Word: leona
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Manhattan Psychiatrist Helen Edey observes that young woman interns and residents are frequently mistaken for nurses. She overcame the problem by ignoring it: "You can do the same things whether the patient calls you nurse or doctor." Leona Miller, now a diabetes specialist in Los Angeles, remembers the sincere but puzzled thank-you from a woman whose husband had been saved by a trio of woman physicians. "To think," the woman said, "that you three nurses took care of him and that a doctor never...
...music from the jukebox stops, the other characters in the bar come into focus. We meet Leona's latest boyfriend who has shacked up in her trailer. Unlike Leona, he doesn't live in the past or the future but he doesn't really live in the present either. He exists in a total narcissistic haze, boozing on Leona's money and returning sexual compensations. Two homosexuals enter, an Amos and Andy combination: a gawky farm boy from Iowa who is bicycling to Mexico and a Hollywood dandy with gestures reminiscent of the Oceanic roll. We also meet an alcoholic...
...centered on one or two characters. There is no plot in the normal sense, no unity of action. The two homosexuals sit at one table, Violet and Steve at another, and the rest sit down at the bar, creating three self-enclosed worlds whose only thread of communication is Leona, moving about like some caged animal. Nervously boastful, muddled but penetrative. Leona is the great middle-aged screaming child who has been brought to perfection as an American theater type: a misty but lynx-eyed observer who holds all the cards and provides a shrewd running commentary on the others...
...each movement, one or two of the characters engage in a confessional, mingled with small talk, posturing, aimless reveries and recollections while the others remain frozen. Each person reveals a shadowy life which moves, like Leona's trailer, any way the wind blows, occasionally forming temporary relationships, and enduring the series of minor disasters inherent in such an existence. They have all, as one of them puts it, "lost the capacity for being surprised" all except for the wide-eyed innocent from Iowa. On this particular night, he's been initiated into the homosexual experience. Next time, he says...
...production itself is first rate. Don Bacon's recreation of the atmosphere of a run down sawdust bar will warm the hearts of inveterate bargoers. The acting is very fine. Hope Schlorholtz gives a powerful portrayal of the burnt-out hussy Leona. She conveys the ambiguity of tender nature turned corrosive through failed aspirations. Tom Wells looks like he learned his part of the Hollywood faggot while listening to a James Brown record. He and John Rudman, the Iowa corn boy, produce some very comic visual effects flirting at their table. Terry Steiner deserves credit for salvaging the deficient role...