Christmas, 1948

This is a street scene from 1948 and this is Armand's recounting of that Christmas, sixty years ago:

Well, Xmas was a fine one, mainly in money to get or exchange presents with when we went to Toronto. Got a coat and trousers of Harris tweed here, to be sent over later; we got pair of cushions for divan, and I, a new briefcase.

Fine (unusually so) dinners in Hamilton Wednesday, previous Sunday and Xmas. I got stamps in Toronto. We saw a very engaging play: Terence Rattigan's O Mistress Mine- London and New York stage hit, about a woman's young son of 17 to return from Canada to London after 5 year's absence to find his mother now a mistress of a cabinet minister.

Coward-like dialogue to spruce up an essentially tragic theme, played in a light key almost throughout. Boy finally comes to accept the man, who is carrying on a noble tradition since, for fear of war scandal, he can't ask his no good wife for a divorce so he can marry, etc., etc.

Sylvia Sidney as mother, John Loder as the minister, and Dick Van Patten as brash, idealistic, outspoken boy all fine. Van Patten took the adolescent's role with breaking voice and all, a different one, most convincingly.

Loder, who's been an army officer in 1914-1917 and in business, etc., son of General Sir William Lowe and Lady Frances Lowe, is a handsome guy for all his 50 or so years. Only criticism I'd have of play is the unnatural mixing of frothy comedy with serious tragedy.

I'm mainly for no mixing of genres. Of course, as people say, life is a mixture. But, (a) it doesn't mix froth and despair, but is rather the funny with the serious, and almost never abrupt changes from one to other and (b) even if it were, life runs on for years; in a 2 hour play, it's hard to switch your attitude back and forth from belly laughter to Kleenex for the tears.

Photo: Uncanny.net