“Someone’s gonna have ter take the boy to see the picture tonight,” Horrie declared with full paternal authority.
“Oh, Horrie,” my mother sighed with irritation. “It’s only a movie. He’ll forget about it by tomorrow.”
“No he won’t. This is real important to him, even if I don’t see why. I know it is.”
“No movie could be worth all this kafuffle,” my mother was sure.
“Jesus, Ella. Who could know what goes on the in the head of a strange kid like him? I ain’t never seen him so excited about anything before. Neither have you—you said so. It has to be done.”
“Alright, if you say so. You take him.”
“It ain’t Wednesday.”
“You could make an exception.”
“Jesus, woman. I been workin’ all day...”
“Maybe its a western. He seems to like them best.”
There was a profound pause.
“Hey, boy, come here. And fer Christ’s sake stop snufflin’. Now this picture you wanna see so badly—wouldn’t happen to be a western, would it?”
The temptation to lie was absolutely gigantic.
“No Dad.”
Somehow, the burden of responsibility was shifted by that brave honesty. Horrie looked at my mother, who began to cringe.
“Come on, Ella. You ain’t been to the pictures fer ages. You’re always on about it. Here’s your chance.”
A monumental sigh of world-weary motherliness seemed to envelop the whole house.
“Get me the paper, dear, and show me which one it is.”
I dashed off frantically and located the full page advertisement in The Sun and galloped back to hand it to her jubilantly. It might have seemed that the great slimy tentacles had reached off the page and snared her own body, such was the horror and revulsion with which she reacted.
“Oh! Oh dear me! Good heavens. That’s awful. Take it away!”
Horrie regarded the page with stoic calm.
“Looks to me like they made a picture as strange as he is.”
Younger brother Howie, who knew everything, salivated over those images and knew only too well that he would not be allowed to be exposed to so monstrous a film. But he also thought he knew the answer.
“You oughta get Uncle Kevin to take him, cos it’s all his fault anyway.”
“Kevin? I mighta known that silly bugger would...”
“Horrie!” my mother snapped before whatever was going to be said next got said.
“Okay, Howie,” Horrie sighed. “How come it’s Uncle Kevin’s fault?”
“Uncle Kevin gave him the book.”
“Is that what this is about? That bloody book!”
“So Uncle Kevin oughta go with him, oughtn’t he.”
“You know very well that Uncle Kevin is in hospital having his gall stones done and won’t be taking anyone anywhere.”
“Orr, yeah. I fergot.”
The options were narrowing. Rosely decided it was time to go and tidy her room, a chore outstanding for about four years.
“Hang about, Roe.”
“Ohhh, Daddy. I wasn’t allowed to go to the footy because of his damned movie...”
“Don’t swear in front of your mother, girl.”
“It isn’t fair!”
“Nothin’ is.”
“Ohhh, mummy. Do I have to?”
But even as long-suffering a mother as mine was could not know the answer to that one.
It was then that I solved my own problem. This was where my second distant benefactor got into the act. There are some movie stars you like (or even idolise) and some you don’t—that’s how it’s meant to be. I wonder if it’s significant that the only Hollywood icon who ever exerted a direct influence in my life (and did so several times) was one from the dislike list? Admittedly, my distaste was almost certainly because he was in fact a better actor than most and in his early days tended to play rather despicable complex characters.
He was a Polish actor named Issur Demsky who to me seemed to have little to recommend him other than the most remarkably dimpled chin that anyone had ever seen, but he had a vital role to play in these events in addition to playing that of Ned Land in the subject film.
“Kirk Douglas is in it,” I said blithely.
It was wonderful. Just the delight of seeing my evil sister caught so neatly made it all worthwhile. For suddenly, there she was, skewered on her own poisonous temperament, her essential bossy-boots character determined not to co-operate with me at all costs, but her considerably less complex instincts of post-pubescence decidedly dragging her the other way. There was a long pause while these priorities sorted themselves out within her. As is always the case, sexual instincts won through in the end.
“You’re lying,” she said in final defiance and even stamped her foot in rage. But I had the advertisement right there, along with the name at the head of the cast in rippling block letters and anyway, even as he battled the tentacles of the giant squid, that dimpled chin was unmistakable.
“Kirk Douglas,” she breathed, unable to help herself. “What a hunk! Oh, alright then, I’ll go. But you just think yourself lucky.”
Oh yes, I did. I did.
