This is a very sad time for us all here and I wish I could be there with you all to tell some stories about my Grandot. But as most of you know, a long time ago Grandot put a plan in motion that had me fall in love with all things film related and that’s why I can’t be with you today.
She didn’t want to be known as a Grandma, she was far too young and attractive for anyone to believe that she was a Grandma. Her name was Dorothy and so she proclaimed herself: Grandot.
And there is just one example of Grandot doing it ‘her way’.
I had a very special bond with Grandot. A bond formed over movies. But it was a lot more than movies. It was stories, it was books, it was memories, it was gossip and rumors and cautionary tales.
Grandot loved stories.
My earliest memories are of the comfort I found in her reading me books. I knew every word of my favorite books but still would live for her reading them to me over and over again. Sometimes when she was trying to get me off to sleep quicker – she would skip a page or two and I would have to turn the page back myself to where we should be in the story. She would giggle about being caught and pick up the story in the correct place.
She took me to my first movie at the theater – she says I was 3 but if you do an internet search I would have been closer to 5. Grandot was never one for kids films. She didn’t like them and even with her great grandchildren barely tolerated them. So it’s no surprise that the first movie she took me to starred Elizabeth Taylor. One of her idols and I would learn in later years one of the women she modeled herself after. The movie was called ‘Blue Bird’ and it was the closest thing she could probably stomach as far as kids fare.
Grandot took me on a film education that Martin Scorsese himself would have been jealous of. Mainly it was on Friday or Saturday nights in front of her TV with Mamps besides us in his chair and her in hers. ‘Cousy’ her unkept and untrained dog at her feet. I would be on the couch and eventually fall asleep to the screams of virginal women being ravaged by Dracula or the Wolfman or any number of horrid monsters.
Grandot had two movie rules – she was not interested in too much sex on her screen or ANY violence towards animals.
The sex part was unavoidable with the adult fare we chose. She would tolerate it and tell Mamps to turn his head – he was not to watch such filth. She couldn’t stand to watch any violence towards animals. She would leave the room and tell Mamps to monitor the activity on screen and he would call her back from the kitchen when it was over.
Her story telling sense was impeccable – she would sometimes sniff out a tragic animal scene within the first 10 mins of a film. She would see that someone had a trusty dog by his side as he was about to embark on dangerous quest. She would look over to me and Mamps on the couch and say “I think they are going to do something to the dog – Ed – if they stuffin do something to this dog I will not be happy.”
It would fall onto Mamps to somehow be the censor in the living room.
If an animal was killed on screen – an actor could find himself blacklisted for months from her viewing schedule.
That story telling sense was something that started to seep into me. This was a time where not everything was available – like now. VHS came into our lives early but the catalogue was slow to catch up. Classics like Gone With the Wind were not on video and not at the theatre.
Grandot would sit and tell me the story of Gone with the Wind – beat for beat. I swear when it became available years later for the first time on video – it wasn’t as good as the way Grandot told the story.
I would often find myself the only child in an audience of adults. I will never forget the cinema release of Alien. Yes people do the math – it came out in 1979 – I was barely 8 and after witnessing the first time Mamps and Grandot covered their faces in pure horror, the credits were rolling and she said to me to perhaps not tell mum and dad everything that happened in the movie, so they won’t stop me from seeing more like it.
From that point on it was a strict policy of ‘no film left shall be left behind’. We saw EVERYTHING.
We would go away on holiday with her and the family and discover that they had ‘in-room’ movies in our hotel. From that moment Grandot and I had no interest in seeing the sights of whatever town we were in, we had what we wanted being beamed into our rooms.
It wasn’t just movies though. She loved telling stories about the ‘good old days’. She had hundreds of them and sometimes I would just say to her – ‘Tell me about your father again.’ And she would entertain me for hours with stories of drunken brawling and gambling and men being men in the outback.
We all knew that there was only one way to do anything and that was ‘her way’. I remember being in the middle of many arguments between her and Mamps. Sometimes the evidence against her was overwhelming but it was like she could make the truth bow before her and she would re-invent an incident as her own and re-write the details to suit.
One night Mamps and Grandot got into an argument about whether some minor actor was in the film we watched the night before. Grandot was adamant that this actor was not who Mamps said he was. Eventually Mamps went and got the TV guide from the other room to prove his point. As he left the room Grandot looked at me and said “You know I think Eddie’s right.” She started to laugh. So did I. without hesitation she rolled up the newspaper in front of her and hid behind the door to the kitchen. As he walked back in proudly with the proof he needed, Grandot attacked him with the newpaper, giving him a beating around the head like a bad dog. All the time she was shouting over him so he couldn’t read out the info from the TV guide. She was saying “Oh what do I care what stuffing actor was in that stuffin film Ed! Just sit down and eat your bloody dinner before I feed it to the cats!”
We were all laughing at the craziness of the situation. Mamps and I knew that she would never utter the words “I was wrong”. This was the best he would ever get from her as far as an apology went – a loving beating around the head with a rolled up newspaper.
I don’t think she ever uttered the words “I was wrong”.
Which is a monumental achievement for a woman who was wrong so much throughout her life.
In quite times together she confessed to me her regrets.
It never changed how much I loved her. She did the best she could with who she was and where she had come from.
We’re all better for her being in our lives. We all have many stories to tell about this wonderful woman. In telling these stories she will always be with us.
Nothing is more fitting than this last verse from one of her favorite songs:
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!
She certainly did and we will all miss her dearly.
