fun, engaging read.”  The Book Evangelist

“This is a fantastic book and I was totally enchanted by it.”  Books Your Kids Will Love

“Abby, as a truly “normal” heroine is easy to identify with. Unfinished business suggests a sequel in store.” Publishers Weekly

“Caitlen weaves the issue of Ord inequality to be parallels of racism, class systems and ableism.”   Write the Word

“Not only does [Ordinary Magic] twist many of the genre’s convents, but it is filled with well-developed characters and relationships.”  Page in Training

I love, love, love how Caitlen Rubino handled her story. Harry Potter had a very magical sense in the story. Ordinary Magic does to, but also attacks issues, such as prejudice…” Hippies, Beauty and Books, Oh My!

“I LOVE THIS BOOK!”  Yearning To Read

[Ordinary Magic] is just plain fun to read in every way, and that includes fabulous magical action scenes, intense excitement – and simple charm, which it has in spades…This is my very favorite MG fantasy discovery in a very long time.” Stephanie Burgis, Author

    We would like to thank Rosemont College for inviting us to speak about the genesis of Lady Vernon and Her Daughter and the current state of Austen paraliterature, at a lovely afternoon tea held in the Main Building on Rosemont’s campus. Particular thanks go to Professor Mary Ann Macartney and President Sharon Hirsh for making us so welcome, and to the “clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation” who attended the event.

“The Play, on Saturday, is, I hope, to conclude our Gaities here….” Wrote Jane Austen from Bath in June, 1799. The play referred to was a comic melodrama by the popular playwright Augustus von Kotzebue, The Birthday, also known under the titles The Reconciliation (Die Versöhnung), Fraternal Discord, and The Veteran Tars, the title varying with the translator.

Augustus von Kotzebuem

The plot of The Birthday/The Reconciliation/Fraternal Discord/The Veteran Tars concerns the invalid Mr. Philip Bertram, his devoted daughter Charlotte, his estranged twin brother Captain Bertram, and the kind-hearted doctor, Bloomfield. Charlotte has vowed never to abandon her invalid father for a husband, unless, as Bloomfleid proposes, “But suppose there was a man willing and able to…make a third in the circle of domestic felicity, who would dwell under your roof…”- the same proposal Mr. Knightley makes to Emma and Mr. Woodhouse. The play concludes with a reconciliation between the brothers being effected by Charlotte and Bloomfield. Mr. Bertram throws off his crutches, the brothers embrace, and Charlotte, presumably, is released from her pledge.

Austen’s situation in life did not permit her to be a regular theatre-goer, but it would have been unusual for even an occasional patron to avoid seeing a play by Kotzebue, who, critics notwithstanding (Sir Walter Scott declared that Kotzebue’s work displayed “…an affectation of attributing noble and virtuous sentiments to the persons least qualified by habit or education to entertain them”) was among the most prolific and widely produced playwrights of the latter 18^th and early 19^th century. If Austen did not catch one of his plays while at Bath, she might have seen one in London; Kotzebue’s plays were frequently to be seen at Covent Garden, The Haymarket and the Drury Lane. His plays were produced everywhere, from Russia to the United States. Of the six new German plays produced for the 1798-1799 New York season, four were Kotzebue works; twenty years later, of the seven German works produced for the New York stage, five were Kotzebue works.

It was a Kotzebue play, in fact, that Austen selected to work into the plot of Mansfield Park. When the young people gather at the Bertram household to put up a play, they immediately reject Shakespeare, the popular tragedies The Gamester and Douglas – though Tom Bertram was familiar with the latter, as his “I am sure my name was Norval-“ (the main character in Douglas) “- every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays.” They reject several comedies, though Tom Bertram, who has his eye on two of the choice roles, suggests The Heir at Law five times. At last they settle upon Lover’s Vows, aka A Child of Love, and The Natural Son. This adaptation of Kotzebue’s play was the work of the actress/playwright Elizabeth Inchbald, who is sometimes credited as the writer, though hers was only one of three English translations that appeared in the same year. It is likely that the Bertrams and their friends decided upon the Inchbald translation, over the more faithful ones by Stephen Porter and Anne Plumptre because it re-formed the work to exclude the elements of illegitimacy, which may have been tolerable on the London stage, but would not have been tolerated by Edmund Bertram.

