Tuesday, December 07, 2004

“You need more than luck in Shanghai.”

The Movie: The Lady from Shanghai, 1948 (Orson Welles, director and screenwriter, from a book by Sherwood King)
Who says it: Rita Hayworth as Rosalie Bannister, the wife of a wealthy lawyer
The context: Rosalie is telling sailor Mike O’Hara (Orson Welles) about her earlier life as a gambler in Shanghai.
How to use it: To express quiet confidence when someone wishes you luck.

When Rita Hayworth made this movie, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. No one else was even close. I watched it again recently, and it's tremendously entertaining on many levels -- just keeping track of Orson Welles' dreadful Irish accent is hypnotizing.

It's snowing again. I'm afraid to go pick up my car in this weather, because I really don't know how to drive in this weather, and I am absolutely positive that if I try to take the Beetle out in it, nothing good can happen. But I need to return the rental car... it's all giving me a headache, or maybe that's just the paint fumes.

Happy anniversary to Anna and Tarren, whose wedding in Portland two years ago was the first time I seriously considered Maine as a place to live.

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