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Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 149.
Today, 15 February 2023, American actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch (1940) has died at the age of 82 after a short illness. She was one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.
Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall. At age 14, Raquel won her first beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol. After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a well-known name. Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time."
Raquel Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967), a typical European anthology film of the 1960s. A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages, made by a pan-European cast and crew. Some of the most sensual stars of the era played the leads: Michèle Mercier, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Karina, Nadia Gray, Jeanne Moreau and Welch. She played Nini in the episode La belle époque/The Gay Nineties by German director Michael Pfleghar. When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer (Martin Held) is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! Varlaam at IMDb: "Raquel Welch stars in the most amusing episode, relatively speaking. It's apparently set in the 1890s Vienna (Emperor Franz Josef is on the paper money). One could probably say that Raquel's greatest classic role was as the injured party in the Cannery Row lawsuit. Finely nuanced she was not, normally. But she makes an appealing light comedienne here, and she can really fill a lacy Viennese corset. The Belle Époque it assuredly was." Next, she appeared in the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967). In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968). Back in the United States, she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part of the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her own stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr. She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975). A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her one of the reigning icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement. She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), David Carless (IMDb), Bob Taylor (IMDb), Varlaam (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Haruki Murakami's books are another common element in the periods of my life after some crisis or storm, when everything calms down and tends to be more introspective and silent and deep. He's here again and "Kafka on the shore" is a book I read and read and there's always something more in there to find. Having Simon the cat around only makes the influence of the book stronger, as if it has somehow come to life.
No rock tune this week, but there is certainly a soundtrack: Bluebeard's Castle by Bela Bartok.
The alley in the Chicago Loop which held bodies of over 600 people in 1903 during the fire of the former Iroquois Theatre. December 30th 1903 a sold out Iroquois Theatre was hosting a performance of Mr. Bluebeard with actor Eddie Foy. A live performance turned into a nightmare with a fire starting from the stage. Panic erupted from the audience and many doors were locked or had to be opened by pulling them in instead of out. Many people couldn't get out the theatre. As a result over 600 people died. www.iroquoistheater.com/firemen-in-couch-alley-behind-iro...
Eddie Foy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Foy_Sr.
British cigarette card in the Third Film Stars series by John Player & Sons, no. 8. Photo: United Artists.
American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronized music and sound effects, and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.
In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.
Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly-fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year the cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
The alley in the Chicago Loop which held bodies of over 600 people in 1903 during the fire of the former Iroquois Theatre. December 30th 1903 a sold out Iroquois Theatre was hosting a performance of Mr. Bluebeard with actor Eddie Foy. A live performance turned into a nightmare with a fire starting from the stage. Panic erupted from the audience and many doors were locked or had to be opened by pulling them in instead of out. Many people couldn't get out the theatre. As a result over 600 people died. www.iroquoistheater.com/firemen-in-couch-alley-behind-iro...
Eddie Foy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Foy_Sr.
The Postcard
A postally unused Cameracolour Series postcard that was published by J. Salmon Ltd. of Sevenoaks, Kent. The card, which has a divided back, was printed in England.
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter (28th. July 1866 - 22nd. December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist. She was best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit'.
Born into an upper-middle-class household, Potter was educated by governesses, and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets, and spent holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted.
Potter's study and watercolours of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology.
In her thirties, Beatrix self-published the highly successful children's book 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit'. Following this, she began writing and illustrating children's books full-time.
Beatrix wrote thirty books, the best known being her twenty-three children's tales. With the proceeds from the books and a legacy from an aunt, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in 1905; this is a village in the Lake District in the historic county of Lancashire. (The neighbouring village is called Far Sawrey). Over the following decades, Beatrix purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape.
In 1913, at the age of 47, Beatrix married William Heelis, a respected local solicitor from Hawkshead.
Beatrix was also a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep, and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation. She continued to write and illustrate, and to design spin-off merchandise based on her children's books for British publisher Warne until the duties of land management and her diminishing eyesight made it difficult for her to continue.
Beatrix Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease on the 22nd. December 1943 at her home at the age of 77, leaving almost all her property to the National Trust. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now constitutes the Lake District National Park.
Potter's books continue to sell throughout the world in many languages, with her stories being re-told in songs, films, ballet, and animations, and her life is depicted in two films and a television series.
Beatrix Potter - The Early Years
Potter's family on both sides were from the Manchester area. They were English Unitarians, associated with dissenting Protestant congregations that were influential in 19th. century England. They affirmed the oneness of God, and rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.
Beatrix's paternal grandfather, Edmund Potter, from Glossop in Derbyshire, owned what was then the largest calico printing works in England, and later served as a Member of Parliament.
Potter's father, Rupert William Potter (1832–1914), was educated at Manchester College by the Unitarian philosopher James Martineau. He then trained as a barrister in London.
Rupert practised law, specialising in equity law and conveyancing. He married Helen Leech (1839–1932) on the 8th. August 1863 at Hyde Unitarian Chapel, Gee Cross. Helen was the daughter of Jane Ashton (1806–1884) and John Leech, a wealthy cotton merchant and shipbuilder from Stalybridge.
Helen's first cousins were siblings Harriet Lupton (née Ashton) and Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde. It was reported in July 2014 that Potter had personally given a number of her own original hand-painted illustrations to the two daughters of Arthur and Harriet Lupton, who were cousins to both Beatrix Potter and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.
Potter's parents lived comfortably at 2 Bolton Gardens, West Brompton, where Helen Beatrix was born on the 28th. July 1866; her younger brother Walter Bertram was born there on the 14th. March 1872.
The house was destroyed in the Blitz. Bousfield Primary School now stands where the house once was. A blue plaque on the school building testifies to the former site of the Potter home.
Both of Beatrix's parents were artistically talented, and Rupert was an adept amateur photographer. Rupert had invested in the stock market, and by the early 1890's, he was extremely wealthy.
Beatrix Potter was educated by three governesses, the last of whom was Annie Moore (née Carter), just three years older than Potter, who tutored Potter in German as well as acting as lady's companion. She and Potter remained friends throughout their lives, and Annie's eight children were the recipients of many of Potter's picture letters. It was Annie who later suggested that these letters might make good children's books.
Beatrix and her younger brother Walter Bertram, who died in 1918, grew up with few friends outside their large extended family. Her parents were artistic, interested in nature, and enjoyed the countryside.
As children, Beatrix and Bertram had numerous small animals as pets which they observed closely and drew endlessly. In their schoolroom, they kept a variety of small pets - mice, rabbits, a hedgehog and some bats, along with collections of butterflies and other insects - which they drew and studied.
Potter was devoted to the care of her small animals, often taking them with her on long holidays. In most of the first fifteen years of her life, Potter spent summer holidays at Dalguise, an estate on the River Tay in Perthshire, Scotland. There she sketched and explored an area that nourished her imagination and her observation.
Potter and her brother were allowed great freedom in the country, and both children became adept students of natural history. In 1882, when Dalguise was no longer available, the Potters took their first summer holiday in the Lake District, at Wray Castle near Lake Windermere. Here Potter met Hardwicke Rawnsley, vicar of Wray and later the founding secretary of the National Trust, whose interest in the countryside and country life inspired the same in Potter, and who was to have a lasting impact on her life.
At about the age of 14, Beatrix began to keep a diary. It was written in a code of her own devising which was a simple letter for letter substitution. Her Journal was important to the development of her creativity, serving as both sketchbook and literary experiment: in tiny handwriting, she reported on society, recorded her impressions of art and artists, recounted stories, and observed life around her.
The Journal, decoded and transcribed by Leslie Linder in 1958, does not provide an intimate record of her personal life, but it is an invaluable source for understanding a vibrant part of British society in the late 19th. century. It describes Potter's maturing artistic and intellectual interests, her often amusing insights on the places she visited, and her unusual ability to observe nature and to describe it.
Started in 1881, her journal ends in 1897 when her artistic and intellectual energies were absorbed in scientific study and in efforts to publish her drawings. Precocious but reserved and often bored, she was searching for more independent activities, and wished to earn some money of her own while dutifully taking care of her parents, dealing with her especially demanding mother, and managing their various households.
Scientific Illustrations and Work in Mycology
Beatrix Potter's parents did not discourage higher education. As was common in the Victorian era, women of her class were privately educated, and rarely went to university.
Beatrix was interested in every branch of natural science save for astronomy. Botany was a passion for most Victorians, and nature study was a popular enthusiasm. She collected fossils, studied archaeological artefacts from London excavations, and was interested in entomology.
In all these areas, she drew and painted her specimens with increasing skill. By the 1890's, her scientific interests centred on mycology. First drawn to fungi because of their colours and evanescence in nature and her delight in painting them, her interest deepened after meeting Charles McIntosh, a revered naturalist and amateur mycologist, during a summer holiday in Dunkeld in Perthshire in 1892.
McIntosh helped to improve the accuracy of her illustrations, taught her taxonomy, and supplied her with live specimens to paint during the winter. Curious as to how fungi reproduced, Potter began microscopic drawings of fungus spores (the agarics) and in 1895 developed a theory of their germination.
Through the connections of her uncle Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, a chemist and vice-chancellor of the University of London, she consulted with botanists at Kew Gardens, convincing George Massee of her ability to germinate spores and her theory of hybridisation.
She did not believe in the theory of symbiosis proposed by Simon Schwendener, the German mycologist, as previously thought; instead, she proposed a more independent process of reproduction.
Rebuffed by William Thiselton-Dyer, the Director at Kew, because of her gender and amateur status, Potter wrote up her conclusions and submitted a paper, 'On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae', to the Linnean Society in 1897.
The paper was introduced by Massee because, as a female, Potter could not attend proceedings or read her paper herself. She subsequently withdrew it, realising that some of her samples were contaminated, but continued her microscopic studies for several more years.
Beatrix's paper has only recently been re-discovered, along with the rich, artistic illustrations and drawings that accompanied it. Her work is only now being properly evaluated.
Potter later gave her other mycological and scientific drawings to the Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside, where mycologists still refer to them to identify fungi. There is also a collection of her fungus paintings at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth, Scotland, donated by Charles McIntosh.
In 1967, the mycologist W.P.K. Findlay included many of Potter's beautifully accurate fungus drawings in his Wayside & Woodland Fungi, thereby fulfilling her desire to one day have her fungus drawings published in a book. In 1997, the Linnean Society issued a posthumous apology to Potter for the sexism displayed in its handling of her research.
Beatrix Potter's Artistic and Literary Career
Beatrix Potter's artistic and literary interests were deeply influenced by fairy tales and fantasy. She was a student of the classic fairy tales of Western Europe. As well as stories from the Old Testament, John Bunyan's 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', she grew up with Aesop's Fables, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Kingsley's 'The Water Babies', the folk tales and mythology of Scotland, the German Romantics, Shakespeare, and the romances of Sir Walter Scott.
As a young child, before the age of eight, Edward Lear's 'A Book of Nonsense', including the much loved 'The Owl and the Pussycat', and Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' had made their impression, although she later said of Alice that she was more interested in Tenniel's illustrations than what they were about.
The Brer Rabbit stories of Joel Chandler Harris had been family favourites, and she later studied his Uncle Remus stories and illustrated them.
Beatrix studied book illustration from a young age and developed her own tastes, but the work of the picture book triumvirate Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott, the last an illustrator whose work was later collected by her father, was a great influence.
When Beatrix started to illustrate, she chose first the traditional rhymes and stories, 'Cinderella', 'Sleeping Beauty', 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves', 'Puss-in-Boots', and 'Red Riding Hood'. However, most often her illustrations were fantasies featuring her own pets: mice, rabbits, kittens, and guinea pigs.
In her teenage years, Potter was a regular visitor to the art galleries of London, particularly enjoying the summer and winter exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London. Her Journal reveals her growing sophistication as a critic as well as the influence of her father's friend, the artist Sir John Everett Millais, who recognised Potter's talent of observation. Although Beatrix was aware of art and artistic trends, her drawing and her prose style were uniquely her own.
As a way to earn money in the 1890's, Potter and her brother began to print Christmas cards of their own design, as well as cards for special occasions. Mice and rabbits were the most frequent subject of her fantasy paintings.
In 1890, the firm of Hildesheimer and Faulkner bought several of the drawings of her rabbit Benjamin Bunny to illustrate verses by Frederic Weatherly entitled 'A Happy Pair'.
In 1893, the same publisher bought several more drawings for Weatherly's 'Our Dear Relations', another book of rhymes, and the following year Potter sold a series of frog illustrations and verses for 'Changing Pictures', a popular annual offered by the art publisher Ernest Nister. Potter was pleased by this success, and determined to publish her own illustrated stories.
Whenever Beatrix went on holiday to the Lake District or Scotland, she sent letters to young friends, illustrating them with quick sketches. Many of these letters were written to the children of her former governess Annie Carter Moore, particularly to Moore's eldest son Noel, who was often ill.
In September 1893, Potter was on holiday at Eastwood in Dunkeld, Perthshire. She had run out of things to say to Noel, and so she told him a story about "Four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter". It became one of the most famous children's letters ever written, and the basis of Potter's future career as a writer-artist-storyteller.
In 1900, Potter revised her tale about the four little rabbits, and fashioned it into a dummy book - it has been suggested, in imitation of Helen Bannerman's 1899 bestseller 'The Story of Little Black Sambo'.
Unable to find a buyer for the work, she published it for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901. It was drawn in black and white with a coloured frontispiece.
Rawnsley had great faith in Potter's tale, recast it in didactic verse, and made the rounds of the London publishing houses. Frederick Warne & Co. had previously rejected the tale but, eager to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted the 'Bunny Book' (as the firm called it) following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke.
The firm declined Rawnsley's verse in favour of Potter's original prose, and Potter agreed to colour her pen and ink illustrations, choosing the then-new Hentschel three-colour process to reproduce her watercolours.
Potter used many real locations for her book illustrations. The Tower Bank Arms, Near Sawrey appears in 'The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck'.
On the 2nd. October 1902, 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' was published, and was an immediate success. It was followed the next year by 'The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin' and 'The Tailor of Gloucester', which had also first been written as picture letters to the Moore children.
Working with Norman Warne as her editor, Potter published two or three little books each year: 23 books in all. The last book in this format was 'Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes' in 1922, a collection of favourite rhymes. Although 'The Tale of Little Pig Robinson' was not published until 1930, it had been written much earlier.
Potter continued creating her little books until after the Great War when her energies were increasingly directed toward her farming, sheep-breeding and land conservation.
The immense popularity of Potter's books was based on the lively quality of her illustrations, the non-didactic nature of her stories, the depiction of the rural countryside, and the imaginative qualities she lent to her animal characters.
Potter was also a canny businesswoman. As early as 1903, she made and patented a Peter Rabbit doll. It was followed by other spin-off merchandise over the years, including painting books, board games, wall-paper, figurines, baby blankets and china tea-sets. All were licensed by Frederick Warne & Co., and earned Potter an independent income, as well as immense profits for her publisher.
In 1905, Potter and Norman Warne became unofficially engaged. Potter's parents objected to the match because Warne was "in trade" and thus not socially suitable. The engagement lasted only one month - Warne died of pernicious anaemia at the age of 37.
That same year, Potter used some of her income and a small inheritance from an aunt to buy Hill Top Farm, Near Sawrey in the English Lake District near Windermere. Potter and Warne may have hoped that Hill Top Farm would be their holiday home, but after Warne's death, Potter went ahead with its purchase as she had always wanted to own the farm, and live in "that charming village".
Country Life and Marriage
Hill Top is now owned by the National Trust, and preserved as it was when she lived and wrote her stories there.
The tenant farmer John Cannon and his family agreed to stay on to manage the farm for her while she made physical improvements and learned the techniques of fell farming and of raising livestock, including pigs, cows and chickens; the following year she added sheep.
Realising she needed to protect her boundaries, she sought advice from W.H. Heelis & Son, a local firm of solicitors with offices in nearby Hawkshead. With William Heelis acting for her, she bought contiguous pasture, and in 1909 the 20 acre (8.1 ha) Castle Farm across the road from Hill Top Farm.
Beatrix visited Hill Top at every opportunity, and her books written during this period (such as 'The Tale of Ginger and Pickles', about the local shop in Near Sawrey and 'The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse', a wood mouse) reflect her increasing participation in village life and her delight in country living.
Owning and managing these working farms required routine collaboration with the widely respected William Heelis. By the summer of 1912, Heelis had proposed marriage and Potter had accepted; although she did not immediately tell her parents, who once again disapproved because Heelis was only a country solicitor.
Potter and Heelis were married on the 15th. October 1913 in London at St. Mary Abbots in Kensington. The couple moved immediately to Near Sawrey, residing at Castle Cottage, the renovated farmhouse on Castle Farm, which was 34 acres large.
Hill Top remained a working farm, but was now remodelled to allow for the tenant family and Potter's private studio and workshop. At last her own woman, Potter settled into the partnerships that shaped the rest of her life: her country solicitor husband and his large family, her farms, the Sawrey community and the predictable rounds of country life.
'The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck' and 'The Tale of Tom Kitten' are representative of Hill Top Farm and her farming life, and reflect her happiness with her country life.
Rupert Potter died in 1914 and, with the outbreak of the Great War, Beatrix, by now a wealthy woman, persuaded her mother to move to the Lake District, and found a property for her to rent in Near Sawrey.
Finding life in Near Sawrey dull, Helen Potter soon moved to Lindeth Howe (now a 34 bedroomed hotel), a large house that the Potters had previously rented for the summer in Bowness, on the other side of Lake Windermere.
Beatrix's brother Walter Bertram Potter, who was also an accomplished artist and farmer, died suddenly of a stroke after working in his garden on the 22nd. June 1918. He was buried in the parish churchyard at Ancrum, Scotland, near the remains of the Old Parish Church, which was abandoned in 1890. Walter was 46 years of age when he died, or, to put it another way, he lived for 16,900 days.
Beatrix continued to write stories for Frederick Warne & Co., and fully participated in country life. She established a Nursing Trust for local villages, and served on various committees and councils responsible for footpaths and other rural issues.
Sheep Farming
Soon after acquiring Hill Top Farm, Potter became keenly interested in the breeding and raising of Herdwick sheep, the indigenous fell sheep breed.
In 1923 she bought a large sheep farm in the Troutbeck Valley called Troutbeck Park Farm, formerly a deer park. Beatrix restored its land with thousands of Herdwick sheep, and this established her as one of the major Herdwick sheep farmers in the county.
She was admired by her shepherds and farm managers for her willingness to experiment with the latest biological remedies for the common diseases of sheep, and for her employment of the best shepherds, sheep breeders, and farm managers.
By the late 1920's, Potter and her Hill Top farm manager Tom Storey had made a name for their prize-winning Herdwick flock, which took many prizes at the local agricultural shows, where Potter was often asked to serve as a judge.
In 1942 Beatrix became President-elect of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders' Association, the first time a woman had been elected, although she died before taking office.
Lake District Conservation
Beatrix Potter had been a disciple of the land conservation and preservation ideals of her long-time friend and mentor, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, the first secretary and founding member of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.
According to the National Trust:
"She supported the efforts of the National Trust
to preserve not just the places of extraordinary
beauty, but also those heads of valleys and low
grazing lands that would be irreparably ruined
by development."
Beatrix Potter was also an authority on the traditional Lakeland crafts and period furniture, as well as local stonework. She restored and preserved the farms that she bought or managed, making sure that each farm house had in it a piece of antique Lakeland furniture.
