Chicagoboyz linked to my Dino archive when I first started writing about him - and the traffic has been semi-constant ever since. But for whatever reason, I went there again this morning (it's not a blog I read) - and found myself completely wrapped up in this post. The launching pad is Dean Martin - but my God, what a wonderful journey she takes us on. Here's just a snippet of the wonderful-ness, but go read the whole thing:
The fifties were cool, dry, witty. But such threads are not cut sharply; they remain, plaited into the braid that made up the “movements” – the later sixties, the seventies. And I have begun to realize that for some of us that very cool led to the heat of our own youth. God knows, we were earnest. Awed by that generation’s cool, we also felt angry, frustrated by the solidity of the front they presented. Trying to describe this with my friends, one brought up Peter Gunn. Perfect, I thought - that pairing of Blake Edwards & Henry Mancini, the sultry singer in the bar - I, too, remember watching it with my father, who loved Brubeck & Mulligan. And, then, she said, there was the dapper Niven in that first, great Pink Panther. Yes, I smiled, for I remember the first time I saw it, who I saw it with, what we ate afterwards. I’m sure that was because I then developed a totally irrational passion for the guy, who was icy & German, with an engineer’s mind & laconic patter. I wanted cool; that, I was used to. The irony in those movies moved into the campy - the later Panther ones, Modesty Blaise. Later, a movie had to go pretty far over the top before it seemed funny. Seeing Casino Royale a few years ago, I was struck by the slowness of its pace – a pace I’d remembered as surprisingly fast. The temperature warmed, the cool era was brought to a boil, but immersed in the water we hardly felt the change.
(I love, too, how one of her commenters references Charade - the movie with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn - directed by Stanley Donen - as an example of the bridge between the 50s and the 60s. EXCELLENT point).
But seriously: go read the whole thing.
Posted by sheila