Irma Johnson

Sue Ane Langdon, where are you now? The almond shaped eyes, somewhat like those of a Chinese woman, the turned up nose, the cheery intensity that complemented her squeaky voice of feminine innocence and yet of seductive ways: irresistible to the quick and maybe even the dead of the opposite sex. These were some of the assets of the actress Miss Langdon. When the sexual revolution raised its banner happily in 1967 with the film "A Guide For The Married Man", who led the charge with her dimpled smile and swaying derriere as Walter Matthau's character began his libidinal meltdown in the brave new world of infidelity as comedy?  It was Sue, of course. When several years earlier Andy Griffith was casting about for a steady girlfriend for his character, the widower  Sheriff Andy Taylor in his self-titled iconic show, Sue Ane was the perfect choice, or so it seemed for several episodes. Sincere, friendly, blonde, young, good and kind: she was of a genre of ideal American womanhood that nestled in that precarious ledge between prudery and a straining-at-the-leash lasciviousness that a changing America recognized as the complicated new locale for those whom the male populace riveted its attention on and craved.  A good woman did not leap into bed in 1962 and it wasn't even implied as part of a character's life. Still, her vivacity trumped any guarantee of virginity. The term, a "family show" was almost a redundant phrase back then and Griffith's show especially did not countenance any sort of promiscuity. Still, beauty was not to be subverted like orthodox Muslim women in their disguises/tents or the extreme sartorial bashfulness of our grandmothers of the Victorian age.

When did dancing the horizontal rhumba become a blase event or at least a common one in the lives of unmarried men and women, as characters on television increasingly divulge? Filmgoers have long since become accustomed to the sophisticated and daring levels of scenes expressing violence and less and less implicit stories of sex. But now the last citadel of modesty, television is being besieged to drop any pretense of it.  Nudity in fact, common on European channels for a long time, is coming to America's airwaves and not just on cable t.v.

But what was Sue Ane's true gift to us?  She was an artist who would have thrived in any age, but her transitional role of Irma Johnson was a kind of final hand holding by Langdon's character for the shy and those a bit frightened about cheating as a lighthearted adventure. How could it be so bad when Irma's earnestness and friendly, guileless ways signaled neither danger nor damnation? If it felt good, so the mantra of the '60s assured us, it was good. Half a century later, a click of the computer mouse brings a near instantaneous roar of a lion of lust in the forms of any imaginable (or unimaginable) image of carnality, bestiality or in short, imagination-starving visions of deadliness: prideful displays offering no joy but mind altering and addicting excitement. Hefner and his disciples (four generations since the '54 "maiden"cover of "Playboy" with Marilyn Monroe gracing it)  still chase the dream of adolescent consequence-free fornication. Pornography stuffs many a pocketbook and we let it seep further and further into our mainstream culture with each passing decade. The match was struck long before Sue Ane's gyrations and to rail against adultery or promiscuity is perhaps akin to scolding hungry men who rob a bakery. Still, self-control is invariably left with no champions in mass culture and advertising. Is the legalization of abortion unrelated to these sea changes in mores in the period described? I think not. Demanding certain things, certain outcomes, like the satiety of all our animal needs when and where we desire and on our terms, well this may appeal irresistibly to the normal human inclination to control one's environment, but it does nothing to address another human longing: to nurture and to preserve the race. Marriage, commitment and children: these entities have been devalued as the afore mentioned ones have been raised up and embraced by an increasingly troubled and restless nation. Few consciously shout out militantly for libertine causes, but the constant cynical and glib denigration of traditional values and religious convictions in the media is a huge concern for this blogger. A renaissance of decency awaits combative strides by younger and stronger cultural warriors for whom these verities are like wondrous discoveries that their natural idealism can empower. I'll cheer them on.