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Thursday, August 1, 2019

The World of Henry Orient

I watched an old movie (1964) the other day, which I had seen a couple times long ago. The World of Henry Orient. In fact, if I remember aright, my parents took my brother and I to the movie at the Baghdad or Orpheum theater. It is a delightful coming of age drama/comedy about two adolescent girls, one from a set of rich, continually absent parents, the other from a stable home, one wild (proudly stating on their first meeting that she has already been thrown out of two schools), the other more sedate. At the same time, there is the story of Henry Orient (played by Peter Sellers), a less than impressive concert pianist focusing (probably for that reason) on avantgarde composers while in the meantime pursing a career as a womanizer. The wilder girl, Valerie, decides that she is madly in love with the pianist, as adolescent girls are wont to do, while the other, Marian, gleefully joins into the infatuation. They begin to follow Orient wherever he goes, which soon terrifies the pianist as he becomes convinced that they are spies hired by his latest female target's husband. I have always loved the final line of the film, uttered by Valerie after the two girls are reunited as teenagers after a few years of separation. They are in Marian's room trying out various types of makeup and lipstick, and Valerie says, "You know what I like? A mouth like a crimson gash!" 

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