Click! Click! Click!

I watched a lot of television when I was a kid. In addition to the usual suspects like The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, and Bewitched, I was especially drawn to That Girl starring Marlo Thomas.

This may have been partly due to the story-line echoing my Mom's life before she married my Dad and I was born. That Girl ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It was the story of Ann Marie, a young woman who has moved to New York City to be an actress. In the mid-1940s my Mom had moved to New York for the same reason. So Mom could tell me stories about living in New York, eating at the Automat, the subway, Central Park, Summer stock, dating, roommates, having pre-marital sex, all the things one does when one runs away to New York City to be in the theatre. Indeed, I did much the same stuff when I went to New York to do theatre in the late 1980s.

That Girl also shot a lot of location footage in NYC, so each episode was story-fodder for Mom. In the last couple years That Girl has finally been coming out on DVD. And since I had pretty much not seen it since the mid 1970s, I have been buying and rewatching it. It holds up quite well, the writing isn't bad, the cinematography is especially good, and the production and costume design is great! It truly is a little time capsule of fashion and fun circa late 1960s.

On rewatching the series I encountered a two part episode called "It's a Mod Mod World!" in which Ann gets a job as a fashion model after being discovered eating that old actor's treat, ketchup-and-hot-water soup, at the Automat. I had not particularly remembered this episode until I resaw it. But it immediately brought back a torrent of nostalgic glee. Because back in the summer of 1970 it set my little mind to working and got me all fired up to join the world of fashion. Mod Squad, move over! I got out my Instamatic camera, corralled my three-year-old sister, and decided that I simply MUST do a fashion shoot!

Now, of course I had much empathy with Marlo Thomas and her character Anne Marie. And perhaps deep down I wanted to be an actress, model, fashion-plate. Perhaps I still do! Yet this being 1970, me being seven years old, and my not being able to both click the camera and do drag at the same time—I enlisted my little sister.

I set up my photo-shoot in front of the sliding glass doors that led from the living room to the dining room (they looked sort of like store windows to me). I asked my sister to go put on her best dress, or as my grandmother called it, her "Sunday-go-to-meeting" clothes. And we were ready. I demonstrated the classy poses Marlo Thomas had used. A look of coy surprise! Click! Hands up and out so as not to cover the dress! Click! A big smile! Click! Sell it, sister, sell it! Click!

And then one has to take the film to the Skaggs Drugstore to be developed and wait and wait and wait. But eventually they were developed and I was the Fashionista of the Second Grade. No digital, no Polaroid, just a Kodak Instamatic, a box of blue flash-cubes, my three-year-old sister, and me.

Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine. All rights reserved.