I remember Mattie Ross uttering that line. Why? I was in NYC for the first time I ever took a plane. My three year-old brother drank hot cocoa on the plane and spit it out all over. We took the subway when my mother (Dad was at meetings) was six-months pregnant and he asked about all the “chocolate” people. They were kind, gave her an elusive seat.
The other main theme of this visit for me was Radio City Music Hall and a screening of True Grit. This is during the week that included July 20, 1969 and the landing on the moon on my sister’s birthday. It was an illustrative week, of present and future.
I’ve written about my live heroines but Mattie Ross became my film herione at the time. I was ten, Rooster Cogburn was OK but being in NYC at Radio City Music Hall was fantastic and I wanted to be Mattie Ross like I wanted to sing like Rosemary Clooney, dance like the best of ABT and NYC Ballet dancers and meet Frank Sinatra.
This is not a movie parents would take three children 10, 8, and three to, but it was the spectacle of perhaps the theater itself, Radio City, and a brand new New York City that made this spectacular. Of course I remember you, John Wayne, but now I’m thinking this may have been the beginning of cowboy culture in my mind, if not my life.
I look forward to seeing Rooster and Mattie again on the big (littler these days from Radio City) screen very soon. Not in NYC, but in another landscape. It’s years later and I’ve many other reel heroines but that will be saved for a later date.
Welcome back Mattie and Rooster and colleagues! Dee
Cooking with Dee 