Girl looks like a Lady: Provide and Train

I love old movies. I love stories. I love good acting. With the enduring old movies, it seems, one has to be a good actor, because they have good stories, and there's no "effect" to save the actor.

I like the stories and I like thinking through what's been said through the ideas and images. "A Day in the Sun" is full, for example, of social struggles: class, propriety, selfishness, death / murder, and the possibility of abortion. One of my favorite old movies, "12 Angry Men" is all about justice and the refusal to profile and the failure of not thinking through something and the success of thinking it through. I could go on and on.

I like connecting the dots, too. For example, I watched "Victor / Victoria" -- I did NOT like that movie; reasons aside -- and BEGAN to watch "Alfie" -- didn't like the premise, so I stopped -- but, I like being able to recognize people appearing in different / small roles in different movies. In the former, Graham Stark plays a snarky waiter and in the latter, though only watched for a few minutes, I could tell Mr. Stark was playing the lovelorn Humphrey. There was 16 years between the movies, but Mr. Stark looked the same and it was obvious he was honing his craft with age.

Anyway, enough of that. If I carry on, I will carry on and on. And on.

I recently watched "My Fair Lady" for probably the 3rd time in my life. It's a great movie and no one can doubt the fantastic acting jobs of Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. ----- An aside: I did learn from Robert Osbourne that Hepburn did not do her own singing in this movie; rather, it was Marni Nixon who dubbed over Hepburn. Nice, huh?

Anyway, enough of that...

"My Fair Lady" makes an interesting point; training people up in their actions does change them, but relationship trains them more. Over the course of her training, she learns to talk and carry herself like a lady. She learns that. What also happens is she falls in love with her instructor.

Training can make a lady, but love makes a woman want to be a gentleman's wife.

One can be trained, and one ought to be trained in many things. However, if love does not make the training desirable to us, most likely it will not stick, nor will it mean much.

I also, for the first time, watched "Lady for a Day." It's hard to beat a Frank Capra movie for simply being entertained.

It was an interesting movie. A common, seller of apples, for the sake of her daughter's possible engagement, wants some people to think she is a lady of society. For various reasons, many people get behind her, and they pull it off. What is amazing is how many people get behind the effort. May Robson's character, Apple Annie, gets treated like a lady and starts to act like a lady. There's something to be said for that.

There are a powerful bunch of females in the world that are definitely women, but not ladies. (The same could be said of men and gentlemen, too.)

Be that as it may, what stops us from treating women like ladies, whether they "deserve" it or not? We stop us! It is true that a male is born, will become a boy, may become a man, but must choose to be a gentleman. And, to loosely quote Chaucer, "He is a gentle because he wants to be a gentleman." We ought to want to be gentlemen!

I know, I know, it's hard enough to be a man, and harder still to walk as a Christian man, but there's a call to it and need for it.

Now, I don't owe Hollywood a thing, and they certainly teach any male very little about the most important things in life. More so, they teach males less about being men every year. I look to God's word for that. I look to the perfect Man, Jesus. That's where I'll take my cues from.

So, sure, I'll train girls to be ladies (I do have two daughters!). Sure, I'll love them and pray they respond to my love. Either way, I receive this call to be a gentleman. If for no other reason, this: "love bears all things." I've been loved, so I'll live it now that I know it.