Weekend Video - Fosse

The most electrifying dance I ever saw was a 1999 performance of "Cool Hand Luke" - a piece Bob Fosse originally created in 1968 for Gwen Verdon to perform on the Bob Hope Special. (Got all that?) I had given up any hope of seeing the piece again until thanks to the miracle of You Tube - I found not just one but two clips - each only viewed by about 300 people! The first is from an un-named and un-located rehearsal, and in spite of the mildly shaky camera work I like the rawness of this rendition. The second is from a t.v. recording of the Broadway musical "Fosse".



Bob Fosse died young (age 60), and while his choreography and trademark turned-in, finger-snapping style created a bridge between modern dance and Broadway, the more time passes the more it looks like high art.

Fosse became a choreographer when premature baldness ended his career as an actor and dancer, and apparently his trademark use of hats as props came from his self-consciousness about his own appearance. He had an interesting life, remaining married to Gwen Verdon long after they separated and through his relationships with Ann Reinking and Jessica Lange. As a film-maker he was also no slouch. His 1979 "All That Jazz" won four Academy Awards and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. Fosse's last film "Star 80", a 1983 biopic of Dorothy Stratton got mixed critical reaction at the time (although Richard Schickel of Time and Rex Reed gave it rave reviews) but has since acquired a strong cult following.

Wrapping up our Fall Term Study of Insects

We have had several insects that we have seen and identified but not taken great photos of for the blog. One was an earwig that I found in my kitchen. I hate earwigs.

The Handbook of Nature Study does not have any information on the earwig but it is a great insect to identify the parts of an insect with. I knew what kind of insect it was so we did a quick internet search and found loads of information about it.

We also found a millipede which we quickly discovered was *not* an insect. It is an invertebrate. You can find an illustration of a millipede and a caption about it on pages 448-449 of HNS.


We also found a tarantula in our garage, dead and stiff. This made for some interesting observations. At first I was horrified by its appearance but then, after I knew it was dead, I was able to observe its parts and really see it up close. I don't care to do that too much but it was interesting this one time. :) So even though it technically isn't an insect, we did learn something about tarantulas.

Here's what the Handbook of Nature Study says on page 435-436:
"There is an impression abroad that all spiders are dangerous to handle. This is a mistake; the bite of any of our common spiders in not nearly so dangerous as the bite of a malaria-laden mosquito. Although there is a little venom injected into the wound by the bite of any spider, yet there are few species found in the United States whose bite is sufficiently venomous to be feared. With the exception of the tarantulas of the Southwest, and the hourglass or black widow, which seems now to be extending its range from the South, the spiders of the United States are really as harmless to handle as are most of our common insects."

Believe me, I will not be handling any tarantulas in the near future. :)

We are wrapping up the focus on insects and we will be moving on to mammals for now. I am sort of excited to start since I know we are going to learn so much about what has been under our very noses and we have missed it.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Many Dates With Judy

For having been born too late, I missed dates with Judy far greater in number than what I’d assumed was her sole appearance in the 1948 MGM musical starring Jane Powell, just released on DVD. Turns out this character had a near twenty-year run in various media, a brand name on radio and television, plus comic books and motion pictures. What started as summer replacement for Bob Hope in 1941 evolved into nine seasons of home listening. Shows like A Date With Judy revolved around teen problems at home and among school friends, with parents baffled over juve slanguage and exhibits of immaturity, but always right in the end. According to sex-deprived boys who grew up in radio's era, the girl’s voices were a major turn-on, despite all programs being scrubbed clean of such inference. Guess you took it where you could get it back then. I pulled up a handful of Judy shows for on-line listening. One of them guest-starred Frank Sinatra; another had Joseph Cotten visiting the family. At times it sounded as though they were talking out of barrels. Radio archives are flush with some shows, bone dry on others. I located fifteen Dates With Judy. Maybe more exist, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were all. The similar Meet Corliss Archer is said to be largely gone, which is too bad, because my elementary school band teacher, Priscilla Lyon, was the first actress to play her on radio. None of these shows are particularly funny, but it is possible to lull yourself into a sufficiently comatose state to groove with them. Girls act silly, boys their eunuch pets. Teenagers as a group behave as utter fools, presumably to blunt any threat they might otherwise pose. You can tell sponsors were parsing these scripts with surgical precision, careful to disperse reality’s intrusion. I’d love to hear from a then-faithful listener, but how many of those visit Greenbriar (or any website)? Web-based nostalgia is after all limited to those who can (or are willing to) ambulate there --- age and passing have taken a lot of older memories with them. A Date With Judy had sufficient legs to manage a daytime television berth beginning in 1951 (the cast shown above). This played live and lasted a couple of years, eventually moving into primetime. There weren’t enough episodes to strip in syndication, not a factor anyway since A Date With Judy wasn’t shot on film and would survive (if at all) on kinescope only. Fans may well have read comic books while listening (or watching), so why not spin the character off into these? Covers here represent a DC run that lasted from 1947 to 1960. They’re not collected with anything like the gusto Superman and Batman inspire, and for all the world they look just like Archie comics I used to get in the early sixties. Those were easy for me to dump later, with nary a regret since, demonstrating perhaps just how disposable A Date With Judy and its kind became once listeners (and readers) grew out of them.

