My wife was reading the last few pages of Pooh to our kids the other night and it made her cry. So I took over, and yes, yes it nearly made me cry.
Flat out, Pooh is one of the great tragedies. Which got us and our good pal “So-Called Bill” ruminating over how much sadder even the saddest story would be with Pooh in the lead. Of Mice and Pooh. “Do I get to take care of the bunnies? I want to take care of the bunnies.” I mean come on. What’s sadder than that? Flowers for Poohgernon. In which Pooh becomes really really smart. And then gets reduced back to being just a bear of little brain. I’m crying right now. You know? It’s amazing. I’m typing this, and I’m actually sobbing. The English Pooh. In which Pooh is left in a cave. To die.
Or worst of all: Old Pooh. In which Pooh gets rabies and, and Christopher Robin, he has to go get a shotgun and — and he — I’m sorry. I need a moment.
OK… Deep breath. So Old Pooh. In which Pooh gets rabies and he starts to foam around the mouth and Charlotte, she’s just dead. And it doesn’t matter if three baby spiders stay because Charlotte’s still dead and Wilbur, he’s all alone. And then Wilbur gets a gun and shoots Pooh.
In the mid 50s, Pooh, ripe for fresh creative challenges, was drawn to the footlights of New York City. It’s not common knowledge now, but at the time, Pooh’s subtle and moving performances sent ripples through the acting world, inspiring seasoned actors as well as those just cutting their teeth.
Although he would never comment publicly, it’s widely held that Marlon Brando’s searing screen performance as manly, brutish Stanley Kowalski in “Streetcar Named Pooh” owed a great debt to Pooh’s early performances of the same role. A leading stage critic of the day said simply: “Two words–animal magnetism.”
And no less a light than grande dame Kate Hepburn acknowledged her debt to Pooh in her preparation for her film role in “Long Pooh’s Journey into Night”: “I had come out of retirement for this part and was deeply. deeply. immersed. But I hadn’t. quite. got hold of it. And then I recalled Pooh’s riveting performance of some ten years before. His utter. dependence. on the honey. Well, it made it all. plain. as. day.”
Next week–Pathos Defined: “Death of a Pooh” and the Audible Sobs of Arthur Miller on Opening Night.
Don’t forget “The Sound and the Pooh” which is written alternately from the points of view of Pooh, Christopher Robin, and Eeyore.
Actually, go look for a book called /Golfing for Cats/, a collection of humorous essays. It includes one in which the narrator visits an aged, disgruntled Pooh who points out that Gatsby came out the same year as House at Pooh Corner and why couldn’t Milne have written “Gatsby Meets a Heffalump” and Fitzgerald “The Great Pooh”?
there’s this scene early on in Gatsby where Daisy and Jordan are in this living room or sitting room. And the way FSF describes it, they’re literally floating in that room in these big ballooning dresses. And then, as I recall it, Tom walks in (boo Tom!) and slams the door or somesuch and they fall back down to the ground.
And it was one of those things where I’d read the book in high school and it was all so smooth I didn’t even think twice about it. And then in college some friend or teacher pointed that passage out to me — pointed out that he doesn’t flinch. That if you take it word by word, they’re literally floating. And it was one of those great eye openers — that he could throw that kind of wild moment in without drawing any real attention to it. Just such graceful prose.
Update: here’s the actual passage….
“The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.”
ugh, i hate myself for this, i really do–but who can ever forget pooh radley in “to kill a mockingpooh”?
Yeah, but all I recall is that snuff film I saw on the steamer to thailand….Poo Poo Platter…yeah
In the mid 50s, Pooh, ripe for fresh creative challenges, was drawn to the footlights of New York City. It’s not common knowledge now, but at the time, Pooh’s subtle and moving performances sent ripples through the acting world, inspiring seasoned actors as well as those just cutting their teeth.
Although he would never comment publicly, it’s widely held that Marlon Brando’s searing screen performance as manly, brutish Stanley Kowalski in “Streetcar Named Pooh” owed a great debt to Pooh’s early performances of the same role. A leading stage critic of the day said simply: “Two words–animal magnetism.”
And no less a light than grande dame Kate Hepburn acknowledged her debt to Pooh in her preparation for her film role in “Long Pooh’s Journey into Night”: “I had come out of retirement for this part and was deeply. deeply. immersed. But I hadn’t. quite. got hold of it. And then I recalled Pooh’s riveting performance of some ten years before. His utter. dependence. on the honey. Well, it made it all. plain. as. day.”
Next week–Pathos Defined: “Death of a Pooh” and the Audible Sobs of Arthur Miller on Opening Night.
Poohtergeist: They’re here? Oh, bother.
Don’t forget “The Sound and the Pooh” which is written alternately from the points of view of Pooh, Christopher Robin, and Eeyore.
Actually, go look for a book called /Golfing for Cats/, a collection of humorous essays. It includes one in which the narrator visits an aged, disgruntled Pooh who points out that Gatsby came out the same year as House at Pooh Corner and why couldn’t Milne have written “Gatsby Meets a Heffalump” and Fitzgerald “The Great Pooh”?
there’s this scene early on in Gatsby where Daisy and Jordan are in this living room or sitting room. And the way FSF describes it, they’re literally floating in that room in these big ballooning dresses. And then, as I recall it, Tom walks in (boo Tom!) and slams the door or somesuch and they fall back down to the ground.
And it was one of those things where I’d read the book in high school and it was all so smooth I didn’t even think twice about it. And then in college some friend or teacher pointed that passage out to me — pointed out that he doesn’t flinch. That if you take it word by word, they’re literally floating. And it was one of those great eye openers — that he could throw that kind of wild moment in without drawing any real attention to it. Just such graceful prose.
Update: here’s the actual passage….
“The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.”
I understand that there’s a compelling tome out there called Gravity’s RainPooh, in which our protagonist….