Dear Heart(1964).

Dear Heart(1964). Romantic/Comedy. Cast: Glenn Ford, Geraldine Page and Angela Lansbury. Directed by Delbert Mann. The movie received an Oscar nomination for best song "Dear Heart". Music: Henry Mancini Lyrics: Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.

Quirky postmistress Evie Jackson, arrives in New York City, to attend a postmasters' convention where she meets playboy Harry Mork, a greeting card salesman who is engaged to Phyllis.

He, like most men is put off by Evie's personality, but after his failed date with June, he decides to take up Evie's invitation to a party. They have a wonderful time together and she falls in love with him. Evie, soon learns and is brokenhearted that Harry is engaged to another woman named Phyllis. After, Harry takes her to see the apartment he has rented she decides to return home.

Phyllis, who really does not love Harry arrives in New York, where Harry shows her the apartment. They find Phyllis' teenaged son, Patrick, living there with his bohemian girl friend. Phyllis, tells him that she prefers to live in hotels because she likes to be waited on and Harry realizes that she is only using him.Will Harry, leave her and make Pennsylvania Station in time to find Evie?

Glen Ford and Geraldine Page, are wonderful together, in this believable, sentimental movie. Page, as Evie gives one of her best performances, as she gives a speech about how women "give up" as they grow older waiting to find a husband.

 

Geraldine Page (November 22, 1924 – June 13, 1987). Her film debut was in, Out of the Night (1947). Her role in Hondo, opposite John Wayne, won her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Page received eight Academy Award nominations.

She finally won the Oscar in 1986 for a performance in The Trip to Bountiful. When she won (F. Murray Abraham, upon opening the envelope, exclaimed "I consider this woman the greatest actress in the English language"), she received a standing ovation from the audience. She was surprised by her win  and took a while to get to the stage to accept the award because she had taken off her shoes while sitting in the audience.

 Her other notable screen roles included Academy Award-nominated performances in Tennessee Williams': Summer and Smoke (1961), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), Woody Allen's Interiors (1978), and The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984).

She also appeared in such roles as a psychotic, mass killer in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969); a repressed schoolmistress in the Clint Eastwood film, The Beguiled (1971); a charismatic evangelist in, The Day of the Locust (1975); a nun, Sister Walburga, in Nasty Habits (1977); and as 'Aunt' Beverly in Harry's War (1981).

She did many television shows in the 1950s through the 1980s, including movies and series, such as Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, and several episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, including "The Sins of the Fathers" and "Something in the Woodwork". She also was a voice actress and voiced the villainous Madame Medusa in the Disney animated film The Rescuers. Page has also appeared in television productions and won two Emmy Awards as Outstanding Single Performance By an Actress in a Leading Role in a Drama for her roles in the classic Truman Capote stories, A Christmas Memory (1967) and The Thanksgiving Visitor (1969). Her final film was the 1987 Mary Stuart Masterson film My Little Girl.

Una Merkel - Her Finest Moment

Dawn recently did a piece on Una Merkel, a solid character actress who got her start as a stand-in for Lillian Gish in 1920's Way Down East.  She is famous for her wisecracking blond character in 42nd Street, and is remembered best for such roles.  I wanted to pay homage to one of her performances as a mentally ill mother in 1961's Summer and Smoke, one of the most memorable characters in movies.  She had created the role on Broadway, and brought it to the screen, where her relatively small role shines alongside a stellar cast including Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey.

Summer and Smoke was a play by Tennessee Williams originally titled Eccentricities of a Nightingale.  It tells the story of a southern spinster named Alma (Page), a shy, nervous daughter of a minister.  Alma is emotionally fragile, unable to handle the realities of life and her feelings.  She is easily embarrassed and fluttery with nerves, physically frail, a sad woman who longs for love but cannot express it or act on it.  She is a character well known to Tennessee Williams fans from his  body of work.  Una Merkel plays a character also often seen in Williams' plays.  She is Alma's mother, Mrs. Winemiller, who could be an older version of Alma, old enough to have become mentally unstable and not to be trusted for normal behavior in public.  One of Alma's unspoken fears is that will end up like her mother, the barely tolerated wife of a harried and intolerant husband and the bane of her child's difficult life.  Mrs. Winemiller mainly lives upstairs, an embarrassment and annoyance to her family. When her behavior becomes erratic enough, she is often ordered upstairs by her husband. She has fits of mania when she talks crazily, screams "Where's the ice cream man? I want the ice cream man!"  When she manages to get out of the house, Mrs. Winemiller is known all over the small town as a sneaky kleptomaniac, mainly pilfering hats from stores.  Alma is often the person who has the agonizing job of apologizing to storekeepers, imploring her mother not to humiliate her with that behavior.

Mrs. Winemiller is crazy, alright, but not too crazy to see through Alma, and mean enough to enjoy baiting her daughter with sudden flashes of sane insight into Alma's nerves and humiliation.  She makes fun of Alma for Alma's deeply felt and hidden love of her hell-raising neighbor (Laurence Harvey).  Mrs. Winemiller sings "Alma's in love, Alma's in love" in front of other people, well aware that her daughter is deeply embarrassed by this revelation.  It is very difficult to play crazy without eliciting laughter, but Una does it with an attitude of dignity and pathos in her cruel insanity in this difficult role.  She is a complex character, and Una uses all of her considerable acting talent to bring a marvelous performance to the movie.

Her performance was noticed, and Una was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work.  Una Merkel rounded out her career with this fine piece of serious acting, light years from her early years as a dithering, wisecracking blond.  Well done, Una.  You have left a piece of genius in movie history.