Mary Wickes

            On Sunday morning I finished memorizing "No Comment" by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. No one had posted them and so I worked them out for the "Ooh ooh ooh" part at the beginning. Tomorrow I'll tackle the rest of the song. 

            I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            I spent more than an hour on my essay: 

            Victor can be deconstructed because he is society, as he established in his self-introduction. He has been constructed by counsellors and syndics, by his father's public life, his mother's mourning, travel, wealth, and by having been given a pre-packaged ready made wife to live in storage as his friend and cousin until he was ready to marry. Even Victor's future has been constructed. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before lunch. I had a salad with raspberry vinaigrette. 

            I took a siesta at 14:00 and then got up to get ready for my bike ride. When I was about to put my boots on I looked at the time and saw it was 15:00. I had planned on sleeping until 15:30 and must have gotten up at 14:30 by mistake. Even though I don't set an alarm for my siesta, sometimes if a siren goes by, in my half conscious state I'll think it's the alarm telling me to get up and so I do. So anyway, when I saw it was really 15:00 I went back to bed for half an hour but I didn't sleep. I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst. 

            I weighed 83.8 kilos at 16:30. I spent more than two hours on my essay on Frankenstein but mostly in research to understand why a scientist would reject their invention because it is ugly. A popular science around that time was galvanism which attempted to animate corpses with electricity. It did animate the dead but it just didn't bring them to life. There was one scientist who put on shows by animating corpses and he played to full houses. It was grotesque but everyone in the audience had probably also witnessed public hangings. Here's all I wrote: 

            Victor's rejection of his own invention based on aesthetics is atypical behaviour for the scientist that he purports to be. He has already spent several months gathering the parts of dead animals and humans from slaughterhouses, graves and dissecting tables (55). These materials are ugly to him and he turns "in loathing" sometimes but persists in his work. 

            I had a salad with raspberry vinaigrette and a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching season 6, episode 10 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Granny gets a letter from Adaline Ashley the most renowned socialite from back in the hills. Adaline is coming to visit in a month. Jed tells Milburn Drysdale because, since his wife Margaret is also a socialite, he knows they'll hit it off. Milburn knows Margaret won't want to meet Adaline but he says she would love to meet her, however she'll be flying to Siberia on that date. 

            Adaline shows up that day. She's tall, loud, tough, and dresses flamboyantly in the style of around 1900. Her husband died last week and she's already forgotten about him. She has her intentions set on Jed and his millions. Adaline is Granny's hero and so she does everything she can to bring Jed and Adaline together. 

            Jed tells Milburn that Adaline is there now. Since he can't make up another lie he has to get Margaret to meet Adaline. Jane figures out a trick to use. She calls Mrs. Travis, the head of Margaret's bridge club and pretends to be from the Beverly Hills News asking Travis if she knows the whereabouts of the style setting socialite Adaline Ashley. Travis lies and says she knows where her "dear friend" Adaline is but she wouldn't tell the news. It takes ten minutes for the news to circulate among the bridge club and then Margaret calls Milburn to ask where Adaline is. When Margaret learns that Adaline is at the Clampetts she goes over and begs Granny to forgive her for being mean and asks to become friends. She wants Adaline to come and stay with her for two weeks. 

            Meanwhile Adaline is still trying to reel in Jed as a husband but it's not working. She accepts Margaret's invitation but Margaret screams when she sees her. 

            Adaline was played by Mary Wickes, who was a society debutant and earned a degree in political science. She gave up studying law after performing in stock theatre. She went to New York and won a walk on part in The Farmer Takes a Wife on Broadway and served as understudy to Margaret Hamilton, the future wicked witch of The Wizard of Oz. She performed for two years on Broadway in The Man Who Came to Dinner and then reprised her role when it was adapted as a film. She was a member of Orson Welles's radio troupe Mercury Theatre on the Air. She was a friend and neighbour of Lucille Ball. On television in 1949 she was the first person to play Mary Poppins. She co-starred in the TV series Annette. She earned an Emmy nomination for her role on The Gertrude Berg Show. She played Miss Cathcart on Just Dennis. She was the live action reference model for the animated character Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians. She volunteered at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan. She was a recurring panelist on Match Game for two years. In later life she lectured and gave seminars on comic acting at various universities. 

            

            

            I made it to twenty-three days without finding a bedbug.