Carmen Miranda (1909-1955) was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer and actress popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Miranda was a Broadway star and by some accounts the highest-earning woman in the United States. She achieved stardom in motion pictures, cast in musical roles. Her iconic visual identity is a fruit hat based on costumes she wore in The Gang's All Here. She was highly criticized in Brazil because she was considered too Americanized, and didn’t give a true portrayal of what life was really like in Brazil. She suffered a mild heart attack while filming a segment of the Jimmy Durante show. She finished taping and died later on that evening after another attack. She was but 46 years old.
Now why on earth would I want to to meet her at a party? What does a person like myself have in common with a lady such as this? It’s very simple to explain this. I figure that if a woman wears a heavy fruit basket on her head all the time I can assume she has a strong neck and back. After 35 years of delivering mail, the first 27 on the beat, my neck is shot. It stiffens up, cracks if I turn sharply, and sometimes I get really sharp pains. I feel sorry for anyone sitting behind me at church or in the theatre because I am continually swivelling my neck from here to there to get comfortable. So Carmen must have some tips for someone with a sore neck. I won’t even mention my aching and weak back. That will be for our second get together.