Judy might have been the next Andy Hardy, had attitudes and audiences not been so changed by the war. As it was, MGM ran a decade at least behind the curve when it brought Andy back from service in 1946. He’d not changed at all, and neither would they. A Date With Judy maintained time warpage reflecting a studio’s determination to get back to pre-war business as usual. Household sets are art-directed into otherworldly perfection, and teen patrons facing parental discouragement over wearing excess make-up are confronted with youthful actresses larded with pancake and rouge. Sometimes design and outcome go in opposing directions, or maybe they intended Elizabeth Taylor to represent definitive forties jail-bait, as she certainly does here (speaking of Archie comics, Powell and Taylor are filmic dead ringers, by look and temperament, for Betty and Veronica). High school dances in A Date With Judy are sufficiently divorced from reality as to allow for Xavier Cugat’s casual attendance, as if musical headliners might drop in on your prom, or mine (the closest we came was Willam "Oliver" Swofford of Jean and Good Morning, Starshine fame at our YMCA, but he was raised up the street from me, so that appearance seemed somewhat more plausible). Beyond title and character names based on the radio plays, Judy and her friends are the same sort of let’s-put-on-show Carvel dwellers Mickey and Judy (Garland) had been. Metro teens behaved well and respected their elders. So had kids on radio, but more was at stake in movies. A status quo of family film going must be maintained after all. It was this industry’s very foundation. To undermine that with anything less than idealized depictions of home and hearth was plain suicidal. Let trash merchants handle the likes of Teenage --- Mad Moments Of Youth (shown here), for its disreputable hosts neither needed nor wanted Code Seals for exploitation product they ran, yet theirs was the direction an entire industry would be headed within a short decade. Jane Powell was reassurance itself for parents beginning to worry just prior to release of films that would speak directly to their fears. Columbia’s Knock On Any Door and Universal’s City Across the River within the following year warned, via "A" trappings and top casts, that all was not well among America’s youth. Trouble was confined to slums in these, but there was always the threat it would break out. Misunderstandings with parents in A Date With Judy are resolved promptly and always short of the law’s intervention. Note Elizabeth Taylor’s contretemps with dad Leon Ames over Wall Street distractions that make him inattentive at home, then fast forward to Natalie Wood’s sexually charged Daddy rejection in Rebel Without A Cause. That must surely have been the last picture daughters would have wanted to go with their fathers to see (and vice versa!). By 1955, moviegoers were bifurcating into opposing camps. What one chose for entertainment (and role modeling), the other deplored. Louis Mayer and his producers understood the madness in such a course, but there was little they could do to forestall its forward (or backward?) march.

Apple

This stunning building in Regent Street is home of the apple store. Zillions buying the new iphone at present.

Fresh!

I'm always surprised that the greatest hits of photography still make it into every auction sale and continue to fetch record prices - one would think there would be a law of diminishing returns. But at least this mentality offers the more adventurous collector a great opportunity to pick up bargains. The nice thing about the auction catalogs that come to me regularly (from both the well-known auction houses and places I've never heard of) is the inexhaustible supply of fresh images. The photographs below come from the Bassenge Auction to be held in Berlin on December 5.


