RIP Patricia Neal
I thought she played Alma well. RIP
shareA very great actress, this was her finest role.
Paul and her together are pretty cool.
RIP.
A Face in the Crowd was my personal favorite role, but this was right up there along side it. Wonderful lady.
A Woman
I Like : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47rvqj0BlLY
A deserved Oscar for a terrific, nuanced and sexy performance from a versatile pro. And let's not forget The Fountainhead, The Day the Earth Stood Still, A Face in the Crowd, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Subject Was Roses and many more. Pat also won the British Film Academy award for Hud, and, more interestingly, two years later for In Harm's Way...the latter possibly bestowed in large part as a tribute to her courage, following her devastating strokes a short time before. Yet her performance there is most underrated and excellent in its own right.
More importantly, Patricia Neal was a good, kind, generous person, a woman of class and grace. Rest in Peace.
>>"Pat also won the British Film Academy award for Hud, and, more interestingly, two years later for In Harm's Way...the latter possibly bestowed in large part as a tribute to her courage, following her devastating strokes a short time before. Yet her performance there is most underrated and excellent in its own right"<<
Right, her performance in In Harm's Way was another one of her best, and one of the reasons that John Wayne gave his most believable performance alongside a woman. She brought out the best in many of her male co-stars.
A Woman
I Like : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47rvqj0BlLY
And she and Wayne apparently didn't get along too well when they'd co-starred in another Naval drama fourteen years earlier, Operation Pacific. But she said things were much better on In Harm's Way, and she and the Duke were mutual admirers by then. Of course, she was an Oscar-winning actress by that time, not simply a Warners contract player.
I also learned from her autobiography that one of her closest friends was Hugh Marlowe, her co-star in The Day the Earth Stood Still. They had acted on stage together previously. I agree, her male co-stars did usually react well to her.
Her name in the film is "Almah." Does that not mean "young women,"-- from the Hebrew?
share... from the Hebrew?"
True. About the Hebrew derivation. But the original character's name is spelled in the modern "Alma" -
The girl's name Alma
Alma has 2 variant forms: Almah and Allma.
It is of Latin, Italian, Hebrew and Arabic origin, and the meaning of Alma is "nourishing, kind; soul; young woman; learned". Modern name. Also the name of a river in the Crimea where the famous 19th-century Battle of Alma was fought. "Alma mater" is the term for a college or university, meaning "fostering mother". American vamp of the silent screen, Alma Bennett; composer's wife Alma Mahler.
A simple web search revels the Hebrew meaning:
- from Wiki:
"Almah or plural: alamot is a Hebrew feminine noun, for a girl who has reached puberty but is still under the shielding protection of her family; she is a young, marriageable (i.e. unmarried) girl. In Bibles, almah is typically translated as virgin, maiden, young woman, damsel or girl. For theological reasons, the meaning and definition of this word (especially the definition of "virgin") can be controversial, particularly when applied to Isaiah 7:14...
Almah seems to be the only word in the Biblical Hebrew language which unequivocally signifies an unmarried woman and children born to an almah would be illegitimate. The English word that corresponds most closely to this concept is maiden or maid which means "an unmarried girl (especially a virgin)"."
_______________she was quite a damsel, indeed...
Also, http://www.outreachjudaism.org/alma.htm says it doesn't mean "virgin" in the bible..Rabbi Singer:
"One of the places where the uncommon Hebrew word alma appears in the Bible is in Proverbs 30:18-20 which reads,
There are three things which are too wonderful for me, four which I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the middle of the sea, and the way of a man with a young woman [b’alma]. This is the way of an adulterous woman: she eats and wipes her mouth, and says, “I have done no wrong.”
In the above three verses, King Solomon compares a man with an alma to three other things: an eagle in the sky, a serpent on a rock, and a ship in the sea. What do these three things all have in common? They leave no trace. After the eagle has flown across the sky, determining that the eagle had ever flown there is impossible. Once a snake has slithered over a rock, there is no way to discern that the snake had ever crossed there (as opposed to a snake slithering over sand or grass, where it leaves a trail). After a ship has moved across the sea, the water comes together behind it and there is no way to tell that a ship had ever passed through there. Similarly, King Solomon informs us that once a man has been with an alma there is also no trace of the fornication that had occurred between them. Therefore, in the following verse (verse 20) King Solomon explains that once this adulterous woman has eaten (a metaphor for her fornication), she removes the trace of her sexual activity by exclaiming, “I have done no wrong.” The word alma clearly does not mean virgin."
He says "Betulah is a common word in the Jewish scriptures, and can only mean “virgin.”" - not Almah, so be careful how you refer to the comely ladies, fellas!
A Woman
I Like : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47rvqj0BlLY
share