Older, not wiser, no less in love

Yes, like every other 9 yr old boy in America, I was deeply, helplessly in love with Diana Rigg. The flared-eyed concentration. The pouty-lipped determination. The Mod Squad ironed hair and wooden steering wheel and velvet driving gloves. But mainly the nose, which cleaved the air before her like the prow of an Icebreaker forcing its way through the Northwest Passage. Sure, there was "The Avengers," and all the various delights it offered, including the simple linguistic pleasure of the name "Emma Peel." I also really loved her as Clytemnestra in the TV movie of "Oresteia" that I watched with my father on our green and yellow plaid couch, or Portia in 1970's "Julius Caesar." She was great in the bitterly acidic "The Hospital" opposite the acidulous George C. Scott. She was wasted as "Tracy" in one of the weaker Bonds, "On Her Majesty's Secret Blah Blah Blah," and although it could be said that all women in all Bond films were mere bikini-garland, from Ursula Andress to Denise Richards, Diana rose above them, despite the script, out of sheer self-possession alone. But my favorite role of hers might well be in "Theater of Blood," where she wore a white turtleneck and huge bouffant of Maria Conchita Alonso from Total Recall hair piled up on top of her head the entire film, too busy outrunning the axe of a blood-lusting Vincent Price to hit the salon and straighten that action back into the accepted and comforting Peel style.
​RIP Diana, already missed.
#oleannatyrell