The image above is by Ulrike Rosenbach - one of Joseph Beuys' star pupils in the late sixties. Titled "Art is a Criminal Action" it was made in 1972 and consists of Rosenbach's image copied on to Warhol's "Double Elvis". An early appropriation work with Dada and feminist subtexts, it packs quite a punch. (Estimate - $5760)


This image by Alex Stocker was taken at the 1927 premiere of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" at the Ufa Pavilion in Berlin. The film was the most expensive film made at the time and this photograph exudes a sense of the excitement and drama of opening night. While "Metropolis" is acknowledged today as one of the great masterpieces of cinema, it turned out to be a critical and financial flop, driving its film company to financial ruin. (Estimate - $1,700)


Last is this 1956 portrait of the young Steve McQueen by Roy Schatt. Schatt studied painting with N.C. Wyeth, before moving to Greenwich Village, becoming an actor and then a photographer. Seeking the unguarded, emotional moment, Schatt defined himself as a "method" photographer - and his connection to the changes sweeping through theater and film were confirmed when Lee Strasberg named Schatt the official photographer of the Actor's Studio. (Estimate - $1,400)

Not Kara Walker

The picture above is not a Kara Walker. It's a Katharine Wolkoff commissioned portrait. If you look closely around the neck you might be able to see that it's actually a color photograph. Katharine devised the complex lighting set-up for these silhouette portraits a few years ago and they have since been acquired by museums and collectors. She does her own printing - a rarity these days - and her prints are stunning.

A 2002 Yale MFA graduate, Katharine refuses to be pigeonholed and her two latest projects were a look at post-Katrina New Orleans in the context of the Southern landscape, and a special issue of 2wice Magazine where she photographed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the grounds of the historic Vizcaya estate in Miami.

St Katherine Docks

St Katherine docks (near London Bridge) was an area of commerce and trading from the 10th century. Now you will find restaurants offices and expensive apartments and some pretty expensive looking boats.

Time For Some Laurel and Hardy

Writing about Laurel and Hardy comes easy. Finding previously unpublished photos is the challenge. I’ve not seen these before, but that’s not to say they haven't shown up elsewhere, for there are innumerable fan periodicals and digests devoted to this greatest of comedy teams. The first zine I recall was Pratfall, which started in the late sixties. Many others have flourished since. Laurel and Hardy stood (and sat) for tens of thousands of stills. Publishers loved fresh art of the funnymen. Two more recognizable figures were not to be found in the early thirties (and note how prominently their short subjects were featured in theatre ads of the time, as in this combination of The Chimp with James Cagney’s Winner Take All). How many images of L&H are as yet undiscovered? The one shown here of Hal Roach players taking off on stage melodramas was new to me. From left to right, there’s Stan as maiden in distress, Babe as plantation patriarch, Charley Chase in possession of the mortgage, and blackfaced Edgar Kennedy as loyal family retainer. Laurel and Hardy linked up with comedy giants off their home base from time to time. This pose with Harold Lloyd was taken when the three were at RKO in 1939, Lloyd at producing chores and L&H busily engaged on The Flying Deuces. Paths were crossed with Buster Keaton on Culver City lots during the early thirties. Here they’re making music for MGM publicity cameras. Allen "Farina" Hoskins was one of several Our Gang kids visiting the Laurel and Hardy stage for photo ops. Holiday sittings were also de reguier in the thirties; thus here are Stan and Babe as pilgrims. Sears catalogues gave many 8mm collectors their start during the sixties. My initial Laurel and Hardy purchase, Big Business, came from the venerable mail order house in 1968. Within a few years, Sears would devote a special supplement to movies they were selling (as shown below), but most home enthusiasts went over to Blackhawk Bulletins and ordered directly once that Davenport address was noted on the bottom side of film boxes. Monthly sales provided further incentive. That print you'd wanted of Double Whoopee might drop from $12.98 to $10.95, enough to tip over buyers for whom saving $2.03 amounted to the bargain of their young lives (I’ve not been so thrilled with reduced retail since). I doubt monies going to Blackhawk came any harder earned, for who knows how much grass was cut, papers delivered, and dogs shampooed toward financing purchases of Leave Em’ Laughing and You’re Darn Tootin’?