Beatrix was interested in preserving not only the Herdwick sheep, but also the way of life of fell farming. In 1930 the Heelises became partners with the National Trust in buying and managing fell farms included in the large Monk Coniston Estate. The estate comprised many farms spread over a wide area of north-western Lancashire, including the Tarn Hows.
Potter was the de facto estate manager for the Trust for seven years until the National Trust could afford to re-purchase most of the property from her. Potter's stewardship of these farms earned her full regard, but she was not without her critics, including those who felt that she used her wealth and the position of her husband to acquire properties in advance of their being made public.
She was notable in observing the problems of afforestation, preserving the intact grazing lands, and husbanding the quarries and timber on the farms. All her farms were stocked with Herdwick sheep, and frequently with Galloway cattle.
Beatrix Potter - The Later Years
Beatrix Potter continued to write stories and to draw as she aged, although mostly for her own pleasure. Her books in the late 1920's included the semi-autobiographical 'The Fairy Caravan', a fanciful tale set in her beloved Troutbeck fells. It was published only in the US during Potter's lifetime, and not until 1952 in the UK.
'Sister Anne', Potter's version of the story of Bluebeard, was written for her American readers, but illustrated by Katharine Sturges. A final folktale, 'Wag by Wall', was published posthumously by The Horn Book Magazine in 1944.
Potter was a generous patron of the Girl Guides, whose troupes she allowed to make their summer encampments on her land, and whose company she enjoyed as an older woman.
Potter and William Heelis enjoyed a happy marriage of thirty years, continuing their farming and preservation efforts throughout the hard days of World War II. Although they were childless, Potter played an important role in William's large family, particularly enjoying her relationship with several nieces whom she helped educate, and giving comfort and aid to her husband's brothers and sisters.
The Death of Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter died of complications from pneumonia and heart disease on the 22nd. December 1943 at Castle Cottage, and her remains were cremated at Carleton Crematorium.
Beatrix left nearly all her property to the National Trust, including over 4,000 acres (16 km2) of land, sixteen farms, cottages and herds of cattle and Herdwick sheep.
Hers was the largest gift at that time to the National Trust, and it enabled the preservation of the land now included in the Lake District National Park, as well as the continuation of fell farming. The central office of the National Trust in Swindon was named "Heelis" in 2005 in her memory.
William Heelis continued his stewardship of their properties and of her literary and artistic work for the twenty months he survived her. When he died in August 1945, he left the remainder of the land and property to the National Trust.
Beatrix Potter's Legacy
Beatrix left almost all the original illustrations for her books to the National Trust. The copyright to her stories and merchandise was left to her publisher Frederick Warne & Co., now a division of the Penguin Group.
On the 1st. January 2014, the copyright expired in the UK and other countries with a 70-years-after-death limit.
Hill Top Farm was opened to the public by the National Trust in 1946; her artwork was displayed there until 1985 when it was moved to William Heelis's former law offices in Hawkshead, also owned by the National Trust as the Beatrix Potter Gallery.
Beatrix gave her folios of mycological drawings to the Armitt Library and Museum in Ambleside before her death.
'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' is owned by Frederick Warne and Company, 'The Tailor of Gloucester' by the Tate Gallery, and 'The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies' by the British Museum.
The largest public collection of her letters and drawings is the Leslie Linder Bequest and Leslie Linder Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. (Linder was the collector who—after five years of work—finally transcribed Potter's early journal, originally written in code.)
In the United States, the largest public collections are those in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University.
In 2015 a manuscript for an unpublished book was discovered by Jo Hanks, a publisher at Penguin Random House Children's Books, in the Victoria and Albert Museum archive. The book 'The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots', with illustrations by Quentin Blake, was published on the 1st. September 2016, to mark the 150th. anniversary of Potter's birth.
In 2017, 'The Art of Beatrix Potter: Sketches, Paintings, and Illustrations' by Emily Zach was published after San Francisco publisher Chronicle Books decided to mark the 150th. anniversary of Beatrix Potter's birth by showing that:
"She was far more than a 19th.-century
weekend painter. She was an artist of
astonishing range."
In December 2017, the asteroid 13975 Beatrixpotter, discovered by Belgian astronomer Eric Elst in 1992, was named in her memory.
Beatrix Potter's Work
There are many interpretations of Beatrix's literary work, the sources of her art, and her life and times. These include critical evaluations of her corpus of children's literature. 'That Naughty Rabbit: Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit' by Judy Taylor tells the story of the book's first publication and its many subsequent editions.
Potter's country life and her farming have been discussed in the work of Susan Denyer and other authors in the publications of The National Trust, such as 'Beatrix Potter at Home in the Lake District' (2004).
Potter's work as a scientific illustrator and her work in mycology are discussed in Linda Lear's books 'Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature' (2006) and 'Beatrix Potter: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius' (2008).
Adaptations of Beatrix Potter's Work
In 1971, a ballet film was released, 'The Tales of Beatrix Potter'. It was directed by Reginald Mills, set to music by John Lanchbery with choreography by Frederick Ashton, and performed in character costume by members of the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera House orchestra. The ballet of the same name has been performed by other dance companies around the world.
In 1992, Potter's children's book 'The Tale of Benjamin Bunny' was featured in the film Lorenzo's Oil.
Potter is also featured in Susan Wittig Albert's series of light mysteries called 'The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter'. The first of the eight-book series is 'Tale of Hill Top Farm' (2004), which deals with Potter's life in the Lake District and the village of Near Sawrey between 1905 and 1913.
Beatrix Potter in Film
In 1982, the BBC produced 'The Tale of Beatrix Potter'. This dramatisation of her life was written by John Hawkesworth, directed by Bill Hayes, and starred Holly Aird and Penelope Wilton as the young and adult Potter, respectively.
'The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends', a TV series based on nine of her twenty-four stories, starred actress Niamh Cusack as Beatrix Potter.
In 1993, Weston Woods Studios made a film called 'Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman' with narration by Lynn Redgrave and music by Ernest Troost.
In 2006, Chris Noonan directed 'Miss Potter', a biographical film of Potter's life focusing on her early career and romance with her editor Norman Warne. The film stars Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor and Emily Watson.
On 9 February 2018, Columbia Pictures released 'Peter Rabbit', directed by Will Gluck, based on the work by Beatrix Potter. The character Bea, played by Rose Byrne, is a re-imagined version of Beatrix. A sequel to the film entitled 'Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway' was released in 2021.
On the 24th. December 2020, Sky One premiered 'Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse', a made-for-television drama film. The film was inspired by the true story of six-year-old Roald Dahl meeting his idol Beatrix Potter.
Set in 1922, the movie was written by Abigail Wilson, directed by David Kerr and starred Dawn French as Beatrix Potter, Rob Brydon as William Heelis and Jessica Hynes as Sofie Dahl. Filming took place in Wales (the birthland of Roald Dahl, French and Brydon), during the COVID-19 pandemic. This production incorporates live action, stop motion and puppetry.
Final Thoughts From Beatrix Potter
"There is something delicious about
writing the first words of a story. You
never quite know where they'll take you."
"Once upon a time there were four little
Rabbits, and their names were--Flopsy,
Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter."
"I hold that a strongly marked personality
can influence descendants for generations."
"Believe there is a great power silently
working all things for good, behave
yourself and never mind the rest."
"Thank goodness I was never sent to
school; it would have rubbed off some
of the originality."
"I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor
the result, and when I have a bad time
come over me, it is a stronger desire than
ever."
"All outward forms of religion are almost
useless, and are the causes of endless
strife."
"I remember I used to half believe and
wholly play with fairies when I was a child.
What heaven can be more real than to
retain the spirit-world of childhood,
tempered and balanced by knowledge
and common-sense."
"It is said that the effect of eating
too much lettuce is 'soporific'."
"Most people, after one success, are so
cringingly afraid of doing less well that
they rub all the edge off their subsequent
work."
"Peter was not very well during the evening.
His mother put him to bed, and made some
chamomile tea: 'One table-spoonful to be
taken at bedtime'."
"This is a fierce bad rabbit; look at his savage
whiskers, and his claws and his turned-up tail."
"I hold an old-fashioned notion that a happy
marriage is the crown of a woman’s life."
"In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted
coats with flowered lappets - when gentlemen wore
ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and
taffeta - there lived a tailor in Gloucester."
"I fear that we shall be obliged
to leave this pudding."
"Peter lost one of his shoes among the cabbages,
and the other shoe amongst the potatoes."
"I am aware these little books don't
last long, even if they are a success."
"With opportunity the world
is very interesting."
"If I have done anything, even a little,
to help small children enjoy honest,
simple pleasures, I have done a bit
of good."
"But not even Hitler can damage the fells."
"One place suits on person, another place
suits another person. For my part, I prefer
to live in the country, like Timmy Willie."
J. Salmon Ltd.
Alas, J. Salmon no longer produce postcards. Having churned out small coloured rectangles of card from its factory in Kent for more than 100 years, the company stopped publishing postcards in 2017.
The fifth-generation brothers who still ran the company sent a letter to their clients in the autumn of 2017, advising them that the presses would cease printing at the end of 2017, with their remaining stock being sold off throughout the following year.
The firm’s story began in 1880, when the original J. Salmon acquired a printing business on Sevenoaks high street, and produced a collection of twelve black and white scenes of the town.
In 1912, the business broke through into the big time by commissioning the artist Alfred Robert Quinton (1853 - 1934), who produced 2,300 scenes of British life for them up until his death.
From Redruth to King’s Lynn, his softly coloured, highly detailed watercolours of rosy milkmaids, bucolic pumphouses and picturesque harbour towns earned him a place in the hearts of the public, despite references to his 'chocolate-box art' by some art critics.
J. Salmon also produced photographs and cheery oils of seaside imagery captioned with a garrulous enthusiasm: “Eat More Chips!”, “Sun, Sand & Sea”, “We’re Going Camping!”
It commissioned the comic artist Reg Maurice (who often worked under the pseudonym Vera Paterson), to produce pictures of comically bulbous children with cutesy captions, alongside the usual stock images of British towns.
It was this century’s changing habits – and technology – that did for Salmon. Co-managing director Charles Salmon noted:
“People are going for shorter breaks,
not for a fortnight, so you’re back home
before your postcards have arrived."
He barely needed to say that Instagram and Facebook had made their product all but redundant, almost wiping out the entire industry in a decade.
Michelle Abadie, co-director of the John Hinde Collection, said:
“When I heard the news, I was
actually surprised they still existed."
John Hinde was once J Salmon’s biggest rival; it sold 50-60 million postcards a year at its peak in the 1960's, but it, too, shuttered four years previously. The licensing for its rich archive of images was sold off, and repurposed in art books.
However, in one sense, the death of the postcard is overstated. Like vinyl records, our fetish for the physical objects we left behind is already making its presence felt.
Michelle Abadie points out:
“If you go into Waterstones now, they
sell lots of postcards of book covers.
The idea itself isn’t dead – as a
decorative object, people still want
them.”
Today, I've been reading some Seamus Heaney poems. One of them, which has always been a favourite, was 'Blackberry Picking'. I think it's a metaphor for lots of life's disappointments. Here it is:
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Seamus Heaney
German postcard by Ross Verlag in the Luxus series, no. 592. Photo: Paramount.
American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronized music and sound effects and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.
In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.
Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly-fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6209/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount.
American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronized music and sound effects, and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.
In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.
Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly-fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year the cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
British Real Photogravure Portrait. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935).
American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronized music and sound effects, and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.
In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.
Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly-fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year the cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
Dutch postcard by Takken, Utrecht, nr. AX 309. Photo: Paramount.
Alluring French leading lady Corinne Calvet (1925-2001) made a big splash in Hollywood in the early 1950’s with her sultry looks and her highly publicized legal battles.
Corinne Calvet was born as Corinne Dibos in 1925 in Paris. Her mother was one of the scientists who contributed to the invention of Pyrex, a glassware that enabled food to be cooked directly in the glass in an oven. At the age of 12 Corinne appeared in a short film about billiards called Super Cue Men. She decided to become an actress while studying law at the Sorbonne. She went to study at L'Ecole du Cinema and after WW II she appeared in French radio and stage productions. She made her feature film debut with a small role in La part de l'ombre/Blind Desire (1945, Jean Delannoy) starring Jean-Louis Barrault. Soon followed bigger roles in Pétrus (1946, Marc Allégret) with Fernandel, Nous ne sommes pas mariés/We Are Not Married (1946, Bernard-Roland, Gianni Pons) and Le château de la dernière chance/The Castle of the Last Chance (1947, Jean-Paul Paulin). She was discovered in 1947 by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis invited her to come to Hollywood. He cast the French beauty in the Casablanca derivation Rope of Sand (1949, William Dieterle). As the only woman in a cast that included Burt Lancaster, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre and Claude Rains, the curvaceous 23-year-old Calvet could not help but be noticed. Also in the cast was handsome 27-year-old John Bromfield, whom she soon married. Next followed a role in the comedy My Friend Irma Goes West (1950, Hal Walker), opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, with whom she later also appeared in Sailor Beware (1952, Hal Walker). Calvet's few films made for Darryl F Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox were somewhat better, two of them under John Ford, though they were among the director's weakest works: When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950), in which she played a French underground leader who woos soldier Dan Dailey, and as a vivacious barmaid fought over by soldiers Dailey and James Cagney in What Price Glory? (1952). Also at Fox, Calvet was a spirited partner of Danny Kaye in a nightclub act in On The Riviera (1951, Walter Lang). In 1952 Calvet filed a million-dollar slander lawsuit to actress Zsa Zsa Gabor for telling several people, including a newspaper columnist, that Calvet was not really French (Later that year this to be not a genuine feud but just another publicity stunt.) The following years Calvet appeared in a string of films, usually playing French characters, opposite such leading men as Alan Ladd in Thunder In The East (1952, Charles Vidor), James Stewart in the excellent western The Far Country (1954, Anthony Mann), and Tony Curtis in So This Is Paris (1955, Richard Quine). She continued to act in Italian and French productions, like the thriller Bonnes à tuer/One Step to Eternity (1954, Henri Decoin), Le ragazze di San Frediano/The Girls of San Frediano (1955, Valerio Zurlini), Le Avventure Di Giacomo Casanova/Sins of Casanova (1955, Steno) opposite Gabriele Ferzetti, and Napoleon (1955).
In 1955, Corinne Calvet married actor/writer Jeffrey Stone and cooled her acting career. The couple had a son, Robin. Between her marriages and liaisons she made sporadic appearances on American television series and in such films as the British suspense film Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (1960, W. Lee Wilder) with George Sanders, Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962, Martin Ritt) and Apache Uprising (1966, R.G. Springsteen). In the 1970’s she started a career as a psycho-therapist. On the screen she appeared in such fare as the tv film The Phantom of Hollywood (1974, Gene Levitt) and the soft-core porn film Too Hot to Handle (1976, Don Schain). In the 1980’s, Calvet she played a victim of Oliver Reed in Dr Heckle and Mr Hype (1980, Charles B. Griffith), and had a cameo in The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982, Albert Pyun). Calvet was married four times. Her first marriage was to actor John Bromfield (1948-1954), who had co-starred with her in Rope of Sand and who, she claimed had been ordered to marry her by his studio. She explained that "he had an addiction to sex, which he needed to satisfy in order to sleep". Her second marriage was to minor actor/writer Jeffrey Stone (1955 - 1962). In 1966 she married director Albert C. Gannaway in Las Vegas, with whom she had made the western Plunderers of Painted Flats (1959), the last film for Republic Pictures. But Gannaway left her just a week after their marriage. In 1967, her longtime boyfriend, millionaire Donald Scott sued her to recover assets that he had placed under her name in order to hide them from his wife in a divorce battle. Saying that Calvet had used voodoo to control him, Scott settled his differences with her after a bitter two-week trial. Calvets final marriage was to producer/commercial photographer Robert J. Wirt (1968-1971). All marriages ended in divorce. Calvet once told a reporter that American men make wonderful husbands if you don't love them. But if you love them, she advised, don't marry them. Corinne Calvet died in 2001 in Los Angeles of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 76. She is survived by a son of her fourth marriage, Michael. In her memoir, entitled Has Corinne Been a Good Girl? (1983), she stated that the roles she played for Hollywood studios typecasted her and never challenged her acting ability. And about the title: readers and filmgoers were left to make up their own minds as to the answer.
Sources: Hal Erickson (All Movie Guide), Brian J. Walker (Brian’s Drive-In Theater), Philippe Garnier (Libération), Jon Thurber (Los Angeles Times), Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia and IMDb.
Given our proclivity for leaving things to the last minute we were having a brainstorm in the pub on Tuesday for UPfest ideas when we somehow alighted on the idea of pirates as the infamous Blackbeard was allegedly from Bristol. It was a good start but we needed more. We then moved on to Bluebeard (not actually a pirate but an aristocratic murderer from a French fairy tale), then to Redbeard (a pirate plying his trade in the Mediterranean) and finally Greenbeard.
As it turns out there was no such pirate as Greenbeard but we did find out about 'The Green-beard Effect'. Which, to paraphrase something that sounds quite complicated when you read up on it, is that people like other people who share observable physical traits like blue eyes or, as in the name of the effect, a hypothetical green beard. With that as a vague plan we then came up with the idea of adding some actual greenery to give him a true green beard and an idea was born. A quick word with our trusty gardener friend John to secure some foliage later and the whole thing was a go!
Cue some feverish design, the standard bickering over the final design and then some swift preparation and hey presto! We're ready for another road trip. After a good night's sleep (thanks to Jo & Al for putting us up!) we were down the Tobacco Factory fed, watered and ready to go by 10.30am. It was all going smoothly. Too smoothly. Something had to go wrong. And sure enough we had 10ft less space than we were expecting. Hmmm... What to do? We eventually decided on ditching the 'Sexual Altruism' lettering as it was too big. That was a shame but needs must and we went with just the two heads staring at each other to maximise the space to apply the green beard to. After the rain on Friday and the rain on Sunday it turned out that Saturday was a bastion of sunshine and we even have the cheap trucker tans to prove it.
As we were painting a few people asked if it was white Obama that we were painting. Not only would that be a strange concept to begin with he doesn't have a beard and id-iom doesn't really do political. Perhaps we should think again. Once we'd just about finished we whacked some LED's in the eyes and some reflective paint as their laser like stare. I'd love to see if anyone manages to get a decent night shot...
As ever UPfest was a great day out and it's always nice to put names to faces and chat to all and sundry. Thanks to the UPfest team for having us and Jake in particular for dealing with our whinging.
Cheers
id-iom
For the my life soundtrack pool... thanks for the invite. :)
**********
Opening credits: In the hot hot rays~ Fleet Foxes
Waking up: Blonde on Blonde ~ Nada Surf
Average day: dreams never end ~ New Order
First date: Over the hills and far away ~ Led Zepplin
Falling in love: Under the Milky Way ~ The Church
Love scene: The Beautiful ones ~ Prince
Fight scene: where I end you begin ~ Radiohead
Breaking up: Porcelain ~ Moby
Getting back together: The Greatest ~ Catpower
Secret love: This Modern Love ~ Bloc party
Life's okay: Wraith pinned to the mist and other games~ of montreal
Mental breakdown: Where is my mind~The Pixies
Driving: Lullaby ~ The Cure
Learning a lesson: The simple story ~ Feist & Jane Birkin
Deep thought: Loro~Pinback
Flashback: Creep ~ Radiohead
Partying: Born Slippy ~ Underworld
Happy dance: Ceremony ~ New Order
Regretting: Mercy Street ~ Peter Gabriel
Long night alone: Bluebeard~ Cocteau Twins
Death Scene: Into the Mystic ~ Van Morrison
Closing credits: Dancing Barefoot ~ U2
The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word Acropolis is from the Greek words ἄκρον (akron, "highest point, extremity") and πόλις (polis, "city"). The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was also more properly known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king.
