Sad news. One of the amazing actresses of the Fifties, Anne Francis, has died. Her key films include Bad Day At Black Rock and Blackboard Jungle (both 1955), and of course Forbidden Planet, one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time, and still the most canonical, with its marriage of Freud and Prospero. In the Sixties she entered a whirlwind of TV guest appearances in all the great shows, Dr. Kildare, Mission:Impossible, The Invaders, Columbo, Cannon, Banacek, - but no Star Trek, sadly.
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.

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