Letter From America: The Camera Never Lies
Ronnie Bray, in his youthful naivety, once believed that everything he saw on he silver screen was true. And now, with a digital camera "I can produce a photograph of Prince Charles at my dinner table slopping down one of my Erdine’s Fish Pie Specials, show Lord Lucan riding Shergar down my drive, and produce a snapshot of sweet little faerie-folk at the bottom of my garden!''
Read more of Ronnie's richly humorous columns by clicking on Letter From America in the menu on this page. Read also Ronnie's autobiography A Shout From The Attic.
Being a trusting soul, I believed everything that poured out of the projector onto the silver screen when I was a boy and, at times, somewhat out of the boy class. For example, I believed that the people shot by Johnny Mack Brown, Tom Mix, and Hopalong Cassidy were really shot, that they died on the spot and stayed dead. My feeble mind in its innocence figured out that when a film script called for someone to be shot to death by dry gulchers or the man in the white hat, the studio looked for people who wanted to commit suicide and obligingly accommodated them, doubtless after providing them with a hearty meal and survivor benefits.
It didn’t end there. I saw the great romantic comedy, ‘Genevieve,’ in nineteen fifty-three, and was amazed by the dazzling trumpet-playing of Kay Kendall. “All that musical genius, and a more than passable actress too!” I told myself, pleased with the revelation.
Some years later, a film industry know-it-all speaking on a magazine television documentary revealed that Kay did not blow the horn. She was miming. The film ran on American television last week. Gay and I watched it: me to revive fond memories and to introduce Gay to the classic British comedy and to some stars that had not registered on American show business radar.
This time, armed with the knowledge that Kay did not play the trumpet I saw right past her appalling out-of-sync mime. Still, she did play the bugle and did so on the set, which earned her the title "Glam Strumpet Voluntary" from the film crew.
I learned about blank ammunition in time for me not to make a complete fool of myself among real people, but I was not to learn about Kay’s deceit in time to stop me from believing that Mrs Rex Harrison couldn’t Pygmalion-well play the horn like Kenny Baker could play the horn.
The scales have finally fallen from my eyes as I manipulate images both before and after I get them into and out of my digital camera. I can produce a photograph of Prince Charles at my dinner table slopping down one of my Erdine’s Fish Pie Specials, show Lord Lucan riding Shergar down my drive, and produce a snapshot of sweet little faerie-folk at the bottom of my garden!
The camera never lies. Oh yeah?
Copyright © Ronnie Bray 2006
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
* *
If there is no wind - ROW!
