LOVE SOMEHOW : (CAITLIN MACNAMARA THOMAS DRAMA) MISTRESS MANIFESTO FILM REVIEW

The film LOVE SOMEHOW is an unconventional composition, a monologue of about half an hour.  It presents the widowed wife of Dylan Thomas, Caitlin Macnamara Thomas, as well performed by actress Sally George.  The film is full of beautiful images of Wales and the exterior of the rather ramshackle house the couple lived in.  (I'm not sure the interior shots were done in this house.) Caitlin tells that she was a dancer, following in the footsteps of Isadora Duncan*, and met Dylan in Paris in a bar. He searched her eyes and put his head on her lap. You could say love at first sight.  She is portrayed as boozing herself.  She mentions that he lies, and lies, and lies. What was her reason for staying with him?  Love.

Here is some information on Dylan Thomas and his wife from various other sources.

Caitlin Macnamara was born in 1913 and died in 1994.

The couple married in 1937 and stayed married until his death in 1953.  He broke her heart before he died, it seems repeatedly. They both had affairs. After he died, she gave up drinking and moved to Italy.  She also authored a book called Leftover Life to Kill.

It seems to me that being married to a genius has some difficulties, a famous genius even more. This was never a sober relationship and so her choice to give up drinking and face life without a substance in her system came after this marriage.

I notice that there have been many Dylan Thomas inspired films in recent years, including one called A poet in New York (circa 2012) which perhaps portrays our Mistress of the Month, Pearl Kazin  There is also another film called Set Fire to the Stars with a focus on Dylan Thomas in New York, the Big Apple.  Ditto. Should I get to see one or both of these films, I will try to include my review or what I learned in this blog.

Missy

ALL THE SECONDS BEFORE AND SINCE YOUR LOVELY LAST LETTER...

 "All the seconds before and since your lovely last letter (oh, thank you, Pearl darling) I've tried to write to you, I've tried to say who and what you are to me, but I didn't know the words."

ITVCOM: DYLAN THOMAS LOVE LETTERS PUBLISHED (Good Photo too!)

DYLAN THOMAS to PEARL KAZIN : IT'S TAKEN SO LONG

 "It's taken so long to write your name.  Pearl, dear Pearl.  And every moment of every day I think of you, feel you, want you."

WALES NEWS 2014 : DYLAN THOMAS LOVE LETTERS PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME (includes photos of the lovers)   has photo of pearl and dylan

DYLAN THOMAS : IF I WERE TICKLED BY THE RUB OF LOVE

DYLAN THOMAS was contemporary enough that there are many recordings of the poet reciting his own poems. His voice is compelling.

AN EXTRAORDINARY LITERARY AND PUBLIC SCANDAL : DYLAN THOMAS' AFFAIR WITH PEARL KAZIN

WALES ART REVIEW on LETTER OF THOMAS TO KAZIN

Excerpt:  Their affair is chronicled in John Malcolm Brinnn's Dylan Thomas IN America which scandalized the literary world when it was published in 1955 (to the extent Thomas' friend and fellow poet Vernon Watkins moved to refuse permission for publication of his correspondence with Dylan Thomas).  Yet far from taking easy advantage of any apparent sacrificial longings, Brinnin makes the point that Kazin's professional sophistication, her dark handsomeness and social poise 'made her precisely the sort of women from whom one would expect Dylan Thomas only to flee'.

PEARL KAZIN - MISTRESS RECIPIENT OF IMPASSIONED LOVE LETTERS FROM WELSH POET DYLAN THOMAS

PEARL KAZIN

October 1922-June 2011

Dylan Thomas is one of my favorite poets and so I wondered about his muses, his inspirations, and learned that Pearl Kazin was his last great romance. Because the poet died rather young of alcoholism and in New York City - America - in 1953 at age 39, he was not to have another. But as opinions go, some felt that his affairs were a search for his soul mate, a better wife than the only one he had, Caitlin, a wife of many years that he never divorced, and that Pearl Kazin could have been that woman. Was Thomas aware he was drinking himself to death? Was he self treating a mental illness? Was this the affair to end all affairs? Perhaps there is only speculation.  Mine is that perhaps the relationship had that feeling of eternal hope as well as inevitable doom to it. 

Here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot we know that affairs are common and having an affair does not make you a Mistress. We also know that not all Mistresses are Kept.  Pearl Kazin was not a Kept Woman.  She was probably financially in better shape that Dylan Thomas, who met her when he called upon her to buy a short story he wanted published, A child's Christmas in Wales.

Thomas' passionate letters to Pearl were published in the book A Pearl of Great Price, not to be confused with the Latter Day Saints religious book with a similar title, in 2014. Her letters in response to his are lost or otherwise unavailable.

Pearl Kazin was of Jewish heritage and a career woman in a New York City of the 1950's that was new to career women when she met Dylan Thomas. Though Dylan Thomas and Pearl Kazin have been portrayed in film in recent years, searching for facts about Pearl the career woman through news articles and web sites on the Internet proves there's some confusion about her career. In one article she is called "An American Journalist." In others she is called an "Editor."  Her obituary says she was a writer and critic who worked as an assistant literary editor at Harper's Bazaar magazine, as a copy editor at The New Yorker, and that she was also a fiction critic through the years for such literary publications such as The New Leader, Commentary, and Partisan Review.

Pearl came from the world of words and stories. Thomas's personal letters and poetry to her qualify her as a literary muse. The literary or the merely curious can read over what is left of those letters In A Pearl Of Great Price and come to a conclusion.  

There was passion.  There was intent. There was the ache of long distance.

The first letter by Dylan to Pearl was sent from the Savage Gentlemens Club (an oxymoron?) in London in April 1950.  He referred to his drinking and said "The world is empty this side of the damned sea."  In February 1951 he wrote the last letter Pearl received which was sent from Iran, where Thomas was working on a film script. *** No one ever said he was lazy or that he stayed put.  According to the Daily Mail article linked below, this affair destroyed his marriage (though it seems to me he had been destroying it since it began) because this one was quite public.  It was a scandal.

And there were those who were especially surprised because they felt that no way was Pearl, Dylan's type.

Like many women who have had affairs, married at the time or not, and many women who have been the muses of creative men, Pearl's public affair did not prevent her from becoming married. She married Daniel Bell, had a son, and became a grandmother.

As mid February is the place where there is sometimes a hint that the worst of winter is over and we begin to look forward to spring, and Valentine's Day is an opportunity to express our love of others, not just romances, but friends and family, perhaps this is the time to begin to imagine a better future for us all.

There are so many ways to love.

Missy

As a note, Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Sansea, Wales in 1914 and died in November of 1953 in New York. *** This information comes from a wonderful article in Daily Mail UK which you can link to here:DAILY MAIL : DYLAN THOMAS SAUCY LOVE LETTERS TO AMERICAN... Caitlin was portrayed by Sienna Miller in the 2008 biopic The Edge of Love.

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