1) If there’s one thing I love it’s an offbeat theme. This is why the Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest party was my annual affair in days gone by, why I refer to my kitchen as Howard Johnson’s at Versailles, and why Repeal Day (still at the Gibson House, this year December 1) has appealed to me so much. And the cognoscenti will remember the Margo Channing Memorial three months after my 40th birthday.
2) So now here I am at 60 — 60!* — which meant of course the theme had to be Frankly Forty. And to my mild surprise, no one seems to have heard of this expression. So, allow me to attempt.
3) For me, the expression “frankly forty” means that there is no use pretending to cling to the vain illusion of Dewy Youthfulness and that one frankly, and hopefully gracefully as well, accepts middle age. With luck, Franky Forty can be continued through to the Very End.
3a) I first heard it in college, reading about Edith Head’s costumes for Olivia de Haviland in a movie in which she aged more than 20 years. (I just had to look it up; it’s To Each His Own, which I have not seen.) For the later scenes in which her character was a successful older businesswoman, Head gave de Haviland “a frankly forty foundation.” No, that doesn’t mean makeup, it meant a padded girdle or foundation garment to fill out her figure.
3b) There is almost nothing about this expression online. What I did find was a 1925 newspaper article “Dress for the Frankly Forties.” and a 1921 plea for a less youth-oriented social life, “The Fraternity of the Frankly Forty.” “Let the younger generation solve their own problems. They are quite capable of doing it. What I want to know is why we of the older generation should accept the same social code as the youngsters use?” It’s actually a very good article.
3c) But most enduringly, “Frankly Forty” is the last chapter of Little Me: The Intimate Memoirs of that Famous Star of Stage, Screen and Television, Belle Poitrine, as told to Patrick Dennis with 150 photographs by Cris Alexander. Each chapter begins with the year and a précis of the contents. So while Chapter One, “I Am Born,” begins “1900, . . . ” the last chapter, “Frankly Forty,” begins “1960 . . . ” “A grandmother . . . and at my age!”
3c.i) Craig gave me Little Me years ago for either my birthday or Christmas, so this whole thing is entirely his fault. 😉❤️ It is certainly the gift that has kept on giving, as I love it to pieces.
4) So . . . it’s my birthday! I am still in bed, enjoying chicory coffee and chocolate birthday cake for breakfast. It’s so warm today that later I will pretend to wash the windows (it’s been years), and I will take a brisk, vigorous walk through my beloved Forest Hills Cemetery. And then after a NAP I will get into my black tie and go down to Davio’s for a small dinner in a private room with some dear friends.
5) One final note. Back in August at my annual physical, my doctor gently but firmly explained that it would be easier to take care of me if there was less of me to take care of — and proved it. I took him seriously, looked at the calendar, and realized it would be 20 weeks until New Year’s Eve. This led to yet another offbeat theme, Thirty Pounds in Twenty Weeks, and I am pleased to announce that as of today I have lost 15 pounds and am on track to make it back to 198 by the end of the year. Wish me luck!
*As Sally Field so memorably said in Soapdish, “How in the name of God is it possible?!”