Did They Ever Catch the Woman Who Stole Bette Davis's Eyes?

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the chorus for “Bourrée de complexes” (Buried in Complexes) by Boris Vian. I’ve been trying for a couple of days to memorize the fourth verse of “Variations sur Marilou” by Serge Gainsbourg but when I nail it I forget bits of the previous verses.

            I shot the sixth video of my daily song practice and it felt like it went a lot more smoothly this time. I screwed up my song “Calendar Girl” but some of the other songs seemed like they might have come through without noticeable mistakes.

            The morning got away from me while looking at photos online and so the only home improvement task I managed was to saw the pine board that I’d bought so it’s the right length to serve as a shelf in the bedroom. I didn’t have time to insert the brackets in the wall so as to mount the shelf.

            For lunch I had black beans with salsa and chips.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Andy goes to an art gallery and while he stands looking confused at a piece of modern art called “Venus Descending a Staircase” the model that had posed for the painting approaches him. She introduces herself as Constance Lamarre and Andy recognizes her as a well-known pin-up model. He falls for her and tries to win her over by having his friend Calhoun bring her roses and candy every day. After several days Andy gets dressed up to go and ask Constance out but then he sees her stepping out withy the very successful painter, Salvador Jackson. Andy gets a poet to write some poems to him and to say they are from Constance. He is on his way to show the poems to Jackson when Calhoun tells Kingfish that Constance is married to Jackson and that he’s a former football player with a jealous streak. Kingfish rushes into Jackson’s studio wearing a white coat just as Andy is about to show him the poems. He explains that Andy is an escaped mental patient up to his old tricks. He escorts Andy away. Andy gives up on Constance but it turns out that Jackson is her brother and Calhoun just said she was married so he could be with her himself.

Constance and many other of Andy’s girlfriends was played by Jean Vander Pyl, who is best known as the voice of Wilma Flintstone.

I didn’t take a bike ride because it had been raining.

I watched the video that I’d shot in the morning and it was probably the best I’d shot so far in that I made a lot fewer mistakes than usual and also because I was in a good position in the frame. My living room looks pretty good as a background from that angle as well. Sometimes I wonder if my efforts to smile make me look friendlier or just more insane.

            I had a potato, some peas and a chicken leg with gravy while watching “Fraction of a Second” starring Bette Davis. This was the twenty-eighth episode of the Alfred Hitchcock produced TV series "Suspicion". This one had only downloaded 12% and so I definitely had to find a video of it online. Fortunately there were lots.

            Bette Davis plays Mrs Ellis and Davis would have been fifty years old at this time. Mrs Ellis is a widow but she has a daughter named Susan who attends a private school for girls. This story begins on a Monday morning after Susan has spent a happy weekend at home and she is getting ready to leave to spend the week at school. Also part of the family is Mrs Ellis’s maid Grace and everyone is happy. Mrs Ellis takes Susan to catch her bus and then decides to take a walk in the park, but when she reaches a street corner some heavy materials being lifted by a crane swing out of control and it seems they hit Mrs Ellis.

            Next we see Mrs Ellis returning home but her house suddenly appears run down and her key does not fit the door. She knocks and calls for Grace to let her in, but a man in an undershirt appears at the window, asking in an annoyed voice what she wants. She assumes this man is a workman that Grace has brought in to do some repairs and she tells him to let her in. He opens the door and she walks in. he still wants to know what she wants but is somewhat annoyed but indifferent when she dismisses him and goes back to his room. She sees a man typing in her living room. When he notices her he tells her that his wife is upstairs in the studio. She ascends the stairs and from out of Susan’s room a large, gaudily dressed middle aged woman emerges, smoking a cigarette and holding a cat. She tells her loudly but friendly where the studio is and advises her to get the special treatment. Mrs Ellis enters her own bedroom to find that it is a photography studio and there is a young woman of about thirty sitting there who resents this stranger barging in. Mrs Ellis goes to the phone and calls the police. The photographer does not like Mrs Ellis using her phone without permission and she seems uncomfortable with the police coming as if there is something she doesn’t want them to know about. Everyone gathers downstairs and Mrs Ellis says she doesn't know how they all got in or how they transformed her house in a matter of five minutes but she is sure that the police will clear it up. The cops arrive with a neighbourhood directory. They confirm that everyone in the house is supposed to be there except for Mrs Ellis. They take her to the police station and take down the names and addresses she gives them of people that can corroborate her story but then they send her to a doctor to get some “rest".  The doctor is not particularly calming, especially when he is fairly forceful in insisting that all of those changes to her house could not have taken place in five minutes. She becomes excited and is given an injection. Later she is brought back to the police where they say that the address of her friend had been torn down twenty years ago. They do however have the address of a Susan Ellis and so she is taken there. She is expecting to meet a ten year old girl but instead meets a single mother of about thirty with a young daughter. Neither Mrs Ellis or Susan think that they could be related. Susan says that she did go to the school that Mrs Ellis’s daughter attended and the headmistress helped her find a home when her mother died in an accident twenty years ago. She says she remembers her mother as being kind and sweet and tells Mrs Ellis that she reminds her or her. Mrs Ellis meets Susan’s daughter, who she says is shy but takes to Mrs Ellis right away. Susan leaves the room and the policewoman says it’s time to go. Mrs Ellis picks up a scissors and says she is not leaving. The woman goes to the car to get a male colleague to help her. Mrs Ellis hides in the closet and Susan’s daughter diverts the police. They think she’s left out the back and go looking. Mrs Ellis hugs the little girl goodbye and walks away towards her home. At a street corner we either see a flashback to the accident or a déjà vu, but the same materials on the crane come swinging and Mrs Ellis is lying on the street in the final frame.

            The screenplay was based on the short story “A Split Second" by Daphne Du Maurier. Alfred Hitchcock made at least three movies based on her novels, including “The Birds".

            Bette Davis looked older than fifty in this teleplay, but she had a very elegant walk.

            If Jackie De Shannon wrote about the woman with Bette Davis’s eyes in 1974 and Bette Davis died in 1989, that means she was blind for at least fifteen years. Did they ever find the person who stole Bette’s peepers?