LITTLE BIG SCREEN - MISS NORMA LAMONT

As part of our year-long tribute to Hollywood movies in Toobworld, here's a candidate for one of the May Queen's ladies in waiting......

'DENNIS THE MENACE'

"NEVER SAY DYE"

Norma Lamont was a movie star who had been in the pictures since Alice Mitchell was about seven years old.  (She actually only said "since I was a little girl", but she indicated that she was much shorter than her son Dennis was.

When she said that, Alice was about forty years old.  So it was probably around 1930 when she saw a Norma Lamont movie.  

And by that time, Miss Lamont would have been about 28 years old, having been born just after the turn of the Century. 

Norma was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, but she was willing to lie about the location when she finally had her memoirs ghost-written.  She probably lied about her real name as well, but we never did find out about that.

One reason she might have wanted to lie about her past is because she could have been embarrassed by it.  

She may have been born of an unwed mother, something that would have been quite scandalous at the turn of the Century (and indeed well into 20th Century as well!)

And it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that her birth mother put her up for adoption before leaving town to live her life somewhere else, where her past was unknown.

Perhaps someone like Miss Kelly who was the senior high school English teacher in Millsburg.  (She taught and inspired novelist Cameron Garrett Brooks there about twenty years later, back in 1924.)

It's a shame that when she came to Hillsdale to discuss her memoirs with John Wilson (who was hoping to be the ghost-writer), Miss Lamont never mentioned any of the movies in which she starred.  But if there are any fictional 1930s movies mentioned in TV series, I'd suggest them as starring Miss Lamont.  And anything else that might be dated up to the 1950s.  (I think her career was on the wane by then.)

Movies like "Strawberry Blonde" from a 'Poirot' episode.  Or perhaps "Smoke On The Railway" which can be found in 'Torchwood'.  And there are several films supposedly directed by Courtland Evans - "Pinnacle", "Mansions In The Dust", "Against The Gods", and "Pleasure Domes" which is considered director Courtland Evans best work.  (All mentioned in an episode of 'Marcus Welby, M.D.')

She might even have done a few of those horrible science fiction movies when her career was in its downslide - flicks like "The Monster That Devoured Cleveland", one that Maynard G. Krebs and Dobie Gillis saw.....

BCnU!