January 3, 2003

• The Shanghai Gesture:
  An Exercise in Synchronicity
  

  “A corpse will be transported by express!”

  — Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry (1947)

  Dietrich

  Minogue

  For Dietrich, see the reference below;
  For Minogue, see my entry
  “That Old Devil Moon”
  of January 1st, 2003.

  From the Turner Classic Movies website: PLAYING ON TCM: Jan 03, 2003, 08:00 PM Shanghai Express  (1932) CAST: Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong. DIRECTOR: Josef von Sternberg. A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey. [Set in 1931] BW-82m

  From The New Yorker magazine,
  received in the mail this afternoon:

  Shanghai Moon “…a new play… set in Shanghai in 1931…. Previews begin Jan. 3.”

  Given the above, a believer in synchronicity
  under the volcano 
  will naturally search for a suitable corpse…
  and voilà:

  The Toronto Star — Friday, Jan. 3, 2003. 05:50 PM Syndicated astrologist Sydney Omarr, 76, dies LOS ANGELES (AP) — Sydney Omarr, the astrologer to the stars who came to write horoscopes that appear in more than 200 North American newspapers, has died. He was 76. Omarr, who was blinded and paralysed from the neck down by multiple sclerosis, died Thursday [Jan. 2, 2003] in hospital in Santa Monica of complications from a heart attack, the Los Angeles Times reported. His ex-wife, assistants and several close friends were by his side. Born Sidney Kimmelman in Philadelphia, Omarr decided to change his name at age 15 after watching a movie called The Shanghai Gesture, starring Victor Mature as a character named Omar. He changed the spelling of his first name and adopted Omar as his last name, but added a second “r,” in accordance with certain numerological formulas.

  “It has a ghastly familiarity,
  like a half-forgotten dream.”
   — Poppy (Gene Tierney) in
  “The Shanghai Gesture.”

  “It’s a gesture, dear, not a recipe.”
   — Peggy (Vanessa Redgrave) in
  “Prick Up Your Ears“

   

  • 11:59 pm
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