[In 1954, in perhaps her kookiest (but nevertheless charming) role, Powell played a member of a family of weightlifting vegetarians who becomes involved in a somewhat star-crossed romance with a straitlaced politician (Edmund Purdom) in “Athena.”]
In bed, this morning, I turned to TCM, to find ATHENA, perhaps the silliest of Hollywood Musicals, playing.....It's about an Astrology-believing family of Vegetarian singing sisters bearing the names of Mythical Greek Goddesses, who live with their star-gazing New-Age Grandmother and hang with 'gayish' hyper-masculized body-builders....{one, is Steve Reeves (Hercules).} Jane Powell becomes involved with a man from a family of 'Normal' meat eating Businessmen in a Parody of the disparity of Lifestyles between money-obsessed carnivores who conflict with New Age devotees of vegetable-eating, flower-loving siblings who intrude into the 'Normal' habits of 1950's 'men-in-suits', who espouse smoking cigarettes, drinking, and flesh-eating as the 'normal'/sensible way of Life.......Today, this crew of ginger-leaf eaters would be 'on trend', as mung bean noodles, baked tofu cakes and rice bowls become the Forward Fashion.........
