Lisa Montell

            On Thursday morning I revised my translation of the rest of the verses of “Les millionaires” by Serge Gainsbourg. Next I’ll translate the monologues, which shouldn’t be as difficult since they don’t need to rhyme. 

            I weighed 89.05 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning since January 23. 

            During song practice I played my Martin acoustic and it went out of tune constantly. It’s very frustrating to have no guitars that behave themselves lately. 

            At around 12:15 I headed downtown for the first time since before the storm. They had finally ploughed the Bloor bike lane but not enough. I was slipping and sliding all the way to Dufferin until I gave up and just rode on Bloor Street. From Bathurst on, the bike lane was clear enough for riding. I went to Yonge and Isabella, locked my bike and waited for Brian Haddon. He arrived on time and we had lunch at the Artful Dodger. We shared a pitcher of Creemore and each had the lunch special: the smoked turkey and bacon wrap with fries. Brian recently uploaded to YouTube his suite for wind quintet called “At the Sign of” and he appreciated all the comments I made on it: 

            I’ll be going for oral surgery on Monday and then starting my annual fast a week later so we won’t be getting together again until sometime in April. 

            I stopped at Steve’s Music to buy a rechargeable guitar tuner. The one I use now takes CR2032 batteries. For a long time I used that kind of battery for my bike flashers, my digital scale and my tuner. But now my flashers are rechargeable and I use rechargeable AAA batteries for my scale and so it seems like a waste of money to buy CR2032s just for the tuner. I bought a Snark for about $35 so hopefully it’s a good one. 

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home where I bought five bags of red grapes, a pack of raspberries, some bananas, a squeezer of honey, marinara sauce, Irish Spring soap, a pack of Sponge Towels and a pack of toilet paper. I did a price match on the grapes with the Real Canadian Super Store's price of $4.39 a kilo. 

            I took a siesta from 17:15 to 18:45. 

            I weighed 89.55 kilos at 19:20. That’s the easiest I’ve been on the scale since January 27. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast pork with skyr while watching season 1, episode 11 of Combat. 

            This is a flashback story that really should have been the first episode of the series. The men have been waiting in London for D-Day. There is a betting pool with a large pot that has accumulated from all the men who wagered on the day they move out. Braddock ends up winning the $800 prize, which would be almost $15,000 today. Lieutenant Hanley is only a sergeant like Saunders but he still outranks him though Saunders has more combat experience than Hanley. Saunders has apparently been knocked back to private more than once since he joined the army. 

            Braddock’s bag of rations gets caught in the landing vehicle and he has to leave it behind. Later his bag carrying the $800 is blown up by a mortar shell. 

            Their mission is to locate some captured paratroopers at a farmhouse but they decide to rescue them. The farmhouse is protected by a tank. Under fire, Caje panics and runs. While cowering some distance away he meets some members of the French resistance who say he’s a hero and give him some wine. He regains his confidence and returns to K company with the French resistance fighters that include the beautiful Marcelle. They have also given him grenade launchers. Marcelle gives them some Molotov cocktails. Saunders climbs on the tank and throws one. The Germans surrender. Caje, Hanley and Saunders kiss Marcelle goodbye and they march on into France. 

            Marcelle was played by Lisa Montell, who was born in Poland but moved to the US at the age of 6. She studied voice, art , and dance and was accepted into the High School of Music and Art in New York. She transferred to the High School of Performing Arts. Her father was in the iron mining business and because of that they moved to Peru. It was there in 1953 that Lisa was first noticed by Hollywood producers who were there to shoot Daughter of the Sun God. The movie wasn’t released until 1962. Lisa appeared in some local films but when her father died she and her mother moved to LA. Her TV debut was in Public Defender in 1954. Her Hollywood film debut was Jump Into Hell in 1955. She co-starred in She Gods of Shark Reef. Her last film was The Firebrand in 1962. After that she focused on education and her Bahai religion. She gave talks on the faith and later took graduate studies at university. She taught university courses in holistic education.