Blackhawk used to sell groups of stills from the comedy team’s films. You could pay $2.98 for a nice packet of Hog Wild shots. Several of those happened to be from foreign versions of the short. They produced two in addition to the domestic one we know. The sight of unknown actresses playing Mrs. Hardy was an intriguing bafflement. First I heard of alternate language Laurel and Hardys was when someone wrote that Boris Karloff played a convict in the French Pardon Us. Years later, foreign negatives turned up in a vault search and suddenly we were watching Laughing Gravy, Berth Marks, Chickens Come Home and several others in Spanish and French. German has remained elusive, other than snatches of Pardon Us and a recently discovered Laurel and Hardy Murder Case. Drawers are unfortunately empty on Hog Wild, for neither foreign edition is available or known to exist. The pose shown here was typical of groupings Hal Roach arranged to publicize multiple language options for his comedy shorts. As with Greenbriar’s previously posted shot from Blotto, it was enough to surround the comedians with various players enacting the role of screen wife. Here it’s Oliver Hardy flanked by a multi-national menu of shrewish spouses, each of whom will clonk him with the same fry pan, but in differing tongues. From left to right, there is Linda Loredo (Spanish) Yola D’Avril (French), and of course, beloved Fay Holderness, by far severest of the three. Dialogue was spoken phonetically, but that isn’t news to Laurel and Hardy followers. What fascinates me are expanded versions Hal Roach distributed in countries where his headliner team amounted to so much gold bullion at ticket windows. Was Hog Wild longer in France and South America? Night Owls and Chickens Come Home certainly were. Some foreign versions became virtual features. Laurel and Hardy were if anything more revered off our own shores. There’s a reason for all that DVD circulation in Europe and the UK. The comedians amassed untold good will for making the effort to speak other languages and audiences wouldn't forget them for it. They continued playing continental theatres long after disappearing from our own. I had a high school Spanish teacher exiled from Cuba after the Castro takeover who’d seen Laurel and Hardy with audiences right up to the time he left. These late 50’s screenings would presumably include alternate versions now among the missing. Could the Spanish Hog Wild and others be resting among Cuban holdings yet? Never mind smuggling cigars out of there. I’m all set to hollow out my steamer trunk for the concealment of lost Laurel and Hardys!

Thelma Todd is shown here preparing for an uncertain dive into the oversized bathtub constructed for Brats. That’s another one where foreign versions are lost (French, German, and possibly Spanish). Were any of the jumbo props around when Hal Roach Studios had their closing up auction in 1963? Brats was the first photo set I bought from Blackhawk. They lasted a few weeks until my mother accidentally threw them away (I’m only recently out of analysis over that). We had Laurel and Hardy on four channels back in the sixties, each accessible to varying degrees. The magic of a rotating antenna cleared snow and righted sound but to limited effect. I spent most weekends excavating for stations out of High Point and Charlotte North Carolina, Greenville in South Carolina, and Channel 5 from Bristol, Tennessee. The only satellites in those days were ones the Russians were sending up, and cable was something tractors pulled. I walked through a blizzard to a cousin’s house one morning to see if I could catch Channel 4’s Laurel and Hardy show a little clearer than we were getting it. That’s when I saw Brats the first time … saw being an elastic term to describe pained endurance of a barely visible transmission. No wonder I was obliged to wear spectacles until age eighteen. The hurdles one leaped to see televised favorites were the viewing equivalent of World Olympics. Kid programming formats showed little mercy to pacing and construction of Laurel and Hardy shorts. They’d cut away and leave the projector running; rejoining in progress as if the team were so much filler between clown acts, Cub Scout recognition, and appeals on behalf of animal shelters. I snapped one afternoon and took pen to paper for purposes of straightening out Channel 4’s programming division after they'd cut Chickens Come Home by half on the daily Monty’s Rascals show. You butchers are hacking, defacing, and mutilating these Laurel and Hardy classics! sums up diplomacy I applied to hand-written correspondence on Blue Horse tablet. They erred in assuming the letter had come from an adult, but would do so more grievously by inviting this fifteen-year-old to guest on Today In The Piedmont, Channel 4’s noontime cooking and chat program. Thus November 29, 1969 would mark my first (and so far most recent --- which is to say only) television appearance…

