The greatest recorded love scene of all
This will strain the credulity of younger readers–remember, anyone under 50 qualifies–but not long ago there was nothing called video tape, video stores hadn’t been invented and there was no way to beg, steal or rent Hollywood’s finest for convenient home viewing.
Consequently we had to resort to unconventional methods. I remember setting up a microphone near our black and white TV’s tiny–and tinny–speaker to capture the sound track of “Dr. Strangelove” (my all-time No.1) on a spanking new device called “a cassette player”.
Naturally, since the movie ran on one of the then only seven New York TV stations, my “unoriginal” sound track was corrupted by commercials. But it didn’t matter. When I told colleagues at work they all wanted copies.
We’ve come a long way since those first attempts at do-it-yourself home entertainment.
As Judy will attest, I’ve assiduously recorded everything we’ve done together from the day we met. Because I like to keep track of things. In diaries, thousands of still photographs and after we’d scraped up enough cash, my trusty 8mm movie camera.
For years I filmed the unfolding Sellers’ family saga. And when, eventually, video was introduced, transferred all the best scenes to one 90-minute-long tape that has languished unwatched, together with all those prints in long-unopened boxes.
But now comes along another technological miracle, and the old family films that went from celluloid to video are now permanently etched on an indestructible DVD.
It’s marvellous to see again what really young people do — here anyone under 25 qualifies — when they meet and fall madly in love.
Judy had this thing about dancing. So whenever I filmed her, wherever we were, she twirled and pirouetted. Once, notably down the middle of gridlocked Fifth Avenue. And when she shot me I performed bizarre stunts like climbing into the trunk of our first new car and closing the lid.
The scene that will positively amaze our grandchildren, and hopefully theirs too, running for about 4 minutes is of us giving each other what looks like intensive mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But isn’t. Just an honest-to-goodness smackeroo.
Using movie critic language; “More intense than Bogart and Bergman, more powerful than Gable and Monroe, the silver screen has never seen anything like Judy and Jeff’s unbridled burning passion.”
And because some sexagenarians are notoriously–and understandably–discreet, never again will.
Which doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten how.
