A Musical

It's before 7:00 on a Sunday morning, and a musical is on TCM.

Some "western" where everyone is wearing bright clean well-fitting clothes. No one is scruffy. A Feisty Woman plunks away at a piano in a saloon until she falls asleep gracefully draped over it. Then she wakes up later, and she can PLAY!! Her plunking has purpose now, and the saloon fills with men. Maybe this is meant to represent the elapse of weeks and there was some signal or trope of the passage of that time that someone watching this movie when it came out in the 1950s would recognize that I don't.

Then she breaks into song, and all the cowboys dance with her. Then a few whores walk in, older, zaftig, scrubbed and covered in bright clothes and feather, each with a big round black "beauty mark" painted on her matronly face.

Is this the shit my parents were raised on? Yes.

"And if you asked me to wait for a lifetime / I'll gladly wait for a lifetime, or two / just to get a look at youuuuuuu!!"

This has NOTHING to do with reality. A handsome virile young man, singing this while he is building a house. He has no idea that he will age, days will go by, empty, he will find odd things appearing on his softening body, he will weaken. And this bright hopeful day will pass so quickly...

(He does get her immediately, though; the house he is building is for he and her, and she accepts).