Hot what?

It’s been a bit of a heavy week what with BIG government, gnomes and freaking out over water privatisation. So today, it’s a lighter post. In fact, it’s a post with some seductive stuff thrown in.

Way, way, waaaaaay back when I was growing up, I loved Bill Collins’ Golden Years of Hollywood and all the old time classic Hollywood films. Bill must be ancient now but he’s still on Foxtel. Damn, I gave Foxtel the flick recently in my attempt to be Frugalicious (note to self: must trademark this term). I would eagerly wait for Saturday night 8.30pm, hoping that Bill would show a film with Humphrey Bogart snarling his way through it; or Rita Hayworth with her gorgeous cascading, copper red hair smouldering her way through a 1940s film noir; or Tyrone Power (anyone think Zac Efron looks a bit like him?) playing an Indian doctor engaged in a sultry affair with an Englishwoman during the British Raj (The Rains Came, 1939).

Just because most of these films are from the 1930s and 1940s, don’t make the mistake of wondering whether I’m in my 70s. Tune in to Bill on Foxtel and he’s still showing The Maltese Falcon or Laura – because these are classic films that didn’t require nudity, swearing, over-the-top special effects or violence to entertain. Nope. They all relied on telling a good yarn, some pretty intense acting and a whiff of sexual innuendo.

And speaking of sexual innuendo…to today’s post. One of the films I remember most is Picnic (1955) starring William Holden and Kim Novak. Family myth has it that my father named me after Kim Novak although the counter-myth is that my grandmother named me after Rudyard Kipling’s novel, Kim. Don’t relish being named after some male-dominated novel stuffed full of the ignorance and bigotry of the British Raj. So I’m sticking with the Kim Novak story.

Have you seen the film? I used to droooooool over William Holden. But now that I look at the clip I’m about to get you to watch, I realise he was getting on a bit (probably around 37 years old in 1955, whilst Kim Novak was about 22 years old). So watch this well-known scene from the film. I reckon it’s hotter than a lot of full on sex-scenes you see these days. Okay, the first bit of dancing that William Holden does is a bit quaint (or ‘fey’ as my grandmother used to say) but once they get stuck into the dancing and the intense staring, coupled with the music…well….sultry, sexy, goose bumps. No words needed to be exchanged between these two. Actually, when I was a teen, my father used to play the theme from Picnic (which is called Moonglow) over and over: it remains a piece of music I very much like. Enjoy!