We drove (or rather, I was driven) three hours to reach Greenville. Few back home would see the broadcast as practically no one could pick up Channel 4. The station manager’s jaw dropped like a Tex Avery wolf when he greeted us at the door. I thought you’d be older, said he, but what to do now, with airtime less than two hours away? They escorted me to the film room (my request) so I could see where the Laurel and Hardys were kept. My imagination had constructed a pristine library with neatly arranged rows of all the cartoons and comedies Channel 4 possessed --- Popeye, Looney Tunes, The Mischief Makers. Little prepared was I for the sight that greeted me. An oversized closet it was, with 16mm prints haphazardly stacked into corners and station employees shuffling about like inmates on Devil’s Island. I ingratiated myself thus, Hey! Why do you guys keep showing "The Hoosegow" week after week and never once "Blotto" or "Helpmates"? My guest status checkmated their natural impulse to cut a hickory stalk and apply it to my precocious backside. Well, suppose you just root around and find the ones you want to see, they volunteered, and we’ll start showing them on Monty’s Rascals. My next half-hour was spent rearranging Channel 4's shelves. Favorites were moved up the queue. Alpine Antics and Gyp the Gypsy were consigned to a dark corner among Astro Boy cartoons they were no longer using. Never was an adolescent Laurel and Hardy fan so empowered. As further demonstration of heroic patience, the film room employees threaded up Blotto and let me sit next to a chattering Bell and Howell to watch it. We’ll never be able be able to show this, said one of them when a scantily clad dancer made her entrance at the Rainbow Club. Going on Today In The Piedmont became an afterthought in the wake of such fun I was having here. My segment lasted seven or so minutes. The lady host (and she still has a daytime program, albeit on another station) politely regarded her couch sitting interview subject whose feet barely touched the floor. Today In The Piedmont’s producer doubled as helmsman on Monty’s Rascals. So you’re the one who wrote those nasty letters, he said with a glower just as we were going live before thousands, nay millions, of viewers who no doubt mistook me for Harry Earles or perhaps Billy Curtis (my growth spurt being years in the offing). I have little memory of what was said, though forearmed with those 8X10 photos purchased from Blackhawk, there were at least visual aids we could hold up to the camera as it lumbered close in upon us. And yes, the program was in living color. For purposes of context, do note the line-up on the ad Channel 4 ran in that day’s newspaper. Blaze Starr coming up on Mike Douglas, then My World and Welcome To It for the evening’s start, and Bracken’s World to wrap up NBC’s primetime feast. I was, if nothing else, keeping distinguished entertainment company that day!

Royal Opera House

I liked the reflections in the glass front of the Royal Opera House. Haven't been inside yet. Perhaps a ballet sometime soon.

Paper Wasps-A Work of Art

You need to click on the photos to enlarge the photos and really see the wasp nest.

My dad found this paper wasp nest for us to look at in the tree behind his house. It is sooooo big I can hardly believe it. It does look like something has pulled it down and you can see the actual honeycomb cells that are exposed. Here is a better shot.

The texture of the nest itself is truly amazing. I found a resource online that says that they make the nest from a papery pulp of chewed up wood fibers mixed with saliva.

Page 378 of the Handbook of Nature Study has a lot of very interesting information about wasps in general.

Another great day out.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

At The Louvre

Two pictures of the Louvre. The first appeared in the New York Times illustrating an article about how the Sarkozy government is considering making all museum entries free. The photographer, who I have not previously heard of, is Ed Alcock. The second is from Thomas Struth's famous museum series. I like them both in different ways - the Struth because it is so deliberately and thoughtfully conceived, and the Alcock because it is unwittingly artful.

With MoMA admission now infamously at $20, the free admission idea seems timely and is already working in England where there has been a 50 percent rise in attendance recorded since the measure was introduced in 2001. An intelligent alternative is the Metropolitan Museum's where there is a "suggested donation" of $20, but you can pay nothing if you wish.

An even better idea for improving the quality of American museums - get the curators and directors out of their chairs and offices and into the streets, galleries, studios, and schools. There was a time when the photography directors of the New York museums would regularly come to galleries, but this is now a rarity and all are the poorer for it.

Crickets in the House

I have been busy trying to wrap up our fall study of insects. I never imagined we would enjoy finding and viewing insects as much as we did and I am sure part of it was the information provided in the Handbook of Nature Study. Anna Comstock provides such great investigations into the individual insects and we learned so much just by taking a few minutes each time we found a new insect to stop and really look at it. I think everyone in our family has gained a new appreciation for the little creatures we pass by so often.