While there is evidence that the hill was inhabited as early as the fourth millennium BC, it was Pericles (c. 495–429 BC) in the fifth century BC who coordinated the construction of the buildings whose present remains are the site's most important ones, including the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. The Parthenon and the other buildings were seriously damaged during the 1687 siege by the Venetians during the Morean War when gunpowder being stored by the then Turkish rulers in the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian bombardment and exploded.
History
Early settlement
The Acropolis is located on a flattish-topped rock that rises 150 m (490 ft) above sea level in the city of Athens, with a surface area of about 3 ha (7.4 acres). While the earliest artifacts date to the Middle Neolithic era, there have been documented habitations in Attica from the Early Neolithic period (6th millennium BC).
There is little doubt that a Mycenaean megaron palace stood upon the hill during the late Bronze Age. Nothing of this megaron survives except, probably, a single limestone column base and pieces of several sandstone steps. Soon after the palace was constructed, a Cyclopean massive circuit wall was built, 760 meters long, up to 10 meters high, and ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters thick. From the end of the Helladic IIIB (1300–1200 BC) on, this wall would serve as the main defense for the acropolis until the 5th century. The wall consisted of two parapets built with large stone blocks and cemented with an earth mortar called emplekton (Greek: ἔμπλεκτον). The wall uses typical Mycenaean conventions in that it followed the natural contour of the terrain and its gate, which was towards the south, was arranged obliquely, with a parapet and tower overhanging the incomers' right-hand side, thus facilitating defense. There were two lesser approaches up the hill on its north side, consisting of steep, narrow flights of steps cut in the rock. Homer is assumed to refer to this fortification when he mentions the "strong-built house of Erechtheus" (Odyssey 7.81). At some time before the 13th century BC, an earthquake caused a fissure near the northeastern edge of the Acropolis. This fissure extended some 35 meters to a bed of soft marl in which a well was dug. An elaborate set of stairs was built and the well served as an invaluable, protected source of drinking water during times of siege for some portion of the Mycenaean period.
Archaic Acropolis
Not much is known about the architectural appearance of the Acropolis until the Archaic era. During the 7th and the 6th centuries BC, the site was controlled by Kylon during the failed Kylonian revolt, and twice by Peisistratos; each of these was attempts directed at seizing political power by coups d'état. Apart from the Hekatompedon mentioned later, Peisistratos also built an entry gate or propylaea. Nevertheless, it seems that a nine-gate wall, the Enneapylon, had been built around the acropolis hill and incorporated the biggest water spring, the Clepsydra, at the northwestern foot.
A temple to Athena Polias, the tutelary deity of the city, was erected between 570 and 550 BC. This Doric limestone building, from which many relics survive, is referred to as the Hekatompedon (Greek for "hundred–footed"), Ur-Parthenon (German for "original Parthenon" or "primitive Parthenon"), H–Architecture or Bluebeard temple, after the pedimental three-bodied man-serpent sculpture, whose beards were painted dark blue. Whether this temple replaced an older one or just a sacred precinct or altar is not known. Probably, the Hekatompedon was built where the Parthenon now stands.
Between 529 and 520 BC yet another temple was built by the Pisistratids, the Old Temple of Athena, usually referred to as the Arkhaios Neōs (ἀρχαῖος νεώς, "ancient temple"). This temple of Athena Polias was built upon the Dörpfeld foundations, between the Erechtheion and the still-standing Parthenon. The Arkhaios Neōs was destroyed as part of the Achaemenid destruction of Athens during the Second Persian invasion of Greece during 480–479 BC; however, the temple was probably reconstructed during 454 BC, since the treasury of the Delian League was transferred in its opisthodomos. The temple may have been burnt down during 406/405 BC as Xenophon mentions that the old temple of Athena was set afire. Pausanias does not mention it in his 2nd century AD Description of Greece.
Around 500 BC the Hekatompedon was dismantled to make place for a new grander building, the Older Parthenon (often referred to as the Pre-Parthenon or Early Parthenon). For this reason, Athenians decided to stop the construction of the Olympieion temple which was connoted with the tyrant Peisistratos and his sons, and, instead, used the Piraeus limestone destined for the Olympieion to build the Older Parthenon. To accommodate the new temple, the south part of the summit was cleared, made level by adding some 8,000 two-ton blocks of limestone, a foundation 11 m (36 ft) deep at some points, and the rest was filled with soil kept in place by the retaining wall. However, after the victorious Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, the plan was revised and marble was used instead. The limestone phase of the building is referred to as Pre-Parthenon I and the marble phase as Pre-Parthenon II. In 485 BC, construction stalled to save resources as Xerxes became king of Persia, and war seemed imminent. The Older Parthenon was still under construction when the Persians invaded and sacked the city in 480 BC. The building was burned and looted, along with the Ancient Temple and practically everything else on the rock. After the Persian crisis had subsided, the Athenians incorporated many architectural parts of the unfinished temple (unfluted column drums, triglyphs, metopes, etc.) into the newly built northern curtain wall of the Acropolis, where they served as a prominent "war memorial" and can still be seen today. The devastated site was cleared of debris. Statuary, cult objects, religious offerings, and unsalvageable architectural members were buried ceremoniously in several deeply dug pits on the hill, serving conveniently as a fill for the artificial plateau created around the Classical Parthenon. This "Persian debris" was the richest archaeological deposit excavated on the Acropolis by 1890.
The Periclean building program
After winning at Eurymedon during 468 BC, Cimon and Themistocles ordered the reconstruction of the southern and northern walls of the Acropolis. Most of the major temples, including the Parthenon, were rebuilt by order of Pericles during the so-called Golden Age of Athens (460–430 BC). Phidias, an Athenian sculptor, and Ictinus and Callicrates, two famous architects, were responsible for the reconstruction.
During 437 BC, Mnesicles started building the Propylaea, a monumental gate at the western end of the Acropolis with Doric columns of Pentelic marble, built partly upon the old Propylaea of Peisistratos. These colonnades were almost finished during 432 BC and had two wings, the northern one decorated with paintings by Polygnotus. About the same time, south of the Propylaea, building started on the small Ionic Temple of Athena Nike in Pentelic marble with tetrastyle porches, preserving the essentials of Greek temple design. After an interruption caused by the Peloponnesian War, the temple was finished during the time of Nicias' peace, between 421 BC and 409 BC.
Construction of the elegant temple of Erechtheion in Pentelic marble (421–406 BC) was by a complex plan which took account of the extremely uneven ground and the need to circumvent several shrines in the area. The entrance, facing east, is lined with six Ionic columns. Unusually, the temple has two porches, one on the northwest corner borne by Ionic columns, the other, to the southwest, supported by huge female figures or caryatids. The eastern part of the temple was dedicated to Athena Polias, while the western part, serving the cult of the archaic king Poseidon-Erechtheus, housed the altars of Hephaestus and Voutos, brother of Erechtheus. Little is known about the original plan of the interior, which was destroyed by fire during the first century BC and has been rebuilt several times.
During the same period, a combination of sacred precincts including the temples of Athena Polias, Poseidon, Erechtheus, Cecrops, Herse, Pandrosos and Aglauros, with its Kore Porch (Porch of the Maidens) or Caryatids' Balcony was begun. Between the temple of Athena Nike and the Parthenon, there was the Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia (or the Brauroneion), the goddess represented as a bear and worshipped in the deme of Brauron. According to Pausanias, a wooden statue or xoanon of the goddess and a statue of Artemis made by Praxiteles during the 4th century BC were both in the sanctuary.
Behind the Propylaea, Phidias' gigantic bronze statue of Athena Promachos ("Athena who fights in the front line"), built between 450 BC and 448 BC, dominated. The base was 1.50 m (4 ft 11 in) high, while the total height of the statue was 9 m (30 ft). The goddess held a lance, the gilt tip of which could be seen as a reflection by crews on ships rounding Cape Sounion, and a giant shield on the left side, decorated by Mys with images of the fight between the Centaurs and the Lapiths. Other monuments that have left almost nothing visible to the present day are the Chalkotheke, the Pandroseion, Pandion's sanctuary, Athena's altar, Zeus Polieus's sanctuary and, from Roman times, the circular Temple of Roma and Augustus.
Hellenistic and Roman Period
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many of the existing buildings in the area of the Acropolis were repaired to remedy damage from age and occasionally war. Monuments to foreign kings were erected, notably those of the Attalid kings of Pergamon Attalos II (in front of the NW corner of the Parthenon), and Eumenes II, in front of the Propylaea. These were rededicated during the early Roman Empire to Augustus or Claudius (uncertain) and Agrippa, respectively. Eumenes was also responsible for constructing a stoa on the south slope, similar to that of Attalos in the agora below.
During the Julio-Claudian period, the Temple of Roma and Augustus, a small, round edifice about 23 meters from the Parthenon, was to be the last significant ancient construction on the summit of the rock. Around the same time, on the north slope, in a cave next to the one dedicated to Pan since the Classical period, a sanctuary was founded where the archons dedicated to Apollo on assuming office. During 161 AD, on the south slope, the Roman Herodes Atticus built his grand amphitheater or odeon. It was destroyed by the invading Herulians a century later but was reconstructed during the 1950s.
During the 3rd century, under threat from a Herulian invasion, repairs were made to the Acropolis walls, and the Beulé Gate was constructed to restrict entrance in front of the Propylaea, thus returning the Acropolis to use as a fortress.
Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Period
During the Byzantine period, the Parthenon was used as a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. During the Latin Duchy of Athens, the Acropolis functioned as the city's administrative center, with the Parthenon as its cathedral, and the Propylaea as part of the ducal palace. A large tower was added, the Frankopyrgos, demolished during the 19th century.
After the Ottoman conquest of Greece, the Propylaea were used as the garrison headquarters of the Turkish army,[40] the Parthenon was converted into a mosque and the Erechtheum was turned into the governor's private harem. The buildings of the Acropolis suffered significant damage during the 1687 siege by the Venetians in the Morean War. The Parthenon, which was being used as a gunpowder magazine, was hit by artillery shot and damaged severely.
During subsequent years, the Acropolis was a site of bustling human activity with many Byzantine, Frankish, and Ottoman structures. The dominant feature during the Ottoman period was a mosque inside the Parthenon, complete with a minaret.
The Acropolis was besieged thrice during the Greek War of Independence—two sieges from the Greeks in 1821–1822 and one from the Ottomans in 1826–1827. A new bulwark named after Odysseas Androutsos was built by the Greeks between 1822 and 1825 to protect the recently rediscovered Klepsydra spring, which became the sole fresh water supply of the fortress.
Independent Greece
After independence, most features that dated from the Byzantine, Frankish, and Ottoman periods were cleared from the site in an attempt to restore the monument to its original form, "cleansed" of all later additions. The Parthenon mosque was demolished in 1843, and the Frankish Tower in 1875. German Neoclassicist architect Leo von Klenze was responsible for the restoration of the Acropolis in the 19th century, according to German historian Wolf Seidl, as described in his book Bavarians in Greece.
At the beginning of the Axis occupation of Greece in 1941, German soldiers raised the Nazi German War Flag over the Acropolis. It would be taken down by Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas in one of the first acts of resistance. In 1944 Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou arrived on the Acropolis to celebrate liberation from the Nazis.
Archaeological remains
The entrance to the Acropolis was a monumental gateway termed the Propylaea. To the south of the entrance is the tiny Temple of Athena Nike. At the centre of the Acropolis is the Parthenon or Temple of Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin). East of the entrance and north of the Parthenon is the temple known as the Erechtheum. South of the platform that forms the top of the Acropolis there are also the remains of the ancient, though often remodelled, Theatre of Dionysus. A few hundred metres away, there is the now partially reconstructed Odeon of Herodes Atticus.
All the valuable ancient artifacts are situated in the Acropolis Museum, which resides on the southern slope of the same rock, 280 metres from the Parthenon.
Site plan
Parthenon
Old Temple of Athena
Erechtheum
Statue of Athena Promachos
Propylaea
Temple of Athena Nike
Eleusinion
Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia or Brauroneion
Chalkotheke
Pandroseion
Arrephorion
Altar of Athena
Sanctuary of Zeus Polieus
Sanctuary of Pandion
Odeon of Herodes Atticus
Stoa of Eumenes
Sanctuary of Asclepius or Asclepieion
Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus
Odeon of Pericles
Temenos of Dionysus Eleuthereus
Mycenaean fountain
The Acropolis Restoration Project
The Acropolis Restoration Project began in 1975 to reverse the decay of centuries of attrition, pollution, destruction from military actions, and misguided past restorations. The project included the collection and identification of all stone fragments, even small ones, from the Acropolis and its slopes, and the attempt was made to restore as much as possible using reassembled original material (anastylosis), with new marble from Mount Pentelicus used sparingly. All restoration was made using titanium dowels and is designed to be completely reversible, in case future experts decide to change things. A combination of cutting-edge modern technology and extensive research and reinvention of ancient techniques were used.
The Parthenon colonnades, largely destroyed by Venetian bombardment during the 17th century, were restored, with many wrongly assembled columns now properly placed. The roof and floor of the Propylaea were partly restored, with sections of the roof made of new marble and decorated with blue and gold inserts, as in the original. Restoration of the Temple of Athena Nike was completed in 2010.
A total of 2,675 tons of architectural members were restored, with 686 stones reassembled from fragments of the originals, 905 patched with new marble, and 186 parts made entirely of new marble. A total of 530 cubic meters of new Pentelic marble were used.
In 2021, the addition of new reinforced concrete paths to the site to improve accessibility caused controversy among archaeologists.
Cultural significance
Every four years, the Athenians had a festival called the Great Panathenaea that rivaled the Olympic Games in popularity. During the festival, a procession (believed to be depicted on the Parthenon frieze) traveled through the city via the Panathenaic Way and culminated on the Acropolis. There, a new robe of woven wool (peplos) was placed on either the statue of Athena Polias in the Erechtheum (during the annual Lesser Panathenaea) or the statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon (during the Great Panathenaea, held every four years).
Within the later tradition of Western civilization and Classical revival, the Acropolis, from at least the mid-18th century on, has often been invoked as a critical symbol of the Greek legacy and of the glories of Classical Greece.
Most of the artifacts from the temple are housed today in the Acropolis Museum at the foot of the ancient rock.
Geology
The Acropolis is a klippe consisting of two lithostratigraphic units: the Athens schist and the overlying Acropolis limestone. The Athens schist is a soft reddish rock dating from the late Cretaceous period. The original sediments were deposited in a river delta approximately 72 million years ago. The Acropolis limestone dates from the late Jurassic period, predating the underlying Athens schist by about 30 million years. The Acropolis limestone was thrust over the Athens schist by compressional tectonic forces, forming a nappe or overthrust sheet. Erosion of the limestone nappe led to the eventual detachment of the Acropolis, forming the present-day feature. Where the Athens schist and the limestone meet there are springs and karstic caves.
Many of the hills in the Athens region were formed by the erosion of the same nappe as the Acropolis. These include the hills of Lykabettos, Areopagus, and Mouseion.
The marble used for the buildings of the Acropolis was sourced from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus, a mountain to the northeast of the city.
Geological instability
The limestone that the Acropolis is built upon is unstable because of the erosion and tectonic shifts that the region is prone to. This instability can cause rock slides that cause damage to the historic site. Various measures have been implemented to protect the site including retaining walls, drainage systems, and rock bolts. These measures work to counter the natural processes that threaten the historic site.
Athens is a major coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, and it is both the capital and the largest city of Greece. With its urban area's population numbering over three million, it is also the eighth largest urban area in the European Union. Athens dominates and is the capital of the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years, and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. The city was named after Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom.
Classical Athens was one of the most powerful city-states in ancient Greece. It was a centre for democracy, the arts, education and philosophy, and was highly influential throughout the European continent, particularly in Ancient Rome. For this reason, it is often regarded as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy in its own right independently from the rest of Greece. In modern times, Athens is a huge cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime, political and cultural life in Greece. In 2023, Athens metropolitan area and its surrounding municipalities (consisting the regional area of Attica) has a population of approximately 3.8 million.
Athens is a Beta-status global city according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and is one of the biggest economic centers in Southeastern Europe. It also has a large financial sector, and its port Piraeus is both the 2nd busiest passenger port in Europe, and the 13th largest container port in the world. The Municipality of Athens (also City of Athens), which constitutes a small administrative unit of the entire urban area, had a population of 643,452 (2021) within its official limits, and a land area of 38.96 km2 (15.04 sq mi). The Athens metropolitan area or Greater Athens extends beyond its administrative municipal city limits as well as its urban agglomeration, with a population of 3,638,281 (2021) over an area of 2,928.717 km2 (1,131 sq mi). Athens is also the southernmost capital on the European mainland.
The heritage of the Classical Era is still evident in the city, represented by ancient monuments, and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, considered a key landmark of early Western culture. The city also retains Roman, Byzantine and a smaller number of Ottoman monuments, while its historical urban core features elements of continuity through its millennia of history. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery. Landmarks of the modern era, dating back to the establishment of Athens as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1834, include the Hellenic Parliament and the Architectural Trilogy of Athens, consisting of the National Library of Greece, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and the Academy of Athens. Athens is also home to several museums and cultural institutions, such as the National Archeological Museum, featuring the world's largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, the Acropolis Museum, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Benaki Museum, and the Byzantine and Christian Museum. Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it hosted the 2004 Summer Olympics, making it one of five cities to have hosted the Summer Olympics on multiple occasions. Athens joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2016.
Etymology and names
In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι (Athênai, pronounced [atʰɛ̂ːnai̯] in Classical Attic), which is a plural word. In earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη (Athḗnē). It was possibly rendered in the plural later on, like those of Θῆβαι (Thêbai) and Μυκῆναι (Μukênai). The root of the word is probably not of Greek or Indo-European origin, and is possibly a remnant of the Pre-Greek substrate of Attica. In antiquity, it was debated whether Athens took its name from its patron goddess Athena (Attic Ἀθηνᾶ, Athēnâ, Ionic Ἀθήνη, Athḗnē, and Doric Ἀθάνα, Athā́nā) or Athena took her name from the city. Modern scholars now generally agree that the goddess takes her name from the city,[24] because the ending -ene is common in names of locations, but rare for personal names.
According to the ancient Athenian founding myth, Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, competed against Poseidon, the God of the Seas, for patronage of the yet-unnamed city; they agreed that whoever gave the Athenians the better gift would become their patron and appointed Cecrops, the king of Athens, as the judge. According to the account given by Pseudo-Apollodorus, Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a salt water spring welled up. In an alternative version of the myth from Vergil's poem Georgics, Poseidon instead gave the Athenians the first horse. In both versions, Athena offered the Athenians the first domesticated olive tree. Cecrops accepted this gift and declared Athena the patron goddess of Athens. Eight different etymologies, now commonly rejected, have been proposed since the 17th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος (áthos) or ἄνθος (ánthos) meaning "flower", to denote Athens as the "flowering city". Ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- (tháō, thē-, "to suck") to denote Athens as having fertile soil. Athenians were called cicada-wearers (Ancient Greek: Τεττιγοφόροι) because they used to wear pins of golden cicadas. A symbol of being autochthonous (earth-born), because the legendary founder of Athens, Erechtheus was an autochthon or of being musicians, because the cicada is a "musician" insect. In classical literature, the city was sometimes referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindar's ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι (iostéphanoi Athânai), or as τὸ κλεινὸν ἄστυ (tò kleinòn ásty, "the glorious city").
