The Madeline Kahn Memorial Porch

Friends who have been following the rebirth of our back porch (which I have dubbed Deck 2.0) may not all know another interesting fact about our home: we purchased it from the estate of Madeline Kahn.

Yep, that Madeline Kahn. The famed actress bought the home for her mother in the late 1970s. Paula Kahn lived in what is now our house and taught drama and music on what remains of a small stage in the basement until she moved to an assisted facility.

As a small tribute to a fine comedienne, I will present some favorite clips. And I may as well start at the beginning, with this 1968 Academy Award nominated short film.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3803584387889303730

From Wikipedia:

The Dove (De Düva) is a 1968 Academy Award-nominated short film that humorously parodies the films of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. The film borrows heavily from the plot lines of some of Bergman’s most famous films made before 1968. There is a journey by car back to the location of childhood memories as in Wild Strawberries. The main characters meet with the shrouded figure of Death as in The Seventh Seal. The film was directed by George Coe and Anthony Lover. Madeline Kahn made her first film appearance, in a supporting role.[1] The dialogue and voice-over narration are spoken mostly in a heavily accented fictional language, which is mostly English made to sound like Swedish, with many of the nouns ending in “ska”. There are also a smattering of Yiddish words.[2] The subtitles, which often do not literally match the dialogue, add to the humor.

The film was often shown in repertory film houses as a short feature when Bergman films were on the bill. Audiences frequently did not realize that the short was a comedy until individuals started laughing when they began to understand the fake Swedish.

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