I’m the one in our household with the memory. This frequently means telling Graham who I’m talking about in ways that he’ll remember and understand. When I told him who I was planning to write about for this week’s installment, he of course asked who that meant. My response was, “Goody Two-Shoes.”

I know. Most people think of her as Gigi, I’m sure, or perhaps Lise Bouvier of An American in Paris. In our household, though, it’s Father Goose, where she plays Catherine Louise Marie Ernestine Freneau, uptight ambassador’s daughter stranded on an island with Cary Grant and an assortment of schoolgirls during World War II. For reasons, they are quickly dubbed Goody Two-Shoes and the Filthy Beast.

Still, Leslie Caron has had an impressive career over the decades, hasn’t she? She’s starred alongside some really great people. Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire both. Maurice Chevalier more than once. Barbara Stanwyck. Henry Fonda. And, of course, she was one of the many people in the stacked cast of Is Paris Burning? Even if she never had scenes with half of them.

There’s more to her than just her costars, of course. Beyond just being a talented dancer, she had a deft touch for comedy and could be dramatic when it was called for. She recently played Madame Armfeldt in a revival of A Little Night Music in Paris, and if anyone ever decides to make a good version of that movie, to replace the mediocre one starring Elizabeth Taylor, they should consider casting her in the role for it.

I think it is all too easy to write off women like Caron as being successful because they are lovely women with charming accents, and I think that is underestimating her talents a great deal. For one thing, she’s still working, and “lovely” doesn’t keep your career going when you’re in your eighties. Not in the film industry. For one thing, it takes determination to keep a career going that long, no matter what you look like and regardless of whether you’re male or female. Several of her contemporaries are still out there as well, and I think most of those women were dismissed at one time in their careers or another as just a pretty face.