Lover's Vows

Elizabeth Inchbald

“We have got Fitz-Albini; my father has bought it against my private wishes, for it does not quite satisfy my feelings that we should purchase the only one of Egerton’s works of which his family are ashamed.“ So wrote Jane Austen to Cassandra in late 1798. Despite her reservations, she did add that, “That these scruples, however, do not at all interfere with my reading it, you will easily believe.” Austen goes on to write that she is less disappointed in the work than her father because “I expected nothing better” and writes several more lines about her reservations regarding the work

So what is this minor work that is an affront to the “private wishes” and “feelings” of young (just shy of age 23) Jane Austen, but which she will read nonetheless?

Arthur Fitz-Albini(1798) is the title character of a novel by Samuel Egerton Brydges (later Sir Samuel; he was made a baronet in 1814), genealogist, editor, bibliophile, poet and novelist. It can be inferred from biographical information, that Egerton Brydges was a person whose ambition exceeded his abilities – not that his abilities were negligible, but his conduct suggested an inflated sense of worth. At the time of Arthur Fitz-Albini’s publication, Egerton Brydges was in the thick of a costly thirteen-year legal battle to claim a barony. His claim was  eventually rejected, and it was strongly suggested, even in the obituary published in The Gentleman’s Magazine, that he had “tampered…with the documentary evidence” to support his “favorite illusion”.

Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges

Though Arthur Fitz-Albini was published when Egerton Brydges was a mature thirty-six, it was less a novel than a thinly-disguised and somewhat intemperate airing of his real, or perceived, disenchantments, grievances and injuries by way of his title character/alter ego. Young Arthur’s ambition is to seek out “the few, whose penetration and freedom from envy enabled them to appreciate [his] character”, a character that Egerton Brydges describes as having the eloquence of a senator, the independence of a country gentleman, and the spirit but not the tyranny of a feudal chief. Arthur’s parliamentary ambitions are thwarted by his father, and his refined sensibilities are offended in equal measure by the vanities of Londoners and the ignorance of country-folk. There are flashes of insight, if not self-diagnosis in the author’s description of Arthur/himself. He describes “an inequality of temper and mind” and displays of “indignation and haughtiness…which seem by fits to possess him.”

What we now know about certain forms of mental and emotional illness would make an interesting diagnosis of the author. Egerton Brydges approached his education with an attitude that fluctuated between intense focus and indifference, he studied law without having any apparent enthusiasm for it. From his first marriage, at age 24, he lived in the country, then in town, then purchased a country estate into which he poured thousands of pounds. Following a second marriage, he secured a seat in Parliament for six years, and afterward left England, eventually settling in Geneva. In the foreword to the reprint of his 1819 novel, Sir Ralph Willoughby: An Historical Tale of the Sixteenth Century, it is noted that the author lived his last years in virtual seclusion and “…has scarcely quitted his bed” and “During the latter part of his life, he never shaved and his white beard and hair gave him a most venerable and patriarchal appearance” to go with the manners described as “eccentric”. This brief biographical note is followed by the author’s fifteen-page introduction that fluctuates from high-flown to humble.

What is it about Fitz-Albini that set off Jane Austen to such a degree? She writes of the novel’s “many characters” and “very little story…told in a strange, unconnected way”; yet, it is hard to believe that Austen, who enjoyed novels such as the burlesque The Heroine, or the convoluted Margiana, or Widdrington Tower would object to a number of characters or a meandering plot. Her sense of his family’s shame, with such thinly disguised characters that Austen could recognize some of them (“We have not been able to recognize any of them hitherto – i.e., so far – except Dr. and Mrs. Hay and Mr. Oxenden”) was so off-putting that she refers to the author as ”Egerton”, omitting the “Brydges” that was the maiden name of her much-admired neighbor and confidante Anne Lefroy.

It is possible that Austen’s feelings had another source of dissatisfaction. Mrs. Lefroy was the aunt (by marriage) of Tom Lefroy, and despite the two years that had elapsed since Jane’s flirtation with Tom when he visited his relations, she has not forgotten him. Only a week before the Fitz-Albini letter, Jane had written to Cassandra of a visit from Mrs. Lefroy, and her (Jane’s) attempts to get her father and brother out of the way in the hope that Mrs. Lefroy might confide something of Tom. But “…of her nephew, she said nothing at all” until Jane’s father enquired about him. Perhaps Austen’s dormant “private wishes” had been stirred up by the portrait of  the young, ambitious Fitz-Albini. Perhaps, unlike Mr. Collins, Jane cannot “reflect with augmented satisfaction” upon the proposal which never materialized, and an acceptance that might have involved her in the Brydges/Lefroy “sorrow and disgrace” incurred by Egerton Brydges’ fictionalized tell-all.

