LILLIE

At The Cinema                            LILLIE People are always asking me, "Hey Rodge, what should I watch for entertainment?  I'm lost, and watching Gilligan Island reruns non-stop!"  Here's something.  Lillie. (I'm watching on ROKU- NetFlix) The name Lillie (often Lily) Langtry stuck  in my mind only because of Paul Newman's fixation on her in  The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.  I figured she was a proper historical character, but  wow.  This BBC series is magnificent on several levels, not the least of which is it's intimate look at Victorian Age London, which I adore.  If you like reading Boswell,  or Henry Spencer Ashbee, you'll love it. Yes, Ashbee penned the most pornographic "biography" ever ever written, but it was also an intimate look at his life and times. "Lille"  is bereft of all but the most delicate reference to human intimacies.  Even this moment in  her affair with "Bertie," the Prince of Wales, and later King Edward the VII,  is left out. The Prince of Wales had the Red House (now Langtry Manor Hotel) constructed in Bournemouth, Dorset in 1877 as a private retreat for the couple and allowed Langtry to design it. He once complained to her, "I've spent enough on you to build a battleship," whereupon she tartly replied, "And you've spent enough in me to float one" [citation] Most intriguing to me was her association with Oscar Wilde, whose love for her is described as "esthete." Ahem. And James Whistler, who supposedly left his unfinished portrait of Lillie after being forced into bankruptcy.  Aside from her "role" in Judge Bean films (Walter Brennan did an earlier version),  Langtry is a featured character in the fictional (and greatest series of historical dodgery-doo ever published)  Flashman novels of acclaimed writer George Macdonald Fraser.  She is  mentioned as a former lover of arch cad Harry Flashman. Flashman describes her as one of his few true loves. And, even Montgomery Burns, in the Simpson's  episode in which he auditions children to be his new heir, the theater in which the auditions are held on Burns' estate is called the Lillie Langtry Theater. I think those of you with refined taste will enjoy it.  Those with coarser taste will want to produce Ashbee's "My Secret Life" in their heads.   Ahem..