Speaking of that topic, I had completely forgotten that we had our own personal laboratory in our house for studying a particular insect. Our Fire-Bellied toad eats crickets every morning and we keep a ready supply on hand but I had never thought to investigate them in the HNS. Sure enough, there on page 344 there is the start of a whole section on crickets. On page 346 there are instructions for making a "cricket cage". Pages 347 and 348 have observations questions for you to use with your cricket.

Here's something interesting from page 346: "There would be no use of the cricket's playing his mandolin if there were not an appreciative ear to listen to his music. This ear is placed most conveniently in the tibia of the front leg, so that the crickets literally hear with their elbows, as do the katydids and the meadow grasshoppers. The ear is easily seen with the naked eye as a little white, disclike spot."

Our crickets don't make any noise so I don't know what that means. They are rather small and we purchase them at the feed store, 40 crickets for $2.00. They are much smaller than the local crickets we find in our yard. They are golden in color. I am going to ask at the feed store the next time we get crickets and see if they know what variety of crickets they are. Even though our particular cricket is not listed in the HNS, we can still read through the sections on black crickets and snowy tree crickets and apply the information to our crickets. See, I am learning to not use this big book as a field guide but as a way to familiarize us with general information about something we find in our nature study. :)

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Fulham football club

I'm not a football fan, but walking along the thames path late afternoon yesterday (at this time of year it gets dark from about 3:30pm), I heard lots of crowd noise. A game was on at the fulham football club. Thought it looked rather pretty. Not sure how the fans would feel about my view.

Waiting

Rather liked this entrance to a corner bar/cafe in Covent garden.

How it was

One of the exhibits at the London Transport Museum (see yesterdays post). Very obliging of this gentleman to add some authenticity to this shot for me. (actually he doesn't know, hope he doesn't mind).

Weekend Video - Hey Boy

One of things I love most about You Tube is the dazzling variety of versions, tributes, iterations, etc. of any given subject. You start at a given point and then move laterally or haphazardly around, mining for gold.

This summer I landed on the song - "Hey Boy" by Teddybears STHLM - a Swedish rock/electronic band. (Never heard of them? Neither had I, but according to their Wikipedia entry Iggy Pop and Neneh Cherry guested on their last album.) Anyway, from there it was just a hop to CutieMish whose tribute clip while having a superficial similarity to Laurel Nakadate has now been seen over a quarter of million times (compared to Teddybears' 78,000 views) and made her the kind of You Tube celebrity Andy Warhol would have loved. Apologies for the four letter words that open her clip but enjoy the shooting, editing, and energy.

Greenbriar Weekend Marquee

I knew Richard Dix was the Whistler and that William Castle directed some of the better series entries, but my acquaintance was limited to stills and a misunderstanding that this series seldom rose above "B" levels and was thus safely ignored by latter generations. Wrong was I on several counts. First off, Dix was not himself the Whistler. That character would remain unseen, except in shadow, and would at best serve as Greek chorus for principals changing with each film. Richard Dix was the only constant, but he never repeated roles within this series. Each installment would be a tour de force and provide more variation for the actor than other leading men, even in "A" parts, might hope for in whole careers. Over seven thrillers in which he starred, Dix was sympathetic here, dangerously psychotic there. Wealthy in one, down and out in the next. Had these pictures attracted critical notice, Dix might have been rescued from low-budgeters and back in stardom he’d known during the twenties and early thirties. Overripe in salad days, RD pushed pedals to the floor in big ones like Cimarron, and for my money, he’s dynamic there as empire builder, but once talkie empires were established, Dix’s billing fell below the title except in low-budget he-man actioners evocative of those that gave him a start. Nearing his fifties by the forties, both Dix and the Whistlers aged like fine wine as his tortured alter egos wandered dark alleys and were buffeted by fate. Scripts were borrowed, and padded, after radio’s Whistler team had their go. Sometimes uncertain pacing betrays those origins. Little will happen the first forty minutes, then there’s a rush to finish with plot contrivances unpredictable if unlikely. Crazy illogic plays as though it were everyday normalcy and you keep waiting for one of those dream endings to restore a semblance of reality. Customary "B" economies are observed, as these were pictures not likely to break out beyond predictable returns. For random example, Mark Of The Whistler earned $270,000 in domestic rentals, Power Of The Whistler $226,000. Like most series, revenue diminished as more came off the line. By Return Of The Whistler (the final entry), domestic rentals were down to $166,000. Young and eager director William Castle used Whistlers to show off for Columbia chief Harry Cohn, and a lot of his showman’s tricks were previewed for viewers who’d encounter Castle a decade later in tricky horror pictures. Always in readiness to lift ideas from their betters, the Whistlers drew upon Citizen Kane for one (Dix’s tycoon life told in opening newsreel flashback) and The Maltese Falcon on another (Dix as morally bankrupt private eye pursues priceless Jenny Lind wax cylinders!). All of which is to say neat ideas are in abundance here, and were it not for callow youngsters auditioning before Columbia cameras (Dix really carries a lot of dead weight among so-called supporting casts), these thrillers might enjoy enhanced reputations today. The Whistlers revolved upon the same studio wheel that drove The Crime Doctor, Boston Blackie, The Lone Wolf, and Ellery Queen. Nobody had as many detectives and mysteries running as Columbia. Most have hung shingles at TCM of late after years of comparative invisibility. All are worth revisiting.

