Midge

I saw Vertigo in college, either at the student union theater or at one of two local art-houses. This is not a review of the movie, but rather about a discovery:  The cute sidekick of Jimmy Stuart's character, Midge, was cute and familiar.  It came to me by the end of the movie:  She was Miss Ellie Ewing from Dallas, which was a very popular prime-time drama, that had first aired when I was in high school.

I get an odd feeling when I come across an actress, or really anyone, out of order:  I was used to older woman/matriarch Barbara Bel Geddes of Dallas, not Bel Geddes as gamine in Vertigo.  I get a similar feeling when I look back on my teen years and think about the neighbor moms.  At the time, they seemed old and sexless, now that I'm 20 years older than they were at the time, they seem strangely hot.

I can only imagine the novel someone like Nabokov would write -- if an elderly man got his wish to go back in time to his younger self:  With all his memories, taste and sensibilities intact, suddenly this version of his teen-self becomes uninterested in the futile quest to nail the daughters of the neighbor women* and set's his sights on the local bored housewives, to hilarious effect.

*Since it's Nabokov, obviously the character would nail both the moms and their daughters.