#da flickers

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Anthony Perkins as Professor Cerruti in Winter Kills (1979)

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April 3

Marlon Brando, b. Omaha, Nebraska, 1924

His raw sexual magnetism made his predecessors look manicured and preened. "Like many men, I too have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed." So said the famous actor to the press. No one sniggers at honesty and quiet dignity. So when the news was reported, the sun came up the next day just as it had the day before. Let us hope for an autobiography from Brando before he gets the trash treatment that was Flynn and Power's fate.

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April 2

Hans Christian Andersen, b. Odense, Denmark, 1805

Forget that silly Danny Kaye movie of yesteryear in which Hans sings to inchworms and measures all the marigolds. Andersen was an odd duck, all right, but odd in ways nor even hinted at in that Technicolor atrocity. The real story, on the contrary, might actually make a good film. One can already see the scene between his poor parents as they realize that something's a little strange about the lad. When the other kids are out doing masculine things, like circle jerks and pulling wings off flies, all he wants to do is sew clothing for his dolls. Then we can have the scene where he decides to leave his place as apprentice to a tailor to try to make it as an opera singer. He's really torn about leaving, because he just loves being surrounded by all those clothes to sew. Then there's his time of starvation on the road until he's taken in by two gay musicians who see to it that the hungry young man is plenty stuffed. Passed on to a middle-aged poet, and getting a little wiser, he decides that it's much more fun being kept than taking dancing lessons, as he had originally wanted, in return for services rendered. Eventually he makes it big as the greatest fairy-tale writer in Europe, and the entire cast joins in the great production number, "It Takes One to Write One."

Sergei Lifar, b. Kiev, [Ukraine], 1905

He was sexless and felt desire for neither men nor women, but he wanted the attention of Diaghilev and knew how to get it. Lifar was the last of Diaghilev's dancer-lovers, and probably the most spiritually faithful. Although he had the talent, the body, and the looks to conform to the great impresario's idea of perfection, one slight fault had to be corrected before their honeymoon -- and before the stardom that marriage brought. "Don't sit in the sun, the paraffin will melt," his colleagues teased. But the nose job had its intended results. Lifar, just twenty, was now the lead dancer of the Ballets Russes, and Mme. Diaghilev as well.

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