Beat the Heat

During a cool-down period (one of many) yesterday, I watched a favorite movie, "Westward the Women" (1951, Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson, and Henry Nakamura).  There is, of course, the inevitable romance mandatory for every western, but it's a pretty gritty tale of a wagon train of mail-order brides going to California.  The movie must have been pure hell to make in heat and rough terrain.  Very little was glamorized, probably as close to the truth as Hollywood ever got in the 1950s.

Put Anthony Hopkins in the credits and I'm your gal.  I did a little more time traveling yesterday when I watched "Bobby" (2006, Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, William H. Macy, and a plethora of well-known actors), about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968.  As it happened, I saw the actual coverage on the night it happened.  The Kids' dad was getting ready to go on a late-night stakeout, so I was still up and watching TV.  I grew up in the "Yes, dear" era.  I've always been grateful that voting is done in private, which has allowed me to listen to husbands telling me who I should vote for (for whom I should vote, for the purists), dutifully responding, "Yes, dear," and then going behind the curtain and doing as I darn well please.  My straight-ticket Republican husband would have had a hizzy fit if he'd known I'd thrown my ballot to Robert Kennedy that year.  (I vote the person, not the party.)  At any rate, I was "there" when Bobby was shot.  One person who was not portrayed in the film was Rosey Grier.  I will never forget the grief on that man's face.  It's a film worth watching.

Movies, the older the better, are one way to beat the heat.