Tuesday, Jun. 17, 2003
Hume Cronyn, posted at 9:56 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Hume Cronyn is dead.Even though I teach To Kill a Mockingbird and watch Gregory Peck defend Tom Robinson every semester, I still feel more sad about Cronyn's death. Even though he was older than Peck, Cronyn is more of my generation, thanks to his roles in Cocoon, Marvin's Room and *batteries not included. I'll probably best remember him, though, for his role in this TV movie made in 1994 called To Dance With the White Dog. In that film, he and Jessica Tandy play this old couple, and Tandy's character dies and comes back in the spirit of a white dog. It's a sad, well-made little movie, made more touching by the chemistry between Tandy (one of my all-time favorites) and Cronyn.
It's also sad, because it just makes me think of Jessica Tandy, with whom I was much closer than I was with Cronyn. My emergency sub plans every year are watching Fried Green Tomatoes (I've got a little handout crafted for it), which is a perfect film to show with just about any literature course - you've got your vivid characterization, frame story narrative structure, easily identifiable themes. Tandy is so brave in that movie, letting her 80-year old hair fall down past her shoulders and looking as old as she was. I also love the movie Driving Miss Daisie, but it's almost too painful to watch because the ending of it makes me think of my Alzheimer's suffering grandmother, who now speaks only broken German and flushes her false teeth down the toilet.