Daily Archives: 09-Mar-05

RIP Teresa Wright

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PicOfTeresaWright

Truly terrible and depressing news: one of my all-time favorite actresses, « Teresa Wright, passed away Sunday »:

’« Teresa Wright », the willowy actress who starred opposite Gary Cooper and Marlon Brando and won a supporting Academy Award in 1942 for “Mrs. Miniver,” has died. She was 86. Wright died Sunday of a heart attack at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, her daughter, Mary-Kelly Busch, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

‘Wright’s career skyrocketed after her first film, “The Little Foxes,” which brought her an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress of 1941. The following year she was honored with two nominations: lead actress as the wife of Lou Gehrig in “The Pride of the Yankees” and supporting actress as Greer Garson’s daughter-in-law in the wartime saga “Mrs. Miniver.” She also starred in three other classics: Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” in 1943; Brando’s first film, “The Men,” in 1950; and the multiple Oscar winner “The Best Years of Our Lives” in 1946.’

She was one of the main reasons Mrs. Miniver, Shadow of a Doubt and The Best Years of Our Lives are three of my all-time favorite movies. TBYOOL is, in fact, my favorite movie of all-time, period. I shall have to watch all three tomorrow night, in a Teresa Wright Memorial Requiem Marathon. (Yes, I’m a sentimental old fool.)

It’s very sad that all of the Golden Age’rs are passing, leaving us with the talentless, vapid, ignorant and self-absorbed near-’hos that pass for Hollywood ‘talent’ these days.

I’ve said several times lately that there is no justice in the world (or maybe I was just born like 40 years too late): Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant and now Teresa Wright are dead, but Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Cruise and Jude Law are still running around loose.

Wherever you are, Ms. Wright, thank you for your wonderful work. You will be sorely missed. Rest in peace.

“WHY IS THE WEATHER LIKE THIS???”

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From yesterday’s Ann Arbor News:

Ann Arbor has received 70.3 inches of snow so far this winter, compared with 36.8 by this time last year and 40 inches in an average season. The record is 75 inches in the 1981-82 winter season.

The exclamation above is what some undergrad was screeching into her cellphone when I was walking across campus this afternoon. Well, yes, I can sympathize, despite my vaunted fondness for winter. I spent much of the weekend in pain due to an injury induced by slipping in ice caused by the winter weather, so I should be just as pissed off at winter as that undergrad was. And damn was it ever cold today, all day. It seemed somehow even more piercingly and bitterly cold on March 8 than it did in January when the temps were at zero and below and you couldn’t walk anywhere without nearly freezing your sinuses.

It’ll all be over soon, or so we keep telling ourselves. Right? We’d like to think so — even I wouldn’t mind a change in scenery on a day like this — but as long as that “polar vortex” that the weather-head was pointing to on the map on the news tonight is spinning up there in Ontario and shoveling that Arctic air down in our direction, well…..