I first met Anne when we were kids. I was in college at Fordham. I was nineteen, beginning my senior
I first met Anne when we were kids. I was in college at Fordham. I was nineteen, beginning my senior year, and I was asked to emcee a football rally. It didn’t bother me that I had no interest in football and that I couldn’t even pronounce the coach’s Polish name. I liked the idea of getting a crowd to its feet, roaring with energy. I didn’t even mind that I got a laugh when I mangled the coach’s name. All I knew then was the fun of their cheers. But when I introduced Anne and she came onstage, I heard what cheers could sound like. She was four years older than me and had just come back to the Bronx after a couple of years in Hollywood learning the trade of the starlet. Going through the motions of the Good Looking Girl from New York probably irritated her, because she was a serious actress, but someone in the senior class had asked her to help out at the rally, and she gamely played the part. She came onstage with a smile as big as the Bronx itself and an armful of roses that she tossed, one by one, into the audience. With each rose that she tossed, the screams of joy that swelled from the testosterone soaked crowd in the gymnasium was deafening. Fordham was an all male school at the time, and you saw women only on the way there in the subway. Women were an underground interest, and Anne made the ground shake like an A train. - Alan Alda -- source link
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