During the medieval period, the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα. Variant names included Setines, Satine, and Astines, all derivations involving false splitting of prepositional phrases. King Alphonse X of Castile gives the pseudo-etymology 'the one without death/ignorance'. In Ottoman Turkish, it was called آتينا Ātīnā, and in modern Turkish, it is Atina.
History
Main article: History of Athens
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Athens.
Historical affiliations
Kingdom of Athens 1556 BC–1068 BC
City-state of Athens 1068 BC–322 BC
Hellenic League 338 BC–322 BC
Kingdom of Macedonia 322 BC–148 BC
Roman Republic 146 BC–27 BC
Roman Empire 27 BC–395 AD
Eastern Roman Empire 395–1205
Duchy of Athens 1205–1458
Ottoman Empire 1458–1822, 1827–1832
Greece 1822–1827, 1832–present
Antiquity
The oldest known human presence in Athens is the Cave of Schist, which has been dated to between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 5,000 years (3000 BC). By 1400 BC, the settlement had become an important centre of the Mycenaean civilization, and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean fortress, whose remains can be recognised from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls. Unlike other Mycenaean centers, such as Mycenae and Pylos, it is not known whether Athens suffered destruction in about 1200 BC, an event often attributed to a Dorian invasion, and the Athenians always maintained that they were pure Ionians with no Dorian element. However, Athens, like many other Bronze Age settlements, went into economic decline for around 150 years afterwards. Iron Age burials, in the Kerameikos and other locations, are often richly provided for and demonstrate that from 900 BC onwards Athens was one of the leading centres of trade and prosperity in the region.
By the sixth century BC, widespread social unrest led to the reforms of Solon. These would pave the way for the eventual introduction of democracy by Cleisthenes in 508 BC. Athens had by this time become a significant naval power with a large fleet, and helped the rebellion of the Ionian cities against Persian rule. In the ensuing Greco-Persian Wars Athens, together with Sparta, led the coalition of Greek states that would eventually repel the Persians, defeating them decisively at Marathon in 490 BC, and crucially at Salamis in 480 BC. However, this did not prevent Athens from being captured and sacked twice by the Persians within one year, after a heroic but ultimately failed resistance at Thermopylae by Spartans and other Greeks led by King Leonidas, after both Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persians.
The decades that followed became known as the Golden Age of Athenian democracy, during which time Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations for Western civilization. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished in Athens during this time, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates, and the philosopher Socrates. Guided by Pericles, who promoted the arts and fostered democracy, Athens embarked on an ambitious building program that saw the construction of the Acropolis of Athens (including the Parthenon), as well as empire-building via the Delian League. Originally intended as an association of Greek city-states to continue the fight against the Persians, the league soon turned into a vehicle for Athens's own imperial ambitions. The resulting tensions brought about the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), in which Athens was defeated by its rival Sparta.
By the mid-4th century BC, the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon was becoming dominant in Athenian affairs. In 338 BC the armies of Philip II defeated an alliance of some of the Greek city-states including Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea. Later, under Rome, Athens was given the status of a free city because of its widely admired schools. In the second century AD, The Roman emperor Hadrian, himself an Athenian citizen, ordered the construction of a library, a gymnasium, an aqueduct which is still in use, several temples and sanctuaries, a bridge and financed the completion of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.
In the early 4th century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire began to be governed from Constantinople, and with the construction and expansion of the imperial city, many of Athens's works of art were taken by the emperors to adorn it. The Empire became Christianized, and the use of Latin declined in favour of exclusive use of Greek; in the Roman imperial period, both languages had been used. In the later Roman period, Athens was ruled by the emperors continuing until the 13th century, its citizens identifying themselves as citizens of the Roman Empire ("Rhomaioi"). The conversion of the empire from paganism to Christianity greatly affected Athens, resulting in reduced reverence for the city.[33] Ancient monuments such as the Parthenon, Erechtheion and the Hephaisteion (Theseion) were converted into churches. As the empire became increasingly anti-pagan, Athens became a provincial town and experienced fluctuating fortunes.
The city remained an important center of learning, especially of Neoplatonism—with notable pupils including Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea and emperor Julian (r. 355–363)—and consequently a center of paganism. Christian items do not appear in the archaeological record until the early 5th century. The sack of the city by the Herules in 267 and by the Visigoths under their king Alaric I (r. 395–410) in 396, however, dealt a heavy blow to the city's fabric and fortunes, and Athens was henceforth confined to a small fortified area that embraced a fraction of the ancient city. The emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) banned the teaching of philosophy by pagans in 529, an event whose impact on the city is much debated, but is generally taken to mark the end of the ancient history of Athens. Athens was sacked by the Slavs in 582, but remained in imperial hands thereafter, as highlighted by the visit of the emperor Constans II (r. 641–668) in 662/3 and its inclusion in the Theme of Hellas.
Middle Ages
The city was threatened by Saracen raids in the 8th–9th centuries—in 896, Athens was raided and possibly occupied for a short period, an event which left some archaeological remains and elements of Arabic ornamentation in contemporary buildings—but there is also evidence of a mosque existing in the city at the time. In the great dispute over Byzantine Iconoclasm, Athens is commonly held to have supported the iconophile position, chiefly due to the role played by Empress Irene of Athens in the ending of the first period of Iconoclasm at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. A few years later, another Athenian, Theophano, became empress as the wife of Staurakios (r. 811–812).
Invasion of the empire by the Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, and the ensuing civil wars, largely passed the region by and Athens continued its provincial existence unharmed. When the Byzantine Empire was rescued by the resolute leadership of the three Komnenos emperors Alexios, John and Manuel, Attica and the rest of Greece prospered. Archaeological evidence tells us that the medieval town experienced a period of rapid and sustained growth, starting in the 11th century and continuing until the end of the 12th century.
The Agora (marketplace) had been deserted since late antiquity, began to be built over, and soon the town became an important centre for the production of soaps and dyes. The growth of the town attracted the Venetians, and various other traders who frequented the ports of the Aegean, to Athens. This interest in trade appears to have further increased the economic prosperity of the town.
The 11th and 12th centuries were the Golden Age of Byzantine art in Athens. Almost all of the most important Middle Byzantine churches in and around Athens were built during these two centuries, and this reflects the growth of the town in general. However, this medieval prosperity was not to last. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade conquered Athens and the city was not recovered from the Latins before it was taken by the Ottoman Turks. It did not become Greek in government again until the 19th century.
From 1204 until 1458, Athens was ruled by Latins in three separate periods, following the Crusades. The "Latins", or "Franks", were western Europeans and followers of the Latin Church brought to the Eastern Mediterranean during the Crusades. Along with rest of Byzantine Greece, Athens was part of the series of feudal fiefs, similar to the Crusader states established in Syria and on Cyprus after the First Crusade. This period is known as the Frankokratia.
Ottoman Athens
The first Ottoman attack on Athens, which involved a short-lived occupation of the town, came in 1397, under the Ottoman generals Yaqub Pasha and Timurtash. Finally, in 1458, Athens was captured by the Ottomans under the personal leadership of Sultan Mehmed II. As the Ottoman Sultan rode into the city, he was greatly struck by the beauty of its ancient monuments and issued a firman (imperial edict) forbidding their looting or destruction, on pain of death. The Parthenon was converted into the main mosque of the city.
Under Ottoman rule, Athens was denuded of any importance and its population severely declined, leaving it as a "small country town" (Franz Babinger). From the early 17th century, Athens came under the jurisdiction of the Kizlar Agha, the chief black eunuch of the Sultan's harem. The city had originally been granted by Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) to Basilica, one of his favourite concubines, who hailed from the city, in response of complaints of maladministration by the local governors. After her death, Athens came under the purview of the Kizlar Agha.
The Turks began a practice of storing gunpowder and explosives in the Parthenon and Propylaea. In 1640, a lightning bolt struck the Propylaea, causing its destruction. In 1687, during the Morean War, the Acropolis was besieged by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini, and the temple of Athena Nike was dismantled by the Ottomans to fortify the Parthenon. A shot fired during the bombardment of the Acropolis caused a powder magazine in the Parthenon to explode (26 September), and the building was severely damaged, giving it largely the appearance it has today. The Venetian occupation of Athens lasted for six months, and both the Venetians and the Ottomans participated in the looting of the Parthenon. One of its western pediments was removed, causing even more damage to the structure. During the Venetian occupation, the two mosques of the city were converted into Catholic and Protestant churches, but on 9 April 1688 the Venetians abandoned Athens again to the Ottomans.
Modern history
In 1822, a Greek insurgency captured the city, but it fell to the Ottomans again in 1826 (though Acropolis held till June 1827). Again the ancient monuments suffered badly. The Ottoman forces remained in possession until March 1833, when they withdrew. At that time, the city (as throughout the Ottoman period) had a small population of an estimated 400 houses, mostly located around the Acropolis in the Plaka.
Following the Greek War of Independence and the establishment of the Greek Kingdom, Athens was chosen to replace Nafplio as the second capital of the newly independent Greek state in 1834, largely because of historical and sentimental reasons. At the time, after the extensive destruction it had suffered during the war of independence, it was reduced to a town of about 4,000 people (less than half its earlier population) in a loose swarm of houses along the foot of the Acropolis. The first King of Greece, Otto of Bavaria, commissioned the architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert to design a modern city plan fit for the capital of a state.
The first modern city plan consisted of a triangle defined by the Acropolis, the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos and the new palace of the Bavarian king (now housing the Greek Parliament), so as to highlight the continuity between modern and ancient Athens. Neoclassicism, the international style of this epoch, was the architectural style through which Bavarian, French and Greek architects such as Hansen, Klenze, Boulanger or Kaftantzoglou designed the first important public buildings of the new capital. In 1896, Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games. During the 1920s a number of Greek refugees, expelled from Asia Minor after the Greco-Turkish War and Greek genocide, swelled Athens's population; nevertheless it was most particularly following World War II, and from the 1950s and 1960s, that the population of the city exploded, and Athens experienced a gradual expansion.
In the 1980s, it became evident that smog from factories and an ever-increasing fleet of automobiles, as well as a lack of adequate free space due to congestion, had evolved into the city's most important challenge.[citation needed] A series of anti-pollution measures taken by the city's authorities in the 1990s, combined with a substantial improvement of the city's infrastructure (including the Attiki Odos motorway, the expansion of the Athens Metro, and the new Athens International Airport), considerably alleviated pollution and transformed Athens into a much more functional city. In 2004, Athens hosted the 2004 Summer Olympics.
Geography
Athens sprawls across the central plain of Attica that is often referred to as the Athens Basin or the Attica Basin (Greek: Λεκανοπέδιο Αθηνών/Αττικής). The basin is bounded by four large mountains: Mount Aigaleo to the west, Mount Parnitha to the north, Mount Pentelicus to the northeast and Mount Hymettus to the east. Beyond Mount Aegaleo lies the Thriasian plain, which forms an extension of the central plain to the west. The Saronic Gulf lies to the southwest. Mount Parnitha is the tallest of the four mountains (1,413 m (4,636 ft)), and has been declared a national park. The Athens urban area spreads over 50 kilometres (31 mi) from Agios Stefanos in the north to Varkiza in the south. The city is located in the north temperate zone, 38 degrees north of the equator.
Athens is built around a number of hills. Lycabettus is one of the tallest hills of the city proper and provides a view of the entire Attica Basin. The meteorology of Athens is deemed to be one of the most complex in the world because its mountains cause a temperature inversion phenomenon which, along with the Greek government's difficulties controlling industrial pollution, was responsible for the air pollution problems the city has faced. This issue is not unique to Athens; for instance, Los Angeles and Mexico City also suffer from similar atmospheric inversion problems.
The Cephissus river, the Ilisos and the Eridanos stream are the historical rivers of Athens.
Environment
By the late 1970s, the pollution of Athens had become so destructive that according to the then Greek Minister of Culture, Constantine Trypanis, "...the carved details on the five the caryatids of the Erechtheum had seriously degenerated, while the face of the horseman on the Parthenon's west side was all but obliterated." A series of measures taken by the authorities of the city throughout the 1990s resulted in the improvement of air quality; the appearance of smog (or nefos as the Athenians used to call it) has become less common.
Measures taken by the Greek authorities throughout the 1990s have improved the quality of air over the Attica Basin. Nevertheless, air pollution still remains an issue for Athens, particularly during the hottest summer days. In late June 2007, the Attica region experienced a number of brush fires, including a blaze that burned a significant portion of a large forested national park in Mount Parnitha, considered critical to maintaining a better air quality in Athens all year round. Damage to the park has led to worries over a stalling in the improvement of air quality in the city.
The major waste management efforts undertaken in the last decade (particularly the plant built on the small island of Psytalia) have greatly improved water quality in the Saronic Gulf, and the coastal waters of Athens are now accessible again to swimmers.
Parks and zoos
Parnitha National Park is punctuated by well-marked paths, gorges, springs, torrents and caves dotting the protected area. Hiking and mountain-biking in all four mountains are popular outdoor activities for residents of the city. The National Garden of Athens was completed in 1840 and is a green refuge of 15.5 hectares in the centre of the Greek capital. It is to be found between the Parliament and Zappeion buildings, the latter of which maintains its own garden of seven hectares. Parts of the City Centre have been redeveloped under a masterplan called the Unification of Archeological Sites of Athens, which has also gathered funding from the EU to help enhance the project. The landmark Dionysiou Areopagitou Street has been pedestrianised, forming a scenic route. The route starts from the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Vasilissis Olgas Avenue, continues under the southern slopes of the Acropolis near Plaka, and finishes just beyond the Temple of Hephaestus in Thiseio. The route in its entirety provides visitors with views of the Parthenon and the Agora (the meeting point of ancient Athenians), away from the busy City Centre.
The hills of Athens also provide green space. Lycabettus, Philopappos hill and the area around it, including Pnyx and Ardettos hill, are planted with pines and other trees, with the character of a small forest rather than typical metropolitan parkland. Also to be found is the Pedion tou Areos (Field of Mars) of 27.7 hectares, near the National Archaeological Museum. Athens' largest zoo is the Attica Zoological Park, a 20-hectare (49-acre) private zoo located in the suburb of Spata. The zoo is home to around 2000 animals representing 400 species, and is open 365 days a year. Smaller zoos exist within public gardens or parks, such as the zoo within the National Garden of Athens.
Climate
Athens has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa). According to the meteorological station near the city center which is operated by the National Observatory of Athens, the downtown area has an annual average temperature of 19.2 °C (66.6 °F) while parts of the urban agglomeration may reach up to 19.8 °C (67.6 °F), being affected by the urban heat island effect. Athens receives about 433.1 millimetres (17.05 in) of precipitation per year, largely concentrated during the colder half of the year with the remaining rainfall falling sparsely, mainly during thunderstorms. Fog is rare in the city center, but somewhat more frequent in areas to the east, close to mount Hymettus.
The southern section of the Athens metropolitan area (i.e., Elliniko, Athens Riviera) lies in the transitional zone between Mediterranean (Csa) and hot semi-arid climate (BSh), with its port-city of Piraeus being the most extreme example, receiving just 331.9 millimetres (13.07 in) per year. The areas to the south generally see less extreme temperature variations as their climate is moderated by the Saronic gulf. The northern part of the city (i.e., Kifissia), owing to its higher elevation, features moderately lower temperatures and slightly increased precipitation year-round. The generally dry climate of the Athens basin compared to the precipitation amounts seen in a typical Mediterranean climate is due to the rain shadow effect caused by the Pindus mountain range and the Dirfys and Parnitha mountains, substantially drying the westerly and northerly winds respectively.
Snowfall is not very common, though it occurs almost annually, but it usually does not cause heavy disruption to daily life, in contrast to the northern parts of the city, where blizzards occur on a somewhat more regular basis. The most recent examples include the snowstorms of 16 February 2021 and 24 January 2022, when the entire urban area was blanketed in snow.
Athens may get particularly hot in the summer, owing partly to the strong urban heat island effect characterizing the city. In fact, Athens is considered to be the hottest city in mainland Europe, and is the first city in Europe to appoint a chief heat officer to deal with severe heat waves. Temperatures of 47.5°C have been reported in several locations of the metropolitan area, including within the urban agglomeration. Metropolitan Athens was until 2021 the holder of the World Meteorological Organization record for the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe with 48.0 °C (118.4 °F) which was recorded in the areas of Elefsina and Tatoi on 10 July 1977.
Administration
Athens became the capital of Greece in 1834, following Nafplion, which was the provisional capital from 1829. The municipality (City) of Athens is also the capital of the Attica region. The term Athens can refer either to the Municipality of Athens, to Greater Athens or urban area, or to the entire Athens Metropolitan Area.
The large City Centre (Greek: Κέντρο της Αθήνας) of the Greek capital falls directly within the Municipality of Athens or Athens Municipality (Greek: Δήμος Αθηναίων)—also City of Athens. Athens Municipality is the largest in population size in Greece. Piraeus also forms a significant city centre on its own within the Athens Urban Area and it is the second largest in population size within it.
Athens Urban Area
The Athens Urban Area (Greek: Πολεοδομικό Συγκρότημα Αθηνών), also known as Urban Area of the Capital (Greek: Πολεοδομικό Συγκρότημα Πρωτεύουσας) or Greater Athens (Greek: Ευρύτερη Αθήνα), today consists of 40 municipalities, 35 of which make up what was referred to as the former Athens Prefecture municipalities, located within 4 regional units (North Athens, West Athens, Central Athens, South Athens); and a further 5 municipalities, which make up the former Piraeus Prefecture municipalities, located within the regional unit of Piraeus as mentioned above.
The Athens Municipality forms the core and center of Greater Athens, which in its turn consists of the Athens Municipality and 40 more municipalities, divided in four regional units (Central, North, South and West Athens), accounting for 2,611,713 people (in 2021) within an area of 361 km2 (139 sq mi). Until 2010, which made up the abolished Athens Prefecture and the municipality of Piraeus, the historic Athenian port, with 4 other municipalities make up the regional unit of Piraeus. The regional units of Central Athens, North Athens, South Athens, West Athens and Piraeus with part of East and West Attica regional units combined make up the continuous Athens Urban Area, also called the "Urban Area of the Capital" or simply "Athens" (the most common use of the term), spanning over 412 km2 (159 sq mi), with a population of 3,059,764 people as of 2021. The Athens Urban Area is considered to form the city of Athens as a whole, despite its administrative divisions, which is the largest in Greece and the 9th most populated urban area in Europe.
Demographics
The Municipality of Athens has an official population of 643,452 people (in 2021). According to the 2021 Population and Housing Census, The four regional units that make up what is referred to as Greater Athens have a combined population of 2,611,713 . They together with the regional unit of Piraeus (Greater Piraeus) make up the dense Athens Urban Area which reaches a total population of 3,059,764 inhabitants (in 2021).
The municipality (Center) of Athens is the most populous in Greece, with a population of 643,452 people (in 2021) and an area of 38.96 km2 (15.04 sq mi), forming the core of the Athens Urban Area within the Attica Basin. The incumbent Mayor of Athens is Kostas Bakoyannis of New Democracy. The municipality is divided into seven municipal districts which are mainly used for administrative purposes.
For the Athenians the most popular way of dividing the downtown is through its neighbourhoods such as Pagkrati, Ampelokipoi, Goudi, Exarcheia, Patisia, Ilisia, Petralona, Plaka, Anafiotika, Koukaki, Kolonaki and Kypseli, each with its own distinct history and characteristics.
