Saturday, February 20, 2016

For A Special Lady


The thing about blogging is that many of us find our pictures and images and inspirations in other places.  A few bloggers will post original art.  But in fact, many of the images come from other places and other users.  We see them, and we transfixed by them in any number of ways.  So we share them.  

This is one such image: 




I'm not sure where it came from, and the art isn't really that good.  But, it is the message and execution that captivate me.

I would assume that a Special Lady is a woman who has title.  And why is he waking her up with a Winston and full goblet of Paul Masson.  What is so special about that?

In my mind - its a scene from a movie, entitled "For A Special Lady", from American International Amalgamated Pictures, and shot at Pinewood studios.   Of course it never was, but certainly should have been.

It's a 1970s dramedy cum mystery about an American actress on the downside of the stage bell curve. This woman who falls for and marries an aging British swinger, with visible signs of support.

Lots of cigarettes are smoked and brown booze is drunk in copious quantities.  There are endless conversations held about her fading career, and his attempts to get her that one last leg up she needs to reclaim her place in cinema.

Starring:



Peter Wyngarde as Cyrille St. James - a one time bon vivant at the end of his career as a swinger who needs to find a cash cowm and quick before the government takes his family's country estate.

and



Brenda Vacarro as Deborah Gordon (born Annamaria Annalouisa Furlenghetti, from New Jersey) who is forced to sign a contract to do some British Slasher film where she is second billing (for the first time in ten films, but because of falling box office revenue) to an ailing has been on the comeback played by:




Evelynn Brent.  Of course, Brent dies while the film is in production - no seriously she really died in 1975 - and to make the film work it's rewritten to make "Deborah Gordon" go after Evelynn's part because an out of character role is sure to land her in Oscar territory.

Of course.

But it is this scene...


After their marriage on their honeymoon where Wyngarde brings his awaken wife a goblet of chianti and her morning cigarette so they can discuss "my special lady and her comeback role" that is captured.  She being cheeky, and hung over, grabs the cigarette with her lips, draws in a drag, and then without missing a beat or using her hands, places the cigarette back in the ash tray using just her lips.   

She the croaks "What time is it..."  

To which he says "It's six in the morning in Bangladesh..."

The whole thing could easily go in the dumper when Jan Michael Vincent shows up, uninvited, as Wyngarde's former lover, demanding a role in the movie as payback for "Being tossed aside for that has been cunt."

Now, the music for the movie - I offer this:



And this plays when Wyngarde first sees her at the discoteque, when she emerges nude from the boudoir, and in the final credits as they fade to black.

Of course I cannot tell you how its ends - you'll have to use your imagination for that.  

11 comments:

  1. Brenda Vaccaro in any movie, is enough smokiness' enough. In sight and sound. And what special sauce did you hit tonight?

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    1. Nothing! And thats the truth. My mind just works like this. Frieghtening, isn't it. Imagine what it like when I have had a drink or two. Gad....

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  2. What a darkly hilarious yet depressingly wry film. Just to see the spiralling careers and morals of Deborah Gordon and Cyrille St. James bounce off each other as they slowly peter out - How much lower can they stoop? I simply must see it! When did you say it was out? The 1970s? I'm going to have to break my rule about not time-travelling on a Sunday...

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    1. Well one of them has to die, or surrender to stale cigarettes and cheap wine, the other one is left to enjoy what little of life they haven't ruined for themselves. No happy endings, everything bittersweet and the more bitter, the better.

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  3. Seen it. The "boy" wasn't Jan Michael Vincent. This was Pinewood. It was probably Robin Askwith. Jx

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    1. Good call. Or the you gish chap from are Are You Being Served.

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    2. Or, indeed, Mr Barry Evans, subject of my most (remarkably) successful post ever (46086 hits and counting...) Jx

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  4. i've always loved brenda vaccaro....even when she did the tampon commercials.

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    1. I know, I had to go to you tube to hear her raspy pitch.

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  5. Of everything in this post (and there is a lot to be proud of), I'm most impressed that you found an actor who looks like the man in the cartoon.

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    1. Peter Wyngarde is just one of those actors that invokes the smell of a dirty ashtray to me. But he really does look like the artwork, so it wasn't much of a stretch for me. It as more immediate. And without the ingestion of of any drugs, either. Go figure.

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