Trolley 512

Trolley 512 was captured next to the Co-op, across the road from Epsom railway station. Returned to the M&S food hall, where the stacks were in what has become their usual muddle. And where few people were wearing masks.

From there to CeX of reference 2, where I was able to top up our supply of detective dramas. Maybe forty hours worth for about 50p an hour. The return visit to Richer Sounds to get a streaming-capable television successfully pushed back another few weeks. An approximately equivalent number of Agatha DVD's successfully transferred to the recycling box: we will hang on to Joan Hickson, which we still watch, but the rest of it will go.

A couple of related points.

First, last night, we saw the first half of a star studded Agatha film of 1980 called 'The Mirror Cracked'. With the stars including Elizabeth Taylor playing the aging film star - which was rather brave of her. A rather odd film, but oddly watchable for all that, with some splendid comic touches. But I would say that I much prefer the Mrs Bantry from the Hickson version of 1992 to this one, played by Margaret Courtney. With Courtney being familiar to me as the tiresome nurse-companion to Miss Marple in that later Hickson version, a bit of a demotion from former chatelaine in the present film.

Second, a recent pick-me-up from Raynes Park was a picture book about Judy Garland, from which I share two snippets. First, the biography circulated by her studio in the 1940's, only had a very loose connection with the truth. Second, I have been reminded of the fairly banal truth that making a film of a successful book, in this case 'The Wizard of Oz', is a serious business, only to be undertaken by serious, well led professionals. It is all too easy to spend a lot of money and still get it wrong. In this case, Metro Goldwyn Meyer got it right, while the forays of the original author - one L. Frank Baum - onto stage and into film generally lost a lot of money.

This, only just recently having read of Simenon falling into the same trap. He thought that having written a successful Maigret story, I think 'Le Chien Jaune', he thought that he was the right man to make a film of the story. A film respecting the story, making proper use of the material provided. Like Baum, he got into a pickle too - not having realised that making a film involves lots of people, lots of different skills, lots of organisation and is not the same at all as locking yourself into a hotel room for a couple of weeks to write a story.

Amongst other problems, I can see an author holding onto all his gems, not being able to see that what might work splendidly on the page is not going to work at all on the screen. Absolute menace from the point of view of the director.

PS: I learn that while chatelaine is indeed derived from the French for castle, that is to say, château, it is also the name of a belt worn by high caste ladies since antiquity, a belt which might be used to hold necessaries for the daily toilet, things like brushes and combs, or to hold the all the keys to the castle. Keys to the doors, keys to the cupboards and drawers - with these last holding all sorts of goodies which light fingered servants might make off with. Nothing new about the servant problem.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/trolley-511.html.

Reference 2: https://uk.webuy.com/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz_(1939_film).

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz.

Group search key: trolleysk. A search key brought into use on the 18th May, 2022. Not retrofitted.