Darlings, A Long Overdue Tribute To This Acttress!!!!!!!!!

Well, girls, I suppose it started with "Totem," last week's episode of "Law And Order SVU". Lisa Banes was portraying Elaine Frye, and doing a damn fine job of playing this Mother From Hell. And as she got progressively more hellish, I began to wonder about other Mothers From Hell--and two distinctly came to mind.

The first was David Pelzer's mother, Catherine, chronicled in his harrowing book "A Child Called IT." The second was someone whom I simply referred to as "the mother in 'Sibyl'". Who was that, I wondered? I had not read the book in over 30 years, and I recall the paperback, with stills from the Sally field movie, and this one of a little girl on a table, legs up in the air, hooked to an enema hose, being adminsistered to her by her mother. I decided then and there I was not going to watch it.

But I cannot forget the actress who played the part, a woman named Hattie Dorsett. It was Martine Bartlett.

Martine Bartlett lived from 1925, until 2005. She died, alone, and virtually forgotten, in a motel in Tempe, Arizona, even though a brother and sister were still alive. From what I understand, darlings, they claimed the body, and buried it, but there was no service.

Martine's signature role was as Hattie Dorsett in "Sybil." It was a career breaking part, but it came with a price. She later said her performance spooked so nmany people she was never really able to get work afterwards. And this led eventually to a falling away from acting, and an itinerant life, wandering from motels between L.A, and Arizona. Why her siblings allowed this to happen I will never understand. Much as I would now like to see Martine as Hattie, it is another performance I remember her for, that of spinster English schoolteacher Miss Metcalf in the 1961 Natalie Wood-Elia Kazan-William Inge classic, "Splendor In The Grass."

It was a one scene role, but a pivotal one--where Natalie Wood loses her grip on reality and runs out of the classroom. The first time I saw the film, I hated Miss Metcalf, because I thought she was being a bitch. But subsequent viewings proved this not to be so, as when she ran out of the class in concern to see what the matter with Wood's character was. She looked the classic Inge spinster, and her stern, clipped tones defined the role brilliantly. Who could have thought that, basically, Martine really WAS Miss Metcalf.

A spinster herself, she never married. Her isolation remains enshrouded in mystery. And I will always love her as Miss Metcalf, though her performance as Hattie Dorsett is considered iconic.

Hattie was a piece of work. In addition to abusing her daughter, she dominated her husband, who loved it, and asserted her social superiority over her neighbors by--I kid you not, girls!!!--defecating in their yards!!!!!!! If it were up to me, lambs, I would just cross them off MY Social Register!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But Martine has been gone for six years, and till now there has been no obit, tribute, nothing.

You will be missed, Martine!

And I will miss Miss Metcalf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!