Wednesday, 28 July 2021

A Question of Identity

 

    A question of identity regarding Susan in ‘The Schizoid Man’ has been on my mind from time to time. Then recently a friend of mine suggested that a photograph of actress Liz Fraser was used. He said “the name was stored in the depths of my memory; however, it escaped my mind where it came from.”
   These set me to research pictures of Liz Frazer, and the longer I took the more, well you can see for yourself that there is a strong similarity between Liz on the left and the woman in the photograph of Susan used in ‘The Schizoid Man’ on the right. I deliberately changed Susan’s picture to greyscale in order to maximize the comparison.   










      The top left picture of Liz Frazer is from the 1962 film ‘The Amorous Prawn.’ I carefully studied a large number of photographs of Liz Frazer for hairstyle, facial features, the eyes, nose, lips, eyebrows, facial expression, but especially the prominent philtrum beneath the nose which Liz shares with the woman known as Susan. I thought it a pity that Susan is pictured wearing a fur coat, otherwise it might have made her easier to identify. So I tried to find a photograph of Liz wearing a fur coat in order to make an even better comparison, but in all the photographs I studied, Liz she is never seen to wear a fur coat. And then I got lucky, Liz Frazer wearing a fur coat, pictured left. It is a shame Michael cannot recall how he came to know the picture of Susan as being Liz Frazer. If Susan is Liz Frazer, and I do not doubt Michael’s word, and it is a clear possibility I can see that. However I have to ask myself, why did they think to use the photograph of such a prominent actress as Liz Frazer was at the time?    

Be seeing you

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