Ask anyone who was there in 1967, and they’ll tell you the money shot in Berserk is definitely Micheal Gough getting an oversized spike driven through his forehead from behind (to paraphrase Batiatus to Crassus, Brilliant thrust, difficult angle). It’s a breathtaking tableau that’s stayed with me since, and I was happy to see it left intact for TCM’s recent showing. Do note Gough’s anguished countenance lined up alongside Joan Crawford in the one-sheet here. Berserk was among trashy shock shows aging actresses were loathe to accept in the post-Baby Jane sixties. Outside television and summer stock, however, these were the only games left for even biggest names of yore. Crawford is again hard-as-nails boss lady (and potential, if not actual, murderess) as befitting her public and private image since Mildred Pierce and the end of World War Two. The fact she was still able to play it with name above the title after twenty years is testament to her amazing longevity. Berserk is notable for putting Crawford front and center again after less rewarding featured and "guest star" appearances in support of others (The Best Of Everything, The Caretakers). At sixty-two, she’s brandishing trim legs and a wig pulled back like Barrymore’s Hyde hair, creeping us out with dialogue implying (mercifully offscreen) bedroom frolics with Michael Gough and Ty Hardin. Mayhem against circus backgrounds was so common as to presumably discourage post-war youngsters from wanting to leave home and join the big top. Tent shows in thrillers of limited budget were always of the struggling and fleabag variety. Serial murders seemed all the greater a hardship as so few performers could be spared without endangering the whole enterprise. Suspects are sufficiently limited in number as to necessitate dragging in by the heels a "surprise" killer who doesn’t even appear until the second half of the picture. Authentic circus acts play in their entirety, so there is uneasy communion between trained dogs and trapeze performers either hanged or impaled on a bed of nails, with Crawford functioning as a distaff Don Ameche presiding over a big-screen International Showtime. Producer Herman Cohen would regale interviewers with Berserk anecdotes, most arising from efforts to placate his imperious star. He’s shown twice among spectators in the bleachers. There would be fewer of these for Cohen’s kind of exploitation shocker as a soon-to-be introduced ratings system enabled gorier chills and rendered tame Berserk and much of what had horrified us in the sixties.

Flashback

Yesterday I visited the London Transport Museum for its reopening after a £22 million refurbishment. These transport logos flash across the floor and up the wall in one of the exhibits. I thought they looked pretty cool.

Nature Walk in the Big Trees

Big Trees.......Sequoiadendron giganteum

It is really hard to get a good photo of the big trees and all your kids at the same time. It is rather dark underneath this forest canopy .

Fallen trees are great for walking on, or falling off of in my case. I was so busy trying too look at some cool fungus that I slipped totally off and fell down. Okay, everyone laughed but it wasn't too funny for me. :)


Seed cones from the sequoia tree are rather small.

Baby sequoias


A variety of fungus was all around at this time of year....too bad I didn't have a field guide. Oh well, next time.



That is just a sample of our day out today.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom