A Tribute to Catherine Coulson, Log Lady and so much more

Catherine E. Coulson has passed away. Of all her roles, she is most famous for “The Log Lady” from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. You can find plenty of stories on her passing–though cause of death has not been released–and her past work, but I thought I would post some of my favorite moments from interviews she has done over the years. I think we can say, with some confidence, that David Lynch wouldn’t be quite the same without her supportive influence. I’ll always remember how she called herself, “handmaiden to genius.” Remember, she was married to Jack Nance; Henry in Eraserhead.

Weirdly, the seeds for the Log Lady and perhaps Twin Peaks existed in the 1970s. Here’s a short synopsis from 1971 called “I’ll Test My Log With Every Branch of Knowledge.”

It’s a half-hour television show starring Catherine as the lady with the log. Her husband has been killed in a forest fire and his ashes are on the mantelpiece, with his pipes and his sock hat. He was a woodsman. But the fireplace is completely boarded up. Because she now is very afraid of fire. And she has a small child, but she doesn’t drive, so she takes cabs. And each show would start with her making a phone call to some expert in one of the many fields of knowledge. Maybe on this particular day she calls a dentist, but she makes the appointment for her log. And the log goes in the dental chair and gets a little bib and chain and the dentist X-rays the log for cavities, goes through the whole thing, and the son is also there. Because she is teaching her son through his observations of what the log is going through. And then sometimes they go to a diner and they never get to where they’re going. That was the idea.