“From here to Eternity” encompasses a lockout at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn…Avenue M and 16th Street, a block down from where the Warner Brothers pioneered their movie studio(Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer”) and down away from Avenue K’s Wingate Field (Midwood Field) where theName Detective served his solitary confinement for 36 years at the Surrogate Court , probating Barbara Streisand father’s estate( an English High School teacher)
Some informed or uninformed teachers in the know, claimed he identified with William Shakespeare (the Bard) and therefore caused an envious rift among his colleagues in the Department.
II
But as this 70 year old narrative unravels, Wingate Field named after the Judge of the Surrogate Court, his papa being General Wingate who fought under General Pershing in those European trenches (“Paths of Glory”…., WW 1 the war to end all wars”)starring that doubles tennis player, Kirk Douglas.
III
But our narrative short circuited upon hearing that Anita Ekberg passed on at 83. She was a Swedish sex Goddess not unlike Mae West (“Come up and see me sometime”) or AnnSheridan…..Marilyn Monroe “Some like it hot”..
As a kid growing up in those middle class dwellings and elevator apartment houses surrounding Wingate Field (quarter mile track and bleachers added later), these sirens of the silver screen (Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, Lupe Velez, Fay Wraycouldn’t hold a torch to Anita Ekberg.
IV
She was the Amazon!!!! Fellin I’s “La Dolche Vita”. She caught the eye of New York Post columnist Max Lerner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the columnist and part time Professor from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts..
We were we the first to claim to all our tennis and weaving“high five” basketball amigos that Anita Ekberg was from downtown ”beyond the three point line”.
If an intellectual connoisseur like Max Lerner of the New YorkPost could muster the surrealism Picasso like sculpture of the Goddess from a another planet, then an all full court press was“kefuful”- off the charts.
V
Anita Ekberg died “destitute” claimed the mortuary pros. But in my unconscious she was born into the imagination of Goethe, the Aesop tales, Grimm brothers. She may not have been LittleRed Riding Hood but she was much more than the Beverly HillsHotel pump room siren, being interviewed..
Or swimming in Roma’s fountain de Trevi, with the likes of Lord Byron and Shelly.
A toast to Anita Ekberg’s life on and off the silver screen. May her and Fellini’s “La Dolche Vita” live forever in ourunconscious.
January 21, 2015….. “Destitute? from those adolescent yearnings of Wingate Field 7 decades ago ”From here to Eternity” playing out...