Safety
Athens ranks in the lowest percentage for the risk on frequency and severity of terrorist attacks according to the EU Global Terrorism Database (EIU 2007–2016 calculations). The city also ranked 35th in Digital Security, 21st on Health Security, 29th on Infrastructure Security and 41st on Personal Security globally in a 2017 The Economist Intelligence Unit report. It also ranks as a very safe city (39th globally out of 162 cities overall) on the ranking of the safest and most dangerous countries. As May 2022 the crime index from Numbeo places Athens at 56.33 (moderate), while its safety index is at 43.68.Crime in Athens According to a Mercer 2019 Quality of Living Survey, Athens ranks 89th on the Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranking.
Economy
Athens is the financial capital of Greece. According to data from 2014, Athens as a metropolitan economic area produced US$130 billion as GDP in PPP, which consists of nearly half of the production for the whole country. Athens was ranked 102nd in that year's list of global economic metropolises, while GDP per capita for the same year was 32,000 US-dollars.
Athens is one of the major economic centres in south-eastern Europe and is considered a regional economic power. The port of Piraeus, where big investments by COSCO have already been delivered during the recent decade, the completion of the new Cargo Centre in Thriasion, the expansion of the Athens Metro and the Athens Tram, as well as the Hellenikon metropolitan park redevelopment in Elliniko and other urban projects, are the economic landmarks of the upcoming years.
Prominent Greek companies such as Hellas Sat, Hellenic Aerospace Industry, Mytilineos Holdings, Titan Cement, Hellenic Petroleum, Papadopoulos E.J., Folli Follie, Jumbo S.A., OPAP, and Cosmote have their headquarters in the metropolitan area of Athens. Multinational companies such as Ericsson, Sony, Siemens, Motorola, Samsung, Microsoft, Teleperformance, Novartis, Mondelez and Coca-Cola also have their regional research and development headquarters in the city.
The banking sector is represented by National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank, Eurobank, and Piraeus Bank, while the Bank of Greece is also situated in the City Centre. The Athens Stock Exchange was severely hit by the Greek government-debt crisis and the decision of the government to proceed into capital controls during summer 2015. As a whole the economy of Athens and Greece was strongly affected, while data showed a change from long recession to growth of 1.4% from 2017 onwards.
Tourism is also a leading contributor to the economy of the city, as one of Europe's top destinations for city-break tourism, and also the gateway for excursions to both the islands and other parts of the mainland. Greece attracted 26.5 million visitors in 2015, 30.1 million visitors in 2017, and over 33 million in 2018, making Greece one of the most visited countries in Europe and the world, and contributing 18% to the country's GDP. Athens welcomed more than 5 million tourists in 2018, and 1.4 million were "city-breakers"; this was an increase by over a million city-breakers since 2013.
Tourism
Athens has been a destination for travellers since antiquity. Over the past decade, the city's infrastructure and social amenities have improved, in part because of its successful bid to stage the 2004 Olympic Games. The Greek Government, aided by the EU, has funded major infrastructure projects such as the state-of-the-art Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, the expansion of the Athens Metro system, and the new Attiki Odos Motorway
Education
Located on Panepistimiou Street, the old campus of the University of Athens, the National Library, and the Athens Academy form the "Athens Trilogy" built in the mid-19th century. The largest and oldest university in Athens is the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Most of the functions of NKUA have been transferred to a campus in the eastern suburb of Zografou. The National Technical University of Athens is located on Patision Street.
The University of West Attica is the second largest university in Athens. The seat of the university is located in the western area of Athens, where the philosophers of Ancient Athens delivered lectures. All the activities of UNIWA are carried out in the modern infrastructure of the three University Campuses within the metropolitan region of Athens (Egaleo Park, Ancient Olive Groove and Athens), which offer modern teaching and research spaces, entertainment and support facilities for all students. Other universities that lie within Athens are the Athens University of Economics and Business, the Panteion University, the Agricultural University of Athens and the University of Piraeus.
There are overall ten state-supported Institutions of Higher (or Tertiary) education located in the Athens Urban Area, these are by chronological order: Athens School of Fine Arts (1837), National Technical University of Athens (1837), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (1837), Agricultural University of Athens (1920), Athens University of Economics and Business (1920), Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (1927), University of Piraeus (1938), Harokopio University of Athens (1990), School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (2002), University of West Attica (2018). There are also several other private colleges, as they called formally in Greece, as the establishment of private universities is prohibited by the constitution. Many of them are accredited by a foreign state or university such as the American College of Greece and the Athens Campus of the University of Indianapolis.
Culture
The city is a world centre of archaeological research. Alongside national academic institutions, such as the Athens University and the Archaeological Society, it is home to multiple archaeological museums, taking in the National Archaeological Museum, the Cycladic Museum, the Epigraphic Museum, the Byzantine & Christian Museum, as well as museums at the ancient Agora, Acropolis, Kerameikos, and the Kerameikos Archaeological Museum. The city is also the setting for the Demokritos laboratory for Archaeometry, alongside regional and national archaeological authorities forming part of the Greek Department of Culture.
Athens hosts 17 Foreign Archaeological Institutes which promote and facilitate research by scholars from their home countries. As a result, Athens has more than a dozen archaeological libraries and three specialized archaeological laboratories, and is the venue of several hundred specialized lectures, conferences and seminars, as well as dozens of archaeological exhibitions each year. At any given time, hundreds of international scholars and researchers in all disciplines of archaeology are to be found in the city.
Athens' most important museums include:
the National Archaeological Museum, the largest archaeological museum in the country, and one of the most important internationally, as it contains a vast collection of antiquities. Its artefacts cover a period of more than 5,000 years, from late Neolithic Age to Roman Greece;
the Benaki Museum with its several branches for each of its collections including ancient, Byzantine, Ottoman-era, Chinese art and beyond;
the Byzantine and Christian Museum, one of the most important museums of Byzantine art;
the National Art Gallery, the nation's eponymous leading gallery, which reopened in 2021 after renovation;
the National Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in 2000 in a former brewery building;
the Numismatic Museum, housing a major collection of ancient and modern coins;
the Museum of Cycladic Art, home to an extensive collection of Cycladic art, including its famous figurines of white marble;
the New Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009, and replacing the old museum on the Acropolis. The new museum has proved considerably popular; almost one million people visited during the summer period June–October 2009 alone. A number of smaller and privately owned museums focused on Greek culture and arts are also to be found.
the Kerameikos Archaeological Museum, a museum which displays artifacts from the burial site of Kerameikos. Much of the pottery and other artifacts relate to Athenian attitudes towards death and the afterlife, throughout many ages.
the Jewish Museum of Greece, a museum which describes the history and culture of the Greek Jewish community.
Architecture
Athens incorporates architectural styles ranging from Greco-Roman and Neoclassical to Modern. They are often to be found in the same areas, as Athens is not marked by a uniformity of architectural style. A visitor will quickly notice the absence of tall buildings: Athens has very strict height restriction laws in order to ensure the Acropolis Hill is visible throughout the city. Despite the variety in styles, there is evidence of continuity in elements of the architectural environment throughout the city's history.
For the greatest part of the 19th century Neoclassicism dominated Athens, as well as some deviations from it such as Eclecticism, especially in the early 20th century. Thus, the Old Royal Palace was the first important public building to be built, between 1836 and 1843. Later in the mid and late 19th century, Theophil Freiherr von Hansen and Ernst Ziller took part in the construction of many neoclassical buildings such as the Athens Academy and the Zappeion Hall. Ziller also designed many private mansions in the centre of Athens which gradually became public, usually through donations, such as Schliemann's Iliou Melathron.
Beginning in the 1920s, modern architecture including Bauhaus and Art Deco began to exert an influence on almost all Greek architects, and buildings both public and private were constructed in accordance with these styles. Localities with a great number of such buildings include Kolonaki, and some areas of the centre of the city; neighbourhoods developed in this period include Kypseli.
In the 1950s and 1960s during the extension and development of Athens, other modern movements such as the International style played an important role. The centre of Athens was largely rebuilt, leading to the demolition of a number of neoclassical buildings. The architects of this era employed materials such as glass, marble and aluminium, and many blended modern and classical elements. After World War II, internationally known architects to have designed and built in the city included Walter Gropius, with his design for the US Embassy, and, among others, Eero Saarinen, in his postwar design for the east terminal of the Ellinikon Airport.
Urban sculpture
Across the city numerous statues or busts are to be found. Apart from the neoclassicals by Leonidas Drosis at the Academy of Athens (Plato, Socrates, Apollo and Athena), others in notable categories include the statue of Theseus by Georgios Fytalis at Thiseion; depictions of philhellenes such as Lord Byron, George Canning, and William Gladstone; the equestrian statue of Theodoros Kolokotronis by Lazaros Sochos in front of the Old Parliament; statues of Ioannis Kapodistrias, Rigas Feraios and Adamantios Korais at the University; of Evangelos Zappas and Konstantinos Zappas at the Zappeion; Ioannis Varvakis at the National Garden; the" Woodbreaker" by Dimitrios Filippotis; the equestrian statue of Alexandros Papagos in the Papagou district; and various busts of fighters of Greek independence at the Pedion tou Areos. A significant landmark is also the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Syntagma.
Entertainment and performing arts
Athens is home to 148 theatrical stages, more than any other city in the world, including the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus, home to the Athens Festival, which runs from May to October each year. In addition to a large number of multiplexes, Athens plays host to open air garden cinemas. The city also supports music venues, including the Athens Concert Hall (Megaro Moussikis), which attracts world class artists. The Athens Planetarium, located in Andrea Syngrou Avenue, in Palaio Faliro is one of the largest and best equipped digital planetaria in the world. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, inaugurated in 2016, will house the National Library of Greece and the Greek National Opera. In 2018 Athens was designated as the World Book Capital by UNESCO.
Restaurants, tavernas and bars can be found in the entertainment hubs in Plaka and the Trigono areas of the historic centre, the inner suburbs of Gazi and Psyrri are especially busy with nightclubs and bars, while Kolonaki, Exarchia, Metaxourgeio, Koukaki and Pangrati offer more of a cafe and restaurant scene. The coastal suburbs of Microlimano, Alimos and Glyfada include many tavernas, beach bars and busy summer clubs.
The most successful songs during the period 1870–1930 were the Athenian serenades (Αθηναϊκές καντάδες), based on the Heptanesean kantádhes (καντάδες 'serenades'; sing.: καντάδα) and the songs performed on stage (επιθεωρησιακά τραγούδια 'theatrical revue songs') in revues, musical comedies, operettas and nocturnes that were dominating Athens' theatre scene.
In 1922, following the war, genocide and later population exchange suffered by the Greek population of Asia Minor, many ethnic Greeks fled to Athens. They settled in poor neighbourhoods and brought with them Rebetiko music, making it also popular in Greece, and which later became the base for the Laïko music. Other forms of song popular today in Greece are elafrolaika, entechno, dimotika, and skyladika. Greece's most notable, and internationally famous, composers of Greek song, mainly of the entechno form, are Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis. Both composers have achieved fame abroad for their composition of film scores.
The renowned American-born Greek soprano Maria Callas spent her teenage years in Athens, where she settled in 1937. Her professional opera career started in 1940 in Athens, with the Greek National Opera. In 2018, the city's municipal Olympia Theatre was renamed to "Olympia City Music Theatre 'Maria Callas'" and in 2023, the Municipality inaugurated the Maria Callas Museum, housing it in a neoclassical building on 44 Mitropoleos street.
Sports
The Panathenaic Stadium of Athens (Kallimarmaron) dates back to the fourth century BC and has hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.
Agia Sophia Stadium
Athens has a long tradition in sports and sporting events, serving as home to the most important clubs in Greek sport and housing a large number of sports facilities. The city has also been host to sports events of international importance.
Athens has hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice, in 1896 and 2004. The 2004 Summer Olympics required the development of the Athens Olympic Stadium, which has since gained a reputation as one of the most beautiful stadiums in the world, and one of its most interesting modern monuments. The biggest stadium in the country, it hosted two finals of the UEFA Champions League, in 1994 and 2007. Athens' other major stadiums are the Karaiskakis Stadium located in Piraeus, a sports and entertainment complex, host of the 1971 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup Final, and Agia Sophia Stadium located in Nea Filadelfeia.
Athens has hosted the EuroLeague final three times, the
"The Passenger Synopsis
Act I
The early 1960s, on an ocean liner. Watching over the scene is a chorus who sometimes takes part as prisoners, passengers or officers, and sometimes are merely onlookers from another time, as are we.
Scene i
A German diplomat, Walter, and his young wife, Lisa, are on the way to Brazil where he will take up a diplomatic post. Suddenly she sees a fellow passenger who she thinks she recognizes, except that she knows that person to be dead. Under the shock of this encounter, she reveals to her husband for the first time she was an SS overseer in Auschwitz. The revelation is a crisis for both of them."
See more here:
www.flickr.com/photos/timelessriver/47735008971/in/photos...
Today, May 1st 2019, on the beach, I met Daveda, the mezzo-soprano opera singer who plays the role of Lisa in The Passenger.
It was so wonderful to talk about the opera with her and discuss this very difficult subject of The Holocaust.
We both agreed that although it is a very difficult issue, we have to keep talking and telling about the Holocaust. Daveda said that she was shocked to find out that so very many young Americans know nothing about the Holocaust.
I wish I had my camera with me, but I hadn't just because I went swimming.
There's a beautiful picture of Daveda here: www.israel-opera.co.il/eng/?CategoryID=263&ArticleID=...
"Daveda Karanas was born in the USA. Her repertoire includes Marfa in Khovanshchina (Mussorgsky), Judith in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (Bartok), Azucena in Il trovatore, Amneris in Aida (Verdi), Waltraute in Die Walkure and Gotterdammerung, Fricka in Das Rheingold, Kundry in Parsifal, Brangane in Tristan und Isolde (Wagner), Suzuki in Madama Butterfly (Puccini), Jezibaba in Rusalka (Dvorak), Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana (Mascagni) and others. She performs at the opera houses of Arizona, New Orleans, Florida, Michigan, Chicago, St. Louis, Frankfurt, Toronto, Florence, Vancouver, San Francisco and others. This is her Israeli Opera debut."
Beard and bluetooth headphones he isolated himself in his favourite music to wait till the ferry arrived at NDSM.
Now Out! August 1st for Enchantment "Bluebeard" round! elephanteposes.blogspot.com/2014/08/enchantment.html
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Shooting images for the owner and sponsor of this Christen Eagle II.
© Lloyd Horgan. All Rights Reserved - Unauthorized use of this photo is strictly prohibited
British postcard. Film Weekly. Publicity postcard for the American film musical 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, Warner Bros. 1933). Bebe Daniels and Warren Baxter.
Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer, and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later as the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and later she sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio, and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films.
Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco. By the age of eight Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910), the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910) and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films. At the age of fourteen Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915) and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915). Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918) and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.” After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid.
In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures, and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell. At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon it's release. Following this she was cast in a number of light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque. Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalogue. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930). Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so that most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released. Daniels had become associated with musicals and so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realized what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros. she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931) and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez. In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934).
Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. She had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they adopted. In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre. A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver). The couple stayed in London , broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WWII. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman for war service. In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and to television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955). Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'.
Sources: Stephan Eichenberg (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
George Brent, born George Brendan Nolan (Ballinasloe, 15 March 1904,- Solana Beach, 26 May 1979) was an Irish actor who was mainly active in American cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. He was paired eleven times with Bette Davis, e.g. in Jezebel and Dark Victory.
Vintage postcard, no. 12. Photo: Kalem.
George H. Melford (1877-1961) was an American stage and film actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. Often taken for granted as a director today, the stalwart Melford's name by the 1920s was, like Cecil B. DeMille's, appearing in big bold letters above the title of his films.
George H. Melford was born George Henry Knauff in Rochester, New York, in 1877 (though older sources state 1888). He was the son of German immigrant Henrietta Knauff. Melford had four sisters. Melford graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was an accomplished stage actor working in Cincinnati, Ohio, before joining the Kalem Company in New York City in 1909. Hired by director Sidney Olcott for character actor roles, in the fall of 1910 he was sent to work with a film crew on the West Coast. In 1911, with Robert Vignola, he co-directed Ruth Roland in his first short film, Arizona Bill based on a script he had written. From there, Melford went on to direct another 30 films for Kalem until 1915. Then he was hired by Jesse L. Lasky to direct feature-length films for Lasky's Feature Play Company. That same year, Melford became one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Directors Association. In 1916 Melford directed To Have and to Hold, a film based on the Mary Johnston novel that had been the bestselling novel in the United States for 1900. Another hit was The Sea Wolf (George Melford, 1920) based upon the 1904 novel by Jack London. The film starred Noah Beery as the brutal sea captain Wolf Larsen, sometimes referred to as "The Sea Wolf."
In 1921 George Melford directed what is probably his most famous silent film—The Sheik (George Melford, 1921), starring Rudolph Valentino as Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan and Agnes Ayres. The film was a box-office hit and made Valentino an international star and one of the first male sex symbols of the screen. Melford directed Valentino again in the silent adventure drama Moran of the Lady Letty (George Melford, 1922) also with Dorothy Dalton. Melford remained with Lasky's company for ten years, then joined Universal Pictures, where he directed in 1929 his first talkie, The Woman I Love (George Melford, 1929). The following year, he co-directed four Spanish-language films including the acclaimed Spanish version of Dracula (George Melford, 1931), starring Carlos Villarías. Melford filmed it simultaneously with the English version on the same sets at night using a different cast and crew. Somewhat of controversy has arisen about this film. Some sources say that Melford was assigned the job because he could speak Spanish, but other sources claim that Melford could not speak a word of Spanish and had to use a translator to communicate with the actors. The issue was cleared up when actress Lupita Tovar—who was the leading lady in the film—said in an interview on the 75th anniversary DVD of the film that Melford, in fact, did not speak Spanish and had to use a translator.
George Melford's last major work as a director came in 1937 when he co-directed the 15-episode, five-hour-long adventure film Jungle Menace (Harry L. Fraser, George Melford, 1927), Columbia Pictures' first serial, starring Frank Buck and Reginald Denny. At age 60, the workaholic Melford needed to slow down and decided to give up the stressful job of directing to take on simple character actor roles. In 1946 material from this serial was re-edited into the 70-minute feature film adaptation called Jungle Terror. Melford loved the film business, and although financially independent, he never stopped working. Having directed more than 140 films, he continued to work in small character roles. In the 1940s he was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial 'stock company' of character actors, appearing in six films, including the classic screwball comedy The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943), written and directed by Sturges. He also made a notable appearance in the epic The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956), starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. At the age of 84, he appeared in his last film, the British thriller Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (W. Lee Wilder, 1960) starring George Sanders. George Melford died in Hollywood in 1961, of heart failure. He is interred in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Melford was married to Louise Leroy from 1904 to 1924. He also was married to actress Diana Miller.
Sources: Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Today at Blue Mounds State Park, Brian Miskelley made a fairy house out of the elements available in nature. Here is the exterior, with the neat rock backdrop that proved the inspiration for the piece.
Scroll down!
Montblanc Friedrich II the Great Fountain Pen - Limited Edition 4810 (1999):
First in a series of YouTube videos re: Frederick The Great Documentary - Biography of the life of Frederick The Great. youtu.be/vGLsE1wq3fg
For excellent pen photos please see Peyton Street Pens, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
www.peytonstreetpens.com/montblanc-friedrich-ii-the-great...
I received permission from Teri to post the photos that they took of this nice pen that I am currently unable to afford. USD$950.00 is a great price! I returned within hours and could not find the pen so it had likely already been sold.
Type Limited edition fountain pen:
Product Name:
Montblanc Patron of Arts Friedrich II the Great, marked #933 of 4810.
