What do Dame May Whitty and Marie Dressler have in common? To credit a veteran Boston University researcher, these two movie stars of past decades stand out because they played roles that showed older women as different from the prevailing Hollywood stereotypes.

Starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller “The Lady Vanishes,” Dame May Whitty fools viewers and her enemies alike. As researcher Elizabeth Markson says, “She first looks like the innocuous music teacher but then turns out to be the arch-spy who gets away from people who are at least symbolically the Nazis.”

Marie Dressler, acting in the 1930 film “Min and Bill” with Wallace Beery, became a star despite weighing over 200 pounds and looking homely.

These are just two of the almost 250 films chosen at random from more than 3,000 made during the period 1929 to 1995 that Professor Markson has reviewed. She focused on those actors and actresses who were at least 60 years old who had been nominated for Oscars at least once in their careers.

What surprised this researcher was “the persistence of gender stereotyping through so many decades of filmmaking.” Referring to her previous study, Markson says, “I had originally predicted that we would see a lot of changes.” Unfortunately, in her view, these changes have simply not happened.

As she views the films, Markson finds that “older women become either invisible or we project our fears of aging on women rather than men whom we continue to portray as instrumental and powerful to the very end.”

Women’s place in American society has surely changed in recent decades but not, it seems, Hollywood’s vision of that place. “We still see older women as spinsters, wives, mothers,” Markson points out. She observes that this is not the case with men: “How few older men in films are married or you can’t tell if they are married or not!”

Her review of films also reveals that “family relationships are totally neglected.” This strikes her as particularly strange because research has shown that such relationships become more important as we get older, especially for men.

Markson does not expect the situation to become better any time soon. She admits that Hollywood reflects American attitude, so that you might think that change would happen. But, as she points out, Hollywood shapes our attitudes as well; the movie industry seems to have a vested interest in presenting women as young, thin, and conventionally beautiful.

This process starts with the scripts. Hollywood studios are reported to have a “gray list,” whereby screenwriters over age 35 do not get hired. “Overage”actresses such as Meryl Streep and Faye Dunaway find themselves offered few roles.

Markson does not have much confidence that women themselves will become aware of the situation and pressure Hollywood for change. She tells of showing films to women graduate students and having them not notice the stereotypes until their attention is drawn toward them. And there seems to be no group of older people that currently scans Hollywood films critically, the way the Gray Panthers once did for American advertising.

If, as Markson judges, “some of the best portrayals of women characters were in the 1930s,” that is getting to be long ago. You might expect by now  that American films might have caught up with the creativity shown by many older women.

Markson believes that the stakes are higher than one might think. That’s because demographic changes in the future will multiply the number of older women in American society. If films do not present us with better images of this part of the population, the temptation will become greater to regard old women as nuisances rather than people deserving of dignified care when needed.

But older women as they really are, in their great variety and magnificent diversity, are appropriate subjects for the creative arts such as film. To ignore who they are and what they are doing is to miss much of the American story.

All of us ordinary Americans know family members, friends, and neighbors who are doing interesting projects in retirement. Many of them are finding their later years, in the words of another Hollywood classic, “the best years of our lives.” And yet we see precious little evidence of this in the movie theaters.

Outside the scope of the research project discussed here, a new independent film titled “Innocence” does give a convincing portrayal of people in later life who fall in love and carry on a passionate illicit affair. They had known one another when young and, only after 50 years’ absence, rediscover each other.

And a 1990 Canadian film, “Strangers in Good Company,” portrays a group of older women much the way real people are, skillfully revealing their inner life,

Maybe it’s time for a new burst of cinematic creativity in Hollywood that will show older women and men, not in stereotype, but as we have become in reality.

Richard Griffin

You know yourself well on the way to becoming old when you discover that a new American president was born after you were. That’s what happened to me when Bill Clinton was inaugurated in 1993. We celebrate birthdays on the same date, August 19th, but he was born in 1946, exactly eighteen years after me.

Seeing Bill Clinton last week and hearing him deliver a speech at Harvard before a wildly enthusiastic crowd of students and some of their elders, I felt a strong sense once more of his talents. He is indeed the man who brought rare intellect and vision to the White House and, at times, gave promise of a greatness one can still see in him now.

Unfortunately, as all the world knows, this promise was dashed by at least one action of monumental stupidity that brought shame to him and harm to the whole nation. Even though, at this remove in time, the media and congressional responses to this scandal seem like a foolish waste of time and national resources, Clinton’s actions damaged the common good, lost opportunities for moving important projects ahead, and possibly blew the next election to the Republican Party.

This still-young retiree looked to be on the upswing last week. He was clearly energized by the cheers of the crowd which he did not need his hearing aid to hear. Charming, ebullient, and articulate, he spoke like an elder statesman. Only once, incidentally, did he mention his successor and that in a respectful manner.

Choosing as his theme “The Road Ahead for America,” the former president presented a forecast of the future and an agenda for his fellow citizens, especially the young.

