Endword and Upward

Page 1 2 3 Dedications traditionally start a book, but ours is unique, and must come at the end.

So here it is: This book is dedicated to the one we love: Greer Garson (1908-1996).

She still abides among us, however, like a benign apparition.

Floating above the earth and below the clouds, costumed in sensible riding gear and tribal jewelry by day and flowing designer chiffon and gemstones by night, hair of pink and orange and skin of peaches and Irish cream - surely, the spirit of Mrs. E.E. "Buddy" Fogelson of the Forked Lightning Ranch in Pecos continues to hover over the spirit of filmmaking in New Mexico.

With seven Academy Award nominations for Best Actress - for Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Madame Curie (1943), Mrs. Parkington (1944), The Valley of Decision (1945) and Sunrise at Campobello (1960), plus, of course, her win for Mrs. Miniver (1942) - Garson, the thespian, was highly revered among her peers and obviously frequently feted by Oscar.

Garson, the woman, contrariwise, was also known around the MGM lot for the headstrong toss of her salmon curls as she jigged out the studio gate, headed for the airport as usual.

Yet ever the professional, she'd shift everybody on and off the set into fifth gear, tying up every single solitary loose end of her personal, public and charitable lives into tidy lace knots, as she raced the clock to catch her plane.

It was thus that Garson first traveled to New Mexico in the 1940s on vacation.

Forty years later, in my 1981 interview with her for The Santa Fe New Mexican, she recalled staying at La Fonda after World War II, and then again in the early 1950s at both La Posada and Bishop's Lodge.

Remaining extraordinarily busy through the years, she continued to juggle acting and public appearances with her business duties and eleemosynary activities, but she also kept managing to return to New Mexico. (As we all do.)

Refuting native lore, however, Greer Garson was never able to shoot a movie here, although she meant to. For decades it was believed that her 1955 Western Strange Lady in Town had been shot locally, largely because it's about a lady doctor from Boston who disrupts 1880 Santa Fe's conservative attitude.

This early feminist saga, however, used Arizona locations for its exteriors. "How I tried to talk (Warner Bros.) into shooting in New Mexico!" she told me. "But they wouldn't. They just wouldn't."

Eventually, she and her husband of 38 years, known to all as the "Colonel" (1900-1987), bought land on which to raise the Santa Gertrudis strain of the high-protein, low-fat cattle/buffalo hybrid. The couple soon became high-profile, low-pretense celebrities around northern New Mexico.