Mom was a huge fan of Classic Hollywood. The actors, directors, movies, all of it. If it was pre-1965, she could tell you everything about that film - cast, director, release year, Oscar wins, you name it. She taught me the love and appreciation of the Golden Era of film. It was her that motivated me to start acting in high school, and then later on in the mid-2000s. She had her first of many strokes in January 2009, and died Christmas Eve 2012. The last time I saw her was a couple of months prior. Her abilities overall had degrade significantly by that point, but she insisted she be able to watch one movie per day.
As a big fan of Turner Classic Movies, that was what her TV was always turned to. TCM was playing a series of 1920s films, and the one we were watching was the 1925 classic Soviet propaganda film Battleship Potemkin (it's actually a good movie, when you consider the context), and was a movie I'd never seen before. Mom had, though. She knew the plot. Being a silent movie, it was a fascinating watch. She was always a fan of war movies. Dad never understood that, as he was never really a movie guy..
On the night she passed, she was watching It's a Wonderful Life. That is one movie that was hard to watch for several years after that, knowing it was one of Mom's all-time favorites.
