July 20, 2014

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PANORAMA

SUNDAY, JULY 20, 2014

THE SUMTER ITEM

Piper Laurie: From the Gipper to Carrie, still acting at 82

BY NICK THOMAS Tinseltown Talks When Piper Laurie published her 2011 candid memoir, “Learning to Live Out Loud,” some readers probably turned straight to either chapter 4, to learn of her brief relationship with a former president, or chapter 14 to discover how she created cinema’s worst mother in a hit horror film.

Laurie’s 60-year acting career netted her three Oscar nominations, as well as Emmy and Golden Globe wins – remarkable achievements considering she suffered from acute anxiety disorder as a child.

“For someone who was extremely timid growing up, it may seem strange to choose a profession like acting, but it was the perfect way to escape from whoever you think you are,” said Laurie. “It provided a mask that enabled me to transform into somebody else and I got courage from that.”

Laurie was just 17 when she began working on her first movie, “Louisa,” released in 1950. It starred Ronald Reagan who, at the time, was a veteran of almost 50 films including “Knute Rockne All American” which led to his nickname as “The Gipper.”

“We went on tour to promote the movie and had autograph parties at places like department stores,” said Laurie. “He was president of the Screen Actors Guild at the time and would jump up on counters and give speeches defending Hollywood. You could tell he loved talking to the public.”

Although Laurie says no one seriously considered he might have political ambi-

tions, she recalls a press agent jokingly remarking “looks like he’s running for president!”

According to Laurie, it was during this time that she and Reagan went on a date that ended up as a one-nightstand, after which their paths didn’t cross again for five years.

“We later met on the set of ‘General Electric Theater,’ a TV show he introduced each week,” recalled Laurie. “The episode was ‘The Road That Led Afar’ with Dan Duryea. I fought to get the part because it was a beautiful script. But I was so focused on the role that I actually forgot Reagan was the show’s host. We were both startled to see each other again.”

Another memorable co-star from “Louisa” was popular character actor Charles Coburn, with whom Laurie worked again two years later in “Has Anybody Seen My Gal.” “He was a wonderful, warm and charming person, but a natural flirt,” said Laurie. “He loved girls and pinching their bottoms. In those days, and at his age, he could get away with it! I remember him sitting in his chair, rather than a dressing room, and taking naps while the cast and crew walked around. He also owned sulky horses and invited me over to ride them.”

After co-starring with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in “The Hustler” (1961), for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination, Laurie abandoned Hollywood for 15 years.

“I was unhappy with the roles I was being offered,” she said. “I had a family, was concentrating on sculpting and had a full life. The world was

also changing with civil rights and the war in Vietnam, so being an actor just seemed rather insignificant then.”

But she returned to the big screen in 1976 in a most memorable role as Sissy Spacek’s deranged mother in “Carrie.”

“I thought the mother’s role was supposed to be a satire,” she said. “At the rehearsal with director Brian De Palma, I added some funny lines to the script. But Brian soon stopped me, and I realized I had to be serious.”

Laurie says she first saw the final version during a midnight screening on Halloween Eve with her husband and friends, after a Japanese dinner.

“I wasn’t a drinking person, but that night had quite a few cups of sake,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t remember a thing about watching the movie!”

Now 82, Laurie continues to work, the most recent chapter on her life being on stage in the musical, “A Little Night Music.” As for the chapters in her book detailing with her earlier career, the work received praise for its candor, although Laurie says she almost omitted many of the intimate details.

“Only some of my family and close friends knew about the relationship with Reagan,” she noted. “My publisher did ask at the last minute if I wanted to include all the personal stuff. What I wrote is the truth, so I don’t have any regrets.”

Nick Thomas teaches at Auburn University at Montgomery, Ala., and has written features, columns and interviews for more than 400 magazines and newspapers.

PHOTOS PROVIDED

Piper Laurie co-starred with Ronald Reagan in her first film, “Louisa,” when she was just 17, he was 39 and had acted in almost 50 movies.

Now 82, Laurie continues to act and recently published a memoir.

