Go Fiji Go!
It would be Fiji's second Oscar, although no one remembers the name of the woman who won our first.
It's a strange story, so I'm putting it out there hoping someone will say "Oh, that's so-and-so!" because it's something that should be known. In fact, should be widely known and boasted about at every single opportunity! The lady deserves that!
What happened was that, when I was about 11 years old (if we want to put a date on this, it was while they were putting in the new Record Bar on the Narsey's side of the building, and you had to go through the scaffolding to get to the toilets) I went into the loo at Morris Hedstrom's department store, in downtown Suva, and found a middle-aged Fijian woman lying on the lounge in there, draped dramatically the full length, and bawling her eyes out. Naturally, I asked her what was wrong and, almost prostrate with grief and not really able to talk, she pulled Uncle Oscar himself out of her handbag and handed him to me!
Yup, I have actually held a real live Oscar in my very own hands.
As I've said many times, I've had a lifetime of totally unexpected 'from left-field' events, but this still ranks high among them. And if you want to know what it feels like to carry one, Oscar's heavier than he looks, feels like quality and has a really nice aerodynamic heft to it that makes you long to swing it in the air. Two of them and you'd have really good equipment for building upper body strength.
Anyway, I was awestruck and, because she was so upset, didn't immediately practice my very own Oscar acceptance speech in the mirror, although I really, really wanted to. "How did you get this?" I asked her instead. "Best Editing!" she told me.
She told me the story: "I left Fiji 22 years ago, determined not to return until I was a great success. But nothing I did seemed big enough, so I waited and waited ... but I left it too late. Last week, I won this Oscar so I came home to boast, but everyone I wanted to show off to, they've all gone. And no one else seems to know what a great honour it is to win one of these, so they don't care."
"I care!" I said to her. "In fact, I'm genuinely and deeply impressed!"
"But you don't count." she said. "I don't have any beef with you." and then she looked at me hard. "Who are your parents?" she asked.
I told her. "Oh my god, I knew Dr Murphy. He wasn't married. Who did he end up marrying?"
I told her that too. "I know your mother. My goodness, she was a lecturer when I was doing my nursing training. Gosh, she married Dr Murphy! That is news to me. Well, I have no beef with her, but will you please tell her I won an Oscar."
She said she won under her married name, but my mother would know her by her maiden name and since it was one of those impossibly long Fijian surnames I knew I'd never remember it so I wrote it down on my wrist ...
... and I recall writing something like like Buladrokodrokodrove or Bainimanukunuku or something else long and impossible starting with a B. Yup, I'd almost be prepared to swear I wrote a capital B at the start ...
... and when I got home I asked my mother if she remembered one of her old nurses called Something Bainima-so-and-so or whatever it was, but, alas, she said she didn't. Nevertheless, I passed on the message and "That's nice, dear!" my mother said but with the greatest indifference imaginable.
So David's Oscar is really Fiji's second, but who on earth was the lady who won the first? Who would she have been and how can we possibly find out? Merlyne?
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6 comments:
The only women who won editing Oscars in the 70s and 80s were Marcia Lucas (nee Griffin), Claire Simpson, Francois Bonot, Verna Field, Lisa Frutchman, and Thelma Schoonmaker. It doesn't appear to be any of them.
Since mum and dad married in 1954, and if she left before then, and if you add 22 years onto that, this makes this Oscar one from around 1976.
The Guam Games were in 1975, so it's after then.
I'm trying to squeeze more out of this memory in order to narrow down the date, and I'm now recalling I was in the MH's bathroom because I've broken my shoe, which was the same pair I was wearing in a photo of the Fiji Swimming Team going off to The South Pacific Games, in either Tahiti (1971) or Guam (1975)? Unless I was able to fix it, I'm now guessing it was before that date.
Oh bummer! Just realised this could easily have been The Commonwealth Games in Christchurch that the Swimming Team was leaving for, and that was in 1974 so that's screwed up my sureness again. Let me check with other swimmers and see if they can recall which is was.
Sandra says the Games in question were in Tahiti in 1971, and that's for definite because it's the only time she ever represented Fiji internationally.
So this entire event has to be taken back three, four, or five years. 1971 or 1972.
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