to have and have not

As baby boomers, we grew up in a time when television was still in it's infancy.  We didn't have oodles of channels.  We had a dial that had only thirteen channels and many had no stations broadcasting from the other end. Weekdays we'd watch the B movies rebroadcast on Tom York's 'Dialing for Dollars'. Friday night and Saturday night was when we'd watch those those A list film classics that our parents had gone to see at the cinemas of their youth.

Bogart was dead before I was born, yet I was introduced to his work via the small screen from our old black and white zenith.  There were many actors and actresses from the silver screen that I first met on our family's little screen.  I became a fan of Clark Gable, John Garfield, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Maureen O'Hara, John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Ingrid Bergman ~ there are just too many to mention them all.  My generation was connected to all those old movies and all of those stars of preceding generations.

We are now experiencing the final curtain call, the last of that golden era taking leave of us.  I know of only a few of those old film greats still among the living.   Lauren Bacall is among the very last.  We lost Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney this year.  We no longer have them among us, but we will continue to have a part of them captured on celluloid.