A while back when she first came on the scene, the ever-fascinating Sarah Palin inspired me to ruminate on which movie character she resembled the most - Tracy Flick in "Election," "Lonesome" Rhodes in "A Face in the Crowd," Suzanne Stone Maretto in "To Die For," Marge Gunderson in "Fargo" or Raymond Shaw in "The Manchurian Candidate."Well, I missed the most obvious - Gladys Glover, the marvelous Judy Holliday creation in George Cukor's "It Should Happen to You!" (1954). As conjured up by the preternaturally astute Garson Kanin, Gladys is a nobody who desperately wants to be a somebody - no ... matter ... what.
And succeeds she does - if only as a symbol of ... nothing.
As for Palin in the here and now, I love how "Family Guy's" Seth MacFarland kept low and let Palin and her clone Bristol mouth off about his show's edgy Down syndrome episode before - ta-da! - announcing that Andrea Fay Friedman, the main vocal talent in the episode, is an actress who has Down syndrome herself, and that the show was supported by Gail Williamson, executive director of the Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles. How's that working fer ya, Sarah?
Good analogy. I always thought at "It Should Happen to You," like "A Face in the Crowd," was way ahead of the time - preternatural, to coin a word you just used. With each passing year, both films become scarily accurate. But I must say that Palin is not nearly as adorable as Judy.
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