Memories of My Father
ALAN writes:
A quarter-century after he died, my father has never been absent from my memory or awareness. I am continuously aware of the debts I owed to him. He accompanies me whenever I walk the streets of St. Louis. I remember most of all his frame of mind and sense of life.
Here is one example:
Many years had gone by since I last viewed the 1964 motion picture musical “My Fair Lady”. Early this month I watched it twice on consecutive evenings. And while doing so, I tried to imagine how my father saw it. It opened in early 1965 at the ornate Ambassador Theater in downtown St. Louis, a movie palace where Ginger Rogers danced on stage in the 1920s.
I do not recall talking with my father about that movie then or in later years. I regret that. But I am sure he saw it. There are many things in it that I know would have impressed him favorably, not least the marriage of music and lyrics, the witty dialogue, and the masculine authority worn unapologetically by Rex Harrison’s character. My father enjoyed the sound of language spoken correctly and carefully. That was one reason why he watched (but especially listened to) William F. Buckley and his guests on his “Firing Line” program. I imagine he was equally impressed by Rex Harrison’s meticulous respect for language and diction in his role as Professor Henry Higgins.












