Super-Sized Series

 Celebrity Nostalgia
 

 Elvis Presley

Falling In Love by Jacqueline Jules

Ed Sullivan said no cameras below the waist.
That Elvis Presley got the girls “All Shook Up” 
and Sullivan wouldn’t “Surrender”
to hips swiveling with the beat. 

Elvis wasn’t born “In the Ghetto,”
but he knew poverty in Mississippi and Tennessee,
and how it felt to live in “Heartbreak Hotel.”
Colonel Parker propelled him to “Fame and Fortune”
and overnight, he had “Too Much” 
at the price of being “A Puppet on a String.”

His fans loved him tender in more than 30 films,
where he rocked in a jailhouse,
sang on the beach of “Blue Hawaii,” and found
“A Hard Headed Woman” in New Orleans.

But it was his voice, 
rocking us “Way Down” and  
back up to “The Promised Land”
that made us call him King. It poured 
from the stage like a “Kentucky Rain”
drenching us in a sound 
that made us raise our arms and proclaim:
we “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”


Originally Published in Poeming Pigeon

 

Gary Cooper by Judith Waller Carroll

I’ve spent all morning trying to remember
who played the sheriff in High Noon.  

Despite the clues my husband gives me
all my guesses–John Wayne,

Jimmy Stewart, boyish Alan Ladd—
are in the wrong Westerns.

I know it was Tex Ritter singing
Oh, to be torn 'twixt love an' duty

and Grace Kelly’s angelic face
framed by lace and ribbons. 

I remember a dog howling, 
then hoof beats like gathering thunder. 

But who was that tall, handsome actor
who was born in Helena, Montana, 

whose father was a Supreme Court Justice,
who won two Oscars

who stepped out into that deserted street,
his face in shadow, his name swallowed by time?


 
Clint Eastwood

  Clint's Sock by Laurie Byro
    
     I own one half of a pair of Clint Eastwood's socks.
     Yes, really.
     You don't believe me. I'll describe the sock.
     Brown, small hole in the toe, good size foot, I'd say.
     That doesn't prove anything?
     Well, I got it the summer I lived in Carmel with Aunt Toots,
     right after Bob left.
     Yes, Aunt Toots. 
     You know the type--has 8 cats, wears an assortment of hats.
     Yes, with feathers.
     Anyhow, everyone in Carmel knows Clint.
     They like him, very ordinary they agree, drives a truck, too.
     Just like one of us.
     Anyway, one day, I was doing errands for Toots
     and I walked smack into Clint.
     BAM--head on collision, we almost knocked each other down.
     He was on his way to do laundry.
     Well, everything spilled and here I was, in any groupie's fantasy, 
     helping him sort laundry.
     I mean, my hands were actually fondling Clint Eastwood's jeans and 
     jockey shorts, can you imagine?
     He didn't say much. I mean, I did all the talking.
     It was embarrassing really, chattering non-stop across
     his wicker laundry basket.
     But he half-smiled, and his eyes chilled me on that hot August day.
     Blue ice, 30 degrees Fahrenheit.
     As he walked away he muttered, "I don't like laundry very much."
     I just stood there gaping.
     Two errands later, when I came out of my trance,
     I realized that I was still holding one of his brown socks.
     I wonder if he knew.
     Well, Auntie and I were all excited.
     I mean, we actually smelled the sock.
     (Male musky sweat, linty perfume). 
     I saw Clint another time after that.
     I was in town again, doing errands.
     I saw him pass the store I was in
     and I ran out and was going to tell him
     "Hey, I have your...."
     But some fat, hatted senior with a bent back got to him first.
     An Auntie type.
     Yes, with a feather.
     She tugged his sleeve, until he growled,
     "Look, Old Lady, I don't have the time."
     I didn't think that was very nice.
     He is, after all, just like one of us.
     Even so, I think I'll keep the sock.
     Maybe I've separated his favorite pair.
      
     


 
Jackie Kennedy 1962
Three poems by Sharon Waller Knutson
I am not a Bouvier 

 and did not marry
 a senator 
who became
president
of the United States
but I must confess
I have her dark eyes,
bouffant brown hair,
bushy eyebrows
cherry lips
and sleek body
in silhouette
sleeveless dresses,
which is why 
a photo of me
wins first place
in the national
Jacqueline Kennedy
Look Alike Contest
when I am nineteen.

 
Patsy Cline at 30 

In a Billings Bar March 6, 1963

I bawl in my beer
as a Patsy Cline
wannabe sings
‘She’s Got You.”

In his black hat,
boots and belt
with a silver dollar
in his buckle,

the red faced cowboy,
slides in the booth beside
me, swigging suds
as the buxom brunette wails:
.
I've got the records, that we used to share
And they still sound the same as when you were here
The only thing different, the only thing new
I've got the records ... she's got you.

I can’t believe she’s dead,
I say as he orders a pitcher.
Who?  he asks. Patsy Cline. 
I say. Who’s that? he asks.

I show him the Gazette front page.
Patsy Cline Dead in Plane Crash.
He spills his beer on his shirt.
You didn’t just get dumped? 

I laugh. I can’t remember how long
that’s been. When the pitcher comes,
he slips away and my fellow reporters 
pay the waiter and join me in the booth

during the break as Patsy’s voice pours
out of the juke box, I’m crazy for feeling
 so lonely.  I'm crazy for feeling so blue 
and somehow the sorrow subsides.

