Luck

Eli Wallach just walked onstage.

When I saw him, I googled Anne Jackson. They used to appear together on afternoon TV–Password, I think–when I was a kid.

I’m happy to report that Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach have been married for over sixty-two years.

They should get an Oscar for that.

Jeff Bridges is now introducing nominees for Best Actress. I’ve somehow missed out on his career.

But I remember his father, Lloyd Bridges, in Sea Hunt.

Or I remember one episode. Mike Nelson was lying on the ocean floor. Something, maybe a torpedo, was lying across his legs, pinning him down. His oxygen was running out.

That’s all I remember. I was very young at the time, and very nearsighted.

I planned to post only the photograph of Jackson and Wallach. But Colin Firth won the Oscar for Best Actor, so I’ve posted a picture of him, too.

It couldn’t hurt.

This is the first presentation of the Academy Awards I’ve watched in years. I’d forgotten it was airing tonight. I watched Any Human Heart and when that was over, David switched channels.

The King’s Speech or Black Swan? I had to see which won.

I almost didn’t watch Any Human Heart. I haven’t read the book, and at the end of the first episode I had the idea that the rest of the series would find a shallow Logan Mountstuart having serial affairs and running into famous people, and that would be that.

But I gave it another chance, and I’m glad I did, not least for the experience of seeing  Matthew Macfadyen morphing into Jim Broadbent.

It’s a difficult story. On the one hand, Logan Mountstuart didn’t exactly pull himself up by his bootstraps. On the other, he got a few body blows along the way. I wished he could have had everything he lacked, including sixty-two years with Freya.

It’s all luck, his father said. Logan Mountstuart was an unlucky, lucky man.

There are a lot of lucky people tonight, and more unlucky ones. Which are which remains to be seen.

*****

Image of Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson by Greg Hernandez (TCM Classic Film Festival) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Colin Firth by nicolas genin from Paris, France (66ème Festival de Venise (Mostra)) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons