You are being pushed forth through a doorway, cigarette dangling from your mouth. Are you a queen with ladies in waiting or a mental patient held together by those who prop you up…? It is always the way the cigarette hangs from your lips in each movie that makes you look a little bit tough and compels me to keep watching you move. You hold it just so, smoking with no hands. You search your pockets and purse for something, always searching, walking as you smoke. How do you smoke with no hands? You never ash your cigarette. Finally, your assistant takes the lit cigarette from your mouth, pulls a drag himself, hands you a pint of whiskey. You down a swig, gracefully somehow, and enter stage left. Later in the film, you ask, “Am I beginning to look like Humphrey Bogart?” It is just that feeling I get as you enter with cigarette, barely speaking, taking that swig, emoting pathos, sensitivity and utter coolness as you walk. swagger or stumble? You are the first real tough lady I have seen in a long time, if ever, on a movie screen. So yeah, maybe you do look a little like Humphrey Bogart in that sense.
