bearing

I suppose that everyone, even if they don't consciously think about such trivia, has a favorite celebrity couple. I would guess that the most ubiquitous/popular would be Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who turned their marriage(s) into a jet-setting adventure, better than any movie that they ever made together.

Frankly, I don't think about such trivia either but when I read of the passing of Bradford Dillman at age 87 on Tuesday, January 16th, I immediately thought of how handsomely he paired with Suzy Parker, his wife of 40 years.

Belatedly, I come to reminisce about a couple who even had names that seemed to sparkle with style.

Ah, style.

Bradford and Suzy met in 1960 when they starred together in Twentieth Century-Fox's "Circle of Deception." They married in 1963 and remained together for 40 years - until Parker's death in 2003. She was 70.

Suzy was arguably the definitive fashion model of her time before she ventured into acting, most memorably opposite Gary Cooper, Diane Varsi and Geraldine Fitzgerald in Philip Dunne's very fine 1958 film version of John O'Hara's "Ten North Frederick" and especially as the glamorously doomed Gregg Adams in Jean Negulesco's compulsively watchable 1959 film version of Rona Jaffe's seminal novel, "The Best of Everything."

Bradford, meanwhile, made his Broadway debut in 1956 in Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night," in the role of the author's alter ego, Edmund Tyrone, and starred with Dean Stockwell, Orson Welles and Diane Varsi (again) in 1959's "Compulsion," Richard Fleischer's excellent take on the notorious Leopold-Loeb case. (Stockwell, coincidentally, played Edmund Tyrone in Sidney Lumet's 1962 film version of "Journey.")

He had an urbane presence that matched his name. Bradford personified breeding and bearing. Yes, that vague, not easily acquired quality - bearing. Suzy had it, too. And they had style - real style.

I confess. All sorts of fancy words would come to mind whenever I would see photographs of them together (or alone) - chic, cosmopolitan, metropolitan, voguish, elegant, sophisticated, cultured, dressy, stylish, chichi, bearing - words that hardly apply to the self-described, rather vulgar "power couples" desperately seeking attention today.

Kim and Kanye?

Get real.

Donald and Melania?

No, I'm afraid that "style" is dead, stone cold dead. And so is the notion of  bearing. Especially bearing. (Would anyone today even know what that word means?)

And neither will be coming back any time soon.

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~images~

(from top)

~Suzy Parker and Bradford Dillman at a '60s Hollywood event

~Bradford Dillman, relaxing with a script
 ~photography: Suzy Parker Dillman 1963©

~Suzy Parker and Bradford Dillman in a scene from "Circle of Deception"

~Photography: 20th Century-Fox 1960©

 ~Suzy Parker, taking a photograph with her Leica

~photography: Peter Stackpole 1953©

~Suzy Parker and Bradford Dillman on a 20th Century -Fox backlot when he was there making "In Love and War" and she was filming "The Best of Everything"

~Photography: 20th Century-Fox 1959©