Debra Paget

            On Sunday morning I translated a little more of "Complainte du progrès" by Boris Vian.

            I finished memorizing Kawasaki by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I washed another four boards of my living room floor so that it’s now clean under and behind the couch, plus a little bit south of the couch and I can see the light at the end of the couch tunnel. One more session will take me up to the front of the dresser in the corner and after that I’ll have to pull the dresser out to wash underneath it.

            I had three corn crackers with cheese for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did some exercises and then took a bike ride to Bloor and University, south to Queen and then home.

            I worked on my journal.

            For dinner I heated up my other turkey burger and had it on a toasted English muffin while watching Wagon Train.

            This story was about a beautiful but bored southern belle named Marie who is travelling to California with her un-well father. She flirts with Flint, but when her go scouting with him she meets Wiley who is running a freight wagon train nearby. It turns out that he's an old friend of the Major. Wiley begins courting Marie and asks her to go away with him. She accepts with all hr heart until he tells her he’s not interested in marriage. She pushes him away and then flirts with a young Sicilian on his way to start a vineyard in California. Antonio has loved Marie since he first saw her and so he almost immediately asks her to marry him. She says she doesn’t want to get married. Wiley tells Antonio that Marie is just using him to make him jealous and Wiley says it worked. He proposes to Marie. She rejects him and runs away. Antonio challenges Wiley to a duel and Wiley says he’ll come to fight him but he’s just humouring him and is done with the whole mess. Antonio has taken his duelling pistol and is on his way to confront Wiley when Marie intercedes. She admits that she was trying to make Wiley jealous but decides to pretend to be mean to Antonio to chase him away. However it backfires and she hurts his honour. He points his gun at her and tells her he wishes he could shoot her. Suddenly the gun accidentally goes off. Marie almost dies but the Major is able to pull her through in time for her to explain that it was an accident and to save Antonio from being hanged. As Marie recovers she has soul searching to do. Wiley tells Antonio that he has a piece of land in California that would be perfect for a vineyard. He offers to go into the wine business with him and he accepts. Everybody is happy.

            Marie was played by Debra Paget, who signed with 20^th Century Fox at the age of 14. She had work in several big movies such as The Ten Commandments, Broken Arrow and Love Me Tender. She retired from acting in 1964 when she married a Chinese millionaire who was a descendant of Confucius. They divorced in 1980. She became a born again Christian and hosted a religious show in the States.