When it comes to Old Hollywood glamor, style and chic, nobody does it like Bette Davis. Which is ironic, because, unlike most actresses of her era, Bette never shied away from unglamorous parts, unlikeable characters, and unflattering makeup, even agreeing to aging techniques that had her convincingly playing a 60-year-old Virgin Queen when she was barely 30 herself.
What can be said of Meryl Streep? One of the most talented and versatile actresses of our day, Streep leads the pack in the race for the little gold statuette, with twenty-one Academy Award nominations and three wins. Only Kate Hepburn has more Oscars, with four victories, but considerably less nominations (just twelve). Streep is a skilled character actress, able to don a new guise in every film; a gifted mimic, assuming accents and dialects with ease; noted for dramatic work but able to turn out a good comedic performance when called for. Streep’s honors peak with her Oscar wins, but don’t stop there. Nominated collectively for more than 400 awards, when Emmys, Golden Globes, Grammys, Tonys and SAG awards are factored in, she has won over 200, about as good a batting average as anyone in the business.
Grace Kelly has always been one of my favorite actresses, despite a thin body of work, with just ten films to her credit over her truncated, five-year career. But what credits! “High Noon” with Gary Cooper; “Mogambo” with Clark Gable; “The Country Girl” with Bing Crosby and William Holden (which garnered her an Oscar); and three Hitchcock classics: “Dial M for Murder” with Ray Milland; “To Catch a Thief” with Cary Grant; and “Rear Window” with Jimmy Stewart. Kelly abruptly left show business at the peak of her career for a higher calling: to become a princess as the wife of Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The connection to royalty didn’t hurt one bit in my admiration of her.
What with one thing and another, quite a few celebrity deaths in 2023 slipped through AAA’s bony fingers, unremarked and unmourned. As the last dregs of the old year are drained from the cup, let’s pause to remember those we’ve lost. The list below is of necessity incomplete, and for the sake of brevity, we’ll not be doing any full-on Aster-Obits or birth charts, just taking a look at how asteroids representing the dear departed interacted with celestial death indicators on the dates of their passing.
Hello, my name is Alex, and I’m a tchotchkaholic.
I’ve been collecting seasonal décor for thirty years, since becoming involved in paganism. It was a way of celebrating the turning wheel of the year, though ironically, not with natural elements. I incorporate those as well, of course, but it’s expensive and ultimately wasteful, and sometimes there are supply issues. Much more satisfying to have it all at your fingertips upon a whim, under my control, says my Scorpio Ascendant, stowed and boxed or binned with Virgo Moon precision and attention to detail. True, the ofttimes lazy Leo Sun balks at the effort, but does enjoy the applause when I do it up big.
Two conservative icons recently passed within days of each other, as November rolled over to December 2023. On November 29th, Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, propelled from academia into international prominence by Richard Nixon, instrumental in ending the Vietnam War and reestablishing diplomatic relations with Communist China, died at the age of 100. Two days later, on December 1st, former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a Reagan appointee and the first woman to sit on the US Supreme Court, passed at age 93. While neither would recognize today’s Republican Party, so focused on grievance and retribution instead of policy, and both have serious blots on their legacies, each reminds us that there were once two viable political philosophies vying for control of the country, in a comparatively congenial and collegial atmosphere.
