When all of the grading is over, I am going to watch A Face in the Crowd, a movie that I have seen a bunch of times. It stars Andy Griffith as a hobo who becomes a huge television star. Unfortunately, his ego grows along with his fame. It also stars Walter Matthau and Patricia Neal, an actress who I feel belongs among the all time greats. She also grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In honor of Patricia Neal, we are going to look for words of wisdom in her movies.
From The Day the Earth Stood Still
There must be security for all, or no one is secure.
It isn’t faith that makes good science. It’s curiosity.
I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.
From A Face in the Crowd
A guitar beats a woman every time.
Nothing’s illegal if they don’t catch you.
From Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.
It’s better to look at the sky than live there.
From Hud
This country is run on epidemics.
Nobody gets out of life alive.
Don’t go shooting all the dogs ’cause one of ’em’s got fleas.
It don’t take long to kill things, not like it does to grow.
From In Harm’s Way
All battles are fought by scared men who’d rather be someplace else.
On the most exalted throne in the world, we are seated on nothing but our own arse.
SBI: A Thinning Crowd 
Garry and I used to hang out with Pat on the Vineyard. She had a nice little house in Edgartown. We visited her apartment in NY once. Got to play with her Oscar, the only one I ever met in person. She had great Gary Cooper stories … and very bitter Roald Dahl stories. I have a bunch of pictures of her with Alfred Eisenstadt (and me) at a barbeque at the place we used to rent in Oak Bluffs. The two of them had never met, even though they were both summer residents of the same rather small island. They got to chatting and the names were dropping like cannon balls. The rest of us sat there in stunned silence. Neither one suffered from a lack of ego.
That sounds like another story for the book Garry needs to write. I haven’t seen many of her movies, but I have liked the few that I have seen.
This was one of the rare ones where I got to play with the big kids. There is, however, kind of a nifty story about how all of this came about. For another day.
That last one.
It’s a good one.