Squirm

(the Mother is looking out the window)
Crow: I wonder when Ashley Wilkes will arrive.

Damn it if, from the whole show, that’s the only line I remember. Okey-dokey, Ashley Wilkes was, of course, a character in Gone with the Wind. He was a genteel Southern soldier whom Scarlett was in love with, and he was played by Leslie Howard, who was in one of my other favorite movies, The Petrified Forest. If you have a chance to see The Petrified Forest, then do—it’s a little stagy, but it’s got Howard, Bette Davis, and the not-quite-famous-yet Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee. There are a lot of great lines, including my favorite (if only because of the way Howard says it): “I’ve got a dollar.” Anyway, back to Howard—it seems like every legendary actress had a crush on him when they were girls. Or at least two: Vivien Leigh and Lauren Bacall. Leigh got to act with him, of course, in Gone with the Wind, but unfortunately Bacall never had the chance. He died while on a war bonds tour—his plane was shot down by the Germans during World War II; the Germans mistakenly thought that Winston Churchill was aboard (no joke). Leslie Howard is sometimes overlooked today, but he really was a talented actor (who only got into acting as therapy after being injured in WWI) and was in a multitude of great films, including Of Human Bondage, Pygmalion, and Intermezzo, along with those previously mentioned. Here’s an interesting piece o’ trivia regarding Gone with the Wind: the boy who played Ashley’s son Beau would actually work with Vivien Leigh again, in Streetcar Named Desire: he’d play the young sailor helping Leigh off of the streetcar at the very beginning.