Goo, Goo, Googie, Goodbye

(Fanfare for Kirsti)

Or
The Lady Tarnishes
(Tip o’ the cap for Kirsti)
Googie Withers, dispenser of a bit of old school British class in dozens of films of the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, has died at the age of 94. Old enough to have been a native of Karachi in what was called British India before the English did such a great job redrawing the map of Asia, Withers took to the stage in London in the 1930s, where she caught the eye of Alfred Hitchcock before he tacitly acknowledged his fetish for icy blondes. Withers had a supporting role in The Lady Vanishes as one of the passengers on a stranded train from which a woman may have disappeared or may have never existed, later adapted as Flightplan and parodied on Andy Barker, PI as The Lady Varnishes. Other films included the inventory comedy One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, Dead of Night and Night and the City. She married the Australian actor John McCallum and joined him when he took over a theater there, bringing to life the words of Chekov, Wilde and Maughum to a bunch of drunks named Bruce. For her efforts, she was the first non-Australian to be named an officer of the Order of Australia, in 1980, later tacking on a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2002. Her final role was the 1996 Australian movie “Shine,” for which Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar as a lunatic pianist.