Programming note: Tomorrow, Sunday, I'll be hosting another audio edition of Steyn's Song of the Week on Serenade Radio in the UK at 5.30pm British Summer Time (that's 12.30pm North American Eastern/9.30am Pacific). You can listen from anywhere on the planet by clicking the button in the top right-hand corner here.
~Just ahead of Part Twenty-Five of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, a quick thank you for all your kind words about this audio adaptation. I don't really know why, but for some reason I've received more huzzahs for my obits than almost anything else I've ever done. Only the other day, Tucker was telling me he never missed my monthly eulogies in The Atlantic. But it wasn't a partisan thing: A long time ago The Washington Post called me "the world's wittiest obit writer" and attempted to poach me for their pages, which they surely wouldn't do now.
This weekend's selections are firm reader favorites. As The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last put it way back when:
I'll be surprised if I read a better essay this year than this beautiful, funny, sad Mark Steyn entry on Sid Luft.
Luft was, for a few years, Mr Judy Garland, but he had many other irons in the fire: he tried to sell Indonesia an air force, for example. We've paired Luft with Lois Maxwell, the one and only Moneypenny:
For a quarter-century, she could stake a plausible claim to have played to bigger audiences around the world than any other Canuck thespian... But, for most of her long reign as M's secretary Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell got a hundred pounds a day for a two- or three-day shoot, and for the first five movies had to supply her own clothes. From Dr No in 1962 to A View to a Kill in 1985, her total screen time barely adds up to an hour.
But what an hour. Ninety per cent of starring roles don't bring the public recognition that a minute and a half of Moneypenny bantering with her beloved James did.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Twenty-Five of our serialization simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade can be found here, and some four dozen other Tales for Our Time here.
John Lewis, a Steyn Clubber from Sussex in the English Home Counties, writes of last week's episode:
That was possibly the most enjoyable Passing Parade I can recall. Neither person was at all known to me and arguably were of far less import than the usual subjects but I found myself fascinated and ultimately warming to them both. Concluding with the charming Sandy Posey was the icing on a rather lovely cake.
Thank you, John. For more on The Mark Steyn Club, please see here. And, if you've a chum who enjoys classic fiction and video poetry and whatnot, we've introduced a special Mark Steyn Gift Membership.
See you for Part Twenty-Six of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade next weekend.
