Dorothy Dandridge

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords for the fourth verse of “Au revoir mon enfance” (Goodbye My Childhood) by Boris Vian. 

            I weighed 88.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin Road Series during song practice for the first of four sessions. A few times it stayed in tune through a whole song and once through two. 

            I painted my bathroom ceiling with the colour Crazy in Love, which is a shade of pink. There’s still almost half a can left but I don’t know if I need a second coat. Looking up from below it seems fine. I’ll have a closer look on Friday and see if it needs more. Maybe I should save what I have until after I paint the walls because then there might be areas I’ll need to touch up. Plus I’m considering using some of that hue for the lazy Susan. 

            I weighed 89.5 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar plus a glass of iced tea. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride, intending to go downtown but it was raining a bit. When the rain picked up I decided to go south on Spadina to Queen and then east back to Parkdale. The rain let up shortly after I decided to go home. I stopped at Queen Fresh and bought two packs of raspberries. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos at 18:05, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since October 27. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:06. 

            I sliced a potato and put it to boil. 

            I remembered to buy beer and so I went over to the liquor store to get a six-pack of Creemore. The cashier rang me up and it said $41, which is $21 too much. She exclaimed “Holy shit!” and then ran out of the store. Then she came back and talked to her manager and he shrugged and told her to void it. I asked what happened and she said the previous customer’s card didn’t go through and she didn’t notice. She did notice that the woman left very quickly so maybe she knew. 

            I listened to half of a Rage Against the Machine cassette that I’ve had for years and to which I’d never listened. The lyrics are interesting. 

            I reviewed the video of my song practice performance of “Leave Some for Everyone Else” on September 20. I played my Gibson but the camera battery charge ran out before I could get a good take of this song. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, a sliced boiled potato, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 21 of Cain’s Hundred. 

            Norma Sherman has been in prison for the last two years for possession of heroin (What a stupid reason to put someone away). Today she is released and Nicholas Cain is waiting for her outside. Her husband Joe still plays trumpet at the club where she used to sing. She goes there and sings The Man I Love. Later Joe tells her he’s moved on from their relationship because he still doesn’t trust her to stay off the stuff. The club owner Arthur Troy says he’ll book her in a tour of clubs up the coast but she can’t do the gigs without a licence and it was revoked when she went to prison. Cain is trying to get his government connections to push her license through but finds she’ll have to wait two months. Troy’s club is dependent on the Organization and now mob representative Dave Keller tells Troy he needs to ship some heroin for the Organization. He doesn’t want to do it but Dave says he has to. Dave also says he has to drop Norma because she is too close to Cain who they don’t want sniffing around their drug operation. So Troy tells Norma he couldn’t get the gigs for her after all. The problems of being dumped by her husband and not being able to work are starting to make Norma want to start shooting up again. Arthur Troy’s brother Maury plays drums with Joe and he is also a former junkie who’s gone clean. Troy asks Maury to help him move the junk but he doesn’t want to get close to the stuff. Troy however lays a guilt trip on Maury about how he’s carried him all these years and so Maury gives in. The junk is being stored in the warehouse of Troy’s musical instrument company. Norma begs Maury for a fix and he takes her there. He shows her the heroin but she is able to resist and run away. Maury though gives in and Troy finds him stoned and playing a drum kit. Troy pulls a gun and reminds Maury that he swore he’d kill him if he ever got stoned again. He puts a gun to his brother’s head but can’t bring himself to shoot. Then Cain walks in and Troy fires at him only to be killed by return fire. Later we see Norma happy and singing and she gets back together with Joe. 

            Norma was played by Dorothy Dandridge, who started performing as a singer in black Baptist churches. She sang with her sister Vivian in a touring duo for a steady five years. Her film debut was in A Day at the Races in 1937. Her first credited role was in Four Shall Die in 1940. She sang the Oscar nominated song “Chattanooga Choo Choo” in Sun Valley Serenade. She sang in a trio for the Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra. She starred in Cow Cow Boogie, Carmen Jones (for which she was nominated for an Oscar), Tamango, and Bright Road. She co-starred in Island in the Sun, Porgy and Bess (for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe), Malaga, The Decks Ran Red, Tarzan’s Peril, The Harlem Globetrotters, and The Murder Men. She became a headliner in the top hotels in the country but wasn’t allowed to sleep in the beds or swim in the pools. She was the first black woman to be featured on the cover of Life. She had love affairs with Peter Lawford and Otto Preminger. She died of a barbiturate overdose with $2.14 in the bank.