Because a thread on Camille Paglia is prominently displayed on this page, I remembered this from a 2008 Salon column of hers.
Now for something completely different. I was surprised and impressed to see the attention given by the New York Times to the death of Beverlee McKinsey, a soap opera star whose prime period is long gone. Plaudits to the obit department! McKinsey's portrayal of bitchy supersocialite Iris Carrington in "Another World" (1970-79) gave me endless pleasure. Those were the glory days of TV soaps -- now a dying form, narcotized by corporate blandness.
McKinsey played Iris like Oscar Wilde's imperious Lady Bracknell crossed with ice-blond Grace Kelly. But her low, velvety voice more resembled Joan Greenwood's as Gwendolen Fairfax (Lady Bracknell's daughter) in the Anthony Asquith film of “The Importance of Being Earnest.” In those pre-VCR years, I had to scribble down soap-opera dialogue as fast as I could. I was then at my first teaching job at Bennington College, which I was regularly disrupting with my obnoxiously militant Amazon feminism. (I gave a rueful account of those hectic years to Philip Davis for his superb recent biography of Bernard Malamud.) McKinsey as Iris Carrington clearly prefigured Joan Collins' ruthless, glamorous Alexis Carrington Colby in the blockbuster prime-time soap "Dynasty," in the 1980s. Both McKinsey and Collins portrayed and embodied an important form of female power that I fiercely felt was excluded or libeled by Second Wave feminism.
Here are some McKinsey highlights from my Bennington notebooks for 1975-76:
As her father's goody-goody wife Rachel lies in critical condition on the verge of losing her baby, rich and idle Iris Carrington causes trouble in the hallway outside the hospital room: "Really--Rachel's servants are becoming as rude she is."
Iris on long-distance telephone: "Oh, Millicent, I know you're usually in Barcelona in June, but surely my wedding takes precedence over that!"
Iris' maid Louise to a plant she is watering: "I know Mrs. Carrington is in an irritable mood this morning, but I hope you will cheer her up." Iris (entering): "Are you discussing me with that monstrosity?"
Loretta (Iris' New York sophisticate friend): "I'll never forget how you cheered me up after my divorce at your villa in Saint-Tropez." Iris (evenly): "I don't have a villa at Saint-Tropez." Loretta: "You don't?" Iris (very evenly): "I hate Saint-Tropez." Loretta (brightly): "It must have been Olive's villa!"
Two years later, while attending a Lily Tomlin show in New York with my friend Stephen Feld, I spotted the actress who had briefly played Loretta on "Another World" and had acted in that very scene. I leaned over the hapless two patrons sitting between us and (to her astonishment) enthusiastically recited both parts of the Saint-Tropez dialogue.
MARY! I mean CAMILLE!
