DCB

She met Harry Callahan on a blind date in 1933 when both worked for Chrysler in Detroit. She was a 17-year-old secretary, and he was a 21-year-old clerk in the parts department. They married three years later after he dropped out of college, mainly because he had missed being with her. Although he began to photograph earnestly in 1938, he often credited a 1941 lecture he attended by Ansel Adams with having “freed” him to pursue a career as an artist.

With no money between them to speak of, it was economical for the frugal Mr. Callahan to feature his wife in his pictures.

Rachel McAdams has Olympic caliber poise. Somewhat jelled, her smile is red-lettered, her jaw, prominent, and her body, sprightly. It’s as if she just landed a double axel or performed a clean dismount from the balance beam, no sweat. In romantic roles her male co-stars regularly lift her, carry her, or nimbly swing her, but I suspect it’s McAdams who supplies any, if not all, cantilevered grace.

What lends most to screen is her strikingly nostalgic features. Owing perhaps to the alien twinkle in her eyes, her dimples, or her downy skin, McAdams appears especially saturated on celluloid; especially Sirk. Like Jane Wyman she is puckish and beautiful, and at times lost in thought. Both women look buffed — a near satin sheen. Both women have incredibly expressive foreheads.

Wrote about Rachel McAdams (sort of) and The Vow (sort of) for TR

“…two-piece number with a long jacket that would turn into a mini-dress after the long skirt and train were pulled off…”

Description of Julia Roberts’ wedding dress (called-off (to Kiefer Sutherland)) in the July 1991 issue of People.

***Know EXACTLY what that dress might have looked despite awkward illustration—appreciate how it was neither timeless or ever worn, and instead “hung unclaimed at the Tyler Trafficante West Hollywood salon.”

Compelled to frame this picture  of mirrored ROBERTS/REGRETS and of matching haircuts, much like this pair

October 4th, 2010:

I was once told that Balzac kept a collection of paper dolls near his desk to remind himself of all the characters that recurred in his thirty years of writing La Comédie Humaine.

Though not totally analogous, David Simon’s West Baltimore in both The Corner and The Wire is designed with a similarly serialized doubling of actors, and recalls Balzac’s renewal of characters: criminal turned dandy turned mayor, a writer turned politician, a student turned parvenu.

In Simon’s case: shrimp factory manager turned school principal; addict turned politically ambitious wife; scale guy turned Sgt.; addict turned detective, hopper turned detective; addict turned Lieutenant; Foot Locker employee turned drug kingpin; addict turned Deputy campaign manager.