It's the last day of the year and I have a little unfinished business, blog wise. When actress Eileen Brennan passed away in July, I was totally slacking off and not posting much after a feverish spring. So now a proper farewell to one of my favorite entertainers.
The cascade of red curls she favored in the 70s and 80s was enough to make me smile; the piercing blue eyes and smoke-stained voice that masked the lyric soprano of her early musical career were enough to induce both fits of laughter and heartfelt tears, depending on the role.
If you're not familiar with her work, you can IMDB or Google her, as many treats await you. Mostly supporting work in films like The Sting, Paper Moon, a couple of Neil Simon comedies, and of course Private Benjamin. You can even find some rare gems on YouTube, like an early television appearance singing the Habenera song from Bizet's Carmen.
For me, I would express her greatness as simultaneously salt of the earth and ethereal. She was both a real broad and a genuine lady. Well, maybe a tad more broad.
I have always tended to be a tiny bit obsessive (though I prefer "enthusiastic") about performers who touch me, but I come by my enthusiasm honestly. Like many things, I inherited it from my mother.
One night in October of 1982, when I was a senior in high school, Eileen Brennan was struck by a car on a darkened street in Venice, California and nearly died. The next day I learned about the accident while doing homework and watching CNN on the small television in our kitchen with my mother. We had both enjoyed Eileen's work tremendously, laughing ourselves silly at everything from her Gal-Friday turn in Murder By Death, to her failed sitcom 13 Queens Boulevard.
It makes me laugh now, but my mother turned away from the TV and looked at me with as much solemnity as I had ever seen her muster.
"Now Jimmy, I want you to be prepared...because...it doesn't look like she's going to make it."
I love that she took it so seriously, this injury to a beloved member of our imagined extended family. And I love that she knew that I would take it just as seriously.
And thankfully Eileen Brennan did make it, living through difficult recoveries from both her injuries and a serious addiction to the painkillers used to treat them. She made it, and went on to entertain the world, and me in particular, for another three decades.
