Audrey Totter

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the sixth verse of “Variations sur Marilou” by Serge Gainsbourg. Two more stanzas to go and then I’ll have to figure out the chords, which won’t be easy because the song goes through a lot of musical changes.

            I made the fourteenth video recording of my daily song practice. I went through my song “Calendar Girl" twice and that’s a long piece. I think I made mistakes both times but we'll see. I was pretty good on everything else I played.

            After shaving, showering and doing yesterday and today's dishes I didn’t have any time to work on any extra cleaning projects. I’d wanted to wash my bedroom dresser with wood soap but it’ll have to wait until Friday.

            I had a cheese, lettuce and cucumber sandwich on a toasted ciabata bun for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish hears about marriage by proxy and that some marriage brokers can get a lot of money for arranging such weddings. He cuts a picture of a beauty contest winner out of the paper and tells Andy that she is a Mexican heiress and that she’s looking for a husband in the United States because there is a shortage of men in Mexico. He says she’s rich because her father owns several enchilada mines. Kingfish arranges the marriage in New York with the lawyer Calhoun as the proxy bride. Andy pays Kingfish $200. But then Amos hears about this and offers a voice of reason. Andy says he's going to Mexico to look for his bride but if he doesn’t find her he's going to come back and arrange Kingfish's funeral. Kingfish tells Andy that his bride was killed by a Texas Ranger while trying to cross the border to get to him. Later a federal agent comes to Kingfish and tells him that Andy Brown has been passing counterfeit money. Kingfish arranges to help the agent catch Andy. He gives the $200 back to Andy and then when the agent comes Kingfish points Andy out to him. But the federal agent was a con set up by Andy to get his $200 back.

            I went for a bike ride and in the Annex I passed a woman riding the squeakiest bike I’d ever heard. It sounded like a bird’s nest in late spring. I rode to Yonge and Bloor and then home via Queen. I noticed that the Rhino patio was crowded with customers wearing masks.

            I cleared some space on my computer and uploaded the video that I’d shot that morning. I watched some of the video from June 25 but couldn’t finish it because I was cooking dinner.

            I made three burgers from the ground beef that I’d gotten a few weeks ago at the food bank. I had the biggest one on a ciabata bun with lettuce, ketchup, barbecue sauce, mustard, relish and salsa. I ate my burger with a beer while watching “A Touch of Evil”, which was the nineteenth episode of the 1957-1958 Alfred Hitchcock produced TV series, "Suspicion".

            In this story, set in New Orleans, Larry has three women who are in love with him. He is married to Marguerite but she is ill. He is obsessed with Anna and she is under his thrall but is troubled by the fact that he is married. He says he can’t divorce Marguerite, perhaps because he's Catholic, but he does entertain hopes that she will succumb to her illness soon. Another woman who is attracted to Larry is Marie, who is in her early middle age and extremely sexual, flaunting it all the time. Marie is married to a bent over tinkerer named Raphael who does not seem to mind her flirtations. Marie and Raphael have a store where Raphael fixes radios and other electronic appliances but they also dwell on the seamy side of society and have no qualms about doing nasty things for money. Larry involves them in a plot to kill Marguerite so he can be with Anna. He pays Raphael to construct a time bomb and meanwhile he arranges for he and Marguerite to take a boat trip to an island off the coast of New Orleans but then arranges to be called away on business before they embark. He promises Marguerite that he will join her the next day. Marie delivers the bomb to the boat in a parcel to be shipped to the island. The ship blows up on the way, killing everyone on board. Anna is upset when she hears that Larry killed all of those people just so he could be with her. He tells her he’d do it again. She kisses him one last time before the police come for him.

            Marguerite was played by Bethel Leslie, who began performing on Broadway as a teenager but was in her late fifties by the time she received a Tony award nomination for her role in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”. Her film parts were mostly as supporting characters but appeared in later years on television soap operas and for a while was the head writer on The Secret Storm. She was close friends with Helen Hayes.

            Marie was played by Audrey Totter who became one of the most sought after bad girls in 1940s film noir, but the type casting didn’t serve her career in the 1950s when film studios started stressing more family oriented pictures. She said producer Louis B Mayer was the greatest actor at MGM because he would start crying so convincingly every time someone asked him for more money.