Laurie comforts Sissy Spacek, who played the title role, in this scene from the 1976 film version of Stephen King’s “Carrie.”

Laurie had returned after a 15-year hiatus to take the part of Carrie’s deranged mother.

Fruits of mystery plant often used for grenadine syrup

BY JOHN NELSON Curator, USC Herbarium Ka-BOOM! Here’s a flower that looks like a small explosion. In this photo, you are looking at a blossom head-on, so to speak.

There are 5-8 fleshy sepal lobes, and plenty of stamens remaining in the flower. It used to have a number of redorange, floppy petals, but these have all fallen away. Before long, this flower will be producing a fruit.

If all goes well, the fruit will be globose, the size of a baseball (or perhaps even a softball), and covered with a smooth, leathery, orange-red skin. Botanists refer to this fruit as a special kind of berry, and it is tightly filled with plenty of seeds, maybe a couple hundred or so. Each seed will be packed into a number of white, pithy chambers, and at maturity each seed will be enclosed in a ruby-red, juice-filled outer layer.

The refreshing juice is deliciously sweet and sour, and filled with vitamins. Ripe seeds are often eaten as a deli-

southern Asia. It has been known since antiquity and is prominently featured in plenty of ancient stories and mythology. The ancient Greeks loved this plant, and grew it commonly as an ornamental. Of course, they were also interested in its juice, as were the Romans, somewhat later.

This is a plant that is easy to grow in the warmer parts of the United States. The shrubs, which are sometimes a bit spiny, feature shiny, dark green leaves, sharppointed at the tips. When the plants are firmly established in the garden, they may produce their marvelous fruits all summer long. This species especially appreciates long, hot summers, and it PHOTO PROVIDED likes it dry.

You may not recognize the This blossom will soon produce a fleshy fruit about the size of a baseflower at all, for it’s really the ball. Its juice is used to make grenadine. fruit for which this plant is known. Ripe fruits will be cery stores. And, of course, cacy. It’s a bit of a chore to topped with the remnants of there is sweet, syrupy grenachew off the delicious, outer the fleshy calyx, and this redine, which is derived from juicy layer, but some connoissembles a crown. These fruits the juice. seurs just chew up the whole are quite decorative, and for Our Mystery Plant is a thing, seed and all. Otherwise, shrub or small tree, native to those who are reluctant to eat you can sometimes find its the seeds, the fruits look great the Mediterranean and juice bottled in specialty gro-

Signs of the times at museum

piled into a bowl, sometimes featured at Thanksgiving. The French word for one of these fruits is “grenade,” and sure enough, this botanical structure has thus provided inspiration for the use of the word that now gives us the explosive hand grenade. A big, ripe, fruit, if dropped on the floor, will sometimes burst into a number of pieces, scattering its seeds. The seeds are thus the shrapnel inside. The fruit itself resembles a swollen, red apple, and when filled with its ripe seeds, allows for the plant’s perfectly good French common name, pommegranate, which, of course, means “seedy apple.”

Answer: Pomegranate, Punica granatum John Nelson is the curator of the A.C. Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia SC 29208. As a public service, the Herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium. org or call (803) 777-8196, or email nelson@sc.edu.

Sumter Celebrates Dance downtown

PHOTO PROVIDED

Theo Lane, the Sumter County Duke Energy Foundation representative, presents a check for $9,000, a grant from the foundation to the Sumter County Museum. Museum director Annie Rivers, accepting the check, said the fund will be used “toward new interpretive signs in the Carolina Backcountry Homestead.” The signs will picture costumed interpreters and will provide information on the area for selfguided tours. They are expected to be in place by August.

PHOTO PROVIDED

Participants in the 2013 National Dance Day learn the Dizzy Feet Foundation’s choreography to Bruno Mars’ “Treasure” at the Downtown Sumter Market. This year’s event will take place at 9 a.m.

Saturday at the green space across from the Sumter Opera House on Main Street. The public is encouraged to come out and learn the dance. See www.dizzyfeetfoundation.org to get a head start.