Rear Window (Starring James Stewart) Poem by Paul Reed

Rear Window

It was directed by Hitchcock
And he hardly ever blew it
So I looked forward with relish
To this film starring Jimmy Stewart

Perhaps not his most famous role
When you look at his acting past
Sat the entire length of the film
With his leg in a plaster cast

Starring opposite him in a classy frock
Was the stunning and delectable Grace Kelly
Yes, the one from High Society
Another great film off the telly

But this one, set in a New York courtyard
Apartments overlooking all angles
And Stewart found himself fascinated
By people from their windows dangled

Incapacitated and with nothing to do
Stewart looked out through his ‘binnocs’
At the strange antics of his neighbours
In the opposing apartment blocks

But the thing that really struck home to me
Was how readily Stewart dismissed
Kelly’s sustained romantic approaches
Remaining impervious to being kissed

Surely he could have grabbed his chance
To stop being an overt ‘peeping tom’
Abandoned his restrictive plaster cast
And got it on with that blonde sex bomb

Then Stewart could have cut another notch
On the post of his old bedframe
And conveniently forget for a few minutes
The injury which had made him lame

The other point I wish to make
Is why did all those ‘50s New Yorkers
Never bother to draw their blinds
And flounce around starkers like porkers?

Did no-one have even the slightest sense
Of maintaining a little privacy?
Were there no discreet people in New York
Who drew their curtains before having their tea?

Hitchcock must have been eternally grateful
For such laxness in staying low profile
For without it his film would have been sunk
And Stewart, even if more agile

Would have had nothing intriguing to spy on
As he reclined in his high-rise lair
And Grace Kelly might have had more of a chance
Of getting laid when she climbed up his stair