  We will be guests and featured speakers at a Jane Austen High Tea on Sunday, April 22 at 2 PM, given by Rosemont College, 1400 Montgomery Avenue, Rosemont, PA. The public is invited; however, you must submit the RSVP form that you will find by clicking on the link below, so that the organizers may have a head count.

  The event will be hosted by Professor Mary Ann Macartney, to whom Lady Vernon and Her Daughter was dedicated.

http://www.rosemont.edu/calendars/detail.aspx?pageaction=VSIPublicBlock2&LinkID=1192&ModuleID=22:27&StartDate=4/22/2012

“Tomorrow, I shall be just like Camilla in Mr. Dubster’s summer-house; for my Lionel will have taken away the ladder by which I came here, or at least by which I intended to get away and here I must stay till his return.”  So wrote Jane Austen to Cassandra in 1796, when her return to Steventon was delayed because none of her brothers were able to escort her. She describes her predicament by alluding to one of the most popular novels of the day, Fanny Burney’s Camilla. In one chapter, the title character and her sister climb a ladder to examine an elevated summer-house; the ladder is removed by their mischievous brother, Lionel, who rides off and leaves them stranded.

Frances "Fanny" Burney

Exclusive of Austen’s reference to Camilla, it may be inferred that Austen was a reader of Burney. Fanny Burney’s first three novels – Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796)– were  “coming of age” novels, which usually involved the heroine’s departure from home and her introduction to a to a society that requires her to make romantic and moral choices. You see this influence in Austen; in all of her novels, save for Emma, significant episodes occur when the heroine leaves the family home. (And, in the case of Emma, this is true of Jane Fairfax). The two authors’ works share a common element: that the vanity, ignorance, prejudices, but also the morality, which had incubated in the family circle are tested against the failings and merits of a broader environment and a new set of acquaintances.

When  Austen wrote her earliest complete works – the work later titled Lady Susan, and Elinor and Marianne, which became Sense and Sensibility - they were written in the epistolary fashion of Evelina . Moreover, when the Reverend Mr. Austen attempted to interest Burney’s publisher in his daughter’s early work (most reports state that the work was First Impressions; an auction notice offering the signed portion of Mr. Austen’s letter suggests that it was Sense and Sensibility), he makes a comparison, in length, to Evelina.

Austen followed up Elinor and Marianne with First Impressions; however, by the time of its publication, there was already a popular novel titled First Impressions, or The Portrait (by Mrs. Margaret Holford), so Austen drew upon the final chapter of Cecilia for her Plan B title, Pride and Prejudice. Cecilia’s plot revolves around a conditional bequest, wherein a young lady’s inheritance depends upon her suitor’s consent to assume her family surname. (Derived, perhaps, from the actual situation of real-life heiress Mary Eleanor Bowes). In bringing the complications to conclusion, the summation, given by the character Lyster, states: “The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE…if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.” (Yes, it is rendered in upper case in the printing).

However, one might wonder whether Austen drew upon the work of another Burney in crafting some of her characters. In 1807, she writes of re-reading the novel Clarentine (1796) by Sarah Burney (Fanny’s step-sister): “We are reading Clarentine and are surprised to find how foolish it is. I remember liking it much less on a second reading than the first, and it does not bear a third at all.” And yet, there is something very Marianne Dashwood about Clarentine’s assertion that, “It is equally impossible for me to forget, or not to feel”, and something quite Darcy-like in Sir Edgar’s “…reserve, which frequently cast a gloom over his features…appeared to denote an unsocial and contemptuous disposition in himself [which] had often displeased her extremely and led her, very naturally, to suspect him of a degree of arrogance and pride.”

If Austen’s assessment of Sarah Burney’s contrived plotting is that it is “full of unnatural conduct and forced difficulties, without striking merits of any kind”, she is good-natured enough to take such criticism to task as well in Northanger Abbey, by citing embarrassed novel-readers who confess that, “’It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda’, or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed.”

