Hayley Mills on Catalina Island by Tosh Berman

 

Hayley Mills on Catalina Island by Tosh Berman

April 18, 2014

April 18, 2014

I have only been to Catalina Island once, and I was seven years old at the time.   My grandfather’s immediate family lived on the island and we visited them over the weekend.  It was my mom and grandmother, and I have no memory of Granddad or father there.  We arrived there on a sea plane. That mode of transportation was both scary and unique, because it may have been the first time I have ever been on a plane.  Landing on water was something out of the cinema; it felt it should have been on a huge movie screen instead of my little un-important life.   I have experienced beach life, especially Santa Monica beach, but the Catalina shore felt differently for some reason.  Mostly due that the ocean water was very clear, and I never experienced the ocean that way.  My understanding now is that the water is very polluted owing to the sewer system on the island, but in 1961, I remember being transfixed on the image of my toes as I walked into the ocean.

It was there that I ‘think’ I fell in love.  Her name is Hayley Mills, and I went to see “The Parent Trap” at the Avalon Theater.  It appeared to me to be a lighter version of the Chinese Theater on Hollywood bouvelard.  Here the theater was even bigger, and it shared the aesthetic of the island at the time, which was art deco reliefs throughout the movie palace.  And it was a palace to me, because it was huge and decorated so beautifully.  With such perfect surroundings, of course I fell in love with Hayley.  Not only, that, but she had two roles in the film, she played a pair of identical twin sisters.  Sitting there, I was overwhelmed with her image on the screen and in the theatrical setting of the actual location of the theater itself.  The combination of her beauty matching the elegance of the theater was hard for me to make a distinction between a woman's beauty and a beautiful building.  I often think of a woman's beauty as being a type of architecture.

Once I got home I remember purchasing a Haley Mills fan magazine.  Such publications were very common at the time.  It had numerous photographs of her, and I spent that afternoon cutting the images out of the magazine and putting it up on my wall in Beverly Glen.   I had a certain amount of attraction for the girls in my class, but Hayley Mills was something bigger than that.   It is like those girls I knew, but projected into another dimension.   It was around this time that I saw “Whistle Down The Wind, ” a black and white film, which made it totally different from the technicolor images of “The Parent Trap.” In other words, this film was a projection of one’s nightmare compared to the sunlight world of the Disney film.  This became even more of an obsession for me, due that it was the story of a young girl who finds a fugitive in a barn, thinking he was Jesus Christ.   He wasn’t of course, just a man running from the law, but he allowed her and the other children to believe that he was Christ.  I loved the idea of the time that a gang of children are keeping a secret from the outside world.  It made my world more powerful, and by seeing this film, I felt I was sharing a common secret.

As a teenager I started reading the works of the French film theorist André Bazin, and I was very taken by his thoughts on cinema criticism should be written by the critic who liked the film he or she is writing about.  I totally concur with this manner of thinking, because “The Parent Trap” may not be a great film, but to me, it was a significant work that somehow shaped my childhood.  The same goes for “Whistle Down The Wind, ” a work that was perfectly natural and logical for a love-struck pre-teen like me.

February 9, 2014

February 9, 2014

For my past crimes, I was just sentenced to the poker for 40 days.  The judge said that I should have known better than to participate in Justin’s egg-throwing party.  Ironically there is a 40 year difference between me and Justin.  Who knows how these things work out.  One day you were hired to write some words to a song, and then a short time later I am facing the judge, in a crime that I truly have no memory of.  Due to the arrest I am thrown out of Justin’s social world, which probably is a blessing than anything else.    The judge was kind enough to give me 40 more days to get my affairs in order before reporting to jail time.  Oddly enough I don’t feel guilty about what happened.  Sometimes you just have to experience the lows in life to appreciate the highs.  Alas, there is a great deal of sadness on my part, because deep down I still want to be part of Justin’s world.

A quick turn of events makes one reflect on one's life, and I often wonder what would happen if I didn’t see The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show when I was 9 years old.  I was for sure attracted to the intense love the whole world was giving the Fab Four.  Yet, I can’t remember what songs they played on the show.  I just remember looking forward to the moment they arrive in front of me, or on my TV screen.  It wasn’t even a music thing, just to become part of that moment when things fell in place so perfectly.

The second thing that hit me right between the eyes that year was “Peyton Place.” I just turned 10 years old and I fell in love with Allison MacKenzie, played by Mia Farrow.   If I had a ‘type’ it would be a girl with long blonde hair.  There was something fairy-tale like about her presence on the little screen that really captured my heart.  I didn’t understand the show, but I got the intensity and passion right away.  Totally emotional, but Farrow struck me as someone I can just talk to, if I knew her.  Or I should say Allison, because that is the part she played in the series.  I believe that she was 19, but her being a teenager, in my mind, was that she was approachable for a ten year old.   Of course this was all fantasy, but when you are a kid you always fall in love with someone older.  I’m sure there were tons of pre-teen girls in love with The Beatles, and on one level you think, these guys are in their early 20’s.  But when you are part of the rush of pre-teenage or teenager, you don’t really pay attention to logic, but more of an inner-fantasy world, that was more important and more lively.

In real life when she went off with Frank Sinatra, it seemed weird to me, and I didn’t totally understand why she didn’t run off with Ryan O'Neal her co-star in “Payton Place.” But then mysteries are mysteries due to the unknown world of emotional attachment.   I think what disturbed me as a kid is that Sinatra wasn’t part of the family or not part of the show.  Around the same time, I also developed another crush on another blonde, Hayley Mills.  She was a great teenage star in the Walt Disney world.  I actually cut out pictures of her from 16 Magazine and put them up on my bedroom wall.   It was shocking to me, that eventually she ended up marrying a British movie director Roy Boulting when she was 20, and he was 53 years old.  Another odd thing about Mia and Hayley is that they were both in productions of “Peter Pan” but not on the same show.  I think Hayley played Wendy, but Mia actually performed as Peter Pan.

So now 50 years later, I am in front of the judge for hanging out with Justin and his crew, and I can sort of see I was trying to capture a moment that I never had.  Only in my head, and I had the chance to live that fantasy or moment, but now find my self soon heading towards jail with only a copy of a novel by Natsume Sōseki.