Jan 20, 2013 — By Renee Boensch

When my friend Tom Huckabee and I were seventeen, we pooled our money and bought a new Kodak Ektasound Super-8 system. One of the first films we made was a black and white pseudodocumentary called Victory at Auschwitz, which we shot in the old train yard off West Vickery in…

Sep 30, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

MY MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER, Grandma Page, was up at three-thirty or four o’clock in the morning to bake and churn and get ready for the cotton fields on our family farm in Bloomington. At night, after all the cooking and sewing, there was energy left for her reading. “Come, Danny, I’ll…

Aug 31, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

I enrolled at the University of Texas in 1950 during a post-war period that produced many talented individuals. Harvey Schmidt, Tom Jones, Liz Smith, Robert Benton, Pat Hingle, Word Baker, Kathryn Grant (later Mrs. Bing Crosby), and I all graduated with degrees in drama. We did lots of dance concerts…

Jul 31, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

One day when I was in the seventh grade at Christ the King School in Dallas, the Ursuline nun who taught our class dragged in a phonograph with 78 rpm records from the convent. She put on an album of Puccini love duets sung by Licia Albanese and James Milton.

Jun 30, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

I arrived in El Paso as a small child and grew up within sight of the Rio Grande. Ju�rez was part of our lives, and it was comfortable and easy to cross the border. My friends and I were part of rat packs: We had jackets, and zip guns were…

May 31, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

When I got out of high school at three o’clock each day, I went to work giving away movie passes and hanging up posters in barbershops and drugstores for coming attractions at the Iris or the Texan or the Ritz theaters in downtown Houston. Unfortunately, when I graduated I didn’t…

Apr 30, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

I entered the University of Texas before World War II ended; I was fresh out of divorce court. I didn’t know a soul in Austin, and there were only very young men—prodigies—or very old men on campus. American guys were still at war! So I spent my time swinging between…

Mar 1, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

When I was a little girl, the thing that I most wanted to do was to be able to sing, but as fortune would have it, I can’t carry a tune. One year at River Oaks Elementary School, a humane decision was made by the principal that anyone who wanted…

Feb 1, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

The day John F. Kennedy was shot, I rushed down to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where I was the night police reporter, to help answer the phones on the city desk. A woman caller asked, “Is there anyone there who can take me to Dallas?” and I said, “Well, this…

Jan 1, 1997 — By Renee Boensch

I went to the University of Texas at Austin to play baseball. In high school I wanted to be a pro baseball player, and I never really thought about movies outside of taking dates to them and stuff like that. And when I tried to walk on to the UT…