Living with Larry

shirley-temple-14I’m making scones. Larry is reading me snatches from the NY Times, including this from the Book Review: “When Shirley Temple Black died at 85 on Feb. 10, The Times’s obituary made brief note of her connection to Graham Greene. In a review of the 1937 film ‘Wee Willie Winkie,’ Greene wrote that Temple’s ‘infancy is her disguise, her appeal is more secret and more adult. ‘He unwisely continued: ‘Her admirers — middle-aged men and clergymen — respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire.’

images-2In his memoirs, the film director Alberto Cavalcanti said Greene fled to Mexico, where he wrote “The Power and the Glory,” rather than face a possible prison sentence in a libel case inspired by the review. Cavalcanti wrote: “Very likely Shirley Temple never learned that it was partly thanks to her that, during his exile, Graham Greene wrote one of his best books.”

Later, Larry came down from his office with a quote from Warren Buffet: “Wall Street is the only place where people drive in Rolls Royces to get advice from people who ride the subway.” He noted that Buffett has almost as many good quotes as Mark Twain.

And this morning he read me part of the obituary of a Stanley Grinstein, an unlikely L.A. arts patron who played a pivotal role in the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s and ’70s. He ran a forklift business, which paid for his art interests.  Larry’s comment, via an email from an artist friend of ours, “We’re all in the forklift business!” And I have to admit, there have been a lot of years of heavy lifting.

2 thoughts on “Living with Larry

  1. “We’re all in the forklift business!”
    HA!
    That is rich! I have been reading your blog backwards for the last few weeks. It is such a tonic after I read through the Guardian and other daily news.
    It’s funny to read a poem or your spiral chicken ranch doings and find I have commented on the post. It is really eye opening to read something from 2013 that is so surprising! Love Moni

    I have really enjoyed my time on your blog. But i am not done yet.

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