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Just days after posting on the passing of Joanna Petet, I had a dream last night about the movie "The Group." In the dream, my mother was telling me I could not see it, and I told her I was because I wanted to go to Vassar and become one of "The Group"--specifically Libby, the high-powered literary agent, played by Jessica Walter, with just a foreshadowing of Evelyn Draper.
This was just a dream, but in reality, when the film was coming to the Albany Theatre in New Brunswick, back in 1966, my mother took me to see something I cannot recall, but I saw coming attractions of "The Group." Oh, my God, darlings, when I saw the scene of Joanna Petet as Kay locked in the closet and screaming, I shouted to my mother, "I want to see this!" Of course, my plea fell on deaf ears.
But, girls, there is so much you can learn from "The Group." Like the clinical details of intercourse, pessary fittings and breast feeding. How to wear a sanitary belt, what books to read, and stop acting like a Bohemian tramp like Norine, played by Carrie Nye, who was ousted by "The Group," and, embittered, tries to take Harald from Kay.
I mean, girls, the book and movie are just a primer for adult development.
But that Norine! You really have to watch out for her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And all Norines out there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2 comments:
OMG, Carrie Nye!!! Sure, she was a hoot in "The Group" but she reached her absolute peak 20 years later when she inexplicably signed on to the veteran daytime soap opera "Guiding Light" for a short term guest villainess role. Ended up staying for three years, turning that staid show into an utter camp fest for anyone lucky enough to catch her in it.
Good lord, she was beyond the pale hilarious: looked and sounded like a withered hacky drag queen yet played a "seductively lethal" real estate agent as if she saw Ava Gardner when she glanced in her mirror. Since the show aired five days a week, you got to see the entire cast slowly adjust to her hammy approach to her role and hone their performances to either compete with her in hamminess or ground her in reality.
Her storyline kept going off the rails: first a standard blackmailer then a sudden turn toward the supernatural then still another shift to her being involved in the criminal coverup of a biracial affair producing an illegitimate heir in colonial Barbados (I kid you not). Fittingly, her character's final demise involved being thrown over a cliff into the rocky sea.
I was fortunate that I was already taping the show to watch a friend who appeared on it, so aside from her first day I have Carrie Nye's entire run preserved in my betamax library. Haven't seen it in forty years: your post makes me want to dig out the tapes and pray they still play. Nothing like her had ever happened in soaps, the closest approximations were when Joan Collins joined Dynasty and Jonathan Frid shook up Dark Shadows..
My Dear, Would have loved to have seen Carrie in that performance. Around this time she did a stage version of Tennessee Williams' "Clothes For A Summer Hotel." Now that would have been something!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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