sovay | If my life were devoted solely to acting, I'd never appear in a film

Happy birthday, Leslie Howard! A hundred and twenty-four years ago you were born Leslie Howard Steiner and I am so very grateful you did not stay a bank clerk. You were one of my formative actors and one of the great hot intellectuals of the screen and you punched Nazis with art and I am glad you are in the zeitgeist for it lately, because that thing where for decades you were remembered mostly for Gone with the Wind (1939) was awkward. You inspired H.P. Lovecraft and Raoul Wallenberg and I wrote a poem out of one of your characters once. I seem to have have written about a highly random assortment of your movies over the years (and I want credit for not compulsively rewriting the post about Pygmalion on the spot, even though it really needs it):

Berkeley Square (1933), dir. Frank Lloyd
Captured! (1933), dir. Roy Del Ruth
The Petrified Forest (1936), dir. Archie Mayo
Stand-In (1937), dir. Tay Garnett
Pygmalion (1938), dir. Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard & David Lean
49th Parallel (1941), dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Pimpernel Smith (1941), dir. Leslie Howard
The First of the Few (1942), dir. Leslie Howard
The Gentle Sex (1943), dir. Leslie Howard

This is not a numerically significant anniversary, so I'm not going to try for some sort of summing-up essay of your influence on my life or my interest in film, although neither is negligible; I am going to post this gif of you eating a banana because I continue to think it's one of the funniest things Tumblr has ever turned up and point out that I think your weird cat-face was beautiful in portraits where you were shot like a romantic hero and in candids where you looked like a terrific nerd and pretty frequently, if you ask me, you counted as both at once. The fact that generations of fans—and not a few lovers—agreed with me will never cease to delight me. You should have played Peter Wimsey. I will fancast that till I die. I have no idea what happened here.

Your memory for a blessing. If you'd never appeared in a film, I'd never have known.

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May I nominate Tom Hiddleston as lead in the (nonexistent) Howard biopic?

I've thought of him in connection with Howard before! Not so much the visual likeness—he reminds me more of Peter Cushing; it's the cheekbones—but when I try to think of present-day actors with the hot intellectual persona, he and Kate McKinnon head the list. I know Benedict Cumberbatch is supposed to be one, but he really doesn't work for me. (He's so good in comedy. People should let him do more comedy!)

Do you have a presence on Dreamwidth? Chances are that I will no longer be around on LJ except perhaps in some kind of archival fashion soon.

Edited 2017-04-04 19:24 (UTC)

I opened a dreamwidth account in December, backed up years of LJ onto it, and then forgot about it. I just re-set my password, so it's functional again
http://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/
I'm another of the LJ or bust folks, but I will try to follow you if you migrate - when I think of it, I check up on Kate Nepveu, who switched entirely,so it's easy enough.

I'm another of the LJ or bust folks, but I will try to follow you if you migrate - when I think of it, I check up on Kate Nepveu, who switched entirely,so it's easy enough.

I've been crossposting from Dreamwidth since 2013, but stopped last night and frankly I expect my next post will also not be mirrored, so you might as well start looking for me when you read Kate Nepveu. It's good to know where you are.

If my life were devoted solely to acting, I'd never appear in a film

Re: What happened here

Re: What happened here

Re: What happened here