Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

The Song "Tea for Two" has been around for a long time. More than 90 years in fact. It was composed for the Broadway musical No No Nanette, which premiered on Broadway in 1925 after a run in Chicago the previous year (the traditional pre-Broadway shakedown cruise). "Tea for Two" is a second act song, sung by Tom and Nanette, a couple that quarreled and broke up in Act I, but that has now reconciled. And as you surely know, since anybody who could possibly be reading this knows the lyrics to the song, Tom and Nanette are dreamily contemplating their future. "We will raise a family A boy for you a girl for me Can't you see how happy we would be?  We three..." That is how it is often sung, anyway: in the Anita O'Day recording for example. But, much as I love O'Day, this always pulls me up short. Surely the natural way to hear the second of those lines is for an "AND" to be implied. Nanette is dreaming of having two children ...

On my mind today is Mildred Pierce, a 1941 novel by James Cain, set in the ten years leading up to the date of publication. No, I didn't just refer to the movie star best known for playing Sonny Corleone. That's James Caan. I'm thinking now of the   novelist James Cain, born in 1892. Although his reputation is in eclipse now, he was quite well known for a time as a writer of "hardboiiled" crime fiction, a peer of Chandler or Hammett. Cain wrote Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. , both memorably adapted into classic Hollywood films. Mildred Pierce was somewhat different, an effort at offering a naturalistic portrait of southern California suburbia. Anyway, Mildred Pierce was also made into a movie in 1945, and became a television miniseries in 2011. The title character has two daughters: Veda (11 years old when the story begins in 1931) and her little sister Ray (7 years). The photo above is of Veda, as portrayed by actress Morgan T...