This is an introduction to the third eulogy of my mother. The introduction includes the movie Orphans of the Storm by D. W. Griffith, the brilliant, flamboyant, dashing director about whom Gore Vidal wrote in his novel Hollywood. Hollywood is about how Griffith and the movie industry collaborated with President Wilson during World War I to produce expensive anti-war propaganda.
As you can see, I sometimes veer from the track.
Track 1 is the third eulogy for my mother Dr. Miriam Pell Schmerler. This eulogy concerns the time from 1930, when my grandmother returned with my mother (Mother was just 5) to the Jewish family, to 1947 when Mother graduated from Hunter College pregnant with me.
The second track is how to prepare you for what is to come. Two movies are required viewing. The first is Orphans of the Storm and second is Marjorie Morningstar. They form what may regarded as book ends (of a sort). Orphans of the Storm, D.W Griffith’s final film released in 1921 but the site of a traumatic experience when first viewed by my mother in 1930. Stay tuned for the trauma.
The second movie is Marjorie Morningstar with Natalie Wood in the title role of a woman who graduates from Hunter College at about the same time that Mother attended Hunter. Mother used to say, “I went to Hunter College with Marjorie Morningstar.”
Why these movies were significant in defining the period and the secrecy that was forced on Mother—the need for secrecy being so characteristic that it seemed so often like part of her makeup—her DNA….
Orphans of the Storm can be viewed right here on this blog, Providence working.
Or Download from neat website The Digital Internet Library where you can download for free digital movies, such as Orphans of the Storm and have access to lots of fascinating stuff (be specific, when you write; be specific)
Here is your movie ready for download: