Some Thoughts on the Death of Irene Cara, and Other Things
I have a friend who met a young woman at a party; they talked all night and, somehow, never saw each other again.
Some years later, he met a young woman, dated her for a while, and eventually married her. Sometime afterwards, he discovered that she was the same young woman from the long-ago party.
Photographic evidence existed.
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When I was a kid, I watched The Electric Company every day. Back when Irene Cara was in The Short Circus, the band of singing kids on that show, when I was in first or second grade, I got it in my head that my favorite band member was a classmate of mine. There was a girl in school who bore what I thought was a striking resemblance.
I didn’t know the names of the kids on the show, they were never introduced as individuals, just as The Short Circus. Morgan Freeman would generally introduce them, but I knew him as “Easy Reader.”
Still, of course, it made no sense at all, the kid was in school all day the way I was, sitting in Mrs. Hill or Mrs. Allen’s class, so when would she run off to star on The Electric Company? Also, if our classmate was a TV star, someone would have mentioned it.
But I wasn’t that logical. I was actually an amazingly stupid kid, even allowing for the fact that I was only seven or eight. So finally I asked her if she was on The Electric Company. She could have reacted politely, but she didn’t. She really thought that was a ridiculous and idiotic question, and it was.
She wasn’t Irene Cara, TV star. She was just some kid in class.
So that is my earliest Irene Cara memory.
When you watch The Electric Company all these years later, you might be struck by how talented the Short Circus was.
In the 1980s, I saw the movie Fame, and I bought the album, and I listened to that title track over and over again, that anthem of sincere, youthful optimism. She could really sing. Only years later did I discover that my favorite member of The Short Circus grew up to be my favorite Fame cast member.
Why wasn’t she in every other movie made during the 1980s? I can’t figure out these things. The world enjoyed Irene Cara not nearly enough when it had the chance, and now our chance is over.
It feels like the death of my childhood. Or the death of youth itself.
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The popular Weird-Western, historical-fantasy/science fiction podcast, The Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O’Hugh, starring Sal Rendino, returns for a full season, with eight new episodes!
Available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts
Back in the 1970s, I watched a show called The Practice, which starred Danny Thomas as a gruff but lovable old New York City general practitioner, a crank with a heart of gold and the demeanor of a Vaudeville comedian. It wasn’t really a show for a nine-year-old, but there you are. I was an old soul. That show cracked me up. Not very many other people, though, and it was soon cancelled.
Then in the 1980s, the movie Arthur came out, which starred Dudley Moore. I didn’t wonder why that guy was living in New York, why two upper class Americans would raise a kid in New York with a working-class English accent. No wonder the poor fellow drank. But it made me laugh the way few things had, since The Practice, maybe.
Only years later did I discover that the director of Arthur was the creator and principal writer of The Practice. His name was Steve Gordon, and he died youngish at the age of 44, of a writer’s-block-related heart attack. He made me laugh a lot before he went on his way. I didn’t know till much later that many of my childhood laughs were from the same source.
.
One more thing:
On Twitter, Georgiana Dogaru says, “Never give up on your dreams and they’re sure to come true.”
Sure to come true, as per Georgiana.
You have a 100% likelihood of success, if you just don’t give up.
I say, just dreaming your dreams and believing yourself isn’t enough. There’s stuff I cannot achieve, no matter how much I want it, no matter how much I don’t give up.
So this is the reason Georgiana has more than six thousand followers, and I don’t.
^^^
This column is by Steven S. Drachman. Steven is the author of a science fiction trilogy, The Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O’Hugh the Third, which is available in paperback from your local bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble; it is also available as a Kindle e-book.
