We lost a great actress today. Julie Harris, star of the incredible Robert Wise film "The Haunting" died at age 87. To this day, still my favorite horror film, made all the more wonderful to me knowing that Julie and I shared the same hometown of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Her family home was only a mile or so from mine.
"Hill House" used in the film is now the Ettington Park Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon. You can book a visit there and do your own ghost hunting if you wish. It's considered the most haunted hotel in all of the UK.
Link: Hauntings at the Ettington Park Hotel
"No one lives any nearer than town.
No one will come any nearer than that.
In the night.
In the dark."
- Mrs Dudley, "The Haunting"
Trivia: Julie Harris' Childhood Home in
Grosse Pointe looking a bit like Hill House:
9,600 square feet of home on Lake St Clair
Even more trivia: An RAF jet crashed into houses about 2000 feet away from their home in October 1958
"No one lives any nearer than town.
No one will come any nearer than that.
In the night.
In the dark."
- Mrs Dudley, "The Haunting"
Trivia: Julie Harris' Childhood Home in
Grosse Pointe looking a bit like Hill House:
Even more trivia: An RAF jet crashed into houses about 2000 feet away from their home in October 1958
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4 comments:
Just ambled in from Ivory Pumpkin, and am sad to hear of Miss Harris' death. She was one of a kind, an old soul even as young Abra in East of Eden. (And though I called another, Abra came).
One of the great surprises of my life is when my overalls-and-tractors pre-teen son asked for tickets to see Belle of Amherst on his birthday. We'd seen it on PBS (when we had only three channels to watch), and it was odd to me that this little farm boy would choose to go to a play in faraway Memphis. And when she shouted, "Horse piss, Tutor Crowell!" I thought my whole brood were going to collapse into the aisle laughing.
We went so far as to make a very-fractional recipe of the black-cake one Christmas.
We so loved her, and enjoyed her work and her personality. He'll be sad to hear of her passing, as well.
rachel
Thank you Rachel, that was a great story, a very beautiful memory!
I did not know. Of course I loved Hill House but the movie I remember first seeing her in was the tragic The Hiding Place.
Oh, and I also had a cassette audio book version of Shelly's Frankenstein read by her. For many years it was a Halloween holiday must.
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