Gwendolyn Darling

My Gwendolyn is, of course, the grown up Wendy from Peter Pan. (Actually, I don't think Wendy was short for anything in the original. In fact, as it happens, I don't think the name 'Wendy' existed before that. Some people say it comes from 'fwendy' - yuck, huh?)

 But the whole point about Wendy is that she grows up. Here is Maggie Smith as Wendy in Spielberg's Hook. I thought the movie was awful on many levels but not while she was in it. For the first half hour or so it was magic.


In Peter Pan Wendy can come across as insipid. There only to scream and be rescued. But that is not how I see her.

Traditionally (but not originally, the same actor plays both her rather ineffectual father and also the villainously scary Captain Hook who she meets in Neverland. In my story Gwendolyn's father is described as both a merchant and a pirate. I see him as having picked up the tastier commercial pieces of the East India Company after it was dissolved.

My personal favourite Captain Hook - Danny Kaye

And a very authentic looking one -  Jeremy Isaacs.  I can't leave out Peter Pan himself - or HERself as the case most often is.  The original was Nina Boucicault - I sould love to have seen her. The Pan I actually did see as a child was Julia Lockwood daughter of Margaret perhaps the most famous of the Scala Pans.

















Another view of Wendy/ I don't know whose. Still not quite my idea of Gwendolyn.

And the Wendy from a recent film - again not quite my Gwendolyn.






Meanwhile Wendy's rivals are relevant to my story. Here they are:

Tiger Lily - what more can a boy want in a playmate than a Red Indian princess. Might Wendy not feel a little drab by comparison?










Or Inkerbell, clearly a magical companion.








Probably it is even worse when Tinkerbell is played by Julia Roberts. So Wendy is assigned the mother role. It is she that has to grow up. I sometimes wonder how well writers like JM Barrie really understand the psychology of what they write.

In Finding Neverland, Kate Winslett is Wendy and mother. She is well on the way to being my Gwendolyn in looks if bot in adventure. I could use a younger version. And so - as if by magic - what about Kate Winslett in Titanic?

TA DAH!!!!! Well I think Gwendolyn looks like that.

But given as how she is my 'action woman', I want to add a bit of Sharon Stone - thus











Now we are getting somewhere. But enough of Gwendolyn for a while. The next post will get on with the story.