Manufacturer and Year: Montblanc, Germany, 1999.
Length: 4-1/2" capped, 5-3/8" posted.
Filling System: Cartridge fill only. Tested and working well.
Colour: Gold plated.
Nib: BROAD 18k nib.
Frederick the Great was anything but an ordinary king. He is a celebrated historical figure, not only because he saw himself as the "first servant of the people", and because of his Prussian discipline, but also because under his rule art and culture underwent a revival. Sanssouci Palace became a centre of attraction for intellectuals, artists and writers from all over Europe. Frederick himself wrote numerous philosophical works with his friend Voltaire, including the famous "Antimachiavelli".
Just as extraordinary as this Prussian king is the Patron of Art Edition Friedrich II the Great made in his honor. The gold-platted barrel of Edition 4810 is decorated by two rings embellished with a pattern of curves. These, like the elegant clip, are also gold-plated. Edition 888 is decorated with rings of 950 platinum, and its barrel and cap are made of 750 white gold. A feature shared by the two editions is the 18-carat gold nib, which carries an engraving of the royal monogram of "Fredericus Rex" An ingenious mechanism enables the pen to be screwed back into the barrel to protect it.
Charlottenburg Palace has him to thank for a new rococo wing, while he also gave Berlin its Opera House, its old library and the Catholic church of St. Hedwig. Friedrich II the Great went down in history as a military commander and a humanitarian philosopher.
The barrel of the Limited Edition Friedrich II the Great features two finely crafted bands with a pattern of interlinking arches. The 18-carat gold nib bears the engraved signet Fredericus Rex as a tribute to the monarch from whom the pen takes its name.
Features:
Just as extraordinary as this Prussian king is the Patron of Art Edition Friedrich II the Great made in his honour.
The gold-plated barrel of Edition 4810 is decorated by two rings embellished with a pattern of curves.
These, like the elegant clip, are also gold plated.
Launched in 1999.
Margaret Anne Foundation, Canada.
Margaret Anne Mitchell:
July 17, 1925 to March 8, 2017 Margaret Mitchell, former Member of Parliament for Vancouver East and a champion of women's rights and social justice throughout her life passed away peacefully at home on March 8, 2017. It does not surprise any of us that Margret chose to leave us on this day where women around the world are celebrating International Women's Day. Margaret is predeceased by her husband, Claude Mitchell, her two brothers Bill and Ted Learoyd and sister, Betty Speers. Margaret grew up in Cayuga, Ontario. She graduated with a BA from McMaster University and M.S.W from University of Toronto. Margaret served Canada overseas through the Canadian Red cross in Korea, Japan, Australia and Austria. Her work with the Settlement House in Toronto and the Neighbourhood Association in Vancouver established her as a pioneer in community development, a social work practice which persists in putting power in the hands of communities to make decisions affecting their lives. Prior to entering politics, she served as a Manager with the Vancouver Resources Board which integrated social services and decentralized service delivery and decision making. Margaret served in the House of Commons as an MP for Vancouver East from 1979 to 1993. She voted against a pay raise during this time and donated the additional pay to the Vancity Community Foundation which established the Margaret Mitchell Fund for Women. Margaret was, at her core, an advocate for women. In 1982, she stood up in Parliament to demand government action to stop domestic violence. When male members of Parliament responded by laughing as she addressed the issue, she furiously replied: 'This is no laughing matter, Madam Speaker.' Thousands of Canadians agreed, calling for immediate action to end violence against women and inspiring activism and services for women across the country. Many years later, she published an autobiography titled 'No Laughing Matter.' Margaret was the NDP critic in the House of Commons for Immigration, Housing, Status of Women, Health and Welfare, Multiculturalism and Citizenship. She was the first MP to have raised the issue of Chinese head tax in the House of Commons. Margaret pressed the government to decriminalize abortion, worked with First Nations Women for the reinstatement of status under the Indian Act and supported a national childcare programme. Margaret is the recipient of many honours and recognitions, including the Order of British Columbia and Freedom to the City, from the City of Vancouver. Margaret leaves behind several nieces and nephews and their families, many close friends and colleagues. With a wonderful depth of humour, integrity and passion, Margaret contributed profoundly to Canada and to the world by promoting equal rights, justice. This is her legacy, a legacy that will continue to empower and inspire all of us who admired, loved and respected her. A celebration of her life will be held at a later date. Special thanks to Care At Home Services for their professional care at home which made it possible for Margaret to stay at her own home right until the end. For anyone wishing to donate, she would ask you to continue her work on behalf of low income and racialized women in East Vancouver by contributing to the Margaret Mitchell Fund for Women held at the Vancity Community Foundation.
Dina Vierny, France:
Description: Dina Vierny was an artists' model who became a singer, French art dealer, collector and museum director. Born as Dina Aibinder into a Jewish family in Kishinev, Bessarabia, she was Aristide Maillol's muse for the last ten years of his life. Wikipedia
Born: January 25, 1919, Chișinău, Moldova.
Died: January 20, 2009, Paris, France.
Children: Olivier Lorquin, Bertrand Lorquin.
Movies: Altitude 3200, Dina Vierny, Youth in Revolt
Awards: Legion of Honour.
YouTube: youtu.be/3NkCMlf9-C0
Irene Mössinger, Germany:
The Tempodrom (also referred to as Neues Tempodrom) is a multi-purpose event venue in Berlin.
Address: Möckernstraße 10
10963 Berlin Germany.
Location: Kreuzberg.
Capacity: 3,500 (Big Arena) 400 (Small Arena:
General information:
Groundbreaking: 21 May 2000.
Opened: 1 December 2001.
Inaugurated: 8 December 2001.
Relocated: 1985, 1999.
Renovation cost; DM 35.8 million ($21.5 million in 2009 [1]).
Renovating team:
Architect: Gerkan, Marg and Partners.
Structural engineer: Schlaich Bergermann Partner.
Civil engineer: Krentel.
Other designers:
Energie system technik, Krupp Stahlbau BeSB.
Founded by Irene Moessinger, it opened in 1980 next to the Berlin Wall on the west side of Potsdamer Platz, housed in a large circus tent. After several changes of location it is now housed in a permanent building in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood.
Moessinger had recently become a nursewhen she came into an 800,000 markinheritance from her father; it was this bequest that she used to start the Tempodrom in a circus tent.[2] Her initial funds were quickly exhausted and the following year the Berlin Senate agreed to contribute funds to keep the operation going.
The original location attracted noise complaints, and in 1985 the Tempodrom moved to a site in the Tiergarten, where it remained until displaced by construction of the new German Chancellery. At this time a new construction of the current building was proposed, and the tents moved to a temporary site during construction. In May 1999, the venue moved to another temporary location near the Ostbahnhof.
In 2001, a permanent venue was finally constructed on the site of the old Anhalter Bahnhof, whose war-damaged ruins had been demolished in 1960. While a small section of the old station façade was retained (and is still standing), the entire train shed was removed, leaving a large open area. The new Tempodrom was erected in the center of this area, with a playing field lying between it and the façade remnant, and a wooded area extending in the other direction towards the Landwehr Canal. The firm of Von Garkan, Marg und Partner (GMP) was retained to design the new building. The basic floor plan is square, accommodating three performance spaces as well as a bistro and various offices and restrooms, underneath a wooden-floored terrace which hosts a beer garden in season.[3] The two arenas are both circular, with the larger, centrally located space covered by a 37 metres (121 ft) steel and concrete panel roof intended to echo the form of the tents of the original site. This space can accommodate 3,500 patrons; the smaller arena seats 400. The third space is the "Liquidrom", a thermal bath/spa establishment featuring a 43 feet (13 m) diameter salt water bath fitted with underwater speakers to provide a multi-sensory spa experience, three saunas at temperatures of 55, 80 and 90 degrees Celsius, a steam bath room along with various massage services.[4] The 135,000 square foot (12,500 m2) building was completed in 2001 at a cost of nearly $36 million, over twice the original budget.[5]Scandal over the overruns led to the resignation of State Senator Peter Strieder [de], who was in charge of the Urban Development department.
The Tempodrom corporation went into bankruptcy in 2005 and was operated by a receiver, with Moessinger retiring as director. She and former Director Norbert Waehl were tried for embezzlement but were acquitted in 2008.[6] The Tempodrom is now operated by the Bremer KPS Group, who took over in April 2010 in the face of a foreclosure threat by Landesbank Berlin.
Tempodrom continues in operation and hosts a wide variety of events.
Notable performers:
Alanis Morissette
Amy Macdonald
Backstreet Boys
Bastille
Björk
Celtic Woman
The Cure
Harry Styles
Iggy Pop
James Taylor
Jamie-Lee
Janet Jackson
Joan Baez
Josh Groban
Keane
Kylie Minogue
Lorde
The Lumineers
Matt White
Monsta X
Niall Horan
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Nicki Minaj
Norah Jones
Olly Murs
Pet Shop Boys
Ramones
Roger Hodgson
Sade
Severina
Snow Patrol
Take That
Tangerine Dream
Tears for Fears
Tori Amos
Troye Sivan
Vanessa Mai
Vasco Rossi
Zara Larsson
Notable events:
German Masters, snooker tournament.
Jean M. Wong, Hong Kong:
Jean Wong - Ballet school principal
Within minutes of meeting Jean Wong at the Sha Tin studio of her ballet school, her love for her art and her students is palpable. Sitting ruler-straight on a chair, she nods approvingly at star pupil Lam Chun-wing and offers him valuable nuggets of advice about make-up and posture.
Wong, who founded the Jean M Wong School of Ballet 51 years ago, credits her mother with helping her find her calling as a ballerina and teacher. 'My mother had a very sharp eye for beauty, and I think that greatly influenced my life. She would take me to see Chinese operas and old Hollywood movies, which definitely made an imprint on my mind,' says Wong, who is from Shanghai.
Her first artistic encounter was music when she learned to play the piano. She also learned to paint. Ballet came later and it was like love at first sight. 'My hobby and pleasure in life is ballet. Looking back, ballet combines all the arts - painting because of the sceneries, music and drama,' says Wong, who went to London to study at the teacher-training college of the Royal Academy of Dance in 1956. She returned brimming with ballet theories and was determined to put into practice what she had mastered. In 1960, and 'not knowing that I needed to pay rent, I just started my own school', Wong says. 'But I think I had so much passion that word soon spread and I had more students, including children from famous families.'
Wong says promoting the tradition of ballet in Hong Kong remains a challenge to this day. She says: 'You have to communicate with the children and the parents. Ballet doesn't have a long history in Hong Kong, so you don't expect [them] to understand its tradition.' Wong encourages her students and their families to buy ballet DVDs and to see ballet performances so that they can appreciate the art form.Of all things taught to her students, Wong considers discipline the most important.'You can't become anybody of importance without self-control, especially for a dancer,' she says. 'Everything in ballet has to be perfect. A desire to reach perfection is important for ballerinas.'
Wong says she inherited discipline from her father, a banker who was strict but generous. 'He helped a lot of people who were in difficulties. I think that was one of the reasons I started the Tsinforn C Wong Memorial Scholarship.' Established in 1973 as the Tsinforn C Wong Scholarship, it was renamed the Tsinforn C. Wong Memorial Scholarship in 1983 in remembrance of Wong's late father. Wong attributes her achievements to her 'sheer dedication and absolute commitment'. 'I'll never say 'that's enough',' says Wong, adding that she doesn't want to retire because for her retiring means moving backwards. 'I hate to think that I'm going backwards. I've always wanted to go forward. That's my motto.'
Fernando Giulini, Italy: (minimal on line)
Professionista nel settore Ricerca
FCG CONSULTING Srl
Milano, Italia.
Tatsuya Nakadai, Japan:
Tatsuya Nakadai is a Japanese film actor famous for the wide variety of characters he has portrayed and many collaborations with famous Japanese film directors. Wikipedia
Born: December 13, 1932 (age 87 years), Gohongi, Tokyo, Japan
Height: 1.78 m.
Spouse: Yasuko Miyazaki (m. 1957–1996).
Children: Nao Nakadai.
Siblings: Keigo Nakadai.
Tatsuya Nakadai (仲代 達矢, Nakadai Tatsuya, born Motohisa Nakadai; December 13, 1932) is a Japanese film actor famous for the wide variety of characters he has portrayed and many collaborations with famous Japanese film directors.[1]
Born: Motohisa Nakadai (仲代 元久)
December 13, 1932(age 87). Tokyo, Japan
Occupation: Actor.
Years active: 1954–present
Height:: 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)
He was featured in 11 films directed by Masaki Kobayashi, including The Human Condition trilogy, wherein he starred as the lead character Kaji, plus Harakiri, Samurai Rebellion and Kwaidan.
Nakadai worked with a number of Japan's best-known filmmakers—starring or co-starring in five films directed by Akira Kurosawa, as well as being cast in significant films directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara (The Face of Another), Mikio Naruse (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs), Kihachi Okamoto (Kill! and The Sword of Doom), Hideo Gosha (Goyokin), Shirō Toyoda(Portrait of Hell) and Kon Ichikawa (Enjō and Odd Obsession).
Biography:
Nakadai grew up in a very poor family and was unable to afford a university education, prompting him to take up acting. He greatly admired American films and was a fan of actors such as John Wayne and Marlon Brando. He also picked up a liking of Broadway musicals, and travels once a year to New York City to watch them. Nakadai was working as a shop clerk in Tokyo before a chance encounter with director Masaki Kobayashi led to him being cast in the film The Thick Walled Room. The following year, he made a brief and uncredited cameo in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai where he is seen for a few seconds as a samurai walking through town.[2] Nakadai's role in Seven Samurai is technically his debut as The Thick-Walled Room's release was delayed for three years due to controversial subject matter. His major breakthrough as an actor came when he was given the part of Jo, a young yakuza in Black River, another film directed by Kobayashi. Nakadai continued to work with Kobayashi into the 1960s and won his first Blue Ribbon Award for his role in Harakiri (his personal favorite among his own films) as the aging rōnin Hanshiro Tsugumo.
Nakadai appeared in two more Kurosawa films from the 1980s. In Kagemusha Nakadai plays both the titular thief turned body-double and the famous daimyō Takeda Shingen whom the thief is tasked with impersonating. This dual role helped him win his second Blue Ribbon Award for Best Actor. In Ran Nakadai plays another daimyo, Hidetora Ichimonji (loosely based on King Lear from Shakespeare's play King Lear and inspired by the historical daimyo Mōri Motonari).
