aprilhenry —
aprilhenry ( aprilhenry) wrote,
aprilhenry
My new relatives: Seamus Dever and Leslie Feist
Okay, so I am getting ready for a blog tour, and one of the people asks me about who I think of when I think of the word glamorous. It's my Aunt Jeanne Arnold, who was an actress on Broadway, TV, and occasionally movies. She worked with Katherine Hepburn in the musical Coco, and we got to go backstage and meet Ms. Hepburn. (Who did not really want to meet three yokels from Medford OR, including one who was wearing kneesocks - me. We were given the piece of paper she had pretended to write on during a scene. Aunt Jeanne dressed in silk blouses and Christian Dior belts (I still have one that must date back to the 60s). She was on the Guiding Light for four years, until her character died in a car accident. She did commercials where she weighed paper towels, ate tic tacs, and for some reason, if memory serves, sang opera while wearing a Playtex bra in a phone booth.
And since she was born in 1921, I thought no one probably remembered her. But Google revealed that actor Seamus Dever claimed her as his cousin. It turns out that her second marriage was to Seamus's second cousin (once or twice removed, I would guess, given that he was born in 1976). But that's all just too confusing, so I say he is now my cousin, too! He is currently appearing in the new show, Castle, about a mystery writer who teams up with a cop.
Seamus says Jeanne encouraged him in his acting, sent him books and made recommendations about schools, but died before he did anything professionally. I'm just happy that a woman who meant a lot to me went on to mean a lot to someone else. She never had any kids, so it's up to us to remember.
And not only that, but Seamus also is some kind of cousin with Feist (AKA Leslie Feist), the Canadian singer who has such a catchy tune used in a Mac commercial. And I say, if he is related to Feist, then so am I!
Haven't I seen you someplace before? Dueling covers with torn paper
Haven't I seen you someplace before? Dueling covers of swirly ships
Haven't I seen you someplace before? Dueling covers show that girls in red coats always leave