What Ever Happened to...The Pigeon Lady from "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York"

Last night, before catching the Yankees lose again (sometimes I don't even know why I bother) I caught "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" on one of the 50 HBO channels I have. As I watched this classic sequel that stands right up there with "Ghostbusters 2," something occurred to me: what happened to the Pigeon Lady? And I thought about this both in the film's realm as well as the in real life.

Brenda Fricker, hailing from Dublin, Ireland was cast as the Pigeon Lady (though IMDB.com credits her as the "Bird Lady") to be the film's replacement for the creepy old shovel-wielding neighbor from the first film. This brought me to the realization of my childhood stupidity, as I never before recognized that they completely re-created the same exact character in both films; Creepy Old Neighbor/Creepy Grimey Pigeon Lady, both ultimately having hearts of gold.

Prior to "Home Alone 2" I had never seen Brenda Fricker in any films, though since she has popped up on my TV several times. The next I saw of her was in the classic Mike Myers comedy "So I Married An Ax Murderer," where she played Myers's horny Irish mother who had a trashy tabloid love jones. She was perfect in this film and followed it up with another Home Alone 2-esque heart of gold role in "Angels in the Outfield" in 1994. This film starred Danny Glover, Tony Danza, and a young Matthew McConaughey as members of the California Angels who had actual angels on their side (led by a borderline pedophile-like performance by Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd). This would be followed with a co-starring role where she re-teamed with McConaughey in his breakout film "A Time to Kill." However, the Pigeon Lady would be seen seldom after this, save for a bunch of forgettable straight to video/TV movies. One worthy of mentioning was her turn as Madame Alex in "Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss" in 2004.

More recently I caught probably the best performance of her career which came in her pre-Pigeon Lady days. As the mother of Daniel Day Lewis's Christy Brown in "My Left Foot," Fricker earned her only Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1990.

I believe it was somewhere between this film and "Angels in the Outfield" that she let herself slip into the typecast of the life lesson teaching Irish woman who may or may not be covered in pigeon poop. Needless to say, her presence in the early 1990's on film will forever be a part of my childhood movie memories. The way she threw that pigeon food at Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern that relinquished a bird attack reminiscent of Hitchcock, is something that could never be recreated or matched onscreen. Click below to see her in all of her creepy pigeon lady glory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knNsBJcF8Ys

Now, on to what became of the pigeon lady in the film world. The first thing that came to mind when watching "Home Alone 2" again after all these years was, why Kevin never did anything more to help the Pigeon Lady out. And after not only becoming his only friend when he's lost in one of the biggest cities in the world (if you don't count the guy who owned the toy store), but also saving his life by attacking Harry and Marv with the pigeons, he lets her freeze her ass off in Central Park on Christmas Day! The McCallister family is shacked up in this huge mansion of a room at the Plaza Hotel (Herbert Hoover stayed there, the vacuum guy) and you'd think they could at least invite her in for a hot cup of coffee, or soup, or anything. They have a room full of free presents and they can't even give her one, she just gets one of those plastic turtle dove ornaments he gave her to hang on a shrub in Central Park.

This is what I predict came of the pigeon lady: After retiring to a cheap, warm bottle of rasberry brandy she bought after pawning the turtle dove ornament, she realized walking around covered in pigeon poop is not a very sociable way to live. She tried to abandon the pigeons, only to continually have them follow her. Then, one day the pigeons obscured her vision while crossing the street and she was struck by a taxi cab. However, the slickness of the fresh pigeon dung on her coat slid her over the top of the cab where she landed on her feet, avoiding major injury. She went on to sue the city and the cab company, making millions and buying the suite in the Plaza that the McCallisters shared on that fateful day so many years ago.

A few years later, Fuller, the McCallister cousin who had a tendency to wet the bed, got lost in New York in a similar fashion to Kevin. Harry and Marv found Fuller and held him for ransom, eventually using the money to flee to Mexico City. The Pigeon Lady could have helped Fuller, but refused to when remembering how the McCallisters turned their back on her at the end of "Home Alone 2."

Cheers to Brenda "The Pigeon Lady" Fricker!