Blog

Barbra Streisand, the One Pot Pledge and Me

Kenneth Hill | 26.05.10

I don't talk to my plants. No, sir. I'm not a crazy person.

I don't sing to them either, not when I have Barbra Streisand to do it for me - with proven results.

In the 1970 Vincente Minnelli film On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, Ms. Streisand gives a marvelous performance as Daisy Gamble, a nice woman living in New York, engaged to a guy so boring he could make weeds wilt.

Among her gifts, aside from channeling her past lives during psychotherapy, are two sorta cool "superpowers:" She hears phones ring before they ring, and she sings to make plants grow --and I mean grow REALLY FAST - with lyrics like:

"Hey buds below
Up is where to grow
Up with which below can't compare with.
Hurry, it's lovely up here…"

The supersonic plant growing is done to marvelous effect in the film thanks to the talents of John Nash Ott Jr., a time-lapse specialist who pioneered the medium working for Disney and others as early as the 1950s. Ott was also a horticulturist.

The scene below is a fantastic ride through Daisy Gamble's ability to get things to grow, something I'm thinking a lot about at the moment as I watch my little pot of basil inching, well, quarter-inching, it's way to become something I can harvest.

Oh Ms. Streisand, how my One Pot Pledge could use you now!