He taught and trained promising young actors including Kōji Yakusho, Mayumi Wakamura, Tōru Masuoka, Azusa Watanabe, Kenichi Takitō and others.[3]
In 2015, he received the Order of Culture.[4][5]
Filmography:
Film:
Year Title Role Director Notes:
1954 Seven Samurai Samurai Wandering Through Town Akira Kurosawa Uncredited
1956 Hi no tori Keiichi Naganuma Umetsugu Inoue
Hadashi no Seishun Yūji Wada Senkichi Taniguchi
Sazae-san Norisuke Namino Nobuo Aoyagi
Oshidori no Ma Andō Keigo Kimura
1957 Black RiverJoe Masaki Kobayashi
Oban Shin-don Yasuki Chiba
Untamed Kimura Mikio Naruse
Hikage no Musume Motohashi Shūe Matsubayashi
Zoku Oban: Fuunhen Shin-don Yasuki Chiba
A Dangerous Hero (Kiken na eiyu) Imamura Hideo Suzuki
Zokuzoku Oban: Dotouhen Shin-don Yasuki Chiba
Sazae's Youth (Sazae-san no seishun) Norisuke Namino Nobuo Aoyagi
1958A Boy and Three MothersKensaku Seiji Hisamatsu
All About Marriage (Kekkon no subete) Akira Nakayama Kihachi Okamoto
Go and Get It (Buttsuke honban) Hara Kozo Saeki
Enjō Togari Kon Ichikawa
Naked Sun Jirō Maeda Miyoji Ieki
1959 The Human Condition: No Greater Love Kaji Masaki Kobayashi Lead role
Odd Obsession Kimura Kon Ichikawa
The Human Condition: Road to Eternity Kaji Masaki Kobayashi Lead role
Yaju shisubeshi Kunihiko Date Eizo Sugawa Lead role
Three Dolls in Ginza (Ginza no onéchan) Kyōsuke Tamura Toshio Sugie
An'ya Kōro Kaname Shirō Toyoda
1960 When a Woman Ascends the Stairs Kenichi Komatsu Mikio Naruse
Daughters, Wives, and a Mother (Musume tsuma haha) Shingo Kuroki Mikio Naruse
The Blue Beast (Aoi yaju) Yasuhiko Kuroki Hiromichi Horikawa
Get 'em All ("Minagoroshi no uta" yori kenju-yo saraba!) Tsubota Eizō Sugawa
1961 The Other Woman (Tsuma to shite onna to shite) Minami Mikio Naruse
Yojimbo Unosuke Akira Kurosawa
The Human Condition: A Soldier's PrayerKaji Masaki Kobayashi Lead role
Kumo ga chigieru toki James Kimura Heinosuke Gosho
Immortal Love Heibei Keisuke Kinoshita
1962 Sanjuro Muroto Hanbei Akira Kurosawa
Love Under the Crucifix (Oginsama) Takayama Ukon Kinuyo Tanaka Lead role
The Inheritance (Karami-ai) Kikuo Furukawa Masaki Kobayashi
Harakiri Tsugumo Hanshirō Masaki Kobayashi Lead role
Madame Aki Uojirō Tatsumi Shirō Toyoda
1963 High and Low Chief Detective Tokura Akira Kurosawa
Pressure of Guilt (Shiro to kuro) Ichirō Hamano Hiromichi Horikawa Lead role
The Legacy of the 500,000 (Gojuman-nin no isan) Mitsuru Gunji Toshiro Mifune
Miren Ryōta Kinoshita Yasuki Chiba
A Woman's Life (Onna no rekishi) Takashi Akimoto Mikio Naruse
1964 Arijigoku sakusenIshiki Takashi Tsuboshima Lead role
Kwaidan Minokichi Masaki Kobayashi Lead role
1965 Saigo no shinpan Jirō Hiromichi Horikawa Lead role
Fort Graveyard (Chi to suna) Sakuma Kihachi Okamoto
Illusion of Blood Iemon Shirō Toyoda Lead role
1966 Cash Calls Hell (Gohiki no shinshi) Oida Hideo Gosha Lead role
The Sword of Doom Ryunosuke Tsukueb Kihachi Okamoto Lead role [6]
The Face of Another Mr. Okuyama Hiroshi Teshigahara Lead role
The Daphne (Jinchoge) Professor Kanahira Yasuki Chiba
1967 The Age of Assassins (Satsujin kyo jidai) Shinji Kikyo Kihachi Okamoto Lead role
Kojiro Miyamoto Musashi Hiroshi Inagaki
Samurai Rebellion Asano Tatewaki Masaki Kobayashi
Japan's Longest Day Narrator Kihachi Okamoto
1968 Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! James Elfego Tonino Cervi
Kill! Genta Kihachi Okamoto Lead role
Admiral Yamamoto Narrator Seiji Maruyama
The Human Bullet Narrator Kihachi Okamoto
1969 Goyokin Magobei Hideo Gosha Lead role
Eiko's 5000 Kilograms (Eiko e no 5,000 kiro) Takeuchi Koreyoshi Kurahara
The Battle of the Japan Sea (Nihonkai daikaisen) Akashi Motojiro Seiji Maruyama
Hitokiri Takechi Hanpeita Hideo Gosha
Blood End (Tengu-to) Sentarō Satsuo Yamamoto Lead role
Portrait of Hell Yoshihide Shirō Toyoda Lead role
1970 Duel at Ezo (Ezo yakata no ketto) Daizennokami Honjo Kengo Furusawa
Bakumatsu Nakaoka Shintarō Daisuke Itō
The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan Kataoka Naojirō Masahiro Shinoda
Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival Ronin Kenji Misumi
Will to Conquer (Tenka no abarembo) Yoshida Tōyō Seiji Maruyama
1971 Inn of Evil (Inochi boni furo) Sadashichi Masaki Kobayashi Lead role
Battle of Okinawa Colonel Hiromichi Yahara Kihachi Okamoto Lead role
The Wolves (Shussho Iwai) Seji Iwahashi Hideo Gosha Lead role
1973 Osho Sekine Hiromichi Horikawa
The Human Revolution Nichiren Toshio Masuda
Rise, Fair Sun Sakuzo Kei Kumai Lead role
1974 Karei-naru Ichizoku Teppei Manpyō Satsuo Yamamoto Lead role
1975 The Gate of Youth (Seishun no mon) Jūzō Ibuki Kirio Urayama
Tokkan Hijikata Toshizō Kihachi Okamoto
I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru) Kushami Chin'no Kon Ichikawa Lead role
Kinkanshoku Yasuo Hoshino Satsuo Yamamoto Lead role
1976 Banka Setsuo Katsuragi Yoshisuke Kawasaki
Zoku ningen kakumei Nichiren Toshio Masuda
Fumō Chitai Tadashi Iki Satsuo Yamamoto Lead role
1977 Sugata Sanshiro Shōgorō Yano Kihachi Okamoto
1978 Blue Christmas Minami Kihachi Okamoto
Rhyme of Vengeance (Jo-oh-bachi) Ginzo Daidoji Kon Ichikawa
Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron Kumokiri Nizaemon Hideo Gosha Lead role
Hi no Tori (Hi no tori) Ninigi Kon Ichikawa
1979 Hunter in the Dark (Yami no karyudo) Gomyo Kiyoemon Hideo Gosha Lead role
1980 Kagemusha Takeda Shingen / Kagemusha Akira KurosawaLead role
The Battle of Port Arthur (also known as 203 kochi) [7] General Yogi Maresuke Toshio Masuda Lead role
1981 Willful Murder Yashiro Kei Kumai Lead role
1982 Onimasa Masagoro Kiryuin Hideo Gosha Lead role
1984 Fireflies in the North Takeshi Tsukigata Hideo Gosha Lead role
1985 Ran Lord Hidetora Ichimonji Akira Kurosawa Lead role
The Empty Table (Shokutaku no nai ie) Nobuyuki Kidoji Masaki Kobayashi Lead role
1986 Atami satsujin jiken Denbei NikaidoKazuo Takahashi Lead role
1987 Hachiko Monogatari Hidejiro Ueno Seijirō Kōyama Lead role
1988 Return from the River Kwai Major HaradaAndrew V. McLaglen
Oracion (Yushun) Heihachiro Wagu Shigemichi Sugita
1989 Four Days of Snow and Blood (Ni-ni-roku) Hajime Sugiyama Hideo Gosha
1991 Heat Wave (Kagero) Tsunejiro Murai Hideo Gosha
Florence My Love Sakazaki Seiji Izumi
1992 The Wicked City Daishu (Yuen Tai Chung) Mak Tai-Kit
Basara – The Princess Goh (Goh-hime) Furuta Oribe Hiroshi Teshigahara
Tōki Rakujitsu Sakae Kobayashi Seijirō Kōyama
1993 Lone Wolf and Cub: Final Conflict Yagyu Retsudo Akira Inoue
Summer of the Moonlight Sonata (Gekko no natsu) Kazama (postwar) Seijirō Kōyama
1995 East Meets West Katsu Rintarō Kihachi Okamoto
1996 Miyazawa Kenji sonoai Seijirō Miyazawa Seijirō Kōyama
1999 After the Rain Tsuji Gettan Takashi Koizumi
Spellbound Hideaki Sasaki Masato Harada
2001 Vengeance for Sale (Sukedachi-ya Sukeroku) Umetaro Katakura Kihachi Okamoto
2002 To Dance With the White Dog (Shiroi inu to Waltz wo) Eisuke Nakamoto Takashi Tsukinoki Lead role
Dawn of a New Day: The Man Behind VHS Konosuke Matsushita Kiyoshi Sasabe
2003 Like Asura Kotaro Takezawa Yoshimitsu Morita
2005 Yamato Katsumi Kamio (75 years old) Junya Sato
2006 The Inugamis Sahei Inugami Kon Ichikawa
2009 Listen to My Heart Kyozo Hayami Shinichi Mishiro
2010 Haru's Journey Tadao Nakai Masahiro Kobayashi Lead role
Zatoichi: The Last Tendo Junji Sakamoto
2012 Until The Break Of Dawn Sadayuki Akiyama Yūichirō Hirakawa
2013 Human Trust Nobuhiko Sasakura Junji Sakamoto
2015 Yuzuriha no koro Kenichiro Miya Mineko Okamoto
2017 Lear of the Beach/ Umibe No Ria Chōkitsu Kuwabatake Masahiro Kobayashi Lead role
2018 Henkan Kōshōnin Narrator Tsuyoshi Yanagawa
2020 Touge: The Last Samurai Makino Tadayuki Takashi Koizumi.
Animated film:
Year, Title, Role, Director, Notes:
1973 Kanashimi no Belladonna The Devil Eiichi Yamamoto
1983 Final Yamato Narrator Tomoharu Katsumata / Yoshinobu Nishizaki / Takeshi Shirado / Toshio Masuda
2013 The Tale of Princess Kaguya Sumiyaki no RoujiniIsao Takahata
2014 Giovanni's Island[8] Junpei Senō (Present) Mizuho Nishikubo
Theater:
Year Title Role Director Notes:
1964 Hamlet Hamlet Koreya Senda
1968 Yotsuya Kaidan Tamiya Iemon Eitaro Ozawa
1971 Othello Othello Koreya Senda
1974 Richard III Richard Toshikiyo Masumi
1975 The Lower Depths Satine Toshikiyo Masumi
1978 Oedipus Rex Oedipus Tomoe Ryu (Yasuko Miyazaki)
1982 Macbeth Macbeth Tomoe Ryu (Yasuko Miyazaki)
1990 Cyrano de Bergerac Cyrano de Bergerac Tomoe Ryu (Yasuko Miyazaki)
2000 Death of a Salesman William "Willy" Loman Kiyoto Hayashi
2001 The Merry Wives of Windsor John Falstaff Kiyoto Hayashi
2005 Driving Miss Daisy HokeIkumi Tanno
2008 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Ikumi Tanno
2010 John Gabriel Borkman John Gabriel Borkman Tamiya Kuriyama
2013 Bluebeard's Castle The Bard Michiyoshi Inoue
2014 Barrymore John Barrymore Ikumi Tanno
2014 Romeo and Juliet Father Lawrence Ikumi Tanno
Television;
Year Title Role Network Notes
1971 Shin Heike Monogatari Taira no Kiyomori NHK Lead role, Taiga drama
1995 Daichi no Kov Kōji Matsumoto NHK Lead role
1996 Hideyoshi Sen no Rikyū NHK Taiga drama
2004 Socrates in Love Kentarō Matsumoto TBS Special appearance
2007 Fūrin Kazan Takeda Nobutora NHK Taiga drama
2014 Zainin no Uso Kenzō Haneda Wowow
2015 Haretsu Kuraki NHK
Hatashiai Sanosuke Jidaigeki Senmon Channel Lead role, TV movie
2016 Kyoakuwa Nemurasenai Yōhei Tachibana TV Tokyo
Cold Case Wowow
2017 Henkan Kōshōnin Narrator NHK TV movie
2020 The Return Unokichi Jidaigeki Senmon Channel Lead role, TV movie.
Honours:
Chevalier De L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1992)
Medal with Purple Ribbon (1996)
Order of the Rising Sun, 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette (2003)
Person of Cultural Merit (2007)
Asahi Prize (2013)
Kawakita Award (2013)
Toshiro Mifune Award (2015)
Order of Culture (2015)
References:
^ "Tatsuya Nakadai". The New York Times.
^ Stephens, Chuck. "The Eighth Samurai: Tatsuya Nakadai". Current. Retrieved 2013-10-10.
^ "無名塾公演「おれたちは天使じゃない」 @ウェスタ川越 大ホール". ARK. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 15, 2015.
^ "Two Nobel scientists to receive Order of Culture award". The Japan Times. 2015.
^ www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tatsuya-nakadai-set-receiv...
^ Stuart Galbraith IV (16 May 2008). The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Scarecrow Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-1-4616-7374-3.
^ The Battle of Port Arthur (203 Kochi) in the Internet Movie Database
^ "Full Trailer for I.G's Hand-Drawn Anime Film Giovanni's Island Posted". Anime News Network. 2013-12-18. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
Michael Hwang, Singapore:
Michael Hwang SC is a Singaporean barrister and arbitrator. In 1991, he was appointed Judicial Commissioner of the Supreme Court of Singapore. He completed his term in 1992, and in 1997 he was appointed one of the first eight Senior Counsel in Singapore.[1] From 2008 to 2010, he was the President of the Law Society of Singapore.[2] In 2010, he became the Chief Justice of the Dubai International Financial Centre Courts.
Michael Hwang; SC
Born: Singapore
Nationality: Singaporean
Occupation: lawyer
Years active: 1968-present
In 2014, he was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin Medal by the International Olympic Committee for his work with the International Council of Arbitration for Sports, which operates the Court of Arbitration for Sport.[3]
References:
^ Senior Counsel Directory, www.sal.org.sg, accessed 31 March 2008.
^ Chee Kong, Loh, "Law Society president says Singapore lawyers apathetic about public law", channelnewsasia.com, 18 March 2008, accessed 31 March 2008.
^ "Singapore lawyer Michael Hwang receives the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for his services to the Olympic movement", singaporeolympics.com, 13 October 2014, accessed 13 July 2015.
Jose Ferrer Sala, Spain:
Role: Narrator
Birthdate: January 8, 1912
Biography José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón, known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, and director of theatre and film. He was the first Puerto Rican-born actor, as well as the first Hispanic actor, to win an Academy Award (in 1950 for Cyrano de Bergerac).
In 1947, Ferrer won the Tony Award for his theatrical performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, and in 1952, he won the Distinguished Dramatic Actor Award for The Shrike, and also the Outstanding Director Award for directing the plays The Shrike, The Fourposter, and Stalag 17.
Ferrer's contributions to American theatre were recognized in 1981, when he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 1985, he received the National Medal of Arts from Ronald Reagan, becoming the first actor to receive that honor.[2]
Episodes:
I, Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha
Be It Ever So Mortgaged
Mother Meets What's-His-Name
References:
↑ José Ferrer on the Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on January 8, 2020.
↑ José Ferrer on Wikipedia. Retrieved on January 8, 2020.
Sir Torquil Norman, UK:
Sir Torquil Patrick Alexander Norman, CBE
Born: 11 April 1933) is a British businessman, aircraft enthusiast, and arts philanthropist.[1]
Sir Torquil Norman. CBE
Born: 11 April 1933 (age 87). Marylebone, London
Nationality: British
Occupation: Businessman
Spouse(s): Lady Elizabeth Ann Montagu. (m. 1961)
Early life and education::
Norman is the youngest of three sons born to Air Commodore Sir Nigel Norman, 2nd Baronet, and Patrician Moyra Annesley, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel James Howard Adolphus Annesley. His father, the only child of journalist and politician Sir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet, and novelist Ménie Muriel Dowie, was killed in action in 1943, shortly before Torquil's 10th birthday. His eldest brother, Sir Mark Annesley Norman, inherited the baronetcy and his middle brother, Desmond Norman, was an aviation pioneer.[1]
Norman was educated at Eton College, Harvard University and Trinity College, Cambridge.[1]
Career:
Standing 6'7", Norman gained his pilot's licence at eighteen, and did his National Service in the Fleet Air Arm. After he left, he bought a Piper Comanche, flew in No. 601 Squadron RAF,[2] and took up skydiving.
After working as an investment banker in the United States for eleven years, Norman returned to the United Kingdom in the 1960s and subsequently entered the toymaking industry, first as chief executive of Berwick Timpo[3] toy company from 1973. In 1980, he founded Bluebird Toys, makers of the Big Yellow Teapot House, the Big Red Fun Bus, and the successful Polly Pocket line of dolls.[4]
A long-term Camden resident, Norman bought the derelict Roundhouse arts venuein Chalk Farm for £3 million in 1996 "as an impulse buy", having read it was proposed to turn it into an architectural museum.[5] As founder and chairman of the Roundhouse Trust he then raised £27 million from public and private sources, including almost £4 million more of his own personal funds, to restore the crumbling Victorian former railway repair shed, which had been a major arts venue in the 1960s and '70s. The restored Roundhouse reopened in June 2006 as a 1,700 seat performance space, with a state-of-the-art creative centre for young people in the undercroft, and a new wing with a purpose-built bar and café.[6][7] It was soon the base for a major season by the Royal Shakespeare Company, played host to regular big-name rock concerts, and by 2008 had involved over 12,000 teenagers in creative arts projects.[8]
Norman, who was previously appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, stepped down as chairman of the Roundhouse Trust in 2007,[9] and was knighted the same year for his "services to the arts and to disadvantaged young people".[10] In 2007 he won the Beacon Fellowship Prize for his work with young people through the Roundhouse Trust.[11]
A collector of classic aeroplanes, Norman wrote a vivid account of flying a DH Leopard Moth across the Atlantic.[12] In 1995 Norman and Henry Labouchère undertook a long distance flight in a light aircraft, culminating in their East-West trans-Atlantic flight in a (then) 59-year-old De Havilland Dragonfly, with both of them being awarded the Certificate of Merit by the Royal Aero Club.
Personal life:
On 8 July 1961, Norman married Lady Elizabeth Ann Montagu, the daughter of Victor Montagu, 10th Earl of Sandwich. They have five children, including Conservative Party MP Jesse Norman, the artist Amy Sharrocks, and ten grandchildren.[1]
Published works:
2010 – Kick The Tyres, Light The Fires: One Man's Vision For Britain's Future And How We Can Make It Work. Infinite Ideas. ISBN 978-1-906821-53-1.
References:
^ a b c d Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knighthood (107 ed.). Burke's Peerage & Gentry. pp. 2918–2919. ISBN 0-9711966-2-1. Cite uses deprecated parameter |editorlink= (help)
^ 601: The Flying Sword, RAF MuseumPodcast Series
^ Berwick Timpo plc
^ BBC Interview with Sir Torquil Norman, Desert Island Discs, 12 December 2010
^ Jane Wright, Torquil's not cheap at the Roundhouse, Camden New Journal, 22 May 2003
^ Richard Morrison, The magic round about, The Times, 3 February 2006
^ Tom Foot, The beginning of a new era as the Roundhouse re-opens, Camden New Journal, May 2006
^ Sara Newman, Roundhouse night of glamour raises £900,000 for charity, Camden New Journal, 19 June 2008.
^ Dan Carrier, Tributes to outgoing Torquil, Camden New Journal, 18 January 2007
^ Birthday honours: London list, BBC News, 16 June 2007
^ Beacon Special Prize 2007, Beacon Fellowship, 2007
^ Pilot, June 1996.
David Robinson, USA:
David Maurice Robinson:
David Maurice Robinson (born August 6, 1965) is an American former professional basketball player who played for the San Antonio Spurs in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1989 to 2003. Nicknamed "the Admiral" for his service with the U.S. Navy, Robinson was a 10-time NBA All-Star, the 1995 NBA MVP, a two-time NBA champion (1999 and 2003), a two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner (1992, 1996), a two-time Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee (2009 for his individual career, 2010 as a member of the 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball team), and a two-time U.S. Olympic Hall of Fameinductee (2008 individually, 2009 as a member of the 1992 Olympic team).[2] He is widely considered one of the greatest centers in both college basketball and NBA history.[3]
Personal information:
Born: August 6, 1965(age 55). Key West, Florida
Nationality: American
Listed height: 7 ft 1 in (2.16 m)
Listed weight: 235 lb (107 kg)
Career information:
High school: Osbourn Park. (Manassas, Virginia)
College: Navy (1983–1987)
NBA draft:
1987 / Round: 1 / Pick: 1st overall
Selected by the San Antonio Spurs
Playing career: 1989–2003
Position: Center
Number: 50
Career history: 1989–2003
San Antonio Spurs
Career highlights and awards
2× NBA champion (1999, 2003)
NBA Most Valuable Player (1995)
10× NBA All-Star (1990–1996, 1998, 2000, 2001)
4× All-NBA First Team (1991, 1992, 1995, 1996)
2× All-NBA Second Team (1994, 1998)
4× All-NBA Third Team (1990, 1993, 2000, 2001)
NBA Defensive Player of the Year (1992)
4× NBA All-Defensive First Team (1991, 1992, 1995, 1996)
4× NBA All-Defensive Second Team (1990, 1993, 1994, 1998)
NBA Sportsmanship Award (2001)
NBA scoring champion (1994)
NBA rebounding leader (1991)
NBA blocks leader (1992)
NBA Rookie of the Year (1990)
NBA All-Rookie First Team (1990)
NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team
No. 50 retired by San Antonio Spurs
Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year(2003)
National college player of the year (1987)
Consensus first-team All-American (1987)
Consensus second-team All-American (1986)
3× CAA Player of the Year (1985–1987)
2× NCAA blocks leader (1986, 1987)
NCAA rebounding leader (1986)
USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year(1986).
David Robinson was born in Key West, Florida, the second child of Ambrose and Freda Robinson. Since Robinson's father was in the U.S. Navy, the family moved frequently. After his father retired from the Navy, the family settled in Woodbridge, Virginia, where Robinson excelled in school and in most sports, except basketball. Robinson attended Osbourn Park High School in Manassas, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., where Robinson's father was working as an engineer.
Robinson was of average height for most of his childhood and teenage years, and stood only 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m) tall in his junior year of high school (age 16–17). But during his senior year he experienced a large growth spurt and grew to 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m). He had not played organized basketball or attended any basketball camps,[4] but the school's basketball coach added him to the team, and Robinson earned all-area and all-district honors but generated little interest among college basketball coaches.
Robinson graduated from Osbourn Park in 1983. He achieved a relatively high score of 1320 on the SAT, and chose to attend the U.S. Naval Academy, where he would major in mathematics and play on the basketball team. At the time the Naval Academy had a height restriction of 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) for all cadets, and in the autumn when the new academic year began Robinson had grown to 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m). Assuming that he was unlikely to grow much more, the academy's superintendent readily granted him a waiver. However Robinson continued growing, and by the start of his second year at the academy he had nearly reached his adult height of 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m), which later prevented him from serving on any U.S. naval ships.
