SHE

    k, I came across this today (quite by accident) after a friend hit me up in youtube with another track. I am not, nor have I ever been a HUGE fan of Elvis Costello, but I am a fan of the film Notting Hill, and of the song She (sung originally, and very well too, by Charles Aznavour) and ~ as those of you who followed my Waterloo Bridge blog (http://www.chess.com/tournament/kev-amp-jens-bogus-tourney) will know ~ I am a fan too of Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Swan Lake(http://blog.chess.com/m8ed/swan-lake--the-story-within-the-story), and Gone With The Wind. . . but do you even care?

Well. . . "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."  J

Elvis Costello was approached to do the cover and re-record She for the film Notting Hill ~ a great little love story starring Hugh Grant as Will Thacker, a pretty ordinary English guy (getting over a divorce) who runs a small book store and his up and down relationship in London with the American Hollywood actress Anna Scott, played by Julia Roberts, whom he meets quite by accident. 

Elvis Costello actually produces a sterling rendition of the cover (you could be forgiven for actually thinking it was Charles Aznavour), but the raison d'être is not so much the song, but the video that accompanies it - and together they are nothing short of superb, and well worth a viewing or three. . . or four!

So, on to the video, not any old 2-bit C-list, or lower, out-of-work actresses here but rather, one of the best actresses of all time, and this is dedicated to her ~ the drop-dead gorgeous, au naturale, Vivien Leigh ~ the sweetest flower in all the field. There was no air-brushing back then, no surgeries, no silicone, and she wasn't weighed down with a Kilo of make-up. Yes, if you haven't already guessed, she's a definate and well-loved favourite of mine from a time gone by! Age has not wearied her, nor the years condemned. . .

Hoorah for celluloid  J

Enjoy the clip ~ we get a fleeting glimpse of her in Gone With The Wind in the role of Scarlett O'Hara down in the deep south in the plantation house in Clayton County before switching right to London in her role as the small time ballerina Myra Lester in Swan Lake, in the film Waterloo Bridge, and thence back and forth from London to Georgia, and back again, in these, her two greatest films, with her leading men Robert Taylor (British Army officer Roy Cronin) in one,  and Clark Gable (her beau, Rhett Butler) in t'other.

Who wouldn't want to play alongside this beautiful girl?  J

She may be the face I can't forget
The trace of pleasure or regret
Maybe my treasure or the price I have to pay
She may be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day

She may be the beauty or the beast
May be the famine or the feast
May turn each day into a Heaven or a Hell
She may be the mirror of my dreams
A smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell....

She, who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry
She maybe the love that cannot hope to last
May come to me from shadows in the past
That I remember 'till the day I die

She maybe the reason I survive
The why and wherefore I'm alive
The one I care for through the rough and ready years

Me, I'll take the laughter and her tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where she goes I've got to be
The meaning of my life is
She....She
Oh, she....

O, and for good measure (and so as not to exclude Notting Hill) here's the closing scene ~ Anna Scott and Will Thacker live happily ever after  J

~ m8ed