“My father is now reading The Midnight Bell, which he has got from the library, and mother sitting by the fire.” So wrote Jane Austen, from the Bull and George coaching inn, in October, 1798. It is an interesting portrait, the practical Reverend George Austen reading (aloud, perhaps) from one of the most popular Gothic novels of the day, the library book that he enjoyed well enough to carry while traveling.

The Midnight Bell, was published in the first half of 1798, not very long before Jane Austen began writing Northanger Abbey (then called   Susan), and Austen references that novel in her work as one of the ten or twelve Udolpho-like books that Isabella Thorpe has compiled to read with Catherine.

The author of The Midnight Bell was Francis Lathom. Like Austen, he was a precocious writer who enjoyed an early period of productivity followed by a lapse, and then a renewal of creativity in the years preceding his death. While Austen and Lathom were roughly the same age, by the late 1790s, she had, to her credit, a batch of juvenile writing and two unpublished epistolary novels: an untitled one (Lady Susan) that she later recopied and abandoned, and Elinor and Marianne, the early version of Sense and Sensibility. Lathom, on the other hand, had already churned out a number of stage plays, many of which had been produced, and published his first novel, The Castle of Ollada. Reviews of his plays were often lukewarm. The Monthly Mirror, July 1801, wrote of one: “The author possesses some vivacity and a tolerable notion of what is agreeable to the taste of a modern audience; but the interest and humor of this piece are very slight” and A Companion to the Playhouse pronounced one of his early comedies “frivolous and uninteresting” and “deservedly condemned”. On the other hand, The Cabinet wrote that Lathom was “..one of the best novelists of the modern school.”

Lathom was among the earliest novelists to incorporate historical fact with sensational fiction. Reality did not displace the Gothic staples, however: there were an abundance of exotic locations, secret passages, abductions, wretched wanderers, long lost parents, noble villains and damsels in distress. It is unlikely that Lathom’s integration of history or extravagant melodrama had appeal for Jane Austen as something to be imitated; she avoided history and– other than lampooning them in Northanger Abbey – Gothic-style histrionics. Lathom’s knack for irony and satire would not have escaped her, however, and one can imagine Jane smiling as her father read, “He threw himself upon the ground in despair; in a few minutes, however, recollecting that inactivity could add little to forward his wishes, he rose”, or, “The gates of the castle being locked might be construed into an indication either of its being inhabited or not being inhabited.” It is possible as well that when Austen crafted heroines and heroes who learned to distinguish between social rank and genuine merit, she reflected upon Lathom’s observation in Men and Manners, that “Such is the frailty of human nature, that the sneer of a fool has more power to raise its feelings than the admonitions of a wise man has to restrain them.”

March is Women’s History Month, (it’s also Save Your Vision Month and National Eye Donor Month, which seems a bit of a contradiction), which gives me an excuse to dedicate a film blog to women on screen and, since the availability of plum roles for older women haven’t kept pace with the march of women’s history, I’ve decided to list a few exceptional and entertaining performances by actresses “of a certain age.”

Viva la Diva – There are some actresses (and actors) whose persona will always overwhelm the role. In the borderline campy, Fritz Lang-directed revenge Western Rancho Notorious, (1952) Marlene Dietrich is an ex-chanteuse who harbors outlaws for a percentage of their take, but she’s always DIETRICH, all caps, and so you’re willing to put up with some weak performances and the annoying balladeer narration just to watch her belt Get Away, Young Men, with that worldly ennui.

Dietrich with co-star Mel Ferrer

Don’t Mess With the Little Lady – In the classic Night of the Hunter (1955), seductive sociopath Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) is no match for the deceptively fragile Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), who gives asylum to helpless children. Among the most memorable scenes: Gish, cradling a shotgun, accompanies the lurking Mitchum in Leaning On the Everlasting Arms. If Gish handles the gun like a pro, it may be due to the fact that she was given shooting lessons by cowboy/outlaw/ex-con/actor A. J. Jennings.

Lillian Gish

 Nobody Loves You Like Your Mother – In the remake of the classic tearjerker, Imitation of Life (1959), Juanita Moore elevates the self-sacrificing mother above the cliché with a luminous performance as a black woman rejected by the light-skinned daughter who has passed herself off as white. If your heart doesn’t break when Moore represents herself as a former nanny in front of her daughter’s white friend, you need to check your pulse. It’s difficult to believe that Moore was only 36 when she delivered this intuitive, mature, Oscar-nominated performance.

Juanita Moore

I Haven’t Lost My Wits, I’ve Just Misplaced Them – The scatterbrained old lady is a rather shopworn film stereotype, but Margaret Rutherford brings a lovable artlessness to her award-winning performance in The V.I.Ps(1963). As one of many high-profile passengers stranded at a snowbound airport, Rutherford steals the film from the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Maggie Smith and Orson Welles with a delightful turn as a down-at-heels duchess forced to find employment to maintain her ancestral estate.

Margaret Rutherford

Dirty Double Crosser – A plum acting challenge is to play twins and Bette Davis took on twin turns twice, in A Stolen Life and the somewhat similar Dead Ringer(1964). In the latter, she is wealthy Margaret and her struggling, embittered twin Edie. The knowledge that Margaret tricked Edie’s former beau into marriage is the final straw; Edie kills her sister, takes on her identity, and realizes too late that Margaret’s life has its own set of entanglements. Davis manages to be both touching and tough-as-nails, and when Bette/Margaret walks into Bette/Edith’s shabby flat, Bette Davis manages to give the line, “A dump?” a wry, inside-jokish spin. Campy, perhaps, but the 60s would have been a dull film decade without Davis.

Davis & Davis

 He’s May, She’s December – Three years after 72-year-old Ruth Gordon stepped up to accept her Oscar (for Rosemary’s Baby) and said, “I can’t tell you how encouragin’ a thing like this is”, she appeared in the cult classic, Harold and Maude (1971). Harold (Bud Cort), a young man obsessed with destruction and death meets and falls for Maude (Ruth Gordon), a 79-year-old woman with an irrepressible joie de vivre. The further a love story deviates from the mean, the more skilled an actor has to be to sell it; despite some dated anti-war bits, and a limp subplot about computer matchmaking, Gordon’s free-spirited performance makes the implausible completely credible. Unlike many films of the era that we look back on with “What did I see in that?”, Harold and Mauderemains as fresh and original as it was forty years ago.

Ruth Gordon

One Bit Wonder – Occasionally a performer will show up for one scene and neatly steal the show. Anne Bancroft proved herself to be quite the scene thief in the clever thriller, Malice (1993). As Nicole Kidman’s con artist mother she wises up Kidman’s poor sap of a husband in a wry, caustic and thoroughly convincing tête-à-tête that is the linchpin of the film’s elaborate plot. Since being nominated for a single scene is not without precedent (William Hurt in A History of Violence, for example) I was surprised that this star turn by Bancroft was not more widely appreciated.

Anne Bancroft

One Flick Wonder – Crossing Delancey(1988) is my favorite romantic comedy, and it’s impossible to watch it without a sense of amazement that this is stage actress Reizl Boyzk’s only film performance. (She did a couple television guest shots). As the downtown grandmother who sets out to arrange a marriage for her career-girl granddaughter, Bozyk is sly, engaging and completely in her element in front of the camera.

Bozyk with Amy Irving

 Classical Muse – There are certain literary characters that ambitious actors want to have a crack at – Hamlet, Madame Bovary, Dr. Jekyll and/or Mr. Hyde. Among the most challenging for an actress is Dickens’  scheming and pitiable Miss Havisham. There have been at least a dozen Miss Havishams, and another Great Expectations in the works, but in my humble opinion, the best of the lot has been Charlotte Rampling in the 1999 television version. Rampling gets it just right, both the pride and vulnerability, the insight and suggestion of self-loathing. The best performance in the best rendition in Great Expectations.

Rampling as Miss Havisham

The Real Deal – I have always thought that the most astute biopics are the snapshots, the ones consolidated around a crisis point and covering a limited time span. Margaret (2009) deals with the events leading to Margaret Thatcher’s resignation. I did not see Iron Lady; however it is difficult for me to believe that any performance could have exceeded Lindsay Duncan’s rendering of Thatcher. Duncan’s instincts are  on point; she knows precisely when to expose a fissure in the iron façade, and develops a portrait that suggests the only humanizing aspect of power is the loss of it.

Lindsay Duncan

Rosemont College:  We will be attending a Jane Austen tea at Rosemont College, Rosemont, PA on Sunday, April 22. (Lady Vernon and Her Daughter was dedicated to Rosemont professor, Mary Ann Macartney).

Avalon Public Library: We will be speaking about Jane Austen and Lady Vernon and Her Daughter at the Avalon Public Library, Avalon, NJ on Thursday, June 28.

We will keep everyone updated!