“We are engaged in a struggle for the soul of this new century,” Bill Clinton announced. In this struggle he predicted that terrorism would be overcome. It has a long history, he said, but one marked by defeat rather than victory. “It cannot win unless we become unwitting accomplices,” he stated.

He foresees us getting better at defending ourselves against attack. Two specific improvements we need to make promptly: strengthening our capacity to chase money and improving our “woefully inadequate” computer tracking capacity.

As always happens when new offensive weapons first appear, they score initial successes but soon defenses catch up with them. In a minimalist prediction that in itself might provide precious little cheer, Clinton looked into the future and said that the twenty-first century will not claim as many victims as the last one.

The former president also outlined the positive and negative forces at work in the world today. Among the positives he listed the global economy, the technology revolution, the advance of the biological sciences, and the explosion of democracy around the world. In the negative column, he mentioned global warming and the worldwide health crisis, especially the spread of AIDS.

As what he called the central irony of our time Clinton identified “the fear, hatred, and demonization of those different from us.” For us to deal successfully with this problem we will have to make the interdependence of the world bring us good not evil.

The problems of the Muslim world drew his special attention. It would help those within that world who are fighting for greater openness if we make them better informed about America. “We’ve got to get our story out,” he urged. Few Muslims realize how the United States has gone to the aid of Muslim populations in Kosovo and elsewhere. Most people do not know how many Muslims died in the World Trade Center attacks.

For Clinton, the heart of the matter is this choice: “Which do you believe is more important, our interesting differences or our common humanity?”

He ended his speech on an ascending pitch: “We can never claim for ourselves what we deny for others. We live in a world without walls. We must defeat those who want to tear it down. We must make the world a home for all its children.”

This idealism commends Bill Clinton as a leader who in retirement has the opportunity to continue leading. It will obviously be in a different mode from his White House days but, as Jimmy Carter has shown, he will have advantages not available to him when president.

Now he can be free of the constraints imposed by politics, at least in large part. He can also feel less bound by the need to compromise the idealism that he seemed often to sacrifice in his days on Pennsylvania Avenue. At this time of crisis he can speak out, when appropriate, in defense of individual rights that now seem in peril.

As one of the nation’s youngest former presidents in history, Clinton can avail himself of his good health and youthful vigor to continue serving the nation as inspirer and even, despite the irony, as moral guide.

Richard Griffin

Were you eighty years old in 1850, you could not have looked back into history and heard the voice of Thomas Jefferson. Had you been age ninety in 1780, you could never have seen the gestures of the Puritan divine Cotton Mather as he preached a fiery sermon in a Boston church.

One of the many ways in which being old is different now from what it was until the twentieth century is how historical figures of our lifetime can be made present to us.

This is one of my reflections this week on hearing the voice of Lyndon Johnson recorded on secret tapes that he kept during his years in the White House. The contents of these tapes also stirred in me a range of emotions ranging from  admiration to indignation, with many stops in between.

Texts from the tapes have been newly published by presidential historian Michael Beschloss in a book entitled “Reaching for Glory.” Appearing two weeks ago on the National Public Radio program “Fresh Air” hosted by Terry Gross, Beschloss provided background for each excerpt before playing it.

The most shocking single item that emerges from LBJ’s private conversations is an admission about the Vietnam War. Early in 1965, speaking of the opposing forces, Johnson tells his defense secretary Robert McNamara, “I don’t believe they’re ever going to quit. I don’t see any hope of a victory.”

To hear the president concede that the United States military could not win the war still, thirty-six years later, comes as a shock. As Beschloss says, “A president should never send Americans into harm’s way with no chance of winning.”

This admission of Johnson also puts into painful context the speeches he continued to give about that war. In short, he lied to the American public, over and over. Privately, he agreed with much of what the anti-war demonstrators were saying, though he dismissed them as tools of the Communists. But publicly he continued to insist that, with the deployment of greater military resources, the United States would prevail.

Why did Lyndon Johnson not edit out of the tapes statements that would reflect badly on him in the eyes of history? Beschloss believes that he probably intended to; but, when he retired to his ranch in Texas, the last thing he wanted to do was to review material on Vietnam that had caused him so much grief and driven him from the presidency.

The tapes also reveal Johnson as a man obsessed with people he saw as his domestic enemies. Beschloss labels him “the ultimate control freak.” Even after he had scored an unprecedentedly large electoral victory over Goldwater in 1964, LBJ fretted about his opponents. He badmouthed the press for portraying the vote as anti-Goldwater rather then pro-Johnson, and himself as the lesser of two evils. “They want to make a Harding of us,” groused Johnson. He also obsessed about Bobby Kennedy whom he foresaw as his electoral challenger.

The tapes also contain a conversation between LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover about homosexuals in government. It came in the wake of a scandal surrounding Walter Jenkins, one of Johnson’s closest aides. The conversation takes on added interest in the light of later speculation about Hoover’s own sexuality. Beschloss’s comments on this exchange gives reason to welcome the change of attitudes that has taken place since then. “How far we have come,” says the historian, remarking that gay people can now be appointed to governmental positions almost routinely.

