Jane Wyman

            On Wednesday morning I tried to find the lyrics for “Paris d’papa” by Serge Gainsbourg but no one has posted them. I downloaded the YouTube audio of Juliette Greco singing the song and then I uploaded the MP4 to Sonix where I still had 28 minutes of free transcription credits. The transcription seems mostly accurate but a couple of words at the end of lines don’t fit the rhyme scheme. I tried it with Vizard but it didn’t transcribe the lines in question so I may have to figure them out on my own. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice and it went out of tune a couple of times. Tomorrow I’ll begin a two session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I finished applying the final coat of primer to the ceiling and upper walls of my bathroom while balanced on my cement block on a kitchen chair. It was a lot more secure than the milk crate on the chair but it was limited compared to a step ladder because I couldn’t reach as wide an area and had to move the chair outside the tub to finish. I then got rid of the block and just stood on the chair to do the area above the lights on the eastern wall. I moved to the left and did some of the space between the vent and the upper shelf. On Friday I might have the whole bathroom primed. 

            I weighed 87.85 kilos before lunch. I ate a whole package of herb turkey slices with no bread and a glass of iced tea.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 18:00. 

            I was behind in my journal until just before supper. I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, the rest of my spicy pepperoni and five-year-old cheddar. I was about to eat when I remembered to buy beer. Luckily the liquor store was still open. I grabbed a six-pack of Creemore and had one with my meal while watching episode 4 of Checkmate.

            Joan Talmadge is walking home after dark when she witnesses a shooting. Months later her testimony leads to the guilty verdict of Edward Joslin. But as he is led away he gives her a sinister smile. She’s afraid that somehow he will find and kill her. Dr. Hyatt happens to be there as he also had been on the witness stand. He takes her to meet Don and Jed of Checkmate to further allay her fears. Don dismisses her dread as groundless. Hyatt admits that Joslin will appeal his conviction but has a one percent chance of getting off. Don offers to have Jed watch over her for a few days. But she’s also being watched by Joselin’s men. The next day she goes to work for the first time since the trial began and in her office finds a crime magazine but the picture on the cover of a man about to knife a swimsuit clad woman from behind has her face and Joselin’s pasted on, and the caption “Killer’s Revenge”. She screams and goes back to reception. The receptionist Millie (played by Mary Tyler Moore), her boss Monroe, and her colleague/boyfriend Bob comfort her. The men go to her office where they find the magazine with the murderous image but not with her and Joselin’s face. She’s sure it was changed but they think it’s just stress causing her to hallucinate. Monroe insists that she take a little more time off. She goes to Checkmate and they also dismiss what she saw as a trick of her stress. After Joan leaves, Hyatt thinks she has a long standing neurosis that has been reigned in for years but recently aggravated. Don says if Joan could be found to be mentally unbalanced, when Joselin gets a retrial it could cause his conviction to be overturned. Don says whether or not what she saw was real, someone left the real magazine on her desk. The next day Joan is being watched as she buys a novel called The Gay Life. That night after a date with Bob she sits down to unwrap her new book only to find that it’s Psychology of Suicide. One of the men watching her from a window in the next building says he switched books in the car while Joan and Bob were having dinner. Don is looking at the magazine and notices that the issue was released two weeks ago while Joan hadn’t been in the office for six weeks. That means her story may be true. Someone comes to Joan while she’s sleeping and slips a cord around her neck. Don and Hyatt go to Joan’s place but there is no answer and so Don busts open the door. They find her on the floor with the cord around her neck and she’s under sedation. The other end of the rope had been tied to a coathanger above the closet door that had collapsed. Don sees that the screws have been loosened indicating that whoever did this didn’t want to kill her. They wanted it to look like an attempted suicide. She has a bottle of sleeping pills but says she didn’t take any. She tells them that when she was graduating she had a close friend who she walked in on at the moment that he was shooting himself in the head. She thinks she’s losing her mind but Don tells her he checked the bookstore and found out that a man bought the Psychology of Suicide book shortly after she left the store. The only person who knows about her past trauma is Bob. Joselin’s men must have offered Bob money to make her think she was losing her mind. They begin to lure Bob into a trap. Jed plants a harmlessly exploding but scary bomb in Bob’s car. Later he fires some blank gunshots at his car when he is driving. The purpose is to make Bob think Joselin’s men are now after him. Jed sings a song to himself, “Please don’t point that gun at me / I never disagree / with anyone who has a gun / Don’t point that gun at me”. Bob calls Checkmate to ask for protection and Don tells him to come there. Since no one is supposed to know that Joselin’s men hired Bob, he can’t reveal that is who is after him. Don says they are busy protecting Joan but when they leave to see her they invite Bob along. But they have Jed drive Bob over so they can get there first and tell Joan that Bob was the one who manipulated her. Jed pretends they are being followed and so when they get to Joan’s place Don and Jed pretend to go after whoever it was. Hyatt is hidden in another room while Bob is alone with Joan. She pretends to Bob that she realizes now that she imagined everything but he tells her she didn’t. He confesses that all they wanted at first was for him to convince her not to testify. He said he was behind switching the magazines but not the fake suicide. He tells her about the men who’ve been watching her and now they have a confession, so Joan doesn’t need to pretend anymore. 

            Joan was played by Jane Wyman, who became a radio singer in 1935 after graduating from university. In 1936 she signed a contract with Warner Brothers. She made her film debut in The Kid from Spain in 1932. She co-starred in The Lost Weekend, The Yearling (for which she was nominated for an Academy Award), Stage Fright, Here Comes the Groom, The Story of Will Rogers, Just For You, Holiday for Lovers, You’re in the Army Now (and held the record for the longest screen kiss for the next few decades), Larceny Inc, My Love Came Back, The Spy Ring, He Couldn’t Say No, Wide Open Faces, The Kid From Kokomo, Kid Nightingale, Private Detective, Brother Rat and a Baby, An Angel from Texas, Gambling on the High Seas, The Body Disappears, My Favourite Spy, Make Your Own Bed, The Doughgirls, One More Tomorrow, Cheyenne, Magic Town, A Kiss in the Dark, The Lady Takes a Sailor, Here Comes the Groom, Let’s Do It Again, Lucy Gallant, and How to Commit Marriage. She starred in Johnny Belinda (for which she won an Oscar), The Glass Menagerie, The Blue Veil (Oscar nominated), Magnificent Obsession (Oscar nominated), So Big, Lucy Gallant, All That Heaven Allows, Miracle in the Rain, Polyanna, Torchy Blane, Crime By Night, Three Guys Named Mike, She starred in the TV series Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside theatre from 1955 to 1958. She was the star of Falcon Crest for nine seasons. She had three top 30 hits as a singer. She was married to Ronald Reagan from 1940 to 1949 and they had three children. She left him for Lew Ayers. She was the first ex-wife of a US president. She voted for Reagan three times after their divorce and attended his funeral. She became a third degree nun before she died. She said , “Women are like tea bags. You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water”. She said if you ask Ronald Reagan the time he’ll tell you how the watch was made. 

            

           I was caught up in my journal at 22:30.