Robinson married Valerie Hoggatt in 1991. They have three sons, David Jr., Corey, and Justin. Corey attended Notre Dame and was a wide receiver on the football team[26]before ending his playing career in 2016 on medical advice due to multiple concussionsprior to what would have been his senior season.[27] He was very active on campus in his final undergraduate year, having been elected student body president in February 2016 for the 2016–17 school year.[28] Justin, a 6'8" (2.03 m) forward in basketball and a two-time all-state selection in Texas, has attended Duke since August 2015. He was initially recruited to the Duke team as a "preferred walk-on" with the opportunity to eventually earn a scholarship, but was placed on scholarship before his arrival at Duke.[29]On September 18, 2020, Mornar Bar of Erste Liga announced that they had signed Justin, signaling that Justin started his professional basketball career.[30]
Robinson became a Christian on June 8, 1991 after being encouraged to read the Bible.[31][32]
In 2001, Robinson founded and funded the $9 million Carver Academy in San Antonio, a non-profit private school named for George Washington Carver to provide more opportunities for inner-city children. In 2012, the school became a public charter school and its name changed to IDEA Carver. Robinson continues to be a very active participant in the school's day-to-day activities.[33][34]
In 2011, Robinson earned a Master of Arts in Administration (with concentration in organizational development) from the University of the Incarnate Word to better "understand how businesses work and how to build them.".[35]
Beyond his founding of Carver Academy, Robinson is well known as a philanthropist. Robinson and business partner Daniel Bassichis donate 10 percent of their profits to charitable causes.[35] The winner of the NBA Community Assist Award is presented with the David Robinson Plaque.[36]
Other ventures:
In 2008 Robinson partnered with Daniel Bassichis, formerly of Goldman Sachs and a board member of The Carver Academy, to form Admiral Capital Group.[37] Admiral Capital Group is a private equity firm whose mission is to invest in opportunities that can provide both financial and social returns. Robinson's primary motivation in starting Admiral Capital was to create a source of additional financial support for The Carver Academy. Its portfolio is worth more than $100 million and includes nine upscale hotels and office buildings across the U.S. as well as Centerplate, one of the largest hospitality companies in the world. Admiral Capital Group also partnered with Living Cities to form the Admiral Center, a non-profit created to support other athletes and entertainers with their philanthropic initiatives. Robinson is also co-owner of a Jaguar Land Rover Dealership in San Juan, Texas.[38][39]
Awards and honours:
Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame
class of 2009 – individual
class of 2010 – as a member of the "Dream Team"
U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame
class of 2008 – individual
class of 2009 – as a member of the "Dream Team"
FIBA Hall of Fame
class of 2013 - individual
class of 2017 - as a member of the "Dream Team"
Two-time NBA Champion
1995 NBA MVP
1992 NBA Defensive Player of the Year
1990 NBA Rookie of the Year
1990 NBA All-Rookie First Team
Four-time All-NBA First Team
Four-time All-Defensive First Team
10-time NBA All-Star
2001 NBA Sportsmanship Award[40]
Two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner
Olympic Bronze Medal winner
One of 50 Greatest Players in NBA History
1994 NBA Scoring Champion
Five-time IBM Award winner[41]
2008 NBA Shooting Stars champion[42]
Gold Medal in 1986 FIBA World Championship.[43]
2003 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year
2012 NCAA Silver Anniversary Award[44]
Number 50 retired by the San Antonio Spurs
Coach Wooden "Keys to Life" Award(2004).
Charitable efforts:
In addition to his lengthy NBA career, Robinson is also noted for his charitable work.
In 1991, Robinson visited with fifth graders at Gates Elementary School in San Antonio and challenged them to finish school and go to college. He offered a $2,000 scholarship to everyone who did. In 1998, proving even better than his word, Robinson awarded $8,000 to each of those students who had completed his challenge. In perhaps his greatest civic and charitable achievement, David and his wife, Valerie, founded the Carver Academy in San Antonio, which opened its doors in September 2001. To date, the Robinsons have donated more than $11 million to the school.[45]
In March 2003, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to charity, the NBA renamed its award for outstanding charitable efforts in honor of Robinson. Winners of the NBA's Community Assist Award receive the David Robinson Plaque, with the inscription "Following the standard set by NBA Legend David Robinson who improved the community piece by piece." The award is given out monthly by the league to recognize players for their charitable efforts. Robinson is also the recipient of the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership.[46]
In 2011, in recognition of his philanthropic efforts with the Carver Academy, Robinson received the Children's Champion Award from the charitable organization Children's Hunger Fund.[47]
References:
^ Men's Tournament of the Americas – 1992, USA Basketball. Retrieved December 6, 2018.
^ "1992 United States Olympic Team". Archived from the original on August 18, 2010.
^ "The game's greatest giants ever". ESPN.com. March 6, 2007. Retrieved January 25, 2011.
^ a b c d Montville, Leigh (April 29, 1996). "Trials Of David". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved March 10, 2013.
^ According to the following article about the city of Annapolis, Robinson won the "Eastman Award" in 1987 and the award is in Lejeune Hall. Bailey, Steve (August 22, 2008). "In Annapolis, Md., the Past Is Always at Hand". New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2010.See also the footnote at United States Naval Academy#Halls and principal buildings (at "Lejeune Hall").
^ Report to the Honorable Gordon J. Humphrey, U.S. Senate (September 1987). "Treatment of Prominent Athletes on Active Duty" (PDF). United States General Accounting Office. Retrieved March 28, 2012.
^ "Information on Military to Civilian Transition Employment, Civilian Jobs for Veterans". G.I. Jobs. Archived from the original on March 10, 2006. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ Anderson, Dave (May 18, 1987). "Sports of the Times; The Robinson Plot Thickens". New York Times.
^ Orsborn, Tom (May 20, 2007). "The Summer Our Ship Came In". San Antonio Express-News.
^ "1988–89 Standings". NBA.com. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ a b "Legends profile: David Robinson". NBA.com.
^ "David Robinson's Supreme Court for Genesis (1992)". MobyGames.
^ "San Antonio Spurs at Los Angeles Clippers Box Score, April 24, 1994". Basketball-Reference.com.
^ "David Robinson Stats". Basketball-Reference.com.
^ "The NBA at 50". NBA.com. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ "Spurs Tower Over NBA". NBA.com. Archived from the original on January 6, 2009. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ Staff, NBA com. "Top Moments: Twin Towers ride off to sunset with another title". NBA.com.
^ "David Robinson: "Tim Duncan is probably the best thing that ever happened to me"". March 23, 2018.
^ a b Kent, Milton. "'Admiral' Robinson isn't one to pull rank". baltimoresun.com.
^ Mooney, Matthew. "Honoring David Robinson". Bleacher Report.
^https://www.basketball.reference.com/players/r/robinda01/gamelog/2000
^ "Transcript of David Robinson Retirement Press Conference". San Antonio Spurs.
^ "David Robinson Scores 71 points". San Antonio Spurs.
^ "ESPN.com – NBA – Kobe makes records wilt". Sports.espn.go.com. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ "An Admiral recollection from the year David Robinson and MJ retired – ESPN". Sports.espn.go.com. September 11, 2009. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ Arnold, Keith (February 5, 2013). "Early Enrollees: Corey Robinson".
^ Bromberg, Nick (June 15, 2016). "Notre Dame WR Corey Robinson medically retires due to concussions". Dr. Saturday. Yahoo! Sports. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
^ Bromberg, Nick (February 11, 2016). "Notre Dame WR Corey Robinson wins student body president election". Dr. Saturday. Yahoo! Sports. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
^ Johnson, Raphielle (May 6, 2015). "Son of former NBA great David Robinson to be on scholarship at Duke next season". NBC Sports. College Basketball Talk. Retrieved May 9, 2015.
^ "Džastin Robinson potpisao za Mornar" [Justin Robinson signed for Mornar]. kkmornar.bar (in Serbian). September 18, 2020. Retrieved September 18, 2020.
^ Leigh Montville (April 29, 1996). "SAN ANTONIO SPURS CENTER AND BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN DAVID – 04.29.96 – SI Vault". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ Joshua Cooley (March–April 2013). "David Robinson: Parenting in the Fourth Quarter". Focus on the Family. Retrieved January 15, 2018.
^ "The 25 Smartest Athlete Purchases in Sports History17. David Robinson Builds Carver Academy". Complex.
^ "David Robinson gives IDEA Carver Academy kids shopping spree". Archived from the original on October 27, 2013.
^ a b "The Education of David Robinson - San Antonio Magazine - March 2012 - San Antonio, TX". www.sanantoniomag.com.
^ "David Robinson: Impact on the Community". San Antonio Spurs.
^ "Admiral Capital Group". Admiral Capital Group. Retrieved August 4,2012.
^ "Home Page - Admiral Capital Group". Admiral Capital Group.
^ Texas, Jaguar San Juan. "ABOUT US | Jaguar San Juan Texas". www.jaguarsanjuantx.com.
^ "NBA Sportsmanship Award Winners". Fox News. April 30, 2013.
^ Shaq claims NBA's IBM award
^ "NBA All-Star Shooting Stars Winners". NBA.com. August 24, 2017. Archived from the original on February 24, 2018.
^ "1986 USA Basketball". Archived from the original on August 14, 2007.
^ "Former NCAA stars shine at Honors Celebration". NCAA.org. January 13, 2012. Archived from the original on May 23, 2012. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ "David Robinson, Chase Invest Sweat, Equity to Rebuild New Orleans One House at a... | Reuters". Uk.reuters.com. February 12, 2008. Archived from the original on January 12, 2009. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
^ "404 Page". Philanthropy Roundtable.
^ Harlan, Tim. (October 3, 2010). "CHF Children's Champion Award Banquet Set for Oct. 9" Archived May 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1605/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Paramount.
American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).
Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronized music and sound effects, and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.
In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.
Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly-fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year the cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
Stamp card items...but I previewed them on the IMVU avatar. Will preview them on the SL one in a few minutes lol
Macro shot of a deep purple, tall bearded iris with blue beards and rain drops.
The only post production was to crop my picture using Picnik.
This is the first time in 11 years that I've seen this beautiful purple iris bloom in our garden.
This was one of my most difficult shots due to the color. The purple has black and blue tones and I needed the correct light to get the right tones. I took several shots at different times of the day in order to get the true colors.
Please take a look at the original size for some pretty amazing details : )
Thank you very much for your views, invitations, faves and comments.
Explore: Highest position: 93 on Saturday, June 25, 2011
RUINS OF GUNNESS' HOME, LAPORTE, IND.
Date: 1908
Source Type: Photograph
Publisher, Printer, Photographer: F. Stansbury
Postmark: None
Collection: Steven R. Shook
Remark: Belle Gunness, often referred to as the Lady Bluebeard, is considered to be the first American female serial killer.
Born in 1858 in Selbu, Norway, Belle Gunness emigrated to America in the mid 1880s. Belle married Mads Sorenson in 1893, and together they operated a store in Chicago. The store burned down, and Mads and Belle collected insurance on the property. Mads Sorenson died in 1900, with Belle collecting approximately $8,000 through his life insurance policy.
On April 1, 1902, Belle married Peter Gunness in LaPorte, Indiana. Together, Peter and Belle owned and operated a small farm on McClung Road in LaPorte County. Belle again collected insurance on a husband when Peter died after a coffee grinder allegedly fell from a shelf hitting him on the head. Following Peter's death, Belle began advertising in Norwegian language newspapers in America for a husband.
Several suitors answered Belle's advertisements. However, many of these potential bridegrooms would suddenly leave in the night, leading Belle's 18 year old niece, Jenny Olson, to be suspicious as to their welfare. Jenny then mysteriously disappeared, though Belle told friends and neighbors that she had left for schooling in California.
The final man to respond to Belle's advertisement was Andrew Helgelein. Belle requested that Andrew sell his property and bring his money (about $3,000) to LaPorte, which he did in 1908. Andrew's brother, Asa Helgelein became suspicious when letters from Andrew ceased to arrive. Asa therefore traveled to LaPorte County to inquire about the welfare of his brother.
In the early morning of April 28, 1908, the Gunness farmhouse burned to the ground. The Gunness children were found in the ashes of the home, as well as the body of a headless woman. This headless body, however, was much smaller in size than the rotund stature of Belle's body. After sluicing through the ashes of the home, dental work reportedly to be Belle's was found. Asa Helgelein arrived several days after the fire, and at his urging, the LaPorte County Sheriff began to further investigate the fire and Belle's relations with out-of-town men. The investigation turned into a national sensation, as numerous bodies were soon found to be buried on Belle's farm..
The remains of Andrew Helgelein were the first to be found, buried in a shallow grave in the garden. Jenny Olson's body was soon discovered nearby. In all, at least twelve other bodies were recovered from the property. It has been estimated that Belle may have buried forty men on the farm.
Enormous crowds, numbering in the thousands, visited the farm during the investigation. Special trains from Chicago and Indianapolis, as well as from other towns and cities, brought curious onlookers to the farm. Picnics were common. A farm building was used as a temporary morgue, where onlookers could view the remains as they were recovered and put on display. Numerous postcards were produced and sold during and after the investigation.
Ray Lamphere, a farm hand of Belle's, was eventually charged with murder and arson. Though not convicted of murder, Lamphere was found guilty of arson and incarcerated in the nearby Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where he died a few years later. While in prison, Lamphere maintained that Belle had escaped and insisted that her body was not found in the debris of the burnt house. Lamphere's statement led to numerous reported sightings of Belle Gunness across the United States for many years, none of which were ever confirmed.
Copyright 2016. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.
Mom: Yeah, I really loved that pool.
Me: Did you ever learn to swim swim?
Mom: No. Well, that's another story for another time.
Me: What do you mean?
Mom: Well, I took swimming lessons periodically for many years until I was forty.
Me: I don't remember this.
Mom: Well, this wasn't anything I was proud of. I mean, I could swim in waters where I could touch the bottom with my feet, but in anything deeper than that, I'd panic and drown. I think the last time I tried to learn was when I went back to work, so that was in my forties.
Me: Well, you know I'm a terrible swimmer?
Mom: Really? Well, at least you stay afloat.
Me: Yeah, but back in camp...let's just say it took forever for me to graduate from swimming level to swimming level. Like, I'd be stuck at the Minnow pool when almost everyone else my age was at the Barracuda one. Eventually the counselors would decide it didn't make sense for one of them to be monitor me and me alone in a pool, so they'd kick me upstairs. I could never qualify due to my swimming skills. The main thing was that I was a terrible diver.
Mom: Well, I was trying to learn when I was twenty, whereas you learned when you were young. So you want the end of the story? Of my swimming?
Me: You know the answer to that.
Mom: Well, I made an appointment with the head swimming coach at Hofstra for private swimming lessons. And he was horrified to learn that I was on a boat all the time, yet I couldn't swim. So he taught me, and I was able to do the butterfly on my back, but I always banging my head on the wall.
Me: Oh, I remember that. It was never pleasant.
Mom: Well, the big moment came when I was jumping into pool and showing him what he had taught me, and he was right there with me, and...I kept drowning. And he gave up on me and said that really, I could never swim, and he would spend a lesson teaching me Navy stay-afloat techniques, which he did, and that was the end of my swimming lessons.
Cover art by George Gross.
"My Body Lured The Suckers"
1 - The Millionaire, The Bed And The Camera.
2 - A Long Drink For The Thirsty Knife !
3 - Nude Corpse In The Lover's Hideaway !
4 - Life, Love And Death Of The Wife-In-Fact Only !
5 - Bluebeard Was An Ameteur !
6 - Of Lust, Love And Death !
7 - Restless Is The Grave Of The Captain's Wife !
8 - My Body Lured The Suckers !
“Journeys Through Bookland, a new and original plan for reading applied to the world’s best literature for children.” By Charles H. Sylvester. Volume 2. Bellows-Reeve Company, 1922.
with Miss Nessie...
An imaginative, sometimes gruesome, literary fairytale with elements from Bluebeard...
Margaret Campbell Barnes - Lady of Cleves
Harlequin Books 169, 1952
Cover Artist: James Derrett McCarthy
"The rich and racy story of England's Bluebeard King, Henry VIII."
Tacoma, Washington
When I first moved up to Washington 3 1/2 years ago and went out exploring in Tacoma I happed upon Red Elm Cafe and it has remained one of my favorites - along with Bluebeard Coffee Roasters. While Bluebeard only has pastries, Red Elm Cafe has waffles made to order. Yesterday I declared it "Waffle Saturday!" and I was not disappointed!
Date: 1908
Source Type: Postcard
Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Unknown
Postmark: June 1, 1908, LaPorte, Indiana
Collection: Steven R. Shook
Remark: Though no description is found on the front of this postcard, the message written on the reverse by Roy Standish to his father B. R. Standish of Falconer, Chautauqua County, New York, clearly identifies it as the Belle Gunness farm in LaPorte County, Indiana. The message reads as follows:
La Porte, Ind
May 31
This is the yard where they dug the bodies out of and shows a little lake in the back ground. at the left of the picture is holes you can see where 4 bodies were found. I will send you some more of these cards after a while. Your son Roy.
Addressed to:
Mr. B. R. Standish
Falconer
Chau Co.
N. Y.
R. F. D. 70
Belle Gunness, often referred to as the Lady Bluebeard, is considered to be the first American female serial killer.
Born in 1858 in Selbu, Norway, Belle Gunness emigrated to America in the mid 1880s. Belle married Mads Sorenson in 1893, and together they operated a store in Chicago. The store burned down, and Mads and Belle collected insurance on the property. Mads Sorenson died in 1900, with Belle collecting approximately $8,000 through his life insurance policy.
On April 1, 1902, Belle married Peter Gunness in LaPorte, Indiana. Together, Peter and Belle owned and operated a small farm on McClung Road in LaPorte County. Belle again collected insurance on a husband when Peter died after a coffee grinder allegedly fell from a shelf hitting him on the head. Following Peter's death, Belle began advertising in Norwegian language newspapers in America for a husband.
Several suitors answered Belle's advertisements. However, many of these potential bridegrooms would suddenly leave in the night, leading Belle's 18 year old niece, Jenny Olson, to be suspicious as to their welfare. Jenny then mysteriously disappeared, though Belle told friends and neighbors that she had left for schooling in California.
The final man to respond to Belle's advertisement was Andrew Helgelein. Belle requested that Andrew sell his property and bring his money (about $3,000) to LaPorte, which he did in 1908. Andrew's brother, Asa Helgelein became suspicious when letters from Andrew ceased to arrive. Asa therefore traveled to LaPorte County to inquire about the welfare of his brother.
In the early morning of April 28, 1908, the Gunness farmhouse burned to the ground. The Gunness children were found in the ashes of the home, as well as the body of a headless woman. This headless body, however, was much smaller in size than the rotund stature of Belle's body. After sluicing through the ashes of the home, dental work reportedly to be Belle's was found. Asa Helgelein arrived several days after the fire, and at his urging, the LaPorte County Sheriff began to further investigate the fire and Belle's relations with out-of-town men. The investigation turned into a national sensation, as numerous bodies were soon found to be buried on Belle's farm..
The remains of Andrew Helgelein were the first to be found, buried in a shallow grave in the garden. Jenny Olson's body was soon discovered nearby. In all, at least twelve other bodies were recovered from the property. It has been estimated that Belle may have buried forty men on the farm.
Enormous crowds, numbering in the thousands, visited the farm during the investigation. Special trains from Chicago and Indianapolis, as well as from other towns and cities, brought curious onlookers to the farm. Picnics were common. A farm building was used as a temporary morgue, where onlookers could view the remains as they were recovered and put on display. Numerous postcards were produced and sold during and after the investigation.
Ray Lamphere, a farm hand of Belle's, was eventually charged with murder and arson. Though not convicted of murder, Lamphere was found guilty of arson and incarcerated in the nearby Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where he died a few years later. While in prison, Lamphere maintained that Belle had escaped and insisted that her body was not found in the debris of the burnt house. Lamphere's statement led to numerous reported sightings of Belle Gunness across the United States for many years, none of which were ever confirmed.
Copyright 2022. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.
Just a bit of fun with a floral macro, shallow DoF and some flypaper textures.
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©2011 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved
This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.
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Links to facebook and twitter can be found on my flickr profile
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