Valentine's Party with... Macaulay Connor!
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Who? Macaulay Connor (Mike, to his friends) played by the boy-next-door Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. In all fairness, he is not my most memorable fictional crush nor my first. There are lists upon lists devoted to chronicling the most dashing and devilish heroes of page and print and while The Philadelphia Story was first a play, my forever love of Macaulay Connor is immortalized on the silver screen.
It's the role that won Jimmy Stewart his one and only Oscar (aside from his Lifetime Achievement Oscar) and stole the limelight from Cary Grant himself in shared scenes ("C.K. Dexter Haven, oh C.K. Dexter HA-ven!").
Personally, I'd take Jimmy over Cary, Bogey, Spencer Tracey, Clark Gable and the likes any day, but it's not his boyish charm that won me over. No for the most part, he plays against type; Mike is a cynical, hard knock journalist with a bitter regard for the privileged and that guards his fragile dreams with callousness (except in his pages of fiction). Ah, yes he is a writer! Insecure and desperate for purpose in his art, he scorns the indulgence of the rich who can spend their days reenacting petty soap operas that he is forced to report for his gossip rag.
This is one of my favorite moments in the movie:
If you don't fall in love with Macaulay Connor here, you may need to get your vitals checked. In a moment, the icy veneer melts away and made vulnerable by his prose, Connor sits before Tracy Lord (Hepburn) with his true hopes and dreams laid bare.
Tracy Lord: These stories are beautiful. Why, Mike, they're almost poetry.
Macaulay Connor: Don't kid yourself, they are.
nb: I just saw Midnight in Paris so elements of that movie might manifest themselves here. I can't help it, it struck a pleasant chord with me. Also, I've always loved Before Sunrise/Sunset. Sometimes there's nothing more pleasant than watching people walk through Paris.
Yar, like a conversation that meanders gracefully through waters rough and calm, that bobs and sways and glides ever onward toward a distant horizon. And this we know only because she's dared leave the safety of her harbor to test the ocean waves. So has our night drifted and now docked, back where we started.
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| via TCM Revamped DVD Cover |
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| C.K. Dexter Haven and Mike "share" a (hiccup!) drink |
This is one of my favorite moments in the movie:
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| via blog |
Tracy Lord: These stories are beautiful. Why, Mike, they're almost poetry.
Macaulay Connor: Don't kid yourself, they are.
nb: I just saw Midnight in Paris so elements of that movie might manifest themselves here. I can't help it, it struck a pleasant chord with me. Also, I've always loved Before Sunrise/Sunset. Sometimes there's nothing more pleasant than watching people walk through Paris.
A (Valentine's) Party with... Macaulay "Mike" Connor
Nobody walks anymore, nobody takes advantage of the waning sunlight or the twilight hours when families flick on the tube or settle down and leave the streets to the vagabonds and night owls.
Perhaps it's that kind of pseudo-romantic (aka weirdo) crap to which
writer's cleave that make us inaccessible and strange. I am strange,
but luckily so is he and what we happen to share is a fondness for the
sound of our own feet on cobblestone. Oh, didn't I mention? We are
walking through le Boulevard Saint-Germain à Paris.
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| rooftops, hotel, cafe |
It's not the symbolism of la ville d'amour that draws us to this specific place (rather cliche location, I admit) but rather the true beauty of the city, the gothic buttresses of Notre Dame, the angles and alleyways, the corner cafes, and the cobblestone, oh the heavenly cobblestone.
It's still light out, we've gotten an early start with no specific plan in mind. When we're hungry, we'll eat, when the coffee calls, we'll drink, but for now we are content to wander, along the Seine, past storefronts and restaurants.
Him:
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| watch, trilby, chinos, chambray, tie, blazer, loafers |
Me:
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| coat, glasses, moleskine, dress, satchel, booties |
He swipes a few blooms from a nearby stand; it feels a bit forced, perhaps like ice cream with cake the sweet gesture feels saccharine in a city saturated with genuine romance. We step into Shakespeare and Co. (just for a second) and lose track of time. He notices me perusing through a gilded copy of The Great Gatsby and buys it when I'm not looking. His kindness isn't forced this time; Fitzgerald fits in Paris and besides, books never spoil us. We pause for café au lait at Les Deux Magots and imagine Hemingway and Camus sitting in our exact chairs.
"My father was a history teacher, you know," he says, jots a note on the back of our receipt, then pockets it quickly. I wonder what he wrote. An adjective maybe, a name or an expression on the face of a passing Parisian. "In South Bend."
South Bend. It conjures the image of people dancing. Of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.
"He loved most to tell us about this city in the '20s, about Picasso and Gertrude Stein and the ex-pats from the war who'd gone through hell and longed for beauty and found it here in Paris."
We're on our feet, past a lively Greek restaurant that tries to coax us with broken porcelain and warm greetings. We don't even realize we're hungry until we glimpse rustic onion soup in ceramic bowls crusted with bubbling cheese so we stumble into a small bistro and sit for their regular three course meal. And some bubbly...
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| flowers, cafe, champagne, onion soup, gatsby |
Then we're somehow walking again with the heavy mist of champagne descended upon our minds. The Seine is such a lovely setting for a night stroll. The conversation has steered towards literary heroines; the stalwart, the steadfast, the stately. Women of all walks of life, "with fires banked down in them, hearth-fires and holocausts," he says, lost in memories of mothers and lovers and sisters and friends of fiction.
He is a writer, there's no denying it in the melody of his speech. I envy his ease of words and depth of mind. Still, it's wonderfully refreshing to hear a man wax poetic about strong women, not "the rich, rapacious, American female," as he puts it that fill our screens and gossip columns. After a moment of ranting about the quality of modern entertainment, he just laughs to himself. "With the rich and mighty, always a little patience," he mumbles to the streetlamps.
A small boat eases by us; her name roughly translated in English spells Easy Virtue, but my is she...
"What's that word?" I wonder aloud.
He's seen the boat and reads my mind. "Yar," he said. "She's yar."
Yar, like a conversation that meanders gracefully through waters rough and calm, that bobs and sways and glides ever onward toward a distant horizon. And this we know only because she's dared leave the safety of her harbor to test the ocean waves. So has our night drifted and now docked, back where we started.
"Thank you, Professor," I joke. My literary tour of the 6th arrondissement has been lovely and informative and imaginative and luxurious and incredibly satisfying. The ride has come to an end and I dare not spoil the perfect evening with a selfish want of more, ever more.
He wrinkles his nose. "Enough with the professor stuff."
"Yes, Professor."
"I wonder," he begins. A clock in the abbey tower strikes midnight and where once drunken teenagers ambled beside us, the streets now lay empty and still. "I wonder if we might do this again sometime."
The bell rings still, ten, eleven, twelve. Then quiet.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Professor. I had a wonderful time."  |
| The Wonderful Jimmy Stewart |
Celebrate love today, Party Go-ers, and the creativity that grows in that very safe place.
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