Despite all that I have learned about human nature over the course of a long lifetime, it still comes as a shock to hear evidence of how petty a man could be while ensconced at the top of the American power structure. Johnson harbored within himself a sensitivity to personal slights that seems totally incompatible with the call to serve the needs of some two hundred and fifty million of his fellow citizens.

And, of course, he served those needs extraordinarily well in certain areas. Almost surely he will go down in history as the greatest champion of civil rights. One of the tapes records a conversation he had with the then segregationist governor, George Wallace. It features a delicate byplay between the two, with Wallace trying to get Johnson to call out his federal troops while Johnson urges him to rely on the Alabama national guard.

Beschloss calls himself fortunate to have this tape of “one of the great moments in history,” and celebrates Johnson’s caring more about civil rights and poverty than anything else.

The earliest event in history that I have watched on videotape is the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901. To see various royals from Britain and other countries as they solemnly parade by on horseback and in their carriages still stirs my imagination. The history that we have lived through since then is now so well documented that we have abundant material for our reveries and our reflections about the past.

Richard Griffin

Last spring, a friend named Joe asked my counsel on a personal issue that had suddenly taken on more importance for him. The arrival of his sixtieth birthday had stirred him to realize his need for more physical exercise and he wanted suggestions from me about how to start.

Joe’s request caught me unprepared, forcing me to ask for time to learn more about exercise before I could advise him or anyone else. Since then, I have accumulated much information about the subject and have made significant changes in my own schedule of physical activity. Unfortunately, Joe and I have not yet come together for me to share my discoveries with him.

Unlike most people, however, Joe has already done some serious exercise, at least irregularly. Thus he differs from the forty percent of Americans who, research reveals, are completely sedentary. Another forty percent reportedly do not exercise enough to get much benefit for their health and fitness. That leaves only one in five of us who take exercise seriously enough to do something about it.

My friend Joe’s request for help moved me to self-examination on the subject. Though I have gone swimming each day for many years, walked at least a mile, and played softball most Sundays from April through October, I felt the need to add another kind of physical activity, namely resistance exercise. This involves pushing and lifting so as to strengthen muscles.

If you were to walk by the section of the university health center where I go each day, you might now see this septuagenarian sitting on a large blue plastic exercise ball, first squatting and then lifting myself up, several times in order to strengthen the muscles of my legs.

You could also see me sitting on a leg curl machine, leaning back and lifting with my feet a bar almost at the floor level. I also sit on a leg extension machine that has me pressing a similar bar down against resistance.

At first, these activities felt slightly ridiculous. Seeing myself in the mirror, dressed in old clothes and looking disreputable, made me wonder if I was in the right place. The people around me were all much younger than I and clearly taking on more arduous challenges on the machines. Sitting on that big ball felt especially silly, since I felt dubious about its value. Why was I doing things that I had often dismissed as appropriate only for yuppies or Generation X?

Gradually, however, the routine has come to feel more comfortable. What has made a decisive difference is the guidance of a young woman who is an exercise trainer. By being so accepting of me with my physical limitations and my uncertain confidence, Wendy Brown has helped me take on new forms of exercise with growing enthusiasm. Swimming and walking remain my prime exercises but work on the machines and the large ball extends the physical value of my regimen.

Most Americans have probably heard something about the value of exercise. What few people realize, however, is how many varied benefits exercise provides. To quote a summary provided by researchers: “During the past 15 years, several hundred studies have looked at the effects of exercise on depression and found that exercise increases self-esteem, improves mood, reduces anxiety levels, increases the ability to handle stress, and improves sleep patterns.”  

I admire the approach of one of my neighbors, Marie Costello. About to celebrate her 91st birthday this month, she takes part in what she calls “old lady exercises” at our public library each week. She and the other participants in these hour-long sessions move their arms, legs, and torsos in a sequence carefully calculated to increase strength and flexibility. And Marie follows through by repeating some of these exercises at home.

She also walks a lot. “I never ask my sons or anyone to take me shopping,” Marie reports, because the ride would deprive her of a fine walking opportunity. Incidentally, she also believes in another form of physical exercise, that of her brain. A few days after I talked with her, she was going to La Paz, New York, where Will Shortz, the crossword editor of the New York Times, runs what she calls a “word weekend,” days that she finds highly enjoyable.

Almost everyone can do some exercise, if only pushing against the nearest wall. But to get started, most of us need the support of others. If you wish to begin or to improve your exercise plan, you can call the Council on Aging in your city or town hall and ask about group programs already functioning in your community. Or, if you prefer to exercise by yourself, you might ask for advice from a Council on Aging staff member.

You can also find such assistance at your regional ASAP (Aging Services Access Point), what used be called the Home Care Corporation. Ask first for the staff person who handles information and referral. Taking a step like this might soon enrich your life.

Richard Griffin