On what ifs, star turns and hard luck chance encounters
- In a witty bit of casting in the new season of Only Murders in the Building, Meryl Streep plays — wait for it — an unsuccessful actress. The character is approximately Streep's age, but with one big difference: Loretta has spent six decades trying to get a break, not getting it, and carrying on regardless — showing up for thousands of auditions, making do with what comes her way.
- A photo I hadn't seen before, from 1955, shows Dilip Kumar sitting with Alfred Hitchcock during the latter's trip to Bombay. It was a triumphant time for both men, with more glories to come soon. The Indian actor had just played the lead in Bimal Roy's Devdas, while Hitchcock had three films out in the previous 12 months, including Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.
On the face of it, this is a sweet document of two giants from different cultures on equal footing. But here is a dampener from Donald Spoto's Hitchcock book, condensing the director's trip into a sentence: 'For seven weeks they endured airplane delays, foul weather, uncongenial menus, and the demands for attention by hopeful Asian actors.'
So here are iconic performers in a new context, where it's possible to imagine them just a little diminished, or not fitting into another realm. I'm a bit of a Streep sceptic (which is not to say I don't think she's a wonderful actor). But her Loretta is such a marvellous conceit, it almost makes you think about that parallel universe where even someone of Streep's talent might not have made it.
Similarly, Kumar doesn't become a lesser legend because a Hollywood filmmaker didn't mull working with him. But it's a reminder that greatness doesn't always transcend place and time, and an icon in one context might be a supplicant in another.
- A scene
