Fifty Shades of Beverly Gray

After a weekend that’s been . . . uh . . .  dominated by Fifty Shades of Grey, I can’t resist submitting a Valentine to my many namesakes, the Beverly Grays of the world.

Beverly Gray is the moniker I was given at birth. To be honest, the surname Gray does not go very far back in the annals of my family. When my father was a young man, his parents legally simplified the name they’d brought with them from the Old Country. Though not a bad name,

it was longer and far more difficult to pronounce than the all-American “Gray.” (I doubt they realized how often it would be misspelled.)

When my mother married my father, she was delighted by the simplicity of her new last name. My given name, Beverly, honors some long-lost relatives, but I suspect it also reminded my parents of Southern California’s glamour locations: Beverly Hills, Beverly Glen, Beverly Boulevard. Just by happenstance, we ended up in a subdivision called Beverlywood. And one day, when I was still tiny, my parents were surprised to spot a young-adult novel titled Beverly Gray’s First Romance. It turns out there were 26 entries in the Beverly Gray Mystery series, published by Clair Blank between 1934 and 1955. Beverly was a beautiful (of course) red-headed reporter -- someone on the order of Nancy Drew, though slightly older -- who solved mysteries and tracked down  criminals all over the world. As a budding journalist myself, I enjoyed scouting out these volumes, which today are considered collectors’ items. It’s slightly embarrassing to me now that if you do a Google search on my name, most of the references are to my literary alter-ego.

But the Internet shows me there are living Beverly Grays too, along with a number of dead ones. (I’ve stumbled across several obits.) Some are writers, among them the Beverly Ann Gray who has written a number of scholarly books about present-day Africa, like The Nigerian Petroleum Industry, A Guide. I’ve also discovered, via Amazon, a Beverly C. Gray who keeps churning out volumes in the Black Knights of the Hudson series, and another Beverly Gray (definitely not me) who has published The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North.

The Beverly Gray who wrote and marketed sentimental verse seems to have disappeared from view. But I often see references to a Beverly Gray who’s respected as the coordinator of the Southern Region Ohio Underground Railroad Association, headquartered in Chillicothe, Ohio. I once got a friendly email from a Beverly Gray in Florida. Presumably she’s not the Beverly Gray who was arrested in that state on April 23, 2014. (I have a link to her mugshot.)  I’m pleased there’s a Dr. Beverly Gray who’s an obstetrician in Raleigh, North Carolina, but I don’t know how I feel about the Beverly Gray who’s married (according to Twitter) to an “Awesome Man of God.”  One Beverly Gray is a cello teacher in Scotland, while another is a prize-winning equestrienne in Utah. Facebook tells me that Beverly Grays go to church, like the Atlanta Center for Cosmetic Dentistry, groove to Willie Nelson, work for the IRS, and are students of the University of Life.

If you’re in show biz, it’s important to have a name that’s unique, which is one reason some actors shed their birth names. (Julianne Moore, for instance, was born Julie Smith, but discovered another professional actress had gotten there first.)  On the Internet Movie Database, I’m happy to be the only Beverly Gray. But there’s actually a crew guy named Gray Beverley. Go figure.

Pride and Prejudice, without Zombies or Peacock Feathers

In the era of Fifty Shades of Grey, the romantic tales of Jane Austen must seem awfully tame. Still, I’ve been on a Pride and Prejudice kick lately, and the advent of Valentine’s Day is the perfect moment to contemplate the innocent side of romance. The time is also ripe because I’m now preparing to lead a community discussion as part my local library’s annual Santa Monica Reads program. The book this year is Longbourn, Jo Baker’s 2013 retelling of Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of the Bennet family’s servants. Longbourn, which I’d personally categorize as educated chick lit, contains some of the upstairs/downstairs social tensions that have drawn many of us to Gosford Park, and more recently Downton Abbey. Longbourn is instructive, mildly steamy (especially when there’s laundry to be done), and presents some uplifting grand passion among the lower orders. But, truthfully, I’d prefer Pride and Prejudice any day.

Hollywood has always been fond of the romantic sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the spirited Elizabeth Bennet, who thinks the worst of him from the moment he arrives in her little village and sneers at the locals. I have a strong affection for the Golden Age version, directed by Robert Z. Leonard, in which Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson play the lovers, and Edmund Gwenn (best known for portraying Santa Claus in the original Miracle on 34^th Street) is Lizzy’s properly whimsical father.Yes, I must admit that Garson, though completely charming, is much too old to play Elizabeth. In 1940, when this film was released, she was 36, though Austen’s character admits in passing that she’s not yet one-and-twenty. But Olivier makes the perfect Darcy, and  Edna May Oliver is hilariously obnoxious as the stuffy Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whose outspoken disapproval of the match ironically ends up furthering it.

It took over sixty years for another big-screen version to surface. The Elizabeth of Joe Wright’s 2005 version was aptly played by the dewy yet spunky twenty-year-old Keira Knightley, with Matthew McFadyen as her Darcy. Who better than Judi Dench in the Lady Catherine role? Others involved included Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn as Lizzy’s mismatched parents. I was amused to discover that her angelic sister Jane was played in this version by Rosamund Pike, far removed from her Amy Dunne character in Gone Girl. And Carey Mulligan, in her first film appearance, was cast as one of the lesser Bennet sisters. Knightley earned herself an Oscar nomination for this film, which was also honored for its music, art direction, and costume design. But true fans of the novel are particularly fond of 1995’s serialized BBC television version, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.

The story of Pride and Prejudice is so well loved that it has also shown up in some multicultural versions. I refer you to Bride & Prejudice, an oddball adaptation from 2004 obviously intended to capitalize on the Bollywood craze. In Bride & Prejudice, Lizzy Bennet is transformed into Lalita Bakshi (played by the gorgeous Aishwarya Rai), one of five daughters in a modern-day Hindu family. Her Mr. Darcy is an American (Martin Henderson), cocky scion of a wealthy family, who shows up in her quaint Indian town with plans to build a big, bad hotel chain. The plot sticks fairly closely to Austen’s original, except that at one point the main characters are whisked away to L.A., where they sing and dance in inimitable Bollywood fashion in front of Disney Hall and other SoCal landmarks. I suspect that Jane Austen would have been puzzled, and then highly amused.

The public is cordially invited to all Santa Monica Reads events. Y’all come!