 
Gene Hackman

Hitching my Heart to Hackman
The difference between a hero and a coward is one step sideways.
Gene Hackman

Maybe it’s the moustache
or his big body and booming
voice blowing up the theatre
that hikes Hackman to the top
of my favorite actor list
whether he coaches 
the underdog team
to win the state championship
and kiss the girl
in Hoosiers or faces a mutiny
as captain of a submarine
in Crimson Tide
which is why I cry 
when he is found mummified 
in his mudroom in New Mexico
a shriveled skeleton of himself.
But when we watch 
a re-run of Runaway Jury,
Hackman is very much alive 
in moustache, muscles 
and mountainous mode
stealing the screen from Cusack
and Hoffman as he says:
Gentlemen, trials are too 
important to be left up to juries.



 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg

TO BE LIKE YOU by Lori Levy

In memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I want to be like you, RBG.
I want to ride an elephant in India
with my polar opposite.
I want to dine with this friend,
go to operas with him, pinch myself
to keep from laughing when his humor splits me
in a place as sober as the Supreme Court. 
I want my family to gather with his
on holidays and birthdays,
putting politics aside for friendship.
I want to banish beliefs to another room,
muted for a while, so they won't interfere
when a man whose opinions and conclusions
I fiercely oppose
sends me two dozen roses on my birthday.
I want to smile as gratefully as you did. 

When I think of you, RBG, I see my mother,
the light in her eyes when she tells me the story—
how she and you were best friends in grade school 
in Brooklyn, the two best students in the class.
How your parents took her to the opera with you. 
How decades later, from her home in Israel,
she sent a letter to you at the Supreme Court. 
I want to be like you, RBG:  the kind of woman
who, no matter how busy, finds a moment
to read a letter from her childhood friend.
A woman who writes back.


 
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

More Than Roy’s Shadow by Alarie Tennille

Being Dale Evans is so boring,
except for riding a horse.
Roy does all the fun stuff.
Lois Lane?  Even worse—no horse.
So, although I gallop around the yard
in a cowgirl skirt, I’m really Morning 
Cloud the Indian princess, who can
speak Horse, Deer, and Bear.
“Run! Hunters are coming!” I call
to my cats, who flee before my hooves.
 
When my horse tires,
I spread my wings and fly—
faster than Superman! Now I am 
Gloria the angel. “Come close 
and I will heal you,” I whisper in Lion,
Lamb, and Wolf. Then I fly off, 
singing my name, “Gloria, Gloria!” 
turning June into Christmas.

When even my wings tire, 
I sit on the steps and tell Frisky, 
“I’m just me now.” She climbs into
my lap. She likes me best of all.

 


Janet Leigh screams in “Psycho” shower

Scared by Lynn White

They scared me as a child,
those scenes of madness in Jane Eyre
with the wild hair and ripped wedding veil.
And for years after I was still afraid
in the wakeful night
even though by then
I’d come to understand her,
to sympathize with her situation
still it scared me,
scarred me even,
the memory of those scenes.

Then there was Psycho.
I was only fifteen
but looked older.
I was my friends ticket
to all the horror movies.
After Psycho, shower cubicles 
would have made me uneasy
if they had existed in 1960s Britain.
Fortunately they didn’t so the fear 
of knives and blood slashing and splashing 
lacked context and was less.

Next came the vampires
occupying my dreams
along with the triffids, the monsters, 
the demons and the possessed.
They all stacked up
until
all of a sudden
the magic was gone
and they were just movies,
laughable

 

My Mother, Me, and the Unfinished Captain Video Episode
By Joan Leotta

Most weeknights at seven,
Captain Video and his Video Rangers
made a habit of saving the world
as we watched, resplendent in their
surplus uniforms, working hard to defeat 
Dr. Pauli, from their ersatz, colorless
mountaintop base.
My mother was ahead of her time
cheering on the science fiction titans,
always happy to scurry to the tv set
to watch the interstellar heroics 
until one night, October 15 1954,
a ferocious storm, a real one, 
(which I later learned was Hurricane Hazel
marching up the Ohio River Valley 
from North Carolina) the electric
power, our electric power,
zapped off, right in the middle of 
power went out at our Pittsburgh home,
just as Captain Video was about to 
reveal his plan to his Rangers.
We got out candles, flashlights,
ate ice cream that might
otherwise melt as the wind 
whipped the last leaves 
from our sycamores and after 
a frenzied dance, dropped them
to the wet streets—a festive time.
However, in spite of the fun,
my mother’s disappointment
was not diminished by the fun or
even the return of our electricity
because the power returned
long after Captain Video had
exercised his mental powers to
again defeat the villain, Dr. Pauli.
I think she even wrote to Dumont,
to find out what happened in 
that episode. And yes, she became fond of 
Star Trek, Star Wars, and especially 
of Lost in Space, )whose sets 
most closely resembled the budget
level ones of Captain Video),
but the Captain still held primacy of
place in her space adventure loving heart.
I would not be surprised if one of the
first questions my Mom asked God
upon arriving in His Realm was
“How did  that storm-cut episode end?”
Now that I think